Biography of danielStrawb!

daniel
It's me! :D

my personal diary

  • Name: Daniil Afanasev

  • Born: January 13 2007

  • Blood: O(I) Rh+ (Type 1 Positive)

  • Sign: Capricorn ♑

  • Religion: Wicca

  • Location: Russia 🇷🇺

Hiiiii! My name is Daniil, I am 19 years old boy from Russia! This is my website, my personal archive of my music, articles I'm writing since 2021 and my drawings! I'm working with art association "The Great" created by me and my friends! We have our own world full of love and happiness and doing fan content based on visual novel callled "Higanbana" created by Pandapenguins! Before my website is called "Danielsblog" and it started as my project created of boredom, but become probably the best thing I've ever made in my life. Writing this blog is a part of my studying process - I'm learning something, documenting it and share it with others in a semi-comical style. That means, you can find some useful information on music making or my philosophical toughts on Internet-addiction together with visual novel reviews.

I like visual novels, altrought I not played a lot of them - my journey started in 2024 when I downloaded Kiri⭐Kiri on my computer, but dropped this videogame at the beginning. My first big experience with these games started in December 2024 and January 2025 when I completed storyline of Rin from Katawa shoujo - it's been one of the most emotional experiences in my life and shortly after that I discovered Higanbana which I consider my favorite literature story of my life up to this day. Right now I feel like Higanbana is the "last visual novel i've read" as i said in my reviw, but I still want to discover some popular games from VisualArts/Key and other big studios - currently I'm playing Kanon in a free time. I belive visual novels is a good introduction to literature for someone who only started his journey - before Katawa Shoujo I hated reading fictional literature because of school, but right now it's a good way to relax for me.

Since reading to me is more about fun, I cannot describe the "greatest" books of my life, but I like "Cosmos" written by Carl Sagan, since it's simply interesting to learn some more about our world, history of human discoveries and differen events in solar system. There's a lot of chemical and mathematical tricks described here, which helped people of the past to move forward in discovering our world. To just learn something new, this book is full of colorful pictures and give a general knowledges which could be useful in every day life without getting too deep into science.

Telling on cartoons, I grow up watching Spongebob Squarepants and like it up to this day. I was watching it since the first days of my life, and I still like these classical episodes, and I consider Season 4 my favorite out of all seasons made after departure of Stephen Hillenburg. It's really hard to define my favorite episode, but Valentine's Day is kinda close. I also like to watch DVD bonus videos, and even made my own SpongeBob out of sponge, which accompany me on my computer table. Stephen Hillenburg is one of the most inspiring persons I've ever seen - maybe that's the reason why I'm working on my website up to this day. I highly recommend his debut work called The Green Beret (1991), which kinda shows us his surrealistic comedy style, long time before SpongeBob get the first episode released. Thank you for everything, Stephen - I still like you art, no matters what... This guy made an awesome documentary on a life of Steve, I wish to share it with you!

Also, I watched almost all the classical episode of Simpsons, South Park and Futurama. Out of all full-length cartoons, I belive classic by Pixar is the best. My most-watched cartoon is Rise of the Guardians - I don't know what's special about it, but I have a good tradition of rewatching it every year.

Out of all the videogames, my favorite games are made in the age of classical let's play youTube era - Minecraft, Goat Simulator, Octodad, The Stanley Parable or even Kerbal Space Program - there's a lot, but a special place in my heart took games by Valve Software since I literally spend my childhood playing Portal and Left 4 Dead, so I even wake up earlier to play before going to school. REcently I started to get into fightings and Soulcalibur I and Soulcalibur VI is my favorite figtings at that time. Feel free to add me on [Steam](links.html) so we can play any videogame together.

Out of all the movies, Wes Anderson made my favorite titles of all times - The Grand Budapest Hotel is probably one of the greatest movies ever made, so I rewatched it countless times and still like it. In childhood I liked Robocop so much, and I still belive this is one of the most "cruel" movies of 80s, which gives me gosebumps up to this day.

I like unusual works, so it's natural for me to read something like Love at First Sight about Cyclop girl, Chocotan! about mini dachshund or Gokicha!! Cockroach Girl about the life of kind cockroach girl who tries to find friends all aaround the world! Sometimes I like something critically absurd like Bunny’s Rent-a-Mom Agency or Plus-Sized Elf. I am not really interested in something "deep" since art to me is always about fun, but when I read something emotional, it hits me very hard every single time.

Music

Music is literally the best thing in the world. I'm so excited while listening to my favorite music, and making my own. My favorite genres are EDM (mostly Eelctro House) and Rock, and they are fits good together in my favorite genre called Electronic Rock.

Since my philosophy says limitations are good for us, I'm trying to listen only artists I already know, covering all of their discography. If you would like to know my favorite records of al ltime, here is a little review:

topster
just random albums I've put on Topster! :D

It's hard to put all the music I love here, but this records is something that makes me cry every time I listen to them, altrought I already listened to them more than 20+ times during my life. Some of records like Aspire literally saved me in the worst time, and other records like Digital Memories makes me remember who am I. At the end, I like music and I see no reasons to stop listening to them.

I feel like Skrillex together with Deadmau5 made impossible back in the days of "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites EP". Even if I feel like "Quest for Fire" is the best record made by Skrillex, his music at that time feel kinda inspiring for my young mind, so this is one of that records which made me to write my own music, being inspired with tracks like "All I Ask of You", which I listen a lot while fell in love, or "Kill Everybody", which become my introduction to Complextro music.

Wish I could have fun as in my childhood days, waking up a little bit earlier to play Portal 2 before going to school, talk to my friends online and just enjoy life listening to awesome music on background!

There's so many records made by talanted musicians, and I cannot review all of them, but there's a few records I also feel kinda imporant to me:

Probably, you may find my favorite music just by looking in YouTube playlists like "Alternative Rock classic". I like simple music full of inspred musician, and don't really care about band being punk or a big commercial giants.

But, is there the tracks out of all these albums, which I discribe as my favorite? Absolutley - Faxing Berlin by deadmau5 from his 2006 album Random Album Title, psml516.midi from Elona (but also appeared in Higanbana), and Innocence by NocolAmarfi from Katawa Shoujo Soundtrack - this is the most emotional record of my life, and I play them only at the most important days, like my Birthday. Wish i could learn them to play on my synthesizer.

Music making

Since I like music a lot, I tried to make my own music together with The Great Band, but recently I decided to stop. Life made me change my priorities, so it's hard for me to make music. But, I belive you want to know which equipment I have!

I have a synthesizer called Casio CT-X3000 - it's a rompler (plays prerecorded instrument sounds) with more than 900 preinstalled instruments. I'm bad at reading music notes or even recording something by yourself, so I use Reaper to record Midi notes and edit them on the timeline. I work kinda slow, so even a simple tracks could take me a months to be done, altrought I learned so many cool tricks from deamdau5 and SebastiAn, so you may say they teach me how to make music. I always record my synthesizer melodies, midi notes and just random ramples I made doing my songs, and collect it in my own ideas bin, just like Deadmau5 show us in his masterclass At the end, Steven Wilson once said it's also nice to just have plugins, try diffirent combinations and just enjoy the moment, even if you don't release music at all. Steven Wilson is also kinda minimal about his plugins and equipment.

I don't use virtual instruments and effects a lot, but I have a few of them on my computer:

  1. Massive - my favorite instrument, the face of EDM's golden age. I created over 100 sound presets with this friend - it's pretty lightweight, and have over 1500 presets preintalled. However, Recently I've been trying to use Vital as my primary synth.
  2. Vital - a free synthesizer, which gives more cleaner sound, but more cpu-heavy processing. It's made by Matt Tytel, the creator of another opensource synth called Helm, which I used when discovered music makingfor the first time.
  3. Raum - Sound-design reverberation plugin from Native Instruments.
  4. Replika - Delay plugin from Native Instruments.
  5. Addictive Keys - My favorite virtual piano.
  6. Addictive Drums - Studio-quality acoustic drums!
  7. Cardinal - A free virtual EuroRack, with over 1000 moduled preinstalled! My favorite ones are from Audiable Instruments, since they remind me of Native Instruments Reaktor's Toy-like modules. Sometimes I also use modules from Surge XT.

I have an audiocard called Focusrite Scarlett Solo Studio, in a bundle with studio headphones, microphone and other great plugins like my favorite ones from Klevgrand: Degrader, ReAMP, and Korvpressor. Focusrite also gave me their Red compressor and equalizer plugins for free.

Philosophy behind The Great

if you feel like my english is too bad for describing such complex ideas, please, read this AI-translated version. I know I am bad at English and I am not going to reject this.

Introduction

1.1 This is my own way to structure everything I know about this world in a simple document. There you might find my toughts about comfort life and ways which helps me in my struggles from anxiety and tourette's syndrome.

1.2 In this document, I used a diffirent terms like professionals and primary work, which are specific to my view on the world - I am going to explain and highlight them in the right places.

1.3 Unlike other philosophers, I am going to write as simple as possible, so everyone can understand me, even if you are not a programmer or musician. Anyway, if you want to read some similar book or watch animes which inspired me to write this document, look into the category called Related Media. It's unnacessary, but may be fun or even emotional experience to understand me better.

1.4 In it's final state, this article meant to represent my general views on diffirent activities in our life. This document is meant to have connection between paragraphs, so I'm going to use arrow signs to refare on a diffirent places in text which support my view from the other perspective.

1.5 Heavily inspired by writings of Arthur Schopenhauer, I am going to use his words a lot. Schopenhauer used the concept of "Pendulum between boredom and sadness" - if explain it simply, person who literally do nothing is always bored, but if the same person is going to write some musical album, he becomes sad because all of the difficulties on his way and literally "impossible" ideas of "writing the greatest album ever made". His philosophy is about finding balance between these two states.

not pleasure, but freedom from pain, is what the wise man will aim at.

Aristotle, "Nichomachean Ethics"

1.6 Buddhism is the second big inspiration to my ideas. In support of words written by Schopenhauer, they are using the concept of "Four Noble Truths" - a cycle between suffering → origin of the suffering (craving) → end of the suffering by fade of the craving → The Noble Eightfold Path is the way to end this cycle. It may sounds kinda confusing, but I understand this by the same way I described in ↑ 1.1 - our own wishes is the main source of sufferings.

1.7 I consider visual novel Higanbana as the base for everything written here - this game changed everything to me, from my views on life, to views on my future. It makes Higanbana connected to The Great the same as Faust connected to Master and Margarita, so I belive it's nacessary to represent some concepts using motivations of Higanbana characters in a spoiler-free form. This website is my own way to put legacy of this brilliant romantic story to infinity.

Inspiration

2.1 Art reflects to our own emotions. When we are reading some great story, usually we are associate protagonist with yourself - we are trying to dream how it would be if we were in the world taken from the book, what we would do to stop the worst and do the best. That's the reason why I consider the art is useless without our own emotions and life experience - we cannot create or being inspired by story if it's not about our own struggles.

I personally think stories are born from our dreams of having happy endings.

Shiori, from Kannon

2.2 The same time, websites like Rate Your Music with their "Best albums of all time" is literally shows us an absolute cancer of art and inspiration.

2.3 Everyone have their own tastes, so it's literally a way to nowhere if someone says you know nothing about art because you didn't hear all the albums of this list, or any other list like this one. You never could find something great and life-changing just by following someone's list.

2.4 Your own taste in movies, music and books is the most important thing which defines your style - your own way from inspiration to creation. To find something great is a pure an accident, not something you should search for.

2.5 This is a brilliant quote from Stoic Philosophers I heavily agree with:

Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady. You must linger among a limited number of master-thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind. Everywhere means nowhere.

Internet made access to any kind of media as simple as possible, and it's harder to find valuable toughts all around the Internet, which makes toughts made by brilliant master-thinkers much valuable, which inspire their followers create a small communities rather than opening their wisdom to everyone.

But, who are these master-thinkers is? It's hard to define only the best authors in the history, because at the end we are going to recreate infamous list from RateYourMusic. I belive, the master, is someone who created our favorite pieces of art. Usually, we can create a little "web" between our favorite creators. Usually, master-thinkers created art together or being inspired by each others, just as I described in ↓3.7. Let me show you a little example - Higanbana is been created by Penguin Tarou and Hero Pandara, they are both stopped performing a long time ago, but you still can find interesting things of their previous projects like sakanaajikan - a library of free pictures from penguintarou, or his own blog. Higanbana is been translated by group called insani.org and they have so many awesome novels which available for free like True Remembrance or legendary Narcissu. Having just one selected work, you can create a big net of relations between authors, their insiprations and people who created their masterpieces after being inspired of their brilliant style.

1.6 Sakura Ayase from Higanbana didin't have opportunity to get familiar with every media in the world, so she simply limited her list to things she really into, and she looks so happy saying this in the game.

1.7 It's important not only to create a great piece of art, but also to present it in a good way - big companies put a lot money to create a good "cover art" of their products - just like my favorite SpongeBob SquarePants DVDs menu or Finding Nemo DVD - they are too good just for cartoon DVDs, which makes me want to spend hours upon hours loking trought these animated interactive menus. My mother's Samsung Galaxy La Fleur[1, 2] with their awesome flower patterns and fashion-styled designs, or even comic book printed by Underoath to the aniiversary of their album are awesome ways to make your fans loving you even more. Bonus content is always a good thing.

2.8 At the end, I recommend you to find inspiration in your favorite art. Higanbana inspired me to make this awesome website design after years of using boring clean html design. You can improve your drawing or storytelling skills by making fan arts and fan fiction!

Creation

3.1 Art creation is something that helps me in a stresful moments - living at the most horrible and scary days of my life, I still have nostalgia about this comfy evenings sitting with my computer and doing something small just to forget bad toughts just for a moment. Even at the most terrible moments in life you can create your own comfy enviroment, even if it's dangerous outside.

3.2 There's two kinds of content creators - amateurs and professionals. Professionals usually make art to make money, while being amateur is more about enjoying yourself by making everything as good as you can, ignoring every quality standards.

3.3 Being amateur doesn't mean to be bad on your own. Being professional means to do art as a full-time job and doing everyhing to be relevant. Amateurs cannot spend 8 hours every day (some friends of mine can, but let's consider this as an exception out of the rules) making a song or writing a book.

3.4 Looking trought lifestyle of professionals from interviews and documentaries, teenager's mind could be hypnotized by these colorful posters and feeling like they are making history right now. I spent years upon years trying to be as cool as my idols in the face of She Music, Madeon who made his first international hit at 16, deadmau5, Nero with their epic cinematic arrangements, SebastiAn with his insane production techniques and Linkin Park with their catchy hard-rock melodies.

3.5 Looking trought their complex dico-rock-electro-opera music with over than 200 audio tracks on a single song made me belive like I'm doing something wrong - not because I am, but more because I tried to be professional by being amateur - I like music, and that's the reason I cannot jump higher than I am, in other way I'm going to start hating my favorite thing.

3.6 Being professional also means to have "quality standard" - they literally cannot release a bad song. Bands like Nero prefare to stay silent for 10 years rather than leaving their fans upset. SebastiAn also said it's hard to write music for Saint Laurent, when they are reuqire a studio-quality track from you every week. It's impossible to stay carefree in situations like these, so 90% of amateurs usually burns out before even getting a half of professionalism Nero and deadmau5 have.

3.7 On the other side, there's producers like Kavinsky. After 21 year of music career, he released 2 Full-Lenght musical albums and a few mini-albums full of remixes from his friends. It makes Kavinsky one of the most unproductive musicians in a crazy world of EDM scene, but by the same time, he always been kinda chill about his own music. Instead of trying to make as much complex high-quality music as possible like his friends from Justice and Daft Punk, he created a powerful atmosphere of 80s movies in every of his songs and just enjoy life riding his Testarossa. Instead of sitting 8 hours a day on a single song, he sketched some simple beats on his computer gifted by Mr. Oizo and worked together with SebastiAn and Daft Punk to make a catchy songs. Does that makes you or me uncool, if we have no contracts with big companies or didn't make a worldwide hit before 20?

3.8 I prefare to create art for my website only - it's comforting to know there's always someone who may like my toughts and music, even if I am amateur, and not because I am doing something great - but because it's me and my own toughts. Doing something always should be fun, but comparing yourself to others kills everything you may like about yourself and your own style. Sometimes I can release a bad song, but no one is going to blame me, since I'm doing this for my friends, and then we can collaborate to write some songs together or release remix to each other tracks. That's the real enjoynment of working together with friends, not for someone popular just to appear on the radio.

3.9 Releasing your art worldwide is hard in these days of commercial distribution. To release a single song on a popular services, you need to have contract with a company and have a good advertisement strategy. It requires time to get into the world of marketing, so I decided not to do - just to self-release everything I'm doing on my website. Services like Neocities make online blogging and independent creativity much easier for everyone with their tutorials on website making.

3.10 It's hard to do both - enjoy art and create it. That's the reason why I stop listening to music when I'm writing my own, or reading articles written by others when writing my own. That helps to stop comparing yourself to others, and searching for own style. The same idea Arthur Schopenhauer says in his essay "On Books and Reading":

When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. In learning to write, the pupil goes over with his pen what the teacher has outlined in pencil: so in reading; the greater part of the work of thought is already done for us. This is why it relieves us to take up a book after being occupied with our own thoughts. And in reading, the mind is, in fact, only the playground of another's thoughts. So it comes about that if anyone spends almost the whole day in reading, and by way of relaxation devotes the intervals to some thoughtless pastime, he gradually loses the capacity for thinking; just as the man who always rides, at last forgets how to walk.

Family

4.1 Family is probably the most powerful union in the life of every of us. There's no dearest person in the world than your family.

4.2 In context of The Great, the concept of family is not that much about biological family, rather than emotional - someone can have no family at all, but we still have people who sacrifice themselves to us and care of us even more than yourself. Your family is the most important thing in your life, only here you can feel protected and understanded more than anywhere else.

4.3 Since cousin marriage is absolutley legal in my country, I belive if you feel something to your cousin, there's no reason to being shy of this. Being always around your family is a way to build a better relationship inside your family - both emotional and material.

4.4 Being married to your cousin also means to be absolutley serious about everything. If cousin-cousin marriage is in crisis, that's a tragedy to the whole family. Altrought, there's a few cases of sucessful marriages between cousins - Christopher Robin and his wife Lesley, or Charles Darwin and Emma Wedgwood build their strong family by respecting each others, accepting diffirent views on the same things (in their case it's religion), and making no reasons for jealousy. This is the only way people could get good together - if they are cousins or not.

4.5 I always wanted to have a big family. It's something I would like to see even in the saddest moments of my lfie. We could have conflicts, but it only means we are diffirent, not that we enemies. We still support each others no matter what. I like games like Kanon, because they are showing us these fun family situations, which kinda makes me come back to the days of my childhood, when I always have someone to talk: my cousins, my aunts and uncles, or even my grandparents. It's so heartwarming coming back to games like this one, just to feel this family comfort once more.

4.6 Waking up every morning and preparing coffee for my sister, eating morning toasts with her during family conversations with parent that's the life I want to - I belive it's awesome when you know the next day should be absolutley the same, when you always have someone to talk to and get support from. That's the thing I like about fictional family stories.

4.7 I was raised in a religious Christian-Orthodoxal family - however I am not Christian even if I respect religious people for their kindness to each others. I am Wiccan and I belive if God exists he simply don't care about us since hate and sadism took over our world and still don't care up to this day. I cannot belive someone kind can create a world full of terror. Seeing countries like Mexico or Palestine, Israel, Iraq or even the place where I live makes me want to cry. Using my Wiccan practices, or talking to a highly religious people is my own way to stay calm - Listening to classic Christian Rock like Underoath or reading quotes from Buddha is a way to be open for kindness even in the most horrible environment. I am not for or against religions, but I belive we should be open to everything new in our life and living just in the middle.

The Great

5.1 The Great is analogy to a big family, which shows even amateur artists could be together in harmony and create something great.

5.2 A good example of art associations like The Great is Ed Banger Records - a french musical label whic consists of professionals like Daft Punk, Justice, SebastiAn, Kavinsky, Busy P, Uffie, DJ Mehdi and others. They are activley help each others, and perform live together.

5.3 My artistic association is created to help amateurs share their drawings, music, animations under one single brand and philosophy.

5.4 The core concept of The Great is to share our works for free with everyone. Since DRM systems cause so many troubles for people with slow Internet connection or old hardware and software, you could download any release made by The Great Band and our partners for free in a high quality, and enjoy it on any device you have.

5.5 All the works we publish, we create during fun evenings together when we are drawing, compose and write together.

5.6 The style of The Great is inspired by the culture of 2000's and early 2010's - If I would like to choice the most influential persons from this time, I would like to say it's Taylor Momsen of The Pretty Reckless and Peaches Gedolf - They are an awesome examples of people who can be the same good as acting in movies, and playing some music by the same time. Peaches Gedolf is been a journalist just like me, so I belive her appearence in fashion and all these documentaries represents The Great as good as it is. I especially like bands such as Escape the Fate and Underoath because of their emotional intensity and rebellious image. I wish I could create something this exciting in the near future, although I have other priorities in my life at the moment.

Most of The Great members (fictional or the real ones) is usually doing a few things at the same period of time, because I belive it's fun to switch between your favorite things - even if it's less productive, you've never been bored of something one.

General

6.1 I have a habbit of archiving everything I do - from musical ideas and synthesizer sounds as files on my computer to my personal archive of school projects I was made in childhood.

If you just collect your personal library of content you made in the past, it's always faster to work by reusing programming functions you already written or little musical pieces. Never delete your projects, just save them, even if you think they are bad.

I call it "Building Blocks" method and you may see I used it for my article "Let's Learn DevOps: Git" by giving only the most basic knowledges in the main article, but also giving you instructions for specific topics.

Sometimes, when I get bored or even annoyed of programming, I can take a break for a few months, just to draw something in my artbook, or simply write music - you may be surprised, but all these blocks I collected trought years help me in every kind of my activities - like using programs I've made to speed up the process of writing music or using my own music in games I'm making.

6.2 It's easy to get into the rabbit hole of technology, so usually I am less distracted in situations where I have no electricity around. If I have only 1 hour of battery from my powerbank - checking my email would be the last thing I am going to do.

6.3 It's a wise decision to ask yourself "Am I going to spend one hour of my life to this?" every time you want to watch some long YouTube video or read a massive book. There's not that much of a free time in the life of average 21st Century man since we are always busy with something. Spending your time on things you consider important - it's the primary goal of every of us in this busy world. Sometimes even playing your favorite videogame or getting some university work done is less-painful decision out of all. Take a note, this is also about workaholics - I struggle with it a lot in the past, so usually I wasted hours upon hours of my life on something I don't care anymore ↓6.5. Please, love your life and don't get too extreme with your own grand plans ↓6.8.

6.4 Diary is my way to stay connected with yourself - this is not just a diary to me, but my own way to strcuture my personal life - I write everything here, from my tought on a recently watched animes to a study plans for the near future. Most of these ideas written here are taken from my diary and structured into this large document. When I am working on something, I like to keep everything "in chaos" - there's no structure to my notes. Just as SebastiAn Akchote make his music by taking a little pre-made musical pieces from already written tracks, I am doing the same with my notes - usually I compile everything I written recently and trying to come up with strucutre for my next article or documents like this one!

When you have lists like "Things to get done before Christmas" it cause stress - our mind understand it as something you need to get done in a short time period. Diary is more like a "flow" - you are writing and forget - there's no "requirements" from yourself to yourself. Diary can be a good way to relax - at the evening, when you can simply write your own tought and have a better sleep because all these "annoying" toughts is already recorded and can be processed later.

Diary is my way to learn things - actually most of my articles are simply the same I am writing in my diary fro yourself, to come back when I get stuck with new things I am learning right now. When you learned something new, it's important to use it on practice. There's a rule called "80/20" which means "20% Theory and 80% Practice" which is the best way to improve, since shy people like me always trying to master every single concept instead of just using skills I have. Even a short videos like VITAL : FM Tutorial And Tips can be enough just to learn the foundation - your building blocks to build something on top of them. Working on this website helped me to get discipline more than any productivity course ↑1.8, ↓6.8.

6.5 As Arthur Schopenhauer says in "Counsels and Maxims":

Care should be taken not to build the happiness of life upon a broad foundation—not to require a great many things in order to be happy. For happiness on such a foundation is the most easily undermined; it offers many more opportunities for accidents; and accidents are always happening.

Instead of giving yourself grand plans, view on life in a short period of future - instead saying to yourself "I'm going to complete this song in one month", say "Alright, I belive this week I can write a few melodies for my future songs". Look into the near future with simple plans, not into a far with grand, since "Counsels and Maxims" also have this brilliant quote:

And lastly, even though the goal should be reached, the changes which Time works in us have been left out of the reckoning: we forget that the capacity whether for achievement or for enjoyment does not last a whole lifetime. So we often toil for things which are no longer suited to us when we attain them; and again, the years we spend in preparing for some work, unconsciously rob us of the power for carrying it out.

6.6 Looking at all these, it feels like every activity in our life is simply a waste of time, isn't it? But, I belive even the most "useless" hobbies could give us interesting toughts or skills which we can find useful in everyday life. Even deadmau5 in his masterclass said:

You might be way overcritical of your idea than it's like... it's sucks, but it's cool that I get that becuase I work at it more. You know, when I'm doing something, ultimately I spent two hours on something that doesn't work, well - no I saved two hours next time I'll try again. The process gets quicker.

Masterclass - The deadmau5 Process: Theory

6.7 It's common problem to me, since this Summer (2026) I decided to spend on completing songs for my upcoming album "Dimetra and Friends", but fate is something we cannot predict, and I spend all my summer without electricity at home, so I cannot even turn on my synthesizer to write something.

I belive, every of us should know our own place in this world - we should know our limits, and quickly recognize when we are taking too much on ourselves. Having a stable mental and physical routine is much better than doing everyhing at the last moment, having insane ammount of stress. Sometimes it's better just to say "Alright, this is not the best moment for my grand plans, let's just get done something I can right now"[↑6.5](#6.5).

Every of us have only three kinds of work we are doing in our life:

1. Primary work - this is th most important activity in our life, usually it's something we get money for. It's a wise decision to spend the most time in getting good at your primary work, which makes you a better specialist on your own. Having a better job makes you earn more money which you can spend on two other activities below.

2. Art - something we are making to write our words in a human history.

3. Break - physical or mental activity to get relieve after bad day at work or unproductive session in your art studio. Something that doesn't require you to be best of the best. You might take pen and paper and write some goofy sketches thinking about the process, not the final result.

Let me explain this in the context of my own life - I am a programmer, or rather DevOps engineer. Right now I have no full-time or even part-time job but I am doing and learn something new every day - even the smallest fact about my profession and software I use, since usually even 15 minuites a day is enough to growth. I know this is something which predict my future - so I want to be serious about my own future. The same time, I am crazy about music - I listen to it since childhood and I feel like I want to create something by yourself. However, I cannot earn money with music - It's a destructive way because I am not a professional but just and amateur who likes music and can listen to it for hours - I simply can start to hate it in the way of making it my primary job. If I want to earn money with my own music, I need to dive deep into marketing and self-promotion and I am absolutley uninterested in it so I decided just to enjoy the moment - it's good if I can release a few tracks a year, but also fine if I don't since writing articles for my website is another kind of creativity. Since I started writing "Let's Learn DevOps" article series it's become a part of my studying process for my primary work. After all, it's nice to be fair to yourself, so time-to-time I have days when I simply do nothing and just play videogames or watch cartoons, which is a part of my break.

6.8 While I'm givng some tips and tricks to get better at your favorite things, I am kinda skeptical to any kind of "productivity" podcasts or any other media connected with a cult of productivity - and I have only one heavy reason for this - most of them simply do nothing. The only product they release is their own motivational content, having nothing behind this productivity, like maybe just a simple drawings or own music, books (not productivity related). They literally teach you how to get more things done by having zero output from their own. I belive every thing in our world have its own time and place, so pushing yourself to get things you are not ready right now is simply cruel. My tricks is more about minimizing ammount of stress in my own life.

No one have right to teach you how to live, even I am - so please, enjoy life - read books you like, play videogames you like, watch cartoons, films, write your own poems, eat meat buns - this is what this life is for - simply enjoy it, because we have no second chance to enjoy it once again.

6.9 At the end, I belive there's no perfect way to get good at this life, and even this document is just a set of lifehacks which works for me, and could be useless to anyone else.

When SebastiAn asked on Reddit "What advice would you give young Sebastian who just started making music?", he respond:

No advice is the best one. Accepting to be alone with all this and Loosing yourself can helps to find what you have to do.
doggg

Our life is more like a representation of famous meme called "This is why dog is happier" - and there's something right in it. There's a big differance between teenagers and adults. Teenager's mind is easy to fool, someone easily could change our "I want" to "I need". When working on personal projects, it's better to set border between results made by other's and results made by me.

As example, while making music, we usually rate our own achivements in context of all music at all - It's easier to see Justice made cool synthesizer sound combined with complex electronic drums, but when we look on this in our own context - we can see that half year ago you cannot even make synthesizer sounds by yourself, but right now you know something on combining waveforms and making them catchy by using effects.

People usually overthink some really basic things. We are trying to find the best way to do the simplest things, we do so many researches and watch so many tutorials, but at the end, we fear of yourself. We always think to do something wrong, when there isn't wrong option at all. Author of "STOP Watching Tutorials, Trust Yourself." showed us a good example. Having fun is to always accept challanges - what about draw your next masterpiace in Miscrosoft Paint, or use colors you dislike? Maybe, you can make a song using only preinstalled sounds in your synthesizer, or reject all productivity apps and simply write your ideas in Notepad?

I am in agree with David Goggins in this interview:

But how I grew a will was constantly doing these things to now it's just life. I wake up. While it still sucks, it's just life. You don't sit back and like, oh my god. Like I have days I don't want to do. But I know I'm going to do it. I know from years of just doing it.

So that's beautiful. And this is why I came on here with you today. And I'm glad that you're talking about this because human beings need to hear this. They need to stop hearing these hacks on this and that.

There's no f***g hack, bro. There's no f***g hack. Yeah, you may this and that and saunas and all this s**t that they-- yeah, it's great. There is no f***g life hack. To grow that thing-- how do you grow it? Do it, and do it, and do it, and do it. That's the hack. The hack is going to f***g suck. And that's what I realized.

Take a note, David Goggins is kinda hard about his own workout routines after years of military service, but these words fits good to anything in our life.

Related Media

You could get familiar with the media that changed my life for the better and inspired me to create this philosophy:

  1. Higanbana - a monumental work by two artists, the centre of my philosophy, which describes the importance of family, love, and how to make the most of life. As you've seen, this website is all about Radiata!

  2. Happy Birthday: Inochi Kagayaku Toki - Made by studio Magic Bus, this animation shows us the importance of being nice to each other. Every person has their own problems, but still want to live in this world. After Re-Birthday, studio Magic Bus made "My Sister, Momoko", and I like it too.

  3. World Masterpiece Theater - anime series collection by Nippon Animation. Titles like "Anne of Green Gables" and "The Story of Pollyanna, Girl of Love" are great examples of Christian stories about finding happiness in life, or "Heidi, Girl of the Alps" from legendary producers like Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata.

  4. Ghibli Animation - Since I mentioned Miyazaki and Takahata, it is necessary to say something about their work after Nippon Animation. The Ghibli Titles are beautiful and warm, so you can find something for yourself! My personal favorites are "Only Yesterday" and "Howl's Moving Castle", but I love everything they did. Ghibli animation is another chance to connect with my family.

    5. Arthur Schopenhauer’s The Wisdom of Life - a good introduction to his ideas and a collection of practical reflections. It is part of Parerga and Paralipomena.

As you can see, the main topics behind my philosophy are: Life and Death, Disability, Love, Family. I have been living with Tourette's Syndrome since 2023, and these masterpieces help me to stay calm in my life and like everything I do.

Also, there are honorable mentions like Josee, the Tiger and the Fish, Gotou ni Naritai anime, or the works of Makoto Shinkai like The Garden of Words, Goethe's Faust. I dislike the fact that almost everything here comes from Japan, though I find German culture interesting too.

Most of the time I enjoy watching brainrot from Japan, which is used as a biological weapon to make people dumb worldwide, so if I want to, I could add some titles like Gokicha! Cockroach Girl, Aho Girl or Plus-Sized Elf here. As my dear readers, you need to be ready for this!

My philosophy is not about being productive - it's about making the most out of life - so if I want to, I will watch an anime about cute elephant girl doing cute and clumsy things 24/7.