Dear friend,

I love difficult and hard things in life.

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One.

To start, have you ever tried to play a game that was too easy? Is it fun? No.

Difficulty is what leads to “fun.”

Video games that are too easy are no fun. Video games are only fun when there is a risk and a thrill of potentially dying.

In life, it is the same.

Photography of sunsets is boring to me and no fun. Why? It’s not difficult to me.

Street photography is fun. Because it is fucking scary and hard. The risk of possibly getting in trouble for making a photo of someone is what makes it fun.

Think about it. We love gambling, because we love the risk of losing it all. Or the risk of gain. Or potentially, we are just addicted to adrenaline responses.

When I play games now, I only play hard games. Flappy Bird is a favorite.

When I make photos, I only have fun when I continue to increase the difficulty and the challenge.

To make photography more difficult:

1. Play a game against myself: to simplify my photos as far as I can, with still making it interesting.
2. Approach strangers who I am afraid of, to ask to make their portrait.
3. Don’t make the same type of photo twice. To seek to add more complexity to photos, either in terms of layers, depth, or deeper emotional complexity.

I get a thrill when I make a photo that I haven’t made before. To me, novelty is what drives me in photography and life.

Two. We love novelty

For example, we like to travel, because we like novelty. We get bored easily, that is human nature.

Imagine: if you had the same meal for the rest of your life, wouldn’t you want to stop eating?

Or imagine: if you had the same exact routine for the rest of your life, wouldn’t you be bored to hell?

Three.

For working out, I only have fun when I make things more difficult. Deadlifts are only fun when I add weight.

Art is only fun when I innovate. To me, innovation is making a new type of art that I didn’t think of before, or a type of art I haven’t seen before.

For example, I’ve been drawing on my photos a lot on an iPad. To me, it is fun. It is novel. I haven’t seen anyone else online do anything like it.

Now whether the art is “good” or not is besides the point. To me, it is just fun.

Four. Have fun.

Children are the wisest. They know how to play, improvise, do role play, and create new things. They hate boredom.

Then they enter the public school system, are told to shut up, sit down, and do multiple choice tests. And if they don’t pay attention, they are medicated with Ritalin and other dumbing down drugs. To me, this is a crime against humanity.

I was a wild child. I still am. I hate social conventions and I’m always asking,

Why?

Why do I need to follow social conventions? Why do I gotta do shit I don’t wanna do?

To me, this free-spirited culture of challenging authority is what keeps me going.

Five. We need to feel pain before pleasure

Another idea: no “pleasure” is felt without pain that precedes it.

For example, food only tastes good when I’m hungry. And to be hungry is “painful.” Nowadays, I don’t eat breakfast or lunch anymore. Now when it is dinner time, I have a voracious appetite. Food tastes 100x times better. I can better smell the food notes, appreciate the textures, and I savor each bite a thousand times more.

When I’m not hungry and someone forces me to eat, it is seriously horrible.

Consider, we would not appreciate warmth if we weren’t cold before.

Also, nothing in life is fun without challenge and difficulty (pain).

Six.

So isn’t it funny that we are all addicted to pleasure and comfort, and afraid of pain and difficulty? But isn’t it difficulty, pain, and hardness which makes life worth it?

This is why to a certain degree, I think competitiveness is good. It forces us to push ourselves to the next level. It alleviates boredom.

If everyone in society were 100% equal, it would be boring.

Seven. Ideas to increase difficulty in life (to be happier)

To be “happier” in life, add more difficulty to your life.

Some things which I do:

1. Don’t eat breakfast or lunch. The difficulty of not eating is a fun challenge, which makes food taste better. Also, on a vain note, I can see my 6 pack abs, which feels good when looking at myself in the mirror.
2. Don’t take warm showers: I only take ice cold showers. Apparently it is better for your immune system and skin. Anyways, it has helped put some hair on my (naked Asian) chest.
3. Level up yourself: the best person to compete against is yourself from a year ago. Or be better today than you were yesterday. If you played an RPG video game, wouldn’t it be boring if you never leveled up? Or if you kept fighting the same easy bosses or monsters?

BE STRONG,
ERIC

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