the same three bullets

april 28, 2026

The renunciation cycle, not willpower. 27 broken promises in 8 months. The negotiations with God. The source I can't replace.

I have written this list more times than any other sentence in my life.

No anime

No YouTube

No videogames

The first time I wrote it was Monday, September 8, 2025. Two days after my grandmother's funeral. A note titled Promise to Harmoni. I had broken it by Wednesday.

The 27th time I wrote it was Saturday, May 3, 2026. Eight months later. I don't want to rot in anime or YT, let's understand that deliverance, our goals will not be achieved by our own timeline, but by the fruits of our labor and direction that the Lord lets us follow.

The bullets never changed. The vocabulary around them inflated. The price tag I tried to attach to make them hold went up. The covenant became a compounding instrument. The brokenness of the covenant became the most consistent thing about me.

This is the piece where I sit with what that means.

The covenant I keep

The first version was three bullets and one sentence: I will not waste another day. 1. Video games. 2. Watching Anime. 3. Watching YT. And I will focus on working as hard and smart as possible to take care of my family, and make sure my family gets to experience things just as Harmoni couldn't experience.

That's the founding text. Eleven days later, my 19th birthday, I wrote the Dear Harmoni letter. I wrote Things I wish I told Hamani. In the second one I made a different promise: I will work harder and forever remember you by a pair of white gloves I shall wear to protect our family in your place. I haven't bought the gloves. I broke the bullets within a week.

By October 30th the bullets are showing up in journals as a habit, like a grace before a meal. By November 26th at 1:21 AM I am writing them again — Starting today (no more anime, YouTube shorts, no more brainrot. Period.) — and adding I'm frustrated because I wasted another day, and I can't remember what exactly did I do.

By November 30th the doomsday clause appears for the first time. And if I break my promise, let it be known that so will my life fade. As this is the last straw for me as I truly want to change my life for the better. Four days later I wasted another 10 hours trying to edit a final essay.

By February 9, 2026 the entry has the timestamp on it. Today I spent from 10:10 am to 4:23 pm (exactly) 6 hrs just watching anime. The exactness is the tell. I'm logging telemetry now. The anime is a defect log.

By March 19th the covenant is no longer between me and me. I realize Lord that I have broken my promises often too many times because I make contradictions and negotiations that make it so my rules are in place. So I want to renew my promise. No anime. No videogames. No YouTube brainrot. The contracting party has changed. I've moved up the chain of accountability because I couldn't hold myself to it.

By March 29th I have just watched 50+ hours of anime in five days. That is final, and I plan on keeping my promise. I broke it within a week.

By April 4th I am writing the bullets twice in one day. By April 5th I am writing them three times in 36 hours. By April 11th I have watched 4.5 hours of anime in a sitting and I am writing Now, goodbye Anime, goodbye YT brainrot, goodbye distractions. The same goodbye I have written 19 times before.

By April 27th the covenant has a new participant. Starting tomorrow, I'm not allowed to watch any more anime. I made a promise to my mom and a promise to myself, and I'm going to keep it. My mom is now in the chain. The chain now goes me → me → my mom → God. Each renewal lengthens the chain because the previous chain didn't hold.

This is what 27 broken renewals of three identical bullets in eight months looks like.

What I keep doing wrong

For a long time I thought the failing was willpower.

Then I started reading my own renunciation notes back to back, and I noticed something I hadn't been able to see while I was writing them.

Almost every no more anime note has anime inside it.

The 3-25 entry where I write let's lock in Dylan, fighting! — that Fighting! is what Japanese characters say at the end of a self-pep talk in basically every shōnen anime in the canon. I had just watched Bunny Girl Senpai and was using its sentence to renounce it.

The 3-29 entry where I say my new purpose is to push the very limits of what defines possibility — that's the protagonist arc in every isekai I've ever watched. Trial and error, great determination, the line from Food Wars. I had just watched 50+ hours.

The 3-31 entry where I write Starting today no more anime contains 600 words analyzing Yukihira Sōma as the moral exemplar I want to be modeled on.

The 4-10 entry where I write play my character 24/7 — the phrase play my character is itself an anime sentence.

The Shadow Garden language I use to describe my entire worldview — that's from The Eminence in Shadow, an anime.

I was renouncing anime in the moral grammar of anime. I was using the source as the engine to renounce the source. I have done this 27 times in eight months and never once said the part out loud.

The honest version of the renunciation isn't anime is brainrot.

The honest version is: anime is the only place I have a working library of how a young man becomes someone.

This is hard to admit. I want to be the kind of person whose moral library is church and Foster and the books I read in Odegaard. The truth is that the moral library that actually moves me to act is the one with named protagonists. Yukihira Sōma. Hinata. Subaru. Solo Leveling. Mushoku Tensei.

I was raised across three countries. I went to five different schools before college. I don't have a hometown. The pastor at the church I attend gives sermons about hope but they don't have stakes I can hold in my hand. My dad isn't fluent in the kind of English where you say things like find your why. My friends were online and they were also playing Valorant. The vocabulary I have for ambition, sacrifice, becoming, growing — most of it I picked up watching protagonists fight things.

When I take anime away I have no other arena to fight in.

That's why the renunciation keeps failing in exactly the same shape. It's failing because the deletion of the source leaves no replacement. The first half of the trick — delete anime — is the only half I've been running. The second half — replace it with a working library of how to become someone — I haven't done.

Until I do, the renunciation will keep failing in the right direction. Toward the next protagonist.

The negotiations with God

The other thing the cycle tells me about myself, when I sit with it long enough:

I don't actually negotiate with myself. I negotiate with God.

Read March 19th again. I realize Lord that I have broken my promises often too many times because I make contradictions and negotiations that make it so my rules are in place. That's the sentence. The contradictions and negotiations are not between me and my impulses. They are between me and the Lord.

The Lord is the one I'm trying to keep the bullets for. The Lord is the one I have to renew the covenant with after I break it. The Lord is the one whose grace I'm afraid of squandering. No longer spent on only solidifying my own glory or pleasure. For to continue watching anime or YouTube or play videogames is to squander the Lord's precious time.

This is the theological frame of every single renunciation entry from November 2025 onward. I don't see it explicitly, because the Christian language is so familiar to me I don't notice when I'm using it. But the structure is there.

I am Protestant in the architecture of my failure. The covenant is between me and God, the breaking is mine, the renewal is mine, the only thing the other party is doing is forgiving me. God forgives, so will I shows up in November 25 in the day notes. The forgiveness doctrine is what allows the cycle to go on.

If I were not a Christian, I would have to confront the cycle differently. Without forgiveness as a release valve, the 27 broken promises would stack up into a single condemnation. I'd have to either give up and accept the brainrot version of myself, or do something radical — therapy, medication, structural change — to break the loop.

Forgiveness lets me stay in the loop.

I am not saying this is a bad thing. I am saying I notice it. The faith that makes the renunciation possible is also what makes the cycle survivable. Without faith, eight months of broken promises would have psychologically broken me. Within faith, the eight months are a sequence of small reconciliations with my Lord.

This is the strongest thing my faith has done for me in the last year. It is also what has let me avoid the harder fix.

The doomsday clause

There is one moment in the cycle where I tried to escape the forgiveness loop and turn the covenant into a real commitment.

November 30th. Great Awaken. The clause reads:

if I break my promise, let it be known that so will my life fade. As this is the last straw for me as I truly want to change my life for the better.

This is the only entry in eight months where I tried to attach a non-religious cost. My life will fade. Not I will sin. Not I will disappoint the Lord. My life will fade.

I broke the promise four days later.

The clause didn't hold for two reasons. First, my life will fade is not a specific consequence. It's a metaphor. Metaphors don't change behavior. If I had written if I watch anime tomorrow I will throw out my $1,200 PC, that would have been a real commitment. The PC is the only piece of equipment I use to play games. Throwing it out would have ended the cycle. I didn't write that.

Second, even if I had written it, I would have negotiated my way out. The negotiations and contradictions that I named on March 19th aren't restricted to the religious channel. I run them on every channel. The PC clause would have become I'll throw it out tomorrow if I do it again, and tomorrow would have become next week, and next week would have become forever.

The fix the doomsday clause was groping toward — attach a real cost to the breaking — is the right idea. The execution failed because I couldn't write a cost that I would actually pay. I have not yet found a cost I would actually pay.

The reason is uncomfortable. Most of the time, the brainrot is winning a real fight. The fight is between do the work today and escape from the work today. If the brainrot did not produce relief, I would not return to it 27 times in eight months. The brainrot is solving a problem.

The problem the brainrot is solving is that I am 19, alone in a dorm room, building things that may not work, in a building chapter of life where the work is uncertain and the result is uncertain and most days I don't know if I'm going to make it or not. The brainrot is the off switch. The covenant tries to remove the off switch. Without the off switch, I have to sit with the uncertainty. I am not yet a person who can sit with the uncertainty without a release valve.

The doomsday clause was a bet that I could become that person by raising the price. The bet didn't work because the underlying need didn't change.

What I think the next move is

I don't know if the cycle is fixable.

I know what hasn't worked. More willpower hasn't worked. Bigger consequences hasn't worked. More frequent renewals hasn't worked. More religious framing hasn't worked. Promising my mom hasn't worked yet, but it's only been three weeks since I added that link in the chain so the data isn't in.

What I think is going to work, eventually, when I'm willing to do it:

Stop deleting the source. Start replacing the source.

The vocabulary I get from anime — protagonist arcs, named characters, fights against monsters, training sequences, breakthroughs — is the vocabulary that moves me to act. I don't get this vocabulary from Foster. I don't get it from the Bible app. I don't get it from my parents. I don't get it from my friends, most of whom are also playing Valorant.

I have to find non-anime sources of the same vocabulary or I have to make peace with the source. I think the long-term answer is to find non-anime sources. Founders I can watch up close. Books with named characters and stakes. Real people whose lives I can read like a series. Sermons that have protagonists.

The short-term answer is more honest. I'm 19. I am going to keep watching anime. I am going to keep writing the bullets. I am going to keep breaking the bullets. The cycle is going to continue for a while.

What I want to change is the language I use when I write about it.

Instead of no more anime — period — we're done — last straw, I want to write anime is currently doing this for me, and the right replacement is X, and until I have X I am going to stop pretending the renunciation is a fix. That sentence is harder to write because it doesn't end with a clean covenant. It ends with admitting that I have a need I'm not meeting another way.

I am not yet able to write that sentence in my journal at 1 AM. When I am up at 1 AM I want the clean covenant. The clean covenant is the dopamine the journal entry gives me. The journal entry is itself a small reward, structurally similar to the anime it's renouncing. I write the bullets, I feel like I have done something, I close the laptop, I sleep, the bullets do not hold.

The honest piece I am trying to write here is about a cycle I am still inside.

What I know about myself, now

Eight months of broken renewals tells me three things about who I am.

The first is that I am a person who needs vocabulary to move. I cannot do hard things without a story. The story has to have a protagonist. The protagonist has to have stakes. When I have a story I act. When I don't have a story I scroll. This is the first axis of who I am as an actor in the world. It is not changing.

The second is that I am a covenanting person, in the religious sense. I do not respond to verbal commitments. I respond to written commitments addressed to a higher party. The journal is my church. The bullets are my liturgy. The renewals are my confessionals. This is not a metaphor. It is operationally how I have been functioning since Halmeoni died. I should stop pretending it's anything else.

The third is that I am 19. The cycle is the cycle of someone who is still figuring out who he is. I read founders who are 30 and they describe the same cycle as resolved. I quit social media in 2019 and never went back. I read men in their 40s and they describe the cycle as managed. I do anime night every other Friday and that's it. I do not know yet how to manage. I only know how to oscillate.

The cycle will not be the most important thing in my life forever. Right now it is one of the more important things. The next year of my life will be measured partly by whether I can stop deleting the source and start replacing it.

If I can, the bullets become a memory. If I can't, the bullets become a feature. Either way, what I want from this piece is to have looked at the cycle without flinching, named what I see, and stop pretending I have already solved it.

I have not solved it.

I am still writing the bullets.

The same three bullets, the next renewal already drafting itself.

Sources: Promise to Harmoni (Sep 8 2025) + Things I wish I told Hamani (Sep 8 2025) + Dear Harmoni (Sep 18 2025) + Blurting (10-29) + (11/26) - 1:21 am frustration + (11/30) - Great Awaken + (11/30) - Goals + (11/25) - Day Notes + (12/4) - Wasted + (2/2) + (2/9) - Remaking our life! + (2/18) + (2/19) + 3-19 (Shepherds promise) + 3-25 + 3-29 + 3-31 + 4-1 + 4-4 + 4-6 + 4-10 + 4-26 (Rewiring brain) + 4-27 + My purpose + 5-3 + 2026-05-08_scan_7 (the dated April scan entries showing 3 renewals in 30 hours).