Tag: blog

How I got happy

Here’s a thing I haven’t really discussed. How I got happy.

For a long long time my emotional range was extremely limited. I was sort of lost in between not feeling great or feeling fine, with no real ability to go beyond either boundary. I was half aware of this but decided it was “fine” and that there was nothing I could do.

Looking back at that time, there’s a few moments that demonstrated some of the feeling or lack thereof, one of which was on a trip to Budapest. I was walking along the Széchenyi Chain Bridge one evening with a good friend and he stopped to admire the view, taking in the air, the architecture, and remarking on how wonderful the trip is. I felt nothing. Not a hint of anything.

I was with my friend, we were on holiday, going to a music festival, the vibes should’ve been up. But right then it was just a bridge. An evening. I didn’t care and wanted to keep walking. He couldn’t quite understand that. It was weird, but I couldn’t convince myself of the value of the moment. I did find respite on the trip a few times though, as the festival we went to that week provided ample booze to kill the melancholy. Mejor que nada.

I didn’t think too much about that moment until I started to get happier, but it was quite a key reminder of what I was trying to defeat in myself. I wanted to enjoy the little things (Rule 32 in Zombieland parlance), and to do that you need to enjoy the moment.

But how do you get to the point you can enjoy the moment when you feel so emotionally empty?

In COVID times, I lived with a girlfriend who did a very good job espousing the benefits of therapy and, through continued effort and cajoling, managed to get me to go. I did 6 or so sessions. I walked into the guy’s office and explained the issue, and internally I was pretty keen on getting a quick turnaround. A solution that meant I could just walk back out all fixed.

Because I had that belief, I basically tried to press him each time to offer solutions (spoilers: not how CBT works, as I later found out with the next therapist), but he did half cave and pointed out that when I described stressful situations I referenced my outfits feeling more constrictive – shirts and shoes type shit – and he prescribed dressing more comfortably. I went to a mall, reupped, and whether it was placebo or not, I did feel a bit better. Probably because I wasn’t wearing a suit all the time to go and do my remote sales work, which was flat out absurd anyway.

With my new, half chavvy but particularly comfortable outfits on, I went for the next session, thanked the guy, told him “I feel better” and ended things. He was particularly taken aback by this. Always good to surprise people though, right?

Well, this feeling of serenity derived from tracksuits obviously didn’t last long, and with COVID at it’s end, and the relationship on the ropes, I started considering what I would do next. I threw myself more into work, which turned out to be a very fucking good move (and is the reason I am where I am now), and wondered if it was possible to travel while working.

I thought that if I got back into travelling I’d almost certainly find some satisfaction, it had worked before when I was a teenager so it’d work now surely… However, around this era, I had my teeth quite firmly stuck in the stoic philosopher Seneca’s letters and in one of them he writes (paraphrasing Socrates) “why do you wonder that your travelling does not cure your problems, when you always bring yourself with you?”.

A good point well made, but while I had read the words, I clearly hadn’t totally internalised them and began planning to head elsewhere with the fallacious idea that a change of scenery would resolve this emotional grey zone I was in.

My original plan was to head to Thailand for a little while, then to Mexico and then see where life took me. Here’s what happened:

I got a place in Bangkok and completely fell in love with the city. The previous few years weren’t very social for me, so when I arrived here, I went hard at socialising (positive) and rampant partying (less positive).

The partying brought about some initial satisfaction as it always does. Khao San Road most nights, dive bars, clubs, new fun strangers, and constant motorbikes. It was great. For a while.

As everyone knows, and sometimes purposefully forgets, cheap dopamine doesn’t work for long. Once some of the partying became routine and the interactions and conversations became tedious, the slide into melancholy began again.

In this case it wasn’t gradual, and I slipped mentally pretty hard, pretty fast. For some bizarre reason I couldn’t reconcile, this was about the lowest I’d ever been. Externally, the business was going well, I was travelling while working, I was in a cool as hell city, meeting loads of new people, and living it large. But whatever balance I’d long since cultivated which had created that grey emotional zone where I lived, just snapped.

I was fucked and needed out.

Once that depression hit, I knew it was time to fix this emotional bullshit or it would do some serious damage to me and compromise my future. Nearly everything else was on the right track, just my feelings were all haywire.

I flew back to England.

I got an apartment in the countryside. It was gorgeous and perfectly picked because it was quiet as hell around, I could easily get into the hills to go running alone, and it even overlooked this little brook that often had baby ducks and geese in it just to add to the picturesque vibe of the surroundings. And a friend lived near enough that we could hang out sometimes.

Going back didn’t feel particularly like a moment of triumph lol, but I was aware that I couldn’t fix this particular issue without devoting a lot of my time to it and I was too stimulated and unregulated while travelling to do that.

With a shit tonne of deliberation, I found a new therapist. A lady this time and a decent 40 minute walk down the river from mine, plenty of time to consider what I wanted to talk about and an uncomfortable amount of time to walk back home analysing what she had told me.

The first session was a little slow. It’s not easy trying to explain something that you don’t understand, but with CBT, the idea is that you process events that happened to you through conversation and questions, and then you eventually notice patterns, loops, and other connections that had otherwise eluded you. Noticing the pattern then allows you to break it, and talking about things genuinely does help.

Some people are particularly averse to therapy and are pretty certain that they just “are how they are are” or that there’s no reason to fix things and that it’s “all just fine”, but “fine” is a shitty life sentence. I wouldn’t want to live as “fine”, I spent years as “fine”, and felt very fucking little as “fine”.

I wanted to feel things. I wanted real emotions.

Shit that would make me stop at the bridge and admire how fucking lovely it is to be alive and be here and be with friends, and “fine”, I knew, would not get me there and it won’t get you there either.

With that declaration in mind, I went to the next session.

Some of the early ones were particularly tough. I hated opening up and having to actual discuss things that only existed in fragments in my mind. It was tough. It was so tough that after one session I went straight to the airport with my laptop and decided I would fuck it all off and stay in Amsterdam.

While at lunch with a friend there, I was asked “how are you?” and nearly broke down. Not my best look.

I came back for the next session.

A few weeks later I had a similar reaction and this time found myself (and my problems) in Lyon, where I was also apparently going to escape to, but once the dopamine rush of the escape wore off and the sadness kicked in again I chanced upon a Paolo Nutini song where he sang “I hope I’m happy before I’m old”. The lyrics hit and I flew back.

From then I spent over 6 months specifically grounded in England and focused hard at therapy and exercise and time outdoors walking or running. I’d run for hours in a pretty directionless manner, just noticing what’s around me and trying to see the beauty in it. I specifically didn’t date anyone, rarely partied, and instead spent all of my energy on me.

It was worth it.

There was a lot of emotional turbulence in this period, naturally, but you can’t go around it – if you want to solve deep seated emotional issues then you must go through them.

It’s awful. But it’s worth it.

Towards the end of that time, I noticed that sometimes while on a run I’d be quite lost in how nice everything felt. I’d stop and the sun would hit, the light would feel just right, I’d see a lamb or something and be smiling.

It was working.

I was focusing on my emotions, processing things through talking and writing, and it was working.

Therapy is weird. You’re not really talking about how to get happy. Instead, you’re processing experiences that you haven’t analysed that had an impact on you, and with probing questions you’re able to understand more about what happened and then your feelings change or they don’t but your understanding does. Equally helpful.

Anyway, as these happy days started to become more consistent, I realised that I’d mostly broken through the previous emotional barrier. Result!

Something good would happen and I would feel great about it, not fine, fucking great.

It’s worth noting however that once you get past “fine”, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, and you can actually now also feel particularly bad sometimes when bad things happen, but christ it is worth it.

I’d much rather have this emotional rollercoaster of ups and downs than a tragic train ride of fine fine fine.

This is the way.

Feel the good, feel the bad, but feel something!

The therapy ended once we realised I’d all but ran out of things to talk about for a few sessions in a row. I thanked her (and myself for going) and then decided it was time to get the fuck out of dodge and head back to Bangkok🙂

That was a few years ago now and I’ll be honest reader, life is fucking good.

Every now and then people will notice this positive outlook that I’ve adopted and wonder how it came about. The therapy was a big part for sure, but a lot of the work was the time I spent in nature trying to notice things around me.

The little walks and runs I’d do without a phone, just me and the outside, were incredibly cathartic and in that time I learnt to actually value the moment. I learnt to stop and look around and think “damn, this really is nice”.

So if you’re in this position where everything is just “fine” or “meh” or whatever, my prescription is to spend a lot of time in nature, to write about the things that happen to you (good or bad, though bad will likely take priority if you’re just starting), and to talk to someone – a friend or a therapist or partner, whoever, but someone you trust who will listen and ask questions without judgement.

To conclude, I didn’t write this as some sob story or some big ad for therapy, but to highlight that this limited emotional range or feeling “fine” or empty isn’t something you’re stuck with.

You are both allowed and able to leave it behind and tell yourself a different story about your emotions, and I think with some of the stuff I wrote above, you can get through it.

Only if you want to, and that is on you.

But holy shit, it is worth it.

Quotes I’m vibing with rn:

Did I play my part well? Then applaud me as I exit   – Augustus

In vino veritas [in wine, there’s truth] – Latin proverb

So, you’ve taken a few blows? Good! That’s the price of being in the arena – Roosevelt

Favourite song for now:

Vanity and Notes on Self Experimentation

Anyone that knows me is aware that despite me being a tad self-obsessed, I am not overly vain, at least about myself…

Yes I take the usual precautions and moderate my eating (excessively) and workout (inefficiently and too often) but barring these, I have taken very little care in what I have worn, skincare, hair in general, how I actually look, how I feel about how I look, and how my presentation impacts my interactions.

As a person who frequently describes himself as having “too much time”, a silly and misguided phrase yet accurate in its own right, I took it upon myself to experiment with vanity for the past few months. Here’s what happened.

Neck wars

I burnt myself pretty badly on my neck as a teenager through extreme aversion to sun cream, silly boy, and a strong desire to lay on a beach reading for hours a day. This resulted in a scar that I hardly noticed until earlier this year when I started to consider my actual appearance.

Now, scars are not a bad thing at all and Hunter S Thompson’s line about “life not being a journey to the grave in a well-preserved body” is something I mostly agree with, but as a budding biohacker and someone who can obsess about anything, given the chance, I wanted to see if I could get rid of it.

It turns out, you can. Kind of.

Bangkok, my glorious home, is rammed full of skin care clinics and beauty clinics and… hmm… Perhaps that’s the reason I decided on this project?

Anyway, I researched a few and found one that fit my usual parameters of any place I visit – pretty looking, convenient, and vaguely overpriced.

I went, did a consultation with a doctor, and after the uncomfortable expense of a cool grand for something I was only middlingly interested in, I received a fuck ton of lasers to my scar.

Did it work?

Ish. After around a month, per the doctor’s words, it did become way less visible though checking through old pics showed that it was scarcely visible before. Funny how we can lock in on one part of our anatomy so diligently.

Well, that was round one of the vanity project and I consider it a success-ish. It successfully showed me that lasering scars probably isn’t worth it unless they’re really impacting you… Lesson learned?

Supplements

Alright yes I love supplements. No I don’t think this relates to my later teenage years enjoyment of similar shaped pills but who knows.

I have been taking a mix of supplements for years and honestly I can say… Most have a pretty minimal effect. I’ve fucked around with heroic doses of them to see if there are any changes and most seem to be so minute in their efficacy that the cost probably isn’t worth it.

But there are a few which do work for sure and I wanted to see if maybe I could do some hardcore experimentation to fix certain things in me. (Yes, I know, “self love, nothing needs fixing” blah blah blah but experimenting is fun and everyone should do more of it.)

Now supplements are all very goal dependent and I highly recommend getting blood tests done to see if you have deficiencies first, then doing diet changes rather than supplements to account for it HOWEVER if you want a simple solution to a low level deficiency, then a supplement is a pretty good way to solve it.

So, onto the recent experiments!

  • Post blood test, it seems I have high cholesterol and statins are a big risk so Red Yeast Rice was on the cards and appears to have worked pretty well reducing my cholesterol to the point where the doctor now only loosely suggests statins rather than underlining it in red as on the original test…
  • I had terrible sleep and 5-HTP totally levelled me out and brought me back to a normal routine (though I cycle it on/off a lot)
  • NMN – seems like it may be good eventually when you’re old but probably no point taking it at this age
  • COQ10 to counteract the Red Yeast Rice’s side effects (no other notable benefit)
  • Then there’s your standards:
    • Vitamin C – works great if you’re ill, take a shit ton and it does help
    • Fish oil – just eat fish instead
    • Collagen powder – tastes gross but probably works

Now these aren’t too crazy but I also wanted to push the boat out a little.

I’ve had a quite muted emotional range for a long time. Sometimes I break out of this but usually I think my emotions are 60% where they should be, that’s a C grade and I have always been an upper B level student (though I did get an A* in English Language) so I wanted to see if I could chemically push this up.

By spamming ChatGPT, I eventually got a list of a few things that may be the root cause.

One suggestion was low dopamine production. Possibly true given my proclivities at formative ages of development.

Anyway, it turns out there’s a supplement called L-Tyrosine that you can take which kinda sorta (mixed evidence) makes your body produce more neurotransmitters including dopamine, but you have to take P5P (another chemical nobody has heard of) with it so that it actually works.

But does it actually work?

I tried this for over 2 months and I would say that it did… drumroll please… Fuck all.

The bottles of pills have 120 in them though so there’s that… But my mood did not improve. Granted, I did have a heavy breakup in that time too but I would prefer to attribute the blame to pills instead please and thank you.

Now given that the L-Tyrosine and P5P combo didn’t fix my mood I was left wondering what would so I started to consider that maybe it’s hormone related. Too little testosterone perhaps?

A little more research and then I began Korean Panax Ginseng which was meant to support my testosterone or balance it out or some other loose marketing term. Now, at the time it was hard to tell exactly if this one worked but I will say my chest gains in the gym were substantial in a short period of time though I was hammering chest exercises + eating way more protein so it’s a little hard to judge if it worked exactly but I think it sort of did?

My overall thought on supplements is that they make you feel like you’re getting something out them when in reality you’re probably just being more generally health conscious. If you’re a person who researches this stuff heavily, you probably also eat a very balanced diet with good macros especially high protein, you likely sleep well, and probably have very few areas of deficiency where random supplements will make you feel better.

They are worth a punt but get the blood tests first and target specifically.

Testosterone

Now we’re getting somewhere a little juicer and probably more contentious. This one is still part of the project but the vanity part comes later.

I, at 26, had never really considered that my testosterone was low until the supplement experimentation and the positive effects of the ginseng. I always assumed that given certain reasons which are unmentionable that mine was actually very high. After a little encouragement from a friend who takes testosterone, I elected to get it tested, just to double check.

It appeared my results were low. Like clinically low. What the fuck.

I already mentioned my muted emotional range above and what do you know? Testosterone has a big fucking effect on this and mine was clinically low. Whoops.

Who’d’ve thunk it.

So with results in hand, I then went to an endocrinologist (a speciality hormone doctor, it turns out) and repeated the words “what the fuck?”. More tests ensued and it appeared that I had a low FSH and LH production causing low test. Results were confirmed so I said “now what?” and treatment ensued.

To anyone parental or concerned reading this, yes it’s safe, yes I listened to the doctors, and yes I did multiple tests to confirm.

Not pleasant getting 4ml of testosterone shot into your arse but hey this is all an experiment and as Bill Hicks says “None of this is real anyway, it’s just a ride“.

So, 4ml of testosterone is a lot. Or quite a lot when you have someone with low amounts already. I’m around 2 weeks into it and I will say, slightly smirkingly, I am feeling pretty fucking great. More confident, a little stronger, bolder, idk man maybe it’s a placebo or this stuff may have actually been the Holy grail I’ve been seeking. Fun!

Perhaps I’ll report back at some point when some emotional event derails this feeling and I try to find some new cure-all but for now, this experiment has WORKED and I feel GOOD.

Fashion

I’ve never particularly had fashion sense or cared about fashion. From my late teens to early 20s, I bought more or less all my clothes from an online store which sells branded clothes at discounted rates. The clothes however are usually from brands you don’t particularly love or in colours that you won’t particularly like, that’s why they’re cheap I guess.

They did usually have some Adidas stuff though so my wardrobe became laden with 3 stripes on every item. I thought it looked cool. It sometimes did. But often, especially during my shaved head phase, it did look a little uhhhh rough? To say the least.

This enjoyment of streetwear persisted for quite a while and I still have periods of constantly wearing it for a few months every year but around April last year I wanted to switch this up. This one has been a LONG and ongoing experiment, it’s a lifetime thing I guess.

So, from around April to October ish, I decided I wanted to be more formal and adult looking. Looking like a real person. Not a droid but like a well put together man. Fuck knows why. I think I decided I was old or getting old and needed to. Stupid thoughts like that about being old persist in your mid 20s and they must be ignored.

This phase had me in cotton shirts, consistently formal trousers, thinning the mass of rings I was previously wearing, and wearing a watch all the time. It was nice to play that role for a while and visit restaurants acting like I’m all that. It felt a bit inauthentic though and I decided a long time ago that I ought to be more authentic so…

After October(ish) I reverted back to a sportswear dominated style and started buying up a lot of branded items but without much thought about how they looked. I judged these on how I felt and generally I felt more confident in them than in the heavily formal attire, it felt closer to home and anyone who’s from the same part of the world as me will probably know what I mean. Grey Nike jumpers litter my childhood memories.

One downside of only wearing sportswear is that you do limit the options of where you can go. Even in particularly lax Bangkok environments, you will struggle to feel in any way comfortable against the army of dripped out Thais.

Noticing this, I decided more recently to ditch the trackies and risk wearing jeans in the consistently 33 degree heat.

Now, that may seem bizarre but climate acclimatisation is so real and the jeans are fine. I couldn’t quite let go of all the sportswear though and have to pair the jeans with a Nike or Adidas or New Balance T shirt, gotta be true to yourself.

This one was a fun experiment and actually is still ongoing 🙂 It’s nice to totally change how you see yourself and how others see you by altering what you wear. I’m still the same me in a suit or in shorts but I do feeeeeel different in each and I do act different in each so it’s nice to play with, especially when you have the time.

The Cerave Cult

One thing that I never particularly put any stock in was skin care. I’m quite pretty right and assumed that because of this I was fine to not do anything. A little arrogant but a lot misguided.

Again, more ChatGPT spamming and a visit to a skin care clinic and I realised that skin care is way easier if you start from a good place with healthy skin, rather than trying to repair things later down the line – which is only questionably possible, unless you do surgeries.

Now rather than opting for surgeries, although perhaps I am the type who would, I was looking for sustainable long term care. The type of shit that most girls seem to know exactly how to do and that most guys have zero idea that they even need to.

Enter Cerave. I doubt I’d even really heard of the brand until this year but it seemed they were the one. Very high quality and no awful chemicals, apparently.

Anyway with a pocket full of Thai Baht I went to one of the luxury malls here and stood out quite significantly amongst the heavily made up Thai girls (I was in essentially a full tracksuit – my sportswear phase), and showed one of the people in the store a list of items I supposedly MUST use.

I walked away with a lot less Baht and a lot of things I had no idea existed let alone things I needed to use.

For starters, there was this DHC oil – some kind of Korean beauty brand that helps remove oil from your skin which is especially useful in this climate, a hydrating Cerave cleanser (at least I kind of knew what that was), Cerave facial moisturising lotion, Cerave resurfacing 1% retinol cream (more expensive per ml than good tequila), some 0.5% salicylic acid, then luxury sun cream which apparently is better but it’s bloody hard to tell the difference – La Roche-Posay Anthelios 50+ – about £30 for an unreasonably small amount.

I had often wondered why a lot of women talk about it being expensive to be a woman and this experiment showed me why – This beauty stuff is expensive. If you use these things and more every day, you start to rack up a pretty significant monthly bill.

Is it worth it? Actually yes… I think. I’ve been using these products in a quite regimented way with a daily routine and the variation days where I’ll fold in retinol one day and use salicylic acid another day.

Initially it was a hassle convincing my brain to do this as a routine but now it’s basically automatic and so slick that I don’t even notice I’m doing it. And my skin, mostly, looks fucking great. Good job, Max. Thanks.

Gym Missions

Alright I’ve been going to the gym a long time but my progress has always been pretty lacklustre. Full accountability, this is entirely on me.

I’ve never really stuck to an effective routine, never particularly researched what I was doing or why, and never tracked or set goals other than loosely get a six pack or something.

Well, we’re in experimental mode so I thought I’d change that. I put a proper routine together, again AI aided (Side note: not using this stuff is gonna put you behind, luddites never prosper), and set to work.

Now it seemed my main issue actually was that I never ate enough protein or calories at all. I was pretty muscular despite my small frame but had no mass because I never ate enough.

Somewhere along the line I became very calorie averse and lived on literally the minimum needed. Bad move in general and a very bad move for gym gains.

But now is as good a time as any to change, I thought, so I pushed my eating like crazy and gained about 10kg. Pretty good. And my lifts improved, strength went up massively, and I felt even more confident.

It’s funny how fixing some of these things; style, strength, appearance can really help your internal feelings.

I’ve since played around with different body weights with a 5-10 KG difference and realised getting a six pack is more about being in a pretty brutal calorie deficit + ab training, rather than just exclusively training abs.

It looks cool but after having one for a little while, I’ve realised I prefer not being perpetually hungry.

My current focus is on arms. My legs are weirdly quite jacked after hammering the leg curl machine for a while, and my back is too – probably from climbing and nonstop pull ups, so it’s time to balance the rest of me out. No interest in going bodybuilder mode but getting a more solid structure would do wonders for me.

This is another ongoing project, and it’s one that is continually making me look and feel better. I love it. Clean living!

Conclusion

I realise that a lot of this is a rant into the void and may have been better as a journal entry but fuck it, why have a blog unless you’re gonna post self-obsessed characterisations of yourself?

To whomever is reading this far, I encourage you to experiment like crazy.

You are likely young, play with it. Try different styles, different bodyweights, routines you wouldn’t normally do, and research this stuff – maybe you’ll find out something you never knew about yourself and get injected with hormones by random doctors in Asia (only joking👀).

Alright people, catch you on the flip.

Quotes I’m vibing with rn:

If it costs you your peace: it’s too expensive – Paulo Coelho

What if it all works out? – Mel Robbins

To do the big things, you have to let the small bad things happen – Tim Ferriss

Favourite song for now:

Takeoff

At takeoff during flights I used to listen to Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” and I’d time it so that the crescendo happens right at the moment we take off and start to gain altitude. Why? It added to the intensity of the experience that’s for sure but mainly I did it because I knew without a shadow of doubt that the plane would crash and I would die. I thought “if it’s going to crash and if this is it for me then at least I get to listen to a fucking good song while it happens”.

A lot of young people assume they’re going to die in plane crashes or freak car accidents or some other relatively unlikely event. I think it’s narcissistic of us. We assume we’re the one who this extremely rare event will befall, odds be damned. Personally I see newspaper headlines in my mind when planes get a little turbulent, they torment me with every specific bit of knowledge I can remember about the flight and then mention the number who died and I see my name on the page… And then once again I load up Sinatra and accept my unlikely fate, which is still yet to meet me.

It’s only recently that I’ve stopped this habit, however I will admit that “That’s life” was playing as the plane ascended today – not on purpose… Promise.

I’ve stopped because… Well I think it’s because I don’t think I’m going to die in some freak accident anymore. Maybe my narcissism is finally abating, though writing about this suggests otherwise.

Regardless, I don’t think I’m going to die anymore in one of these abstract and unlikely ways, in all likelihood I’ll probably go out the way most people do: meandering into a slower old age and gradually seeing my body slip into decline and eventually succumbing to my frailty. Boring but statistically pretty likely.

I wonder if age and experience caused me to change my perspective. I’ve taken a lot of flights and not died… Yet.

As far as I can tell, the people who’ve lived more than me, in years at least, don’t suffer this same anxiety that fate will target them with some rare life-ending event. Perhaps because they’ve lived for long enough to know that the unlikely to happen is even more unlikely to happen to them. 

Anyway, my plane’s about to land and I have music to queue up so for now I’ll take a leaf out of their book and embrace this philosophy: the worst case is unlikely and things will, probably, be okay and if not, well, that’s life.

Quotes I’m vibing with rn:

Gifts of fortune are not to be regarded as your own. What fortune gives, it may also take away – Seneca

Sympathy for all is tyranny for thee, my good neighbour – Friedrich Nietzsche

He was bored, that’s all, bored, like most people; so he created from scratch a life of complications and drama for himself. Something’s got to happen that’s the explanation for most human undertakings. – Albert Camus

Favourite song for now: