It's birthday week. Here's an arbitrary list of unqualified observations.

Without regular, no-rule sparring with other styles, any form of martial art is no better than theoretical dancing. Think of sparring like test cases, without them your moves are simply uncompiled code that crashes before it launches.

Gamers are surprise-seekers craving novelty. they want games to demand something of them they didn't know they are good at. Yet, they consistently end up playing games that make them do grind jobs in exchange for looking at are pretty images.

It's easy to create paradoxes by self-referencing. This statement is false; the previous statement is true.

It's easier to discard beliefs if they are not part of your identity infrastructure. Beliefs are held not because they are true but as a way to define who you are. I'm a Buddhist, I believe in karma. Shaking belief in karma therefore requires more than empirically disproving it, it would require you to stop calling yourself a Buddhist too.

Trying to sleep is a fool's errand. You either sleep or you don't. Your mind is the enemy here. The only thing you get to control is the environment.