This is the first seedling to truly break ground in my new routine.
Since November 23, 2025, I have committed to a singular goal: reading every day. The first vessel for this journey was Drive by Daniel Pink. As of December 18, 2025, I have turned its final page.
The Confession
This is not a book summary. I have no interest in condensing chapters; rather, I want to distill a few lessons from the experience itself. I must offer a confession: this process was a struggle. It was painful. There were moments where I drifted into the fog, my mind wandering to a dozen other places, forcing me to re-read passages just to anchor my focus.
But that does not matter. This is my first attempt at forging a habit, and I accept the friction.
I have now moved on to Atul Gawande's The Checklist Manifesto. I am tracking these small victories on my habits page. My current objective is stripped of vanity metrics: I have no page counts, no time clocks. My only mandate is to read.
Lessons from Drive
Let’s speak of Drive. The text dissects the archaic machinery of human motivation. It argues that the levers we have relied on for centuries—rewards and punishments—are rusted and ineffective in the modern world. The "carrot and stick" approach, the reliance on external stimuli like money or fear, often fails to produce the spark we expect.
Instead, the book suggests that true momentum is internal. It posits that autonomy, mastery, and purpose are the real engines of drive. When I reflect on my own experiences—specifically the hours I have poured into building this digital garden—I see the truth in this. When I work with volition, when I feel the edges of my skill sharpening, the fatigue vanishes.
Result
The reading experience itself wasn't entirely gripping for me, though perhaps that weight came from the rust on my own attention span after such a long hiatus. Yet, this book carries a significance beyond its text. It is the first concrete, completed artifact of the "transformation" I wrote about previously.
For anyone seeking to understand the mechanics of their own will, it offers valuable blueprints.
Echoes from The Little Prince
I do not state this with pride, but I am reading The Little Prince for the first time. It flowed through me effortlessly.
We grown-ups... we are so terribly busy, aren't we?
The book forced me to confront how significantly I magnify the trivialities of my daily existence. For a long time, I have been a victim of "immediacy"—wanting everything now. But the line, "It is the time you have spent on your rose that makes your rose so important," struck a nerve. It highlighted just how much my awareness has atrophied.
It is true: the more of yourself you pour into something, the more weight it holds. The things I acquired years ago through sheer struggle still possess a gravity that my current, far more expensive possessions lack. In the chaotic noise generated by life and technology, it is difficult to remember the fundamental truth: labor is love.
Another message that resonated deeply was this: "I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies."
A beautiful sentiment, yet stinging. It feels as though I have developed amnesia regarding my own scars—forgetting how I learned every hard-won lesson in my life. I don't know how this happened. But yes; everything that brings comfort or joy to my life today required patience, effort, and endurance. I knew that arrival without the journey is impossible, but clearly, I needed the reminder.
"It is much harder to judge oneself than to judge others."
I believe that for the last few months (today is January 13, 2026), I have been excessively generous in this department. I judge myself relentlessly; I hold my deficiencies up to the cold light. Of course, loudly berating one's own reflection is not exactly a strategy, especially if the only goal is to prove oneself right. I don't know.
The Verdict
A magnificent book. I was captivated.
I will likely read it again at the end of this year to weigh my soul once more. It touched so many bruised parts of my life. I wonder—in that future reading, will it evoke the same heavy feelings? Or will it allow me to finally whisper, "Yes, I think I am a little better now"?
My Sweet Orange Tree
I put the book down five minutes ago. I am undone.
This story dragged me back to the cold reality of just how ruthless this world can be. It forced me to recall the weight of innocence—a currency far more valuable than anything I currently chase in this life.
Love, mercy, compassion... are these merely echoes now? In this world, accelerating at such a terrifying velocity, I can no longer distinguish if my "struggles" are genuine burdens or mere illusions.
It wasn't just the prose that shattered me; it was the raw authenticity of it. The terrifying reality. I am not speaking of the author’s biography. I am speaking of resonance. I have lived on the fringes of this story myself. I have borne witness to these kinds of lives.
And yet, here I am, lightyears away from that world, drowning myself in synthetic problems.
I recall, with a strange clarity, that I was happier when my burdens were heavier—when they were real. Pushing a single, solitary toy car across a worn carpet brought me more joy than all the intricate Lego sets that clutter my shelves today.
It is tragic how effortlessly innocence is surrendered in this "modern" architecture we have built.
I do not know how I evaded these texts until now, but perhaps it was mercy. I am glad I waited until I was broken enough to understand them. When I laid the foundation for this website, my intent was to architect some order, to find a spark of motivation. Zeze’s story has now become a load-bearing pillar of this journey.
I hope Zeze, King Luis, Gloria, and Portuga are finally sleeping in peace.
A Week of Static
I have endured a wounded week in the battle to maintain my reading habit.
Caught in the high-bandwidth traffic of life, my old subroutines hijacked the system. For three days, I did not read.
In the past, I have had moments where I read simply to tick a box—opening a book, scanning a single page, and closing it. I knew it was a hollow victory, reading just to say I had read. But I accepted that performance as part of the architecture of habit-building. I preferred the "token effort" over the "zero effort."
But this week was different.
The last two months have been a blur of transit—shifting cities, attending the milestones of friends' lives. These were the exact conditions under which I tried to plant this new habit. I am not exactly known for my precision in planning, and frankly, my timing for initiating this protocol was... suboptimal.
But then again, isn't life always a stream of unplannable chaos?
Here is the truth: This week, instead of reading, I chose the numbness of the scrolling screen. Instead of thinking, I chose to shut down my brain. I traded the friction of the page for digital anesthesia.
This entry serves as both a confession of that failure and a vow to reboot the system. I am returning to the page.
Checking soil...