February 15th - Focusing on PP, wall of text

 15.02.2026

Nice day. Slept well during the day. Ate really poorly; I basically had nothing except a decent meat breakfast yesterday, some snacks. My stomach was empty like a balloon even before I fell asleep. Then after I woke up I pondered how I still have little appetite; one hypothesis is that it's linked to my habit of not eating before the workout. Still, I nibbled on some meat and pasta and even some vegetables (carrot and tomato). Some time later I had a 36/432 conventional coffee which made me feel a little messy in my head.

Speaking of messy - I wanna document my FO4 playthrough. I finally accomplished the two tasks I wished to spitefully do before installing Sim Settlements 2 again, and that is clearing Vault 75 (done a while ago) and finally Gunners' Plaza (Galaxy News Radio building). In the base game it's nothing but a very hard multi-level "dungeon" with some lore drops on Gunners faction. In SS2 it plays a bigger role in a very poorly implemented gameplay system that gave me a massive headache back in the day; I wandered the endless rooms and cubicles of this building and was stressing from all the bugs, all the scripting that FO4 engine can barely handle. This mod, which is a highly entertaining almost a game of its own, it changes a lot and adds a lot of complex systems which are arguably even more complex in gameplay than something like Sim City. That's what it was inspired by, that's why it's called Sim Settlements. It gives you settlement "plans" which you can choose and then the settlement builds on its own which is lowkey the opposite of what I want in my game. No, I wanna design and meticulously manage each and every one of my settlements on my own.

In the game, I finally reinstalled Fallout Commander mod which allows you to have a whole ass army (that's definitely an army within the game limits), so you can go and somewhat safely clear the locations because NPCs prefer to target you while your hired soldiers and your (usually unkillable) companion deal with them. Piper is bugged in my game rn and doesn't wanna go anywhere. I may wanna try disabling that one mod which alters her. That's what I ended on yesterday (i.e. today in the morning) after I finally cleared GNN plaza. Yeah, that was my second goal - to clean Gunners' Plaza before I have to do it in Sim Settlements 2 storyline. And I did it with two minutemen soldiers, one in power armor (a 'heavy') with a serious machine gun and the other just a rifleman, and also me and MacReady since I decided to get him in place of Preston for a while now. I reckon somehow McReady hates the gunners more than Preston even though they've both suffered from them a lot. I wanted to talk about accidental environmental storytelling - when I was scouting that GNN place my Bedlam mod suddenly spawned a whole dangerous squad of Institute droids and they all pretty much ambushed me. Then, after the assault I came across a couple gunners who were implied to have been synths - they had synth component and institute weapons, but I think that might be mod content. So, it is implied that Institute is behind gunners - although it is just a random occurrence. There's a lot of interesting lore as to the "Father's" psychology and what he feels about you (the main character) and The Institute. Spoilers, I know - the Father is your kidnapped son, kidnapped by The Institute and I think he freed you (the main character, Nate/Nora, Sole Survivor) cause he sort of wants to bring down The Institute (possibly unconsciously), so that's why he's teasing you with the synthetic child version of himself, to egg you on. It's implied somewhere that the Institute is behind both radios in the Commonwealth and that's why they play those subliminal songs, both classical and 50s pop music. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was considered pop music back in the day. I know Sinatra's music was. It's sort of like a "broader genre".

I'm writing. I'm writing all this, well, not drivel, but really random stuff instead of writing my book. It's sort of a semi-boring part in the story right now, although I might be wrong. It's just that the "emotional peak" of the chapter already happened and we're all coming down. I think I wanna make this chapter short, which'd be a rarity and skip to remembering other stories that need to be told, things that occurred in the second half of July 2003. It's pretty easy to figure out what year it is in the story, but it'll be even easier in August when I finally get to it. I love the idea of having my reader work for all the info. Ergodic stuff. I know I *tried* to get some extra info within the little hints that Mark Z. Danielewski left in his book, the house book or whatever it was called. Yeah, I tried, I went back in the book and re-read some parts, it was entertaining. I have mixed feelings about this book but I definitely lean towards liking it. It's not solid, but it a solid narrative chunk. It's just that in storytelling we love to have beginning, middle and end and his book doesn't really have an end, you know? It doesn't have a lot of expositions, not a lot of revelations, the whole going insane arc doesn't have high verisimilitude to me personally. You can sort of tell that he himself - the author - he went through a lot of pain, definitely, but the insanity part is, I think, only half-refined, but that's me without being given extra nuance. There might be extra nuance!

So distracted. Not really, but you know. It's 10 PM and I know I'm going to work on my PP today. Right now my "seasonal PRs" are OHP 120 for 2 reps and PP for 3 reps 😁 Which is, of course, hilarious. My tissues in my upper pecs and shoulders are not exactly perfect, well, not that I can tell very well, but I can sense it. They are a little too fragile and I've been having neurosis about my pec tissued having snapped and grown back wrong from my 2019 injury which is of course nonsense. I healed my pecs in 2024-25 season; for the first time in my life I was able to bench well with a wide grip. For the first time in my life ever! I basically never ever worked my pecs, in my years as a noob I improved my bench from 100 to 130 mostly from arm strength, then I dunked it until about 2017-2019 messy season and, as mentioned many times before already, I dunked it again in 2019; at the time my max was a 150 kg floor press. In 2021 I worked on my bench too, yes I did; it wasn't bad, but it was mediocre. Lowkey 2021 was kind of a super mediocre year for my lifting; all I cared about my pleasure from my workouts rather than actual results. In 2022 things changed, 2023 was messy, 2024 was the year of my service and then bouncing back, in 2025 I finally again became stronger than I've even been, in January 2026 I deadlifted 298 and I didn't want to try 300+ cause I wanted to leave it for some bigger occasion rather than do it all alone in the garage gym. Maybe one day we can have our Iron Grip meets again and then I'll just do some deadlifts beside and have someone at all to celebrate with me! I want that, a lot.

Agh, I just need to get it all out. I wrote a semi-okay scene of about 1100 words yesterday, it felt okay, haven't really re-read it since yesterday. I was sort of hoping I could do some more writing today - I think that will happen. I think I should be able to finish my workout before 1AM. I don't have much tomorrow. I still have that "big issue" and I still wanna go back to war. Maybe I'd like to print out my book at first. That's been my creative endeavor for a few years now. It's a long and messy story, how Marco came to be, how he transformed from a cartoon cutout into a somewhat multi-dimensional character, and then Henry and Zita eventually transformed into deeper characters as well. This September I abandoned the old story and decided to focus on different things, take a different direction in my writing which is extremely important to me. My skill improved, I'm a lot more happy with the text I produce nowadays.

Workout

Warmup - extremely thorough, more so than normal; a lot of shoulder, forearm, elbow work, typical overhead stretches, rotators, delts, arguably distracted with stuff that resembles armwrestling work - cause I wanna get rid of all that awkwardness I have in my elbow

Overhead press

20 - 50

70 for 5 messy

80 for 5 better

100 for 5 nice

Had to clean up downstairs for a while after the frame bumped the locker. May want to try and install a new lock there.

Front micro squats, full rack on all except first set

70 - 100 for 10

100 for 14 starting to get nice

100 for 10

Push press

100 for 1 nice

110 for 1 - important tidbit. I figured out you're not supposed to pull the bar "too close" to yourself with your lats and back UNTIL you're wrist / elbows are UNDER the bar; else you sort of end up with a bench stance

120 for 1 - presspush, barely used my legs; that is not what I wanted!

120 for 1 - much better, straight overhead

130 for 0 - fail, push very weak. I THINK I may wanna try tightening my weightlifting shoes really well! There's a reason they got that frigging flapover on top. They're supposed to be really tight, proper pushing hooves! Let's try. I did have a lot of issues of that nature before, real grimy inside, greasy even. They should be tight, same as wrists and belt! Although I have specifically loosened my wrist wraps. I made sure they're not grabbing the base of the palm, I think that's important. Okay, no long waiting tonight, let's go already and give it a cohesive test.

130 for 1 - much better! Not a perfect PP, but it was decently cohesive. I did have to wobble and press out the last inch so I can fix the weight well, and I did. That was good! I need to work on my back actual flexibility, i.e. I need to be able to flex my back into a full 180 easily enough! It god enough mobility but not FLEX-ability, capisce?

120 for 1 right after - feels very good! Cohesive albeit it wasn't an "explosion". It's been a few minutes. Almost exactly 1AM rn, hm. I shall hurry and try to do a really, really good one.

ALSO - ANOTHER IMPORTANT TIDBIT: you gotta push from flat feet! I had a bad habit of starting on tiptoes then leaning them down; I believe that really limits mobility, doesn't allow me to push my knees forward. TIGHT SHOES feel good! Although feet *are* choking 😁

120 for 1 very good 😀 Very cohesive. Decently fast but sadly not quite explosive! I again felt so right here, just like when I did 120 for the first time this season. This season started in December, I'd say.

120 for 1 - nice, good push; I've gotten better at it. Wobbly lockout that reminded me of old times! My back and shoulders are very uneven, so it'll take some patience and regularity to bring into a better state.

OHP focusing on 180 degree lockout - 20 for 20, feels good

Upstairs

Squat stretches / static holds - 2 sets, pulling on all the tissues til they're warm, feels so good!

Thank God, truly and forever, Hallelujah! 😀

Interesting thing I noticed - I rarely ever apply "psychology" tag to my posts anymore. My soul is so much better nowadays!

***

RPotD - File:Vespula flaviceps.jpg