Notes to Self – Page 4 – The Diary of The Deranged Writer

XXXVI: The Nocturnal’s Struggle of Waking Up Early / Notes to Self XVI

If you have been following The Diary lately, you should know that I’ve been making gradual changes in my life. One of those changes is waking up early for work—ideally at 8:00am. I did just that on most workdays after ToyCon 2025, and there were times I even woke up at 6:00am. (That’s a feat for a nocturnal person like me, and even my family is shocked by the fact that I woke up before they did.)

Now it’s beyond the middle of August 2025, and I admit that I haven’t really been waking up as early as 8am lately… and that’s fine.

(Buckle up because this is going to be a long post.)

Notes to Self XV

It’s almost a week after New Year’s Day, and my past several days have been memorable. But I don’t want to blog about all of them at once. Why? I just finished my first workout of 2025.

One of my resolutions this year is to keep exercising as much as I want to keep writing in my journal and here on The Diary. Today, I restarted my fitness journey by following Body Project’s 30-minute fat-burning beginner workout. And in the first few minutes, Mr. Daniel Bartlett (the coach in the video) reminded me that I could pick my place in the workout. I can pause, catch my breath, and keep marching in place if I can’t do the workout. But because I truly wanted to push myself, I followed how Mr. Bartlett works out exactly… and then my legs shook and I was breathing heavily. (And this is from following a low-impact workout. It has been so long since I had a proper workout other than walking and jogging.) I just had to pause, rest for a while, and gain the energy to exercise again.

And when I finally gained that energy back, I played the video again and Mr. Bartlett said something that hit a nail in my head. This is my 15th Notes to Self.

Notes to Self XIV

Hi! I’m The Deranged Writer and welcome to another episode of Notes to Self! In this blog series, I quote something worth remembering from any media or someone I know.

And in this 14th episode of Notes to Self (and the 9th entry of 14 Days of The Deranged Writer [2024]), I’m quoting once again my favorite superhero, Batman – in particular, Robert Pattinson’s version from the movie The Batman.

Spoiler warning if you have not seen The Batman (2022).