So, ever since I updated my monthly plan on July 7th, I’ve mostly been into three things: reading, playing games, and working out. Pretty simple, but it’s been keeping me busy in a good way.

At first, I thought I’d be clever and use AI text-to-speech apps to get through books faster. I tried the paid versions of NaturalReader, Speechify, and Listen AI. Turns out… they were all kind of a pain. Listen AI was the worst — the audio kept stuttering and sometimes it even switched voices mid-sentence (super creepy). NaturalReader would just freeze up whenever my signal wasn’t great (but i can watch YouTube videos at that time). Speechify had the best quality, but it butchered my uploaded e-books. Words that started with “f” would disappear — “friendly” became “endly”(I don’t know why). So, in the end, I gave up, canceled all the subscriptions, and just bought the audiobook on Audible. I hope these AI TTS apps will be better.

I finished the first book on my list How I Built This by Guy Raz and now I’m about halfway through the second one, Glossy. I’ve got about four hours left.

Glossy has been a bit harder for me to follow compared to the first book. It talks a lot about trends and the culture around the time Emily was working her way up and starting her brand. Some parts just don’t click with me. The first book I read was way more relatable — it came from podcast content, with really down-to-earth advice on startups and entrepreneurship plus real stories. Super easy and comforting to read.

On the nerdy side, I also tried Gemini’s paid version to see if it could help with reading and note-taking. It works better but it still couldn’t recognize text from images very well, and sometimes when I asked it to translate long pieces, it just kept repeating the same sentence forever. So, I canceled that too and switched back to GPT. Even GPT isn’t perfect — if I upload multiple pages at once, it’ll usually give up after the first page or start making stuff up. Now I just copy-paste text bit by bit.

Workout-wise, I’ve biked three times so far this month — about 50 miles total, according to my app. My push-ups are getting better too: I can do 20 in a row without breaking a sweat. My hand gripper is my new best friend — today I hit a record of 100 quick squeezes in one set (I squeeze fast but don’t fully open my hand each time). I’m also using a chest expander— slowly leveling up there too.

Here’s what today looked like: grip strengthener at about 265 pounds of resistance, 10 sets of 100 squeezes; push-ups, 5 sets of 20; chest expander at about 66 pounds, 3 sets of 20; power twister, 3 sets of 20. I haven’t even started using my ab roller yet.

A fun thing I do: I knock out a quick set while waiting for matches in Identity V. (Doesn’t work with Genshin Impact though — I’d rather just pull for Marvika.)

At the end of June, I had this long chat with GPT about my weight, my past gym habits, and how I could tweak my diet. The biggest changes? More fruit and lighter dinners — I usually just have an egg wrap now and that’s enough.

Honestly, I feel so busy but in the best way. I didn’t even notice that half the month has flown by already. Hope I can keep this momentum up — it feels good to actually stick with things for once.