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knny

Hi, I'm KNNY, an artist. I write about the intersection of self-improvement, art, lifting, and random shit throughout my day. This journal is locally stored, so it's censorship-proof in that sense.

Frustration with everybody and everything in life

So today after getting done at the gym, I went to a (different) local gym in the area that trains specifically martial arts. I've been wanting to get into martial arts for a while because it seems like it would be the natural progression after bodybuilding, so when I showed up they told me that the Muay Thai class would be starting in like 20 minutes. I bought some gloves on the spot, looked at a cheatsheet on the wall that tells you how to wrap your hands, and everything was cool. Until it wasn...
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Ides of March: Things that have been on my mind (」°ロ°)」

Just gonna jump right into it. I've become very bitter towards everyone. I'm tired of people trying to tell me what to do, which is why I choose to not associate with most people. I don't go out and drink, I don't eat junk food, I don't hook up (most of the time), currently I don't have social media besides Farcaster (which is probably the most useful social media there is right now). I just wake up, work out, eat, and work on my personal projects and my job. It's in a sense living like a monk. ...
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Notes from Shi Heng Yi on the Eightfold Path

Noble 8-fold path is a guideline for learning how to implement a new way of living your life, so that means every day, think about what right understanding means to you. If there is something to adjust within your life, then the Eightfold path is a way to get you to the finality of the adjustment. #1 - Right Understanding Learning to see how things really are. See night and day at the same time. Nothing is permanent. Adjust first of all your understanding of knowing the kind of existence you ...
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You should always be striving to be the best out of everyone

Everyone wants to be known for being a pioneer of a genre - it takes barely any work to come up with an original idea. Original ideas are not hard to come by. What I don't see is people wanting to be known for being the best, because they aren't the best and they don't want to put in concrete effort to strive to become the best. You should always strive to be the best out of everyone, and not just your best. The idea of "your" best is a fallacy that you can only do so much. I'm calling that fal...
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People are mad that an autonomous crypto artist made $95k on one SuperRare sale

Botto, an AI art project created by German artist Mario Klingemann, has recently gotten a lot of press on twitter for a work of art sold for (checks notes) 41.447 ETH, which is $95,396.07 at the time of this writing [ https://superrare.com/0xb932a70a57673d89f4acffbe830e8ed7f75fb9e0/another-sector-31887 ]. On one hand, human artists are mad that an autonomous artist is gaining much more money they could ever dream of making from a single artwork. On the other hand, collectors are astonished that ...
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If you don’t look for it, you won’t find it.

A couple good things have happened in my life as of recently (which I won't reveal - the reasoning behind which you can find here https://listed.to/@knny/48887/don-t-tell-anyone-what-you-re-planning-to-do ). The common denominator between these good things that have happened is that they didn't just happen out of the blue. It may seem that some people are lucky all the time and other people have a very hard time finding luck, but I assure you it's not luck - it's the fact that the "lucky" people...
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The idea of self, burnout, having the wrong identity, and “doing too much”

I am often catching myself reading about self improvement, and averaging out varying perspectives of what "self" means, and how one goes about improving it. One perspective is that there is no true self, that your life is perfect as it already is and the idea of improving who you are (your ego) is an illusion. I used to think this way until I started weight lifting. When you only ever think about your thoughts themselves, there is sort of an invisible cage where you look around and say "I need t...
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Thoughts on sharing good news about your life

It only makes sense to share good news with people who are emotionally/otherwise invested in you, because you know with certainty that they actually want what's best for you. If people aren't directly affected by the going-ons of your life or your personal improving, you're taking a gamble on other people's energy affecting your outcome. Control the narrative of who knows what about you, and you can thereby indirectly control the outcome. If you go around telling everyone the good things about ...
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Strategically constructing originality

Originality is a polarizing topic. I've said in a previous post that originality doesn't materially exist, it's just an idea. It's a combination of habits and experiences that you've accumulated over the course of your life. The experiences you have, whether they happen to you or that you cultivate yourself, embed habits in your subconscious that about 95% of the time dictate what you do in your day to day life. It's only when you consciously choose to go against your subconscious habits that yo...
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People love to harvest your energy

Today while walking down the streets of Castro San Francisco, the gayest of all places, a group of (fatass) construction workers in a truck were driving slowly and looked me up and down, called me a faggot and drove away. I was wearing semi-short shorts leaving the gym (where's my skinny fit squad, sign that guestbook lmfao) so it eventually was bound to happen, even in SF. I was angry in the first 5 minutes after that, and then I thought to myself - I've been in this situation before so many ti...
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Unfucking the programming of your life

If people aren’t on their phone scrolling socials, they have to be listening to music. If they’re not listening to music, they have to be in a conversation with someone. If they’re not in a conversation, they have to be occupied shuffling around multitasking while accomplishing nothing. If they’re not shuffling around, they have to be worried about what new video games are coming out, when the club is going to be busy, out shopping, planning brunch. Most people can’t be bothered to stop and be ...
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Difficulty of a situation is inversely proportional to the simplicity of it

Today was leg day. Went in and did my regular routine except I hit a new PR on about half my sets, including squats. Usually I add smaller plates to incrementally add weight to the bar, but by putting a single plate on the bar and taking off the smaller weights, even though I was lifting more, it felt like I was lifting less. I was convinced I would fail the set, but by just upping the weight and doing it, it made me think - does the amount of plates on the bar affect whether or not we can psych...
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Why you think other people's art looks perfect and your art looks like shit.

The human body is a sort of artwork. The way a sculptor molds clay or casts metal to create a statue, is parallel to the way a bodybuilder adds muscle and subtracts fat to create a new physique on themselves. When I'm in the gym I have a bad habit of comparing myself to others and making myself someone else's imaginary competition. I look at their muscular development and think to myself "damn he looks amazing, I wonder how I can look like him". They didn't ask for this comparison, I just make ...
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PC Music changed my life + thoughts on originality

PC Music was the first big inspiration for a lot of the art I do. Artists like A.G. Cook, Sophie, Hannah Diamond, 100 gecs, Namasanda, and many others who are PC Music adjacent, changed how I look at art and the world. I used to make pointillism ink artwork that was heavily anchored in realism without any real creativity put into it, even though any non-artist would say "of course it's creative, you created some art", but is it really art if the subject matter wasn't something you created yours...
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Don't tell anyone what you're planning to do.

Don't tell anyone what you're planning to do. Time and time again I've told people what I was planning or what I was trying to accomplish, and the thing ended up falling through. Whenever I didn't tell anyone and just did the thing, it happened flawlessly. There is probably a psychological reason behind this, but I'd like to think it's some spiritual force that other people don't want you succeeding. Everyone wants what is best for them and they don't really care that you see through with succe...
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Preparing for a new version of you is just like barbell back squats.

When you're doing a barbell back squat and you adjust your feet and brace your core right before you pick up the bar, it can affect how the entire lift goes. If you pick it up the wrong way, you could either drop the bar or perform poorly. I was thinking about that while doing my night time routine and how it's parallel to a lot of other things we do in life. If we don't prepare for the big moment, the big moment won't actually happen. If I don't drink my tea, have my magnesium and melatonin, I ...
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I've never met a hater who was doing better than me.

I was thinking about how when you're progressing in life and bettering yourself, everyone has an opinion about how you should or shouldn't live, but when you're not progressing, nobody is there to remind you that you're not doing shit. You need to be the one to say, fuck every single person on this planet, I'm going to do what I want to do. I heard someone say the other day "I've never met a hater who was doing better than me." I'm really starting to understand what that means. I've had stranger...
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