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The thoughtbook / Daniel Abudu

Notes from a curious life

Thoughts

A place for ideas
before they’re tidy.

On design, making things, books, games, and the little things that stay with me.

  1. The latest entry

      The Friction Before Doing the Thing Tends to Be a Facade

      I don't know how normal this is but I learned some time ago about myself that when I have this strong aversion to trying something, it doesn't really signal anything of importance. I don't necessarily mean a strong intuition against something fishy or sketchy. I mean something like trying a movie, an experience, something new and/or different that I just don't feel like doing. It may even be a gig or an opportunity. Sometimes, there is genuinely something off about it. In those moments, when I ignore myself, i tend to regret it in some way. But in the moments where I can't pinpoint anything and just have this strong resistance to do something, it's usually a poor indicator of how that thing will actually be or feel. And usually, when I muster the strength to push past that specific feeling, I realise it was a lie.

      2 min readRead the thought

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    • From the notebook

        It’s a Good Time to Reiterate That Sometimes, Naivety Is Good

        The other day, I was watching a video explaining a comic book storyline where the ideals of an older person clashed with that of a younger one. It was an alternate Spider-man reality in a very corrupt world and a young Peter Parker having so much rage about the injustice of the world and having very simple politics.

        2 min readRead the thought
      • From the notebook

          Waking Up Early Gave Me More Time

          It's funny how you learn lessons then slowly move in another direction and have to come back to the lesson you learned. As a morning person, it's not news that I'm at my most productive before noon and for me in particular, I start getting diminishing returns after 2-3pm. I can be productive even till night but it's not me at my best. But over the past year or less, my wake up time became more and more late.

          2 min readRead the thought
        • From the notebook

            It Never Ends, Does It?

            I was on a call with my dad the other day and he asked how I was doing. I said as a fact, and not necessarily to complain, that I was always tired. He said that it's because my responsibilities are more now and "I hope you know it will still increase."

            3 min readRead the thought
          • From the notebook

              Discovering the Hype About Sports as an Adult.

              My childhood was very unorthodox in many ways but normal in many ways. One of the things that seemed out of the ordinary was that I didn't grow up watching football. When I was younger, I thought it was a nature thing. That I just didn't care about sports. But over time, it clicked that it was a nurture thing. And now, several years later, I've gotten older and gotten more exposed to things like movies about sports, documentaries, games, and even trying one or two for the sake of exercise, I'm even more convinced that the difference between me caring about Ronaldo vs. Messi and me not giving a fuck is because no one cared in the house I grew up in.

              9 min readRead the thought
            • From the notebook

                Optimism Is Rational.

                I haven’t been the most optimistic person you've ever met. In fact, for a portion of my life I was a pessimist. I remember my parents asking why I was always frowning and my response would be "why should I smile?" Pessimists like to think of themselves as “realists”, but in reality, their view of the world is so dark that what is “real” is just “everything ends up in a bad place”. I understand this view. I’m not the best believer in the world and in the human race. People say there is good in humanity. I say there is both good and bad with many incentives to be bad.

                5 min readRead the thought