I don't really vibe with "follow your passion" or "believe in yourself" type advice. It feels generic. It could've been said to anyone. But there are two people — one fictional, one real — whose mindset I actually think about when things get hard.

The first one is Bakugo Katsuki. He's the rival character in My Hero Academia, and in most stories, the rival character is the lesson — the cautionary tale about what arrogance costs you. But Bakugo doesn't lose the plot. He stays at the top. He screams about winning and then goes and wins. And what I like about him isn't the arrogance — it's the clarity. He knows exactly what he wants and he never lets himself forget it, not for one second. I respect that. I want that. That kind of locked-in.

The second one is Stable Ronaldo. If you don't know him — he's a Twitch streamer who was huge, then became basically irrelevant, and instead of pivoting or quitting or reinventing himself as something new, he just kept going. Same thing. Every day. And then the numbers came back. He's massive now. I watch him for the content but I think about him for the mindset. He didn't need the validation to keep working. That's the thing.

Right now I don't have a job. I'm applying. I'm building. Some days nothing moves. But I've got a very specific picture of where I'm going — and I'm not changing it just because it's taking longer than I thought.

I want to make my parents proud. I want to be the kind of engineer my younger brother looks up to. That's not poetic — that's just the actual reason I keep going.

Anyway. Back to building.