Constraints

This might be a short post.

I don’t need to have a long one.

What’s the point here? Having a long post is like a constraint.

Thinking of when I restarted the calisthenics training almost three years ago (about June 2023), I don’t think I had a clear goal. I was weak as hell: nearly no sports for 7 years, suffered from allergic rhinitis and asthma for quite some time. With my recalling, I did know that my mind is influenced by my WeChat contact Yuehui Lu, who is the first person I see in person who can do one-arm pull-up (planted the OAP seed in my heart). It is really one of “the moments” when I ask his contact during my undergraduate, because without his moments in Wechat, I might never remember that I was interested in calisthenics.

Now years later I manage to achieve the OAP (although the left one is not standard). In training, the progress is gradual so I know it’s finally going to happen. The first successful attempt of OAP was on the way for chicken rice on a Sunday, when I just did it and continue my way to the hawker centre. For sure it’s a pride moment, but I find my immediate thought is “now what’s next?”.

(TO add the gif here.)

There is nothing wrong, until I find recently that if so many parallel goals are set, the life is being tough by the constraints. For example, other than the monthly blog post, I also force myself to write weekly reading notes to keep the habit of reading. It is kinda the way I’m being so-called self-motivated: can I do sth by certain time? It is fine, but just as in constraint solving, the difficulty is not monotonic with the number of constraints. That’s how life is: releasing certain constraints can make the life easier. Most of the cases in my life, there is no necessary constraint, but those desire-based constraints are a lot. Desire is hard to balance.

Anyway, feel free to not overly constrain yourself.