An idea I have flirted with time and time again is the concept of the perfect sequence. It is the idea that, relative to a person’s life, there could be a perfect, predetermined set of actions they could take in the correct order (whatever that may be) to achieve the very best possible outcomes for that person.

In a way, I think that is Platonic (not as in friend zone – the philosopher!), but in another way, I also think it is delusional. There is, after all, only one life. What good is there in thinking about the ideal state of things when one could just go ahead and do them well? That’s actually why I’m thinking about this at the moment.

Yesterday, I posted a video pretty late at night after practicing a DJ set.

Now that I think about it, it would have probably been better if I had posted the video first, before practicing the DJ set.

Both were things I interpret internally as work, and in a way, both have possible payoffs.

The practice session paid off in extra skills, while the video paid off in views and people knowing a little bit of my thinking.

Had I done the video earlier, though, it would have dropped at a time when people were actually awake, and perhaps the algorithm would have picked it up.

That doesn’t seem to be the case because I dropped it quite late at night.

Either way, it is about the Fly FM AI DJ recruitment drive, which in turn was the fruit of my little expose of their fake live stream just the other day, which also became the top post on r/Malaysia for a while.

Time to flex!

That post in viewership terms reached almost 1% of the Malaysian population, if we assume that the entire viewership is either Malaysian x Malaysian diaspora rather than the possibly more interesting interpretation (that we could back with some data), that we have some Malaysians, mostly bots, disgruntled Singaporeans, kiasu parents who treat me as Malaysians may treat their durian, people who either love me or hate me or are indifferent but arrived by accident, and Americans and Chinese who may or may not be parts of secret agencies.

Anyway, back to earth – my failed video is what it is (or is it?), and there’s no use crying over spilled milk, though you may cry that Fly FM could have even thought that whatever they think they’re doing is a good idea.

This idea of a perfect sequence is still an appealing one, though, and it’s something I do think about time and time again.

Maybe that’s just proof that, as a person, I’m still somebody who can continue to get better and does continue to get better even if in some (many) ways I still suck.

That is a reassuring thought in this close of 2026, and as we open the doorway to the days and years ahead 😀

One of the things I reflected about this morning was a little less about the things that we do, but rather the things that we don’t do.

Why? I guess cause in thinking about life, I’ve come to realize that tradeoffs are inevitable.

I guess it was true from the very beginning of my life, but I just wasn’t really thinking about that in a deep way.

Perhaps that was my own fault – no, it almost certainly was my own fault for being distracted by things and shiny objects and the temptation of “just one more” throughout my entire life – but I suppose the world is replete with temptations that pull a person if they suffer the woe of not having any structure.

The things we do are one thing – discipline is a hard thing to master, and an even harder thing to integrate into a person’s personality – but what we consciously choose to exclude is something I think we should think a lot more about.

That chapter of manhwa that you just read, the next one that you also read, the new series that you browsed and looked at after that – if we took these away from your life and substituted them with something else, what would happen? What would you gain, if not over a single day or perhaps a week, then over months into the years?

What would happen if you got rid of that doomscroll, the video watch, the planting down of your butt on a chair just to stare at a screen?

What would happen if you could consciously eliminate the things in your life that do not contribute – the things that ultimately only serve as dead space or dross on your conscious experience?

I think I am still learning about that in some ways.

There are, after all, times when I find myself overly emotional about things that people have said or not said – unhappy about things that are happening in my living environment and in the places that I call home; some of the ways in which I cope are not always the most productive ways of doing so, whether across short-term or longer-term time horizons, if there is one thing I have become much more sure of in recent days, it is that I have the capacity to improve, and that the limiting factor is not effort, but the ability to see.

To be able to cut off what does not matter, to strengthen what does, and to move forward without the limitations of a cluttered mind:

That is the fruit of knowing what we will not do, and I look forward to harvesting it.