Today I had actually planned to go to Tagaytay and set my alarm for 8, but I woke up at 1 p.m. It was pouring outside, so maybe it was for the best that I didn't go.
What the nighttime numbness in my hand taught me
In the middle of the night my fingertips went numb and I thought, oh, this again.
Because the exact same thing happened to me in Thailand right before I got heatstroke. It's a mineral deficiency — I knew immediately. Still, I was drinking Pocari Sweat properly so I figured I was probably okay regarding heatstroke, but I couldn't help worrying. As a result, I had trouble falling asleep.
So I woke up at 1 p.m.
Salmon pasta and reading time in the downpour
Then I ate salmon pasta while reading Shu Yamaguchi's recently released book "Management Strategies for Life." It was pouring outside, and the forecast said it would rain every day from now on.
I ordered at the hostel counter — at first I ordered Fish & Tips and a mango juice, but they said they didn't have either, so I ordered the salmon pasta instead. Also a strawberry juice. The price was 520 pesos. In Japanese yen, 1,250 yen. It was a pretty decent price.
Salmon pasta
After that I spent the time on my laptop working on future strategies, goals for what kind of content I want to create, and just kept reading books.
A five-hour immersion that started with malware suspicions
So I sat at my laptop working, and when I checked my blog's Search Console I saw a ton of weird links being generated, so this was bad. I got worried that it might be infected with malware and started researching nonstop.
In the end it turned out not to be that; the migration from Local was the cause. I spent about four hours researching that. My brain was running at full capacity. But this was "flow."
The appeal of the 'flow' state I experienced after a long time
I experienced 'flow' for the first time in a while. The characteristics of flow are:
- Loss of sense of time
- Being completely absorbed in the activity
- A fading of self-consciousness
- The activity itself becomes the reward
Apparently. It really was like that. I was checking via SQL and researching the whole time, suspecting a backdoor might have been installed. It started at 7 p.m. and ended at midnight. A full five hours.
I was relieved it wasn't malware in the end, but more than that I thought 'flow' is great. Because I felt something like happiness.
I forgot time and even forgot to be hungry (actually I had ordered on Grab, but sudden rain and thunder caused a driver shortage and it was automatically canceled after a two-hour delay), I was completely immersed in everything. This is what flow is.
But it was really fun. This flow thing is great. During it, social media and stuff didn't matter at all, and the activity itself truly became the reward. It was fun.
So, although I lost time because I suspected a malware infection, on the flip side I was able to experience 'flow' — it was a good day.
