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.)

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

XVIII: Full Circle II (The Diary’s 2nd Anniversary)

2 years ago yesterday, I published my first post here on The Diary. And looking back at those 2 years… oh, man, I have been through a lot.

In my first year of blogging on The Diary, I promised myself to publish 13 posts per month and I will blog every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Thankfully, I reached my post goals and schedule mainly because of my Minute Warning series (where I write anything under time pressure under 10 to 30 minutes). And if I were to publish a longer post, I have a writing process that works. You can check my first-year retrospective on this post.

And today, in my second year of blogging at The Diary, I’m looking back and checking if my writing processes still work and if my blogging schedule still serves me well.

Continue reading XVIII: Full Circle II (The Diary’s 2nd Anniversary)