The New Ego

The next morning, I woke up feeling… off. The motivation from the previous day had faded, replaced by a heavy fog of laziness.

"Maybe I'll just skip today," I thought, rolling over in bed.

But the alarm kept blaring, and I finally turned it off with a groan.

I sat at my desk, staring at my clean, minimalist desktop. The coding tutorial was still open, but my fingers itched to open something else—something familiar.

"Just one video. One scroll. What's the harm?"

I opened TikTok. The first video was a gym bro yelling about discipline. I swiped past it. The next was a girl dancing in a bikini. I paused.

"Just one more."

An hour later, I was still scrolling. My brain felt numb, but I couldn't stop.

By noon, I hadn't done anything productive. I told myself I'd start after lunch, but lunch turned into a nap, and the nap turned into more scrolling.

I opened my freelance site and saw a new project: "Write a 3000-word NSFW story."

"Easy money," I thought.

But as I opened a new document, I hesitated.

"Is this really what I want to do? Waste my life writing this crap?"

I closed the tab and went back to TikTok.

As I scrolled, I stumbled on a video titled "The Effects of Wasting Your Life."

The guy in the video talked about how time is the only resource you can't get back.

"Every minute you waste is a minute you'll never get back," he said. "Stop waiting for external factors to save you. You have to build yourself."

The words hit me like a punch to the gut.

"Is that what I'm doing? Waiting for someone or something to save me?"

Later, I found myself on that site again. It was automatic, like my body was on autopilot.

But as I clicked through videos, I felt… empty.

"Why do I keep doing this? It's not even satisfying anymore."

I closed the tab and opened a new one, searching for "effects of watching porn."

The results were brutal: addiction, decreased motivation, distorted views of relationships.

"Is this who I want to be? A guy who wastes his life scrolling and watching porn?"

I leaned back in my chair, staring at the ceiling.

"I don't want to be like this. I don't want to be like anyone I see online—the gym bros, the influencers, the guys who seem to have it all together. I just want to be… me. But a better version of me."

I opened my notes app and stared at the list I'd made the day before:

Who I Want to Be:

Healthy

Disciplined

Skilled

Underneath, I added:

Who I Don't Want to Be:

Addicted to porn

A procrastinator

A loser

Then, I wrote:

Decision:

New Me or Old Me?

I hesitated for a moment, then typed:

New Me.

Taking Action

I deleted TikTok and blocked that site on my browser. Then, I opened the coding tutorial and started where I'd left off.

It wasn't easy. My mind kept wandering, and I had to fight the urge to check my phone. But I kept going.

"One step at a time," I told myself.

By the end of the day, I'd completed another coding lesson and gone for a short walk. It wasn't much, but it was progress.

As I lay in bed that night, I thought about the day.

"I almost gave in. I almost went back to my old ways. But I didn't. And that's what matters."