Old time Christian advice is to count your blessings each morning. I think this is excellent advice and I’ve tried to stick to a routine of it throughout 2020. Partly, there’s the moral case for looking on the bright side of life. Despair is a sin. Hope is good. Even false hope is better than despair because at least false hope motivates action to improve your life. Despair traps you in inactivity.

Since I started investigating bio-hacking- beginning a month ago- I see many speakers are offering a biological case to support the old time advice. Essentially, your thoughts influence your physiology and happy thoughts encourage a healthier body and better moods.

Think happy, be happy.

When you’re unhappy and stressed, your heart beats faster, your breathing becomes shallow and more likely to come from the chest than the stomach, and your body dumps cortisol into your blood. All of these are bad for you. Cortisol is the unhappy chemical that makes you feel agitated. Its purpose is to spur action. Cortisol in your blood is good if you really do need to act. It’s a curse if it’s a false alarm. It inhibits lots of the body’s natural processes.

Looking back on 2020 I had a pretty good year. It was considerably less fulfilling than 2019 due to Covid but judged objectively I did alright. Despite cancelling or postponing five of my six residential coaching programs, my income didn’t drop below my expenses. I’m grateful I didn’t take backward steps on my routine yearly living. That’s a reason to be cheerful.

My grand plan to get back on it with daygame on April 1st was totally wiped out by Covid. When April came I was under full lockdown in Belgrade. There was a 6pm weekly curfew and nobody allowed out at all for any reason on weekends. Everything bar food and pharmacies were closed. It was a bag of shite. Somehow, I still enjoyed myself. The weather was nice, I stayed on point with gym and diet by training at home and getting all my usual food delivered. My home brewed coffee was tasty. I wasn’t even especially bored as I was into my book reading (160 total books read by end of 2020), wrote a little, played a few games, and occasionally even met friends. Daygame was frustrated but I was in the country I wanted to be in and doing alright. Could’ve been a lot worse. Reasons to be cheerful.

I’d originally intended to dial back the obsessive gym work by April 1st to focus on daygame. But with skirt-chasing off limits, I rededicated to gym and diet. Belgrade gyms opened up and I spent most of the rest of 2020 training at 100% in quality gyms. Diet stayed on point. So I actually ended 2020 in physically better shape than I would have planned had daygame sucked up my primary focus of time and energy. Reasons to be cheerful.

I spent all summer hanging out in Belgrade with Jimmy. We’d sit on a cafe patio chilling out trying to at least get the occasional set in. We’d eat well and both had our training routines. To a normal person, it was living the dream. We were frustrated by the horrible daygame prospects but everything else was great. I evaded the entire year of lockdown bullshit that Brits endured in the UK. Reasons to be cheerful.

We averaged something like one set each every two days and with poor results. Girls just weren’t much interested in meeting men and the volume was never enough to hit critical mass where you get into a flow and there’s enough going on to deal with normal attrition. But we got our 10k+ steps in every day, had a laugh, and at least occasionally had hot girls to shoot at. It wasn’t all bad, hanging out with my pal in a nice city. Reasons to be cheerful.

The highlight of my year was unquestionably the first of my two months in Moscow, beginning September 2nd. The weather held almost all month with bright sunshine, t-shirt and shorts weather, and lots of girls out on streets barely affected by Covid. Roy came over for a month too. I got in over a hundred sets and many were great. There were idates, dates, make-outs, near misses, and one of my best ever notches. In terms of attraction generated, I’d literally never had a better month. The sheer volume and quality of girls expressing interest in me was the best I’ve experienced in my whole life. It was a reason to be extremely cheerful.

Gyms in Moscow were fully open and my Russian pal found a top class place, even better than my usual Belgrade gym. I didn’t have a personal trainer in Moscow but I did have a reliable gym buddy so we cranked out nine consecutive weeks of high intensity training without a single skipped session. Add in the 15k daily daygame steps average and I ended Moscow in the best shape of my life, both in health and aesthetics. I felt amazing. October was cold and bleak in comparison, with a desperate shortage of sets to shoot at, but I still enjoyed myself.

So, as of my November 8th return to Newcastle I was feeling alright. I’d mostly escaped Covid bullshit and despite logging a sub-optimal year I could in no way complain that it wasn’t a good year by more objective standards. For fucks sake, I’d only worked a total of five days and I’d spent almost all the year in my two favourite cities hanging out with pals.

November in the UK was nice, being back home to see family and chill out. It was a month of lockdown but it didn’t matter as everything I wanted to do was at home anyway. I read books, plugged on with my final memoir, and finished a few video games. It was relaxing. I barely even thought about the fact I was locked down.

This is all lovely but the alleged horrible year of 2020 finally got me down in December. I think it was primarily hormonal, a result of a second month of Covid restriction. It started to agitate me that shops were closed and I couldn’t sit in cafes or restaurants. Gym opening and closing was unpredictable so I did what I could. It was bitterly cold and wet so I didn’t get my steps in. I think my body rebelled. Adding to the stress were health problems in my family. My dad had a heart attack in mid-August meaning I came home a couple weeks to be there. Fortunately it was mild and he made a full recovery. He’s got a stent in his heart now and daily heart pills but is otherwise doing all the same things he was. Then he had a bowel cancer scare and needed a biopsy. Fortunately the test came back with an all clear. Those scares really made him face his own mortality and he went on a doctor-advised diet and has slimmed right down to a healthy weight already. My mum has continued to slowly lose her mind so two months of sharing that burden has been stressful. Additionally, my youngest aunt is in the highest Covid risk demographic due to pre-existing conditions so she’s been completely locked down since March and is feeling the isolation and depression of it. I’d been cocooned away from all this during my trips but now I was living in the middle of it and doing my best to provide moral support. It does drag you down.

The US election nonsense didn’t bother me too much. It was certainly dramatic, having Trump win by landslide then Biden blatantly stealing the vote, and all the various fallout of the courts, media, GOP, Congress, and Big Tech all go fully lawless in supporting the steal. I didn’t like to see evil bare its teeth but it was at least fascinating to follow. The masks are off and the Great Awakening has happened. Fully 50+% of the US population now knows that the election was stolen, voting is rigged, the Establishment is in China’s pocket, and elites are selling out the West to its enemies. Back in 2015 normies would’ve thought you a deranged conspiracy theorist had you explained all that. Now it’s common knowledge. The people in denial of it are considered the crazies. I don’t know how it’ll all shake out but as of early January I found the drama exhausting. The ups had cancelled out the downs for two months but finally it was just tiring to pay attention.

So, it’s the second week of January and I’m a bit antsy. I want to walk more [1] and get back in the gym. I want to get the fuck out of the UK at the earliest opportunity, and I very much hope that at least some popular daygame destinations recover their street traffic in spring. I found 2020 alright and remain optimistic for 2021 but, fucking hell, I wish I could get on it. I want winter to end.

Reasons to be cheerful:

• In the best shape of my life;
• Birds still love ‘umble Krauser;
• Finances didn’t take too bad a pounding, even allowing for blowing a bunch betting on Trump’s election;
• Big things still to come in 2021;
• Memoir 95% complete;
• Got myself a few tentative new interests that should keep me motivated throughout now that the reading orgy and gym is dialled back.

If this is all rambling nonsense to you, you’d best buy Daygame Overkill here. It’s the best in-field video instructional course in the world and what better time to polish your technique in anticipation of getting back on it yourself in spring?

[1] At the minute I’m stuck with Broody and his insane ramblings. I think I might shoot myself.