The stress begins

This is the month of madness. November is going to be a time where I'm going to have to keep all my engines running at top notch and not to mention my time has to be super well managed. I've got things lined up all the way to the end of the month which is going to definitely cause me a lot of stress but also will be worth looking back at when I reach the last few weeks of 2008 :) Woah, what a year I must say!

I'm not going to go into re-capping 2008 just yet, that'll be in a later post so I can include the madness that will be this and next month, however, I will say I have already written out a plan of target goals I want to achieve by the end of this year. Again, not going to list them out here but just worth knowing at least I've got that down.

So where am I and how has life been for me? It's been crazy and now it's become mad. I wonder which is worse? Being crazy or being mad. I mean being crazy just means you're out of your mind or have a very strong passion towards something, whereas mad is when you're out of your mind or have a very strong hate towards something. But then again, you'd say you drive me CRAZY and also say I'm madly in love with her. Which makes me wonder why the hell we even bother trying to understand our own language. I mean, so many times people twist and change the English language that you often have to keep up or just ignore the changes. Calling someone the shit is now a good thing, unless you're saying you got the shit. Then that's a bad thing.

I must admit, these last few days have left me overworked and today I'm feeling a little drained out, especially after having a good 2 weeks of being high-energy and alive and just feeling like conquering the world, today I just want to curl up and be left alone, it's been a wild half month. Kind of like how you'd be like if you were on a caffeine rush and get all that work done but the crash is harsh and leaves you below "normal", at least mentally.

I've been changing a lot of my habits, namely my dietary habits to include a lot more healthier foods because in the end, you really are what you eat. I've been reading a lot about better eating habits, how often you should be eating so you avoid waiting till your body is actualyl hungry before you tend to it. After all, prevention is better than cure, so why wait till you're body's giving you the red alert before you nourish it with what it wants? My fitness has also improved, I've become more strategically organized with it so that I know what I need to do to get to where I want to be. This, in turn, has helped my energy levels. No longer was I feeling exhausted every few hours, I was revved up all the time which is why today's little mental crash is so different because it's been a while since I found it difficult to concentrate. Part of it has to do with the soreness of my legs.... I worked really hard at the gym a few days ago with leg weight lifting and because it'd been a while since I stressed my legs like that, I'm going through the initial few days of sore muscles.. leaving me unable to even play drums and I have difficulty walking smoothly. But give it a few days and I'm back to normal :)

I gave a talk at City University of Hong Kong on Friday about freelancing, it was quite fun, talking to younger people eager to take control of their lives. Of course, you had the group who sat in the corner chatting through my lecture, and the few guys who faked being interested and the couple of people who pretended to be one step ahead of me by going "ohh yea I knew that" with their expression on their face. But nonetheless, I was happy with my performance, I tried to keep it as entertaining as I could because I'm the type of guy who hates boring as presenters, no matter how good your material/lecture, if delivered badly, no one will be interested to devote their attention for that long. In fact, while writing up the slides for that lecture, I got to kind of review everything I had learnt along the steps of freelancing all this time. The books I read, the ideas I got, the principles I picked up. In its own way, it was kind of like a Day 10 Entry :)

So yes, yes, I'm late again for my Day 10 entry, this is getting quite normal now. So much for me being on time and on top of everything. I'm actually kind of falling behind even with my work, which is why I need to kind of pick myself up and start moving and not allow myself to feel "oh, I could use a day's break". Not saying that I don't respect rest, just saying that now's not the time as tempting as it seems. Kind of like saying it'd be great to be able to sip a cup of nice warm chocolate but when you have a deadline, now's not the time for stress-free luxury, if anything I'd feel guiltier if I didn't get my work done. So here comes my point, knowing when to do what. People always say stuff like "Oh he was at the right place at the right time." and this is very often a reason for a lot of people's success, but that doesn't really mean they just got lucky, they had to get themselves to that place at the time the opportunity was happening. Yes, there are times when things just fall into place, but a lot of times, it requires a personal effort for things to happen. Being at the right place at the right time is just a jealous person's excuse to explaining why someone else is more successful than them. In fact, I've found unsuccessful people very successful at coming up with excuses that justify why they are not successful, making it seem only in their destiny that their lives turned out this way. It's a shame when you need to convince yourself it's ok to not reach your goals. Again, don't get me wrong, it is ok to fail in life, just like it is ok to make mistakes, but you shouldn't have to convince yourself about this, the time spent doing this could be used towards trying to figure out why you failed or made the mistake and what the consequences are. Like if you failed in an exam, maybe it was because you studied the wrong chapter, or you were just plain lazy. Accepting that it's ok to fail instead of analyzing what went wrong would mean absolutely no improvement because you'd feel this was normal and as they say don't fix it if it ain't broke.

I suppose this has given me a good kick-start to figuring out why the hell I'm feeling so drowsy today and not in tip top shape like I'd want to be. Well it's almost 2pm, which means yummy lunch time for me, and hopefully the nutrition I'll be getting with that meal will kick start a flow of energy alongside productivity. Have yourself a healthy day :)