After uploading last weeks post I actually went for a run. I was fucking freezing and my legs pretty much died that day, but I felt good afterwards. I felt energized to actually do what I set out to do. I went to sleep and woke up the next day motivated to do something for once. So I started to write down all the things I always wanted to do, all the things I wanted to achieve. And here it is, my list of life goals, challenges and whatnot. Just stuff I want to do and achieve. Also, last week I said thereā€™s gonna be the recap of the Takao trip this time around. Well, thatā€™s not gonna happen today either. Maybe next week. Maybe never. Weā€™ll see. I just felt like this is the more important thing to write down right now. Without further ado, here it is:

Super Triathlon

Iā€™ve done my first triathlon this year. The distances were 0.45 km swimming, 20 km cycling and 5 km running and I made it through everything with a time of 1:27 h. In my category I was on place 393 from a total of 441 people competing. Pretty shitty to be honest, but I made it through the whole triathlon which is impressive on its own. The next logical step is pretty obvious. Iā€™m going to participate in an Iron Man competition. Of course not in the near future, the Iron Man is going to be the peak, the long term goal, of my endurance training. Not the least thanks to the fact that I cannot even do a single one of the distances on their own, let alone consecutively. The distances for the official Iron Man challenge are: 3.8 km swimming, 180 km cycling and 42 km running. Just to get an idea of how long this takes: the record in the Ironman Germany is 7:49 h in total with a maximum time of about 16 to 17 h you are allowed to take. Thatā€™s going to be damn hard. But you know, thatā€™s how itā€™s supposed to be with these challenges.

I split this goal up into smaller mid and short term goals, so I have some more achievable goals I can work on. Currently I manage to run a distance of 7 km, which is far off the goal of 42 km I have to run in the Iron Man. So my first short term goal is to run a half marathon (21 km) next year and then work myself up to a full marathon (42 km). When I eventually made it that far, I am going to train for another big challenge. Inspired by aĀ vlog from Casey Neistat on YouTube I want to run the distance of 150 km (approximately 3.5 marathons) in seven days. Sounds hard? Thatā€™s how itā€™s supposed to be.

One of my greatest passions in life is cycling. This goes way back to my childhood, when I cycled with my cousin together all the time. One summer we cycled everyday through the whole city and always went to the same McDonald to eat burgers there. Damn, those were the days. Anyways, I have a few goals when it comes to long distance cycling. The first is cycling from Munich to Stuttgart in a single day. According to Google Maps itā€™s about 240 km along the freeway. If I decide that Iā€™d rather cycle along a river or smaller roads itā€™s going to be a little longer, but Iā€™ll decide that when I actually plan the tour. Another cycling goal for me is a tour from Munich to Hamburg, which would span the whole distance from the south to the north of Germany. Directly that would be 750 km, but Iā€™d definitely take a route along rivers and far away from main roads which would be about 850 - 900 km. Of course I cannot do that in a single day, so I would stretch that to about a whole week. Also I want to camp outside every night, instead of sleeping in the warmth of a hotel or hostel. This is gonna save me some money, but also make it a bit more challenging. And thatā€™s the whole point of this list.

The last pre-Iron Man challenge is for swimming. I actually donā€™t have any particular thing in mind for this. I donā€™t really want to swim through a gigantic lake or something like that to prove myself. So I just set a goal of 10 km of non-stop swimming. My local swimming pool has a length of 50 m, which would put me at 200 lengths of swimming to complete this challenge. Now that Iā€™ve written this down, 200 lengths do sounds pretty ridiculous, but whatever. I gotta do what I gotta do.

Look at that Fucking View

Despite living in Munich for nearly a decade now, I never went into the nearby alps to cycle, hike, camp or ski. I should probably do all of those things at some point. However, the one thing I really want to do is crossing the alps by foot. AfterĀ some research I found the so called ā€˜Traumpfadā€™ hiking trail across the alps. The trail starts at the Marienplatz in Munich and ends at the Piazza San Marco in Venice. The trail is about 550 km long and has a total combined altitude of 40,000 m (up and down). The highest point of the trail is 2900 m high. It kinda sounds insane to actually do the trail, but the views you get on that trail are insanely good and definitely worth the effort. To be honest, the views are probably the biggest reason why I actually want to do this. Anyway, the most common stage division is split into 28 stages, which corresponds to 28 days of hiking. However, before actually tackling this monstrosity of a challenge, I am going to complete some of the other beginner friendly hikes in the alps. Also I am going to do more hikes in general, wherever I can find a place to hike near Munich or when I go camping with friends.

During the hike through the alps I will most likely sleep in the available huts along the trail. There is always the possibility to camp everyday along the way and maybe I am going to do that in Round 2 of doing the Traumpfad trail. However, for the first time I think that the trail itself is challenge enough, even without the extra difficulty that camping would bring with it. This challenge, in addition to being difficult to complete on its own, entails the problem of time. I will have to make time for more than a month, which will be difficult to do in between working and studying. The other challenges, while probably more time intensive, can be done in parallel to my everyday life. This one will occupy a whole month straight without the ability to do anything else. But like I always say, if you actually want to do something, you will find the time to do it.

Minecraft in Real Life

Those were the days, sitting in the warmth of your room, headset on and playing Minecraft with your buddies. All the projects that youā€™ve all planned and built, all the adventures you went on in the mines, finding diamonds and desperately trying not to die on the way back, just to be blown up by a creeper or falling into lava. Damn, those were the days.

Ahem, anyway, now the time has come to do the building again, but this time in real life. This idea is inspired by the YouTube channel Primitive Technology. And yes, I definitely watch to much YouTube in my leisure time and there is nothing that can stop me from doing so. John Plant, the guy behind Primitive Technology, has built so many huts already, itā€™s hard to keep track of how many there even are in those forests in Australia. I could just set myself the goal of building my own hut, but currently Iā€™m not sure what exactly this challenge should entail. I wrote it down regardless, because I want to do something that is connected to primitive or ancient life. Building a hut only using basic tools from the hardware store? Maybe only with DIY tools? Or maybe even something completely different? I donā€™t know yet. But I really want to do something in that direction. That will also hone my survival skills in case shit goes down and zombies actually exist. Ya know, I want to be prepared, just in case.

Deutsch, English, ę—„ęœ¬čŖž, ŁŲ§Ų±Ų³ŪŒ ā€¦

ā€¦ these are the four languages I want to become proficient in. I want to be able to speak the languages fluently and also be able to write in them kinda semi-professionally. Good thing, I already have the basics in all four languages and I am, you may not even believe this, somewhat proficient in English and also in German. I know, I can hardly believe it myself. Persian is technically my mother tongue, but to be honest I can barely get by with it. And by barely I mean every fifth word in my sentences is going to be German, because I canā€™t think of the Persian translation for it. As for Japanese, as you all can probably imagine, I have become completely fluent in speaking in my three months here, talking to native Japanese speakers everyday. Just kidding, I still shit myself every time I have to actually utter more then three words in Japanese. Whatever, Iā€™ll get there at some point. I mean it worked with English, so why not with Japanese also.

To show my proficiency of the languages, I will, in the end, write a book with four stories in my four languages. The stories have to differ, but still be somehow connected. I already have some ideas of how I want to do the stories, but nothing definitive right now. Also, the idea of writing stories does not come from nowhere. I love to write short stories as birthday or Christmas gifts. So I thought why not combine this love for story writing with learning multiple languages.

As an arbitrary goal, Iā€™ve set myself 25 pages per language, so I will have in total at least 100 pages. However, that number is only set as a minimum value. Letā€™s see how long it will actually become. Iā€™m already exited to see what comes out of this.

Anyway, hereā€™s Wonderwall

Donā€™t worry, this is not gonna be the part were I declare my love for music and how my whole life revolves around it. No sad and shitty background story of how music changed my life and saved the life of my goldfish by resurrecting him with the touch of music. But man, that would be funny as hell. Nah, this is not a shitty casting show, this is real life. Nevertheless, I love music.

My musical career started on guitar. Of course. I played some guitar, learned the basics, but was never really interested in becoming good at playing guitar. I never wanted to be a guitar god shredding away on my axe. Also, I eventually stopped playing altogether. However, at the beginning of this year, I gave learning an instrument another chance. But this time on bass. I bought a bass and an amp and started to learn the instrument. I kinda felt at home with the bass, with its deep sound and the power that is behind every pluck. I loved it and so I was way more motivated to learn the instrument to a proficient extent.

And that brings me to my musical goals in life. I want to get better at playing bass, way better. Yeah, that sounds way too generic in comparison to the other things on this list, but whatever, that is the goal I am going to work towards. However, there are some things I want to achieve on this path of becoming a god bass player.

I want to join or even form my own band. Nothing too fancy, I donā€™t dream of becoming a world renowned musician. Neither do I want to live off my musical career. However, I also donā€™t want to treat music as a normal hobby. Letā€™s say something in between, something like a serious hobby. Something Iā€™d be willing to put more effort and time into, but not base my whole life around. Yeah, that sounds about right. There are two things on my band bucket list: release an original album and play a live concert with a relatively big crowd. I mean more then ten people who are all your friends that you forced to go there. A real, proper live concert. And also release an album that I can say Iā€™m proud of in the genre I love.

My other goal is to release a solo album. That doesnā€™t mean that every sound on that album is going to be from me, but rather that the whole album and its execution is based on my ideas. I already have one song for that album. Itā€™s not really finished, but the basic idea is there. And Iā€™m excited to get home and actually start to work on some new stuff. Until then I am going to gather some ideas and see if I can come up with something basic.

Lastly, and this is more of a short to mid term goal: I want to do a bass cover of every single song released by the band Rise Against. Sounds crazy? Well here is some background story for you: back in the day I almost exclusively listened to Rap. Then I went to visit my cousin and he just put on some acoustic song on loop for like an hour. It was ā€˜Hero of Warā€™ by Rise Against. The song was pretty good, but I wasnā€™t really used to that kind of music, so I kinda shrugged it off. Some weeks go by and my school holds a talent show and a friend of mine wants to play guitar there and sing, but doesnā€™t know what song to play. We all brainstorm together and at some point I suggest the song I listened to at my cousins place. Sure as shit, everyone liked that song. They liked that song so much, one of them bought the CD and played it at one of our next rounds. We all liked their music. I liked their music. And so I started to listen to them regularly, devoured one album after another. And so it happened that I started to listen to Rock and later to Metal. And so it happened that I became interested in playing an instrument and becoming a musician myself. Rise Against was the first Rock band I listened to. My first concert was with them headlining. Their music will always have a special place in my heart. And so I decided to do the only possible thing to show my passion and love for this band: I will cover all their songs.

The Nerdy Side

I like to write software in my free time. However, I never really managed to get far with the things I planned on programming. It always failed because of the same reasons: I started without an actual plan on what I wanted to do and I gave up the second it got a little harder. I know, pretty shitty. But while here in Japan I started to develop an App where you can keep track of your expenses. I showed a prototype version of it in anĀ earlier post. Since then I worked a lot on the app. Itā€™s still nowhere near ready to be published, but it is getting there. My next step for it is to write down all the features I want to implement for the first release and then work on those features. As a goal in general I set myself to publish this app on Android, iOS and Desktop and give the user the ability to synchronize between all three platforms. Kinda ambitious as Iā€™m alone on this project and also because Iā€™ve never developed for iOS before. Hell, I donā€™t even own a single Apple product. But whatever, Iā€™m gonna do it and Iā€™m gonna kick ass with it.

Besides this utility app I also plan on developing a game. Not a shitty Flappy Bird clone, but a proper game with complex mechanics and actual depth. I donā€™t have anything concrete planned yet. Itā€™s probably gonna be some kind of building game, but also maybe not, I really donā€™t know yet. One thing I know for certain is that Iā€™m not going to do the same mistake as before with this game. Before I even start to think about programming I am going to plan out the whole game and all its major mechanics. Only then I am going to start programming. And then Iā€™ll stick to it no matter how hard it gets.

I would really encourage everyone to write their own list. Not just have it in your head and thinking that itā€™s enough if you think about it. Actually write it down on a piece of paper. Or on the internet like me. Wait no, you should probably not upload it to the internet, too much responsibility to actually do the stuff then. Or donā€™t write it down. Itā€™s your life.

Well, now that Iā€™m done with this, I can finally start back up with frequent Japan themed stuff in my posts.

Thank you for reading and see you next week :)
Ash