It’s been very long since I’ve written/updated the journal. The main reason was because my family needed to move to a different place that distracted me from working on sub, and other things. (This happened shortly after stopping the journal.)
During and after moving, my sub schedule sorta broke, and I had very inconsistent sub routine, and a long break in between. For this reason, I stopped reporting.
If my memory is correct, I believe I started listening to QL stage 1 from October 2020, very inconsistently.
My listening habit became much more serious from December as it was about a month before the start of the start of the school. (First time to start at this school, taking prerequisites to the AI degree).
Then I listened to QL stage 1 until the actual beginning of the semester. I also used BLU with it. (I typically listened to them on lower loops Blu 1 : QL 1 or BLU 1 : QL 2 or 3)
From the start of the spring semester (late January/February) I moved onto QL stage 2, and pretty much kept listening to it until now. While listening to QL stage 2, I stacked with limitless executive (tackling both limitless and executive function issue from ADD) mostly, but then occasional use of sanguine whenever I feel anxiety. (I used sanguine more during the week of exams, which I found to have calmed me down quite well.) Then when Renaissance Man came out, I put it in rotational use; some times I would use limitless executive. Some other times I would use Renaissance Man. This mainly depended on what I felt like using.
However, what’s important is that I’ve used QL pretty much every single day (except the 2 days of rest, of course - 5 days on and 2 days rest), so I used QL as the main, and other programs (BLU (Limitless Executive, once it came out), Sanguine (for whenever I feel too pressured or feeling anxiety, used especially for exam weeks as I feel anxious during those time), and Renaissance Man (as mentioned, I alternated between Limitless Executive and RM, and used whichever one I felt I wanted to use more on that day))
Now that I briefly explained my sub routine, I want to share some of the things I’ve experienced.
Let’s start with academics part. For this semester I took one math and programming course. I finished with A for both. (I finished with accumulated total of 96% and 97%) For math, my exam scores were 100 and 90s when class average was 60~70. I have no idea about the class average of the class, but I know that not everybody was able to complete the assignment with working program producing the intended result. All my assignment work produced working program producing the intended result.
Well, it might have been an unfair game with my classmates as many of them had careers, but I am a student with no job currently. However, there were others that have currently used programming for their career (albeit different languages), but I pretty much had 0 programming experience to begin with. Also, I haven’t done math for nearly 10 years (although I reviewed extensively before starting the class.) So someone people can argue that it wasn’t necessarily a fair game, but the opposite can also be true. (e.g. I was able to compete with others who have had extensive programming experience but in different language, while I had pretty much none to begin with.) Also, did I mention that there was a math teacher (in the math class) among my peers?
Anyway, I had a successful semester.
Some other things to mention.
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I always found answers. For programming, some tasks were given that seemingly were very difficult at first. I eventually found the answers even if it took me staying up all night. If I cannot find the answer on my own, I was able to search online and find hints. If I found direct answers, I never used it directly; I always incorporated and modified it so that it became my version, not a copy of someone else’s work.
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I find group project dynamics interesting. It was a group of 3, and for all the groups, my role was slightly different. For the first project, I originally began with somewhat passive role, seeing how others would do, and take tasks that nobody would do. Then when I see others’ mistakes, I would intervene, explain why the work is wrong, and how we can fix it. In the final phase of putting things together, I chose to work together on Google Docs, but it was going nowhere (it needed to be in the report form, but it became more like a scrap paper) --> I stepped in and wrote the form in report, and let others do the proof reading. (They had more advantage in proof reading than I, at least I thought that.)
For the second project, I got lucky that I figured out all the necessary work in the beginning. I did all the work, and pretty much finished the entire work of the project on my own. Of course, I showed everything I did to teammates, and made sure that they were onboard with me. I let the others write the report, but I caught some mistakes, stepped in, and fixed it.
For the last project, I took a different role, as I couldn’t take the initiative --> It needed reading a map, which required printing, but because of the different paper standards, my printing would have ruined drawing scale. So for this one, I took more of a checking and a guiding role. I’d ask others for measurements, and if they come up with some work, I’d check to see whether the work is correct. If not, show where the mistake was made, and fixed. For this one, I feel like I was more commanding, but still checked work, and guided/nudged group mates on the right direction.
I think the group project experience showed how I was able to adjust myself to different roles/different environments, and took different styles of leadership. I don’t know if it has anything to do with QL, BLU, Limitless Executive, or Sanguine, but this is something I noticed.
- Becoming more emotional?
I had been more emotional before, that was when I was pretty depressed and suicidal. Have I been that way? Absolutely not. However, I feel that I definitely noticed times of being more emotional, being able to feel more strongly and more intensely when seeing stories, listening to music, or watching/reading/listening to any other literary work or some sort of artistic work.
Some people may think this is a bad thing, but I don’t think that way. I think true genius work, or true work of art comes when emotion and rational part of me work together and create a synergy. For that, I think this is a good improvement.
- Increased sex drive?
Perhaps because of aging (going into 30s) I noticed decrease in libido and sex drive. But lately, I feel the increase in libido, needing to release nearly everyday. (For the last half a year or so, it decreased quite much down to maybe once per week or 2~3 times per week, but it came back to this lately.)
I don’t know what to say about this, but since I have no partner, I have to take care of this on my own.
Nevertheless, I am not as bound to sex as I was in my 20s. Libido level is similar, but I feel less bound.
- Taste in women/girls.
This may be related to 4th point, but I want to mention that I find porn less appealing, and I definitely watch porn much less than before. (The attachment and attraction to porn is continuing to decrease.) However, what I am finding is that I am getting definitely more turned on to some sexy picture (not necessarily fully naked, partial nudes, or underwear worked) of girls/models. In the past I pretty much never got turned on by pictures of some women but now I am finding that I am expanding on this area, while closing on pornographic videos.
Also, I noticed that I am finding Asian women more attractive (turning me on) than before. So now I can say that I can find women of any race to be attractive. (In other words, I have much less defined preference for certain races of women.)
Additionally, I find myself to find/feel many women attractive, who would have been unattractive to me in the past. --> Perhaps a better way of saying this is that in the past, I would have had extremely high or unrealistically high standards for physical appearance, but I now find more women to be attractive, perhaps I am now being attractive to real women?
Still many of these women are women inside screen, but I think/feel that it’s a progress I made, even when this wasn’t a focus.
- Executive functioning
I find this to be still a challenge; much of it had to do with being burned out. Sometimes I’d have difficult time initiating and starting things as early as I would have hoped for. However, I’ve always finished things on time (except once, but that was when the instructor decided to extend the assignment’s due date, and it was the most challenging assignment given in the semester. And I did finish it perfectly under the new deadline, and even when the instructor gave a new challenge, I was able to handle that too, in that new deadline.)
In addition, I find initiating things are easier than before although I still struggle. Keep in mind that I have been diagnosed with some of disabilities related to this area.
- Tarot reading
I don’t know if it’s worth mentioning this, but for some reason I ended up watching a few Tarot readings on YouTube (general reading, so it is to take it with grain of salts.)
What I found interesting is that all my choices ended up saying the same things. (This was true for looking at the same thing from different channels, and also looking at the same thing but different videos in the same channel)
For instance, when I looked at future spouse reading, pretty much all the readings said the same things.
Okay, it can be total BS, and many times, (if not most, or all the times) it means nothing, but I found that every time I chose the same topic from different channels and different videos, they all pretty much said the identical things. This was interesting.
Lastly I will say this. This wasn’t my first time to do very well in school. I’ve had experiences of getting 100s in undergraduates before. (I remember a case when a guy complained how someone got 100 in the test, when the class average was like 50~60ish, and yes that was me, and he complained it in front of me, without knowing that that person was me.) But also, I’ve also had very difficult times in school before.
Thus, it’s somewhat difficult to say definitely, oh yes, QL and other subs have definitely made this possible. (This wasn’t a case of turning an idiot into a super genius.) Nevertheless, I did well in the school, and I did well while being on the sub. I will leave to you guys to be a judge on how well the sub worked.
Alright. This is pretty much everything I experienced in the last 7 months or so, and I summarized and organized it as much as I could. I don’t know when I will be back to report more, but I will be back. (It may not be as frequent, but I don’t plan on just quit it.)
And, lastly, here are my plans. I will go back to QL 1 for the next 2~3 weeks. (Deciding whether to just do it until May, or go till right before the summer school) Then once summer session starts, I will go no QL 3. Probably first week or so alone, and after that add on the rotational stacks (RM, Limitless Executive, and Sanguine) Then do QL3 till the end of the session, perhaps do another month (or go back to QL1), and then start QL4 at the start of the fall semester.