Day 20 of improving myself until I get a girlfriend

Whoooo! It's day 20. Ive been doing this for 20 days, that's kinda hard to believe but I don't plan on stopping anytime soon. 

I learnt about this interesting guy named Machiavelli today. What an oddity, a failed politician turned author. He was almost like a movie villain or Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver. I'll speak more on this guy's philosophy at the end but even though I don't agree with all he has to say, he interests me.

Today, I focused more on my fiction rather than a review. I'm going to start writing my next review maybe on Monday but for now, I wrote fiction. Mostly just short story stuff. I don't think I want to publish my fiction just yet, I'm still improving but I tried something Kafka inspired for this story. 

I spent like the entire day (besides studying) watching Arrested Development and Golden Kamuy and those two are really great. Arrested Development is so witty, it reminds me of community and Golden Kamuy is a pretty entertaining anime. I don't know why but I've taken an interest in more period pieces such as Golden Kamuy. It's interesting, I'll say that much. I'm also going to watch Death Proof literally now.

I studied all day. Like I studied all of my subjects and I felt pretty productive but I've still got a lot of work ahead of me. That's tomorrow's problem though.

I read more After Dark and my dad actually told me to read this book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I think Rich Dad, Poor Dad could either be really good or terrible, I've started reading it, I read 20 or 25 pages and the scene that the author is setting is a financial situation similar to my own so I know that it would be easier for the book to sway me but if this book is a scam, then it's an evil scam but if its genuine then I would really appreciate that. I read 2 chapters of After Dark and it's beautifully written, like the settings, the atmosphere, the tone. It's all beautiful but the author tries to touch on very serious topics that require nuance and then never explores them. Themes like prostitution, violence against women, gangsterism (kinda), trafficking, male gaze. Those are all the problems he touched on in one chapter but never really explored. Maybe that's the point of the book but I don't know, maybe they'll be explored later. 

I tried to exercise today but man, I'm stiff. I'm so stiff in my arms that I can't stretch them out. I physically cannot hold my arm outstretched, it just doesn't move past that point, that is how stiff I am. I just could not work out today.

Lastly, I ate three meals. I had leftovers for breakfast, noodles for lunch and hot dogs for dinner. It was good. I had lunch today because I took a long ass nap and I was hungry afterwards.

Thank you for reading this one. Here's what I wanted to talk about, this Machiavelli fella. He's odd. I do think that as disagreeable as some of his beliefs are for me, some of it rings true. I urge you to do your own research on this guy, he's really interesting but he essentially opposed the morals of the time and for that he was scrutinized and he developed a bad reputation. He never acted on his thoughts and ideas but he wrote about leadership. 

He believes that morals and morality is good or can be good but nobody, especially a leader, can be moral or virtuous all the time. That's true, obviously don't be a shithead and take accountability when you do something wrong but obviously we can't be in the right all the time. Another thing he said was that lying is good sometimes. He put it more eloquently but he said that people should (especially leaders) should lie to gain favor or lie to stay in good graces because if you're good at lying and you can be moral and virtuous sometimes, you can cover up your bad deeds and remain in good graces because the people only see what you want them to see. I don't endorse this but do with that what you will. Last thing be said was that to be a leader you need people to fear you but never hate you. When they hate you it's over so if you need to instil fear in the people do it quickly and get it over with. Fear is a very powerful emotion and it sticks. I don't agree with this either. I don't think he's wrong for thinking these things, if he enacted them and ruled with an iron fist then he'd be in the wrong but he never did so we can look at his advice as more of a warning for what to remember about leaders and politicians of today. Like I said, some of it does ring true today.