I’ve resurrected my Flight Simulator 2004 (FS9) install!

I purchased a large collection of addons back in 2009-2015 for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 of a large variety and with much money. When FSX was released, all those addons were not compatible with it and became obsolete. Back then, FSX required very powerful computers and the poor performance made me return back to FS2004.

Later on, Lockheed-Martin picked up from where the ESP platform was left from Microsoft and released newer and improved versions as Prepar3d. The software was continuously updated breaking the addons that were purchased for the simulator.

Whenever an upgrade was released for the addons, developers often made users pay an upgrade fee. This is assuming that the addons are not abandoned by the developer.

I eventually moved on to X-Plane 11 by Laminar Research at the time where the addon market for it was starting to boom. Many simulations were very in-depth, study-level and so realistic that even pilots could use it for training. I purchased a couple addons for it. I was confident that I didn’t need my old sim anymore and deleted all my installers for FS2004 mods. My backup hard-drive failed and lost everything. I wasn’t upset because I thought I would only play X-Plane from now on.

When Flight Simulator (2020) came out, it revolutionized the way scenery was generated using photogrammetry and satellite imagery to generate a world so accurate that you could see your house in the game. However, this game is still in it’s infancy without a proper SDK. Hardly any serious addons have been release for it.

I realized that I was stuck with a bunch of addons purchased a while ago that I wasn’t using anymore. A sense of guilt ran through me because I felt that I spent money on nothing. I didn’t want to keep spending so much money (addons are getting more expensive these days) every time I upgraded. Therefore, this year, I decided to resurrect FS2004 and get all my addons back. It wasn’t that easy.

Screenshots

Finally! I’ve managed to resurrect most of my FS9 addons on Windows 10. The reason I did this was because I bought so many addons for FS9 back in 2009-2015 and I feel like I was putting them to waste if I didn’t use them at all. It took me two days to get most of my addons installed. I still have more to go. It's about 55 GB so far.

This time, I made backups for all the installers and keys on OneDrive and on an external hard drive. Despite all of this, I figure some addons are going to be eventually out of date.

Difficulty of Installation

Here’s what I discovered installing such an ancient flight simulator on a modern system:

  • Most FS9 products disappeared around 2016 from stores.

  • Addons with plain and simple installers that don’t phone home still work.

  • Flight1 Wrapper doesn’t always work with Windows 10. This is a known issue. Therefore, I’ve lost some addons.

  • Some vendors don’t provide downloads for legacy products anymore.

  • I had to contact some developers to get the legacy installers.

  • Manually generated keys are not done by the developers anymore.

  • Many products aren’t supported anymore (this is understandable).

  • Some activation servers are no longer online.

Due to the above, I had to resort to piracy to use products that I actually bought. I had to go through shady websites often in languages that I don’t understand. I sought refuse with VMWare, uBlock Origin, Sandboxie and VirusTotal to hopefully catch any malicious software. It made me reflect our reliance on online services these days. Once they’re gone we lose the software and our data.

What I miss from FS9:

  • 2D panels which are really easy to read and navigate through. They look ugly compared to virtual cockpits but they’re so much more practical and pragmatic.

  • At this point, after more than 20 years of hardware evolution, frame rate is incredibly high. I can run it at 4K at 60 fps all the time in any scenario.

  • Excellent and busy AI traffic with the proper addons. Easy to spot with labels above them.

  • Probably the simulator with the most freeware addons.

  • The collection of payware addons is much more varied, you can essentially find scenery for any location on the planet and a huge variety of obscure planes.

  • You can have windows of other views and put them on a separate screen.

  • You can have windows of some gauges and put them on a separate screen.

  • No VAS issues. Still need a patch to increase it to 4GB because by default, with more demanding addons, the sim still crashes.

  • Flight Path view and Replay.

  • Planes for early history are there such as the Wright Flyer.

  • Flight Lesson material is in depth and well documented.

  • Incredibly fast load times and startup.

  • Meigs Field

  • The graphics look way more natural than modern FSX and F3D. I find that the addons for the latter tend to look more cartoony and too vibrant.

What I don’t miss from FS9:

  • Gauges refresh rate is terrible, especially compared to X-Plane’s ultra-smooth panels. It’s even worse in VC where some planes where the refresh rate is probably 2-4 FPS.

  • No good camera tool for moving around and effects. There’s only F1View and Active Camera but they leave a lot to be desired.

  • Flight Dynamics are absolutely terrible. It feels like you’re flying on rails and turbulence doesn’t do much.

  • The virtual cockpits look so bad. Almost everything is 2D and you can really tell.

  • So many separate executables for load management and other features. They’re integrated into the sim in new simulators.

  • Comparing to the amazing scenery from MSFS, FS2004 looks extremely dated and horrible. Autogen is utterly terrible. Terrain resolution leaves so much to be desired. I can’t believe one pixel is used for 4 meters squared. Scenery drawn further away is blurry mess and mesh looks terrible.

  • Mesh is so low resolution outside of the US. Addons that add extra resolution are buggy because of improper airport altitudes and flat airports.

  • Almost all decent scenery is payware.

  • Again, it’s ancient software now.

  • Compared to modern addons, system depth isn’t that deep.

  • Need an external tool for flight planning. Forget about SID and STARS with the default one. I use SimBrief as an alternative.

  • The incredibly invasive anti-piracy mechanisms. Some they even detect false positives and do something like delete folders in your FS9 install or delete the addon. I had to use virtual machines to test some of them. I’ll leave this detailed in another post soon.

  • Need to run as administrator for most addons to work.

  • No HDPI support. Everything is tiny.

  • Selecting aircraft don’t always work

  • Default ATC is useless. (I mean, it still is in X-Plane 11 and MSFS2020.

  • The game is unstable and needs constant restarting.

After being spoiled by X-Plane and even more with MSFS, the FS9 graphics are really really starting to look dated. 

Conclusion

It feels like quite an achievement to get all this running and definitely worth the time. I now have access to most of the software that I purchased and learned to love in the past. Looks like this will keep me busy for a while.

I still play and enjoy X-Plane and MSFS and have a collection of addons for them too. I don’t believe that you should pick one simulator and live with it. There’s nothing wrong with having multiple ones as long as you have the disk space!

Recommended Addons

  • Level-D Simulations - The 767: This is a good balance between a study level and a casual simulation. Very easy to learn with nice documentation and example flights. Quite old but a classic.

  • iFly Jets - 737NG and 747: The old PMDG airliners have been discontinued. This is a good replacement and up-to-par with the current PMDG simulations.

  • Leonardo - Fly The Maddog SP2: Probably one of the most complex simulations for FS2004. It is a discontinued but if you look hard enough "online" you'll find it.

  • PMDG - MD-11: This is probably my favourite airliner simulation. You can find DVD of it on eBay but also "online". PMDG discontinued it because apparently, it didn't sell really well. I call bullshit on this and believe that it is due to a developer debacle. The main developer (Lefteris Kalamaras) of the plane left and they couldn't support it anymore. Here’s some help.

  • SSTSIM - CONCORDE: Very detailed Concorde with a very immersive feel. Simulates the majority of systems but not all of them. This is more in-depth than the PSS one.

  • Aerosoft - Piper Cheyenne: A really in-depth dual turboprop simulation.

  • RealAir: Citabria/SF-260 and Spitfire: Simple planes but very realistic flight dynamics. Plane rolls-over in stall and probably the only simulation that I've tried that simulates sideslips.

  • VRS - F/A-18E Superbug: If you ask the developer very nicely, you will get a copy for FS9. This is the most in-depth military aircraft even more than the DCS version.

  • PILOTS - FS Global Real Weather: This is a great replacement to ActiveSky Evolution. It's still supported and works with FS2004.

  • Matthias Neusinger - FS Recorder: A million times between than the integrated replay in FS9. Much smoother.

  • Pablo Diaz - HDEv2: This is freeware, you can find it on AVSIM. It enhances the sky colours and clouds dramatically. I find it to be less cartoonish and subtle than REX.

  • FSAddon - Glacier Bay Alaska/Canada: Another freeware that you can find on AVSIM. It replaces a good portion of Alaska and Canada with more detailed mesh, textures and landclass.

  • Flight One Software - Ultimate Traffic: My favourite AI traffic enhancement. I find it stable, provides good density and good performance. There are many freeware alternatives on the Internet.

  • Flight One Software - Ground Environment Professional: Replacement ground textures. Looks much better than the default but it won't work around the terrible ground resolution in FS9.

  • Flight One Software - Ultimate Terrain: Highly improved landclass, rivers, roads, etc for Alaska, Canada, USA and Europe.

Announcing TopRoms - A Curated ROM Set of High Quality Games.

Announcing TopRoms! A curated ROM collection of high quality games. This set aims to include only games that are worth playing according to the industry. A big search was done through blogs, sales numbers, multiple recommendation lists and top lists to find both well known classics and the gems that we forgot.

This is to avoid the inconvenience of having multi-GB ROM sets that have every game ever made for a given system. The majority of the games are of poor-quality and the collection is hard to explore. It’s not always practical to carry these sets on storage limited systems such as smartphones, single-board computers (such as the Raspberry PI) and portable game systems.

🕹️ Click Here for Collection

It is constantly evolving project and more and more games will be added as they are discovered. Feel free to suggest additional high quality games at toproms@cdahmedeh.net

There are currently several packages:

TopRoms: This is for cartridge based systems. Includes Atari 2600, NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, SMS, Genesis, 32X, TurboGrafx-16

TopArcade: This is for Arcade Machines. It is compatible with MAME 0.236 and newer.

TopIsos: This is for disc-based systems. Includes Sega CD and Playstation. TurboxGrafx-CD coming soon!

TopHacks: Coming soon! A curated collection of homebrew games and ROM hacks!

Use your favourite emulator to play these games but we recommend the amazing multi-system open-source emulator RetroArch

The 5G COVID Mind Control Conspiracy Is True!

I used to think that I was better than everyone else because I thought our pandemic was a result of an evolutionary accident that spread through contact with animals. I would read the newspaper everyday in fear of death because another 300 people died and another 5000 are at the hospital. What if I’m next?

Turns out, I was all wrong and those conspiracy theorists actually turned out to be very insightful people.

So my first hint that something was up when I got my third vaccine. I noticed that my cellphone reception got so much better and download speeds were much improved. The corner where the reception bars are no longer showing LTE but instead 5G. I was stunned. This was undeniable proof that COVID was in part caused by the installation of new 5G towers.

Our cellphones have become spying machines but there weren’t enough because they couldn’t read our minds or control our heart rate. This is why they implanted a chip inside the vaccine that would be injected to us. This is no doubt that it is for mind control. Just like fluoride in our water.

The deaths and illnesses that are developing are completely normal. Everyone dies of viruses every year, nothing is going wrong. The statistics are pure fabrication just to put the world in mass hysteria. This was simply the precursor experiment to see if the globalists could control us only with propaganda. But that failed so they decided that they needed to implant chips as phase two.

Globalists are keeping gene pools in storage containers in the arctic because they’re protecting themselves from all the genetically modified organisms that they are feeding us. COVID is simply another organism that they created in a lab. This is exactly like the black plague that was made by the British Empire to reduce world population.

The other hint that made me reflect was that after the second vaccine, I developed a deep love for Bill Gates and Elon Musk. I really wanted to donate to the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation despite having only a few dollars left in my bank account. I signed up to be next on the list to buy an expensive Tesla Model S Plaid. That’s probably because of the chip. I’m finding it harder to believe my theory about COVID but with pure willpower I’ve overcome the effects of the chip. You can do it too if you read my book “The Truth About Covid And How To Use Your Mind Powers To Combat It”

Unfortunately, I felt like it was too late knowing this conspiracy after getting three shots. So I worked with some of the top homeopathic doctors in the world to develop a remedy for this. This is a very effective product that we spend months developing. We patented it so big pharma couldn’t use it. It can only be bought through me. Based on it’s healing properties, we called it Restoria XL.

The patented mix contains high quantities of phosphatidylserine sourced from bovine cortexes and other secret herbs which strengthens your immune system. It contains calcium orotate with eradicates all the fluoride in your blood. It also contains detoxing properties which will make you feel so refreshed every morning. We also used an innovative method to microdose organic phosphiliates using healing crystals. All these ingredients are 100% natural and vegan friendly. Don’t talk to your doctor about it.

If you put the coupon code Anti-5G-Mind-Control when checking out, you will get a 34% discount on your next bottle of our amazing patented product. Get it now before Bill Gates controls your mind!

This was a satire…

I Want To Be A Generalist

I decided to become a generalist.

Discovering My Interests

It took a while to discover a very important aspect of my life. I didn’t want to have laser focus on only one aspect of the world, something that I was stuck in for a long time. I realized that I want to do a bit of everything and that was being more honest with myself. I felt like I escaped this illusion of life that I had and everything became so much more interesting.

Looking Back Into the Past and Now

The Past of Polymaths

If you search some notable persons on Wikipedia, you’ll notice that they hold multiple denominations such as scientist, philosopher, inventor, artist and so on. What you realize, these people have been from the deep past where being a polymath, someone who’s an expert in many areas, was actually quite standard. Despite the limited access to knowledge and no Interest, these people travelled far and wide to expand their knowledge eventually writing about it in exquisite texts that are so insightful that they are still canon and reference material today.

Our Present Of Specialization

In the past few hundred years, academia has developed a ride towards specializations. We are thought from elementary school that our way to success will involve picking a narrow field, mastering it and finding a job in that area. Although our school adventures starts with a balance of several subjects, as we progress through the grades, things start to narrow down. Once you reach the PhD level, your worldview seems really narrow and it’s seems that your subject is all you can talk about. As our modern times go by, it seems that the specializations are becoming even narrower to the point of making our views on aspect of life very binary and shallow.

Losing Your Advantage

The biggest disadvantage of specializing becomes the fact that what you learn might be irrelevant in just a few years in our fast paced world. If you studied about fourth-generation programming languages, well guess what, today it’s almost irrelevant and few career opportunities will allow you to use this out of date skill.

Leaving My Comfort Zone

Just like many, I was brainwashed to believe that the only way to success and fame was through university. As time progressed, I felt like I wasn’t being squished into a really narrow corridor. The illusions provided by past school became disillusionment.

I went to lounges for graduate students to learn more about their lives. Technically I wasn’t allowed to be there but the people I met were friendly and very open. I started to realize that their entire lives were dedicated to something very narrow. I tried to initiate discussions about something else but it would be awkward and unnatural. It wasn’t until I discussed their favourite subject. They lit up and had so much to say.

Exiting the Path of Specialization

The diplomas handed out at a long party started to seem irrelevant to me. It didn’t even mean I was good at something. I was just complacent ready to be obedient at some job. As one of my physics professors said “when you get a diploma, it just means congratulations! you've memorized fifteen books”.

This whole idea started to become a nightmare for me but for some reason I kept soldering on. The culmination of finishing my courses lead to a very anti-climatic event when I was handed my piece of paper. It was the result of 5 years of boredom that I spent so much money on.

After a long of only doing one thing in my life as a software developer, the shallow perspective of life made me feel incomplete. The world seems so full and colourful, good and bad, things. I left the shackles of my tiny little field and decide that I would like to know a bit more about this planet we live on.

New Careers and Hobbies

I decided to leave the software engineering to try other things. I wanted to do a bit of everything. After trying to bud myself into a field that I had no credentials, I’ve become a technical and content writer, as a freelancer. I left myself to do technology gigs despite my departure from programming doing mostly IT services. I’ve even started driving for Uber with a 10 hour shift every Saturday.

Volunteering was something I took on. I explored taking part in humanitarian efforts, animal conservation and even eccentric meetups. I’ve managed to start my own social club that’s been solid for more than two years with weekly meetings and over 600 members.

Many of these activities took much of my time and didn’t pay near as much as my old software consulting career, maybe even half. However, I feel more content with what I’m doing not only because of the enhanced freedom these opportunities provided but also erasing boredom due to the fact that I was doing something different all the time.

I’m not done yet on seeing what other things I can do. I have on my mind things like real estate and home decoration. Another thing that tickles my mind has a big stigma behind it. Becoming a cuddle therapist…

Fear

I didn’t know how to face my desires and the changes required to move on to something else. The risk was really big and the uncertainty uncomfortable. I was trying to hold something full-time while I looked but I was started to focus less and less on it. Instead, I was exploring the other avenues and doing many interviews that lead to failure. I felt like I had to go back to software but I eventually got my first writing gig. It was a roller-coaster because I was doing something I wasn’t qualified in but after finishing the projects, I was proud of what I did. The impact on the company was obvious.

Irrelevancy

This is a purely anecdotal experience. I noticed that many people worked in fields that have nothing to do with their diploma. Theologians becoming software developers. Electrical engineers doing sales for life insurance. Mathematicians stuck in a job filing tickets for a broken payroll system. Social scientists feeding city hall with wasted time. Uber drivers with advanced diplomas in mechanical engineering. And so on.

Job search has become so difficult that finding something that exactly matches your studies is really difficult. No matter your level of education, there’s a high chance that your intelligence won’t count compared to another candidate who’s less qualified but has more charisma and cheat his way through the interviews.

Learning and Learning to Learn

Academia

While some people want to collect diplomas like Pokémon cards, I thought that academia was probably the worst way to learn. The main problem is cost but also the outdated nature of the form of education. Most of your time was swallowed by boring lectures and endless assignments. Even worse, it cost so much money to the point where in some places around the world, you need a mortgage to study.

Unfortunately, depending on your field and work arrangements, some might be still asked to provide that magic piece of paper. Apparently, it’s a right of passage proving that you learned and mastered something. Nothing could be further than the truth however. Most students worked for grades rather than learning. Cheating is abundant. Professors are incredibly incompetent because they have no experience in the real world. When you escape university after a grueling four to five years, you realize that you’re not ready for the real world.

Self-Learning And Curiosity

This is a path that I’ve taken a decade ago. We live in a blessed age where knowledge is so accessible. Book stores and libraries everywhere with resources ready to have explore the world outside yours. Our biggest blessing is probably the Internet. Content for all sort of interests and often cheap to take part in, in fact sometimes free. You can pick your learning style whether it’s reading a book, doing exercises online or even boring lectures if that what suits you.

It takes much motivation and discipline to learn something. However, once you get into it, it becomes an addiction. Your thirst for knowledge grows and grows.

What will fuel your learning adventure the most is your curiosity. Sometimes you look at something as simple clock and start wondering how a quartz stone can accurately measure seconds. What about the intricate workings of a society you’ve never heard of? Do you want to memorize pi to a thousand places or be a fact machine for the capitals of each country in the world? The possibilities are endless.

Best part is that you can use this knowledge to teach others and make yourself a nice career with some variety. Maybe you won’t have diploma or anything but you just need to sell yourself well. If you’re lucky, some online courses provide certificates which can be added to your portfolio.

Learning on my own has opened my eyes to so many things teaching me so many facts. My sense of culture grew massively and suddenly I was more qualified in something that I didn’t even know existed as a skill a few moments before.

I can’t let go of that anymore. As one of my managers put it so well, I’m stuck in learning mode.

Time Investment

This desire to learn on the other hand required so much time from me. I had to push myself so hard to read Wikipedia all the time and feeding myself with books. I’m entranced with books now reading one or two books every week. I’m a non-fiction lunatic that will read anything (except for biographies). I let my impulsive nature pick the book for me.

My main method of learning is definitely reading. I am a faster than average reader peaking at 700 words per minute so that speeds me up a bit. However, I spend at least two hours everyday reading.

Other people prefer documentaries, lectures, audio books and so on. It doesn’t really matter what you do as long (as you feel that) you’re benefiting. See what you’re willing to invest time in.

Don’t worry about retention but focus more on comprehension. We all forget so easily but an experience will stay with us forever.

Practicing A Skill

Much knowledge requires another huge piece of time investment. If you’re learning about a musical instrument you probably want to practice often. Personally, I’m infatuated with flight and aviation. Learning procedures in a flight simulator can take some time and so much knowledge about the plane. The quirks of landing a plane need to be measured so you can successfully put the plane on the ground.

Of course, the best part is you get to choose how much time you want to spend on something.

Critical Thinking and Creativity

Having been exposed to many subjects, you develop new ways of thinking. Your perspectives are much wider and have new ideas that came to mind that you never even imagined. This sharpens your thinking skills. In fact, you probably just start to think more often instead of being bored staring at the wall. Eventually, that forces to change your perspective all the time and think from many different angles. This fuels your critical thinking skills and you might even become a better debater.

When it comes to creativity, this is really obvious. Having many ideas presented to you on a consistent basis, you develop more curiosity. As you have more ideas in your head, they can become a catalyst for new concepts. You will activate many parts of your brain and link things together that were seemed irrelevant on their own.

Combining Many Subjects

Specialists have rarely explored other subjects in detail. They never get a chance to combine multiple perspectives in one so they miss the chance for innovative thinking and freedom.

For example, if you are familiar with Toyota’s KANBAN methodology, you might fight that it is a good software development methodology as well. Perhaps your knowledge of Non-Euclidean geometry can help with that machine learning algorithm that you are developing.

Conclusion

Learning what I wanted to learn has changed my perspective drastically. I was finally starting to discover myself just a bit more and what my desires and aspirations actually are.

I really wanted to become good at things. Many things in fact. Nothing left as a black box opening things and analyzing their internal mechanisms. I need to be balanced so I can have interesting conversations and debates with all sorts of people. As a result, I became more comfortable with myself and even enjoy my own company.

The biggest change for me is the amount of activities that I can do now. I’m never bored and always have something to explore. I do multiple and different kinds of jobs now. I volunteer and host my own things.

For those who read my blog regularly, you will notice that I’m directionless (unlike many more popular bloggers focusing on a single niche) and quite haphazard sometimes. The subjects I cover are all over the place and this is due to my unending curiosity for learning and practicing a new art. When I learn, I want to share that experience and teach it to other people.

What defines our identity?

For most, this seems like an easy question to answer. You are defined by what you studied and what you do for a living. If you file taxes, then you are an accountant. If you talk to computers everyday, then you’re probably a software developer. After telling one your name, you immodestly reveal and associate yourself to your interlocutor about what you do every day. Some other people use their roles in daily life such as “father” or “care-taker” because their so easy to choose and even easier to understand.

I was the same for most of my life. I did software engineering at university and spent 10 years of my life as a software consultant. I associated myself with computers and technology defining it as my identity. However, many years later, I became a part-time Uber driver as well, so have I become a driver instead of an engineer? My career took u-turn into technical writing. I still was in IT doing computer stuff but I wrote about it rather than writing for them. I write this blog, does that mean that I’m a blogger? So what am I?

Wikipedia has hundreds of articles about notable people. Their titles such as say ‘philosopher’ or ‘artist’ were described in a way to give the impression that it is all they did in their lives. They are essentially a personification of what they did and basically what they will be remembered for. It seems like a really shallow viewpoint to me to box someone like that but perhaps there’s no conspiracy behind it and it’s just true.

I naively entered university thinking that it will be a direction where I will have an intimate connection with computers. This was my dream since I was child. However, as an obsession, I learned much on my own and found myself not learning anything new at school. I pushed through thinking that this piece of paper would be the catalyst to my career and it wasn’t. I found my way into my career before even graduating.

Eventually, I started realizing that university was not teaching me to think or learn. Although many will title this as a conspiracy of some sort, I feel like the education system is designed to just teach us how to follow instructions and be obedient and submissive. Something that we will be doing at our future jobs worshipping our leads. Critical thinking and informing ourselves was totally out of the syllabus.

However, I saw some of my peers still studying after their basic degree. It seemed obvious that this path in university wasn’t designed to make you smarter but rather turn you into a specialist.

This was my nightmare because I didn’t want to be stuck in a tiny world where all I knew was what I researched. Instead, I want to learn about many subjects from technology and philosophy and everything in between. I wanted to become good at many things and have my life coloured with variety.

So technically, I’m a ‘generalist’ but I feel like it’s a condescending title that gives the impression that I was mediocre at everything. However, I believe that I have mastered some arts of all sorts. However, even that title wasn’t one that I didn’t want to have.

At the end, I realized that it was my job to build an identity. I could pick from some many and use a different one at each introduction when meeting people. However, that was far from my nature and what I always aspired to be. Someone creative and well-rounded. But, this couldn’t have a title because that was simplistic and benign.

One of my managers give me a compliment that I still hang on to. That I’m “always in learning mode”. It’s true, I’m constantly searching for meanings that I don’t know yet or prying electronics apart so I can see how they made it work. Not knowing something makes me feel so uncomfortable. Am I a ‘learner’ now? Maybe, but again that’s not really an appropriate title.

I’m still struggling to build an identity for myself and always wondered what I’ll be called when I pass away. I’m neither everything or nothing. I’m pulled into many directions but that’s more important and fun then being boxed to a single title that will limit me to just one thing.

Many of us are tantalized by many things so I believe it’s fruitless to keep our identity binary. As a result, I don’t think it’s necessary to have an identity of any kind and rather just enjoy what we do for both a living and in our free-time.

So what defines our identity? Nothing really. We are free to choose it. It’s a waste of time to think about. You are way more than what you do in your life.

Ironically, “Calling Out” by “Penguin Prison” is playing on Spotify. “I can’t be good at everything, so do me a favour and just take what you want!”.