A long hard day, out of debt

Well, the lovely sound of rain is hitting my window and I've got a bit of time before I arrive at snooze land.

Today's been a long, but good day. Very focused unlike the last 2 days really. I've been struggling with a few days of semi-burnout where I kind of could feel a burn out coming but I wasn't to the point I couldn't focus. I think, however, I felt like I was stuck in a rut. I did notice that I was bored. Not the I don't know what to do now kind of bored but the not this again kind of bored :(.


I've also been thinking of changing the way I organize my workloads. I've been using the lovely Pomdoro Technique for my work and it sure works wonders to prevent me from being too drained at one go, and it also keeps me getting stuff done. However, I've noticed that sometimes when my to do list has like 10 items on it, I just feel overwhelmed and defeated, only to realize those 10 items could have been finished in 10 minutes (example item: "Check if I have any wet clothes leftover in my bag" which really takes a minute). So the new mission is to organize my tasks based on the estimated time it'll take me to do. Hopefully knowing that each task should take no longer than 2 minutes will keep me burning through the items even if there are like 50 of them!

And speaking of timing, it's that time again for Legend Fighting Championship! Yep! Very excited about that (excited and nervous as usual) and check this out, it's on 24th! And guess what's 25th! Wahoo my birthday!
But on a serious note, birthdays aren't my thing. Like I literally don't celebrate them and don't really see the need to celebrate them really :P I mean I get it, I was born on that day, but so what? So it marks another milestone in my life... and? I guess since I'm a milestone/log freak things like birthdays aren't really anything special to me.... hmm.

On top of that, I'm finally doing it, I'm doing my own one-man English stand up comedy show so that's going down in the log book of accomplishments too! I've always wanted to do it and well why not now? I was upset with myself that I didn't do it last year, but then again, I think I'm way better prepared this year.

Woah! The sky just lit the hell up?! WTF?!

Well these last 10 days have been madness really and I'm expecting the next 10 days to be no saner. What I do expect is to be way more calm after these next 10 days because the weather will have cooled down and that means another accomplishment to add -- "Didn't turn on the air-conditioner ever this whole year!" Ahaha, the stupid things I do to myself to feel like I've accomplished something :P

Alright, time to sleep and get that rest!

The good timing, the bad stomach and the ugly ring girl

I really just wanted to start this post with "the bad stomach" but felt I needed something positive there and well you know me, stupid is as stupid does :P

So it's the afternoon of  a very hot Friday (yes, I don't turn on my air conditioner, and so far 2010 has been a 0-days with a/c in my room year :P Insane eh?) and my stomach's feeling a bit better. I was really worried yesterday when I woke up with an uneasy feeling and pretty much spent the rest of the day working from my bed (I actually can do this even when I'm feeling alright, but I don't want to associate my bed with work... mentally at least). I do have some work to get done but I think I'm going to allow myself some rest for another 30 minutes before I get down to it.

So last night was the Legend Fighting Championship Ring Girls Audition. I was MC-ing the event and it was awesome! The ladies were hot hot hot and from what I remember, in round 2 of the competition, I made a boo boo calling out "group no. 5!" when there were only 4 groups. So I joking told the crowd "Oh I guess maybe it's my turn to walk" and BAM! Suddenly everyone started cheering, wanting me to do a ring girl walk :P I was like "!?!?!? Seriously people? We just had hot hot hot women do it and you want me? A man in jeans and black t-shirt to be the headliner?!" But what the heck, I did it and it was fun! Ahaha, I did the whole strut your stuff and when you get to the corner, strike a pose thing. Ahaha yes, I am the title's ugly ring girl (Here's the picture from Gloriana Wong's facebook page. I guess NSFW? :P) But I guess I could say that it was good timing? At least no one remembered my little "group 5" boo boo :P

So September has already been a fruitful month for me work-wise even though we're only really 1/3 of the way into it. I've been messing around with my uber-sexy android phone and now that I'm more and more comfortable with it, it's fitting better and better into my personal work flow. It definitely is a great help and improvement and adds some peace to my mind work-wise! I'm still working out a way of deciding what I will exclusively use it for. Like my macbook is the tool I use when I want to read my RSS feeds, update my blog and do more relaxing things (also because I can use it while on my bed), but now there's a conflict, I can read my e-books, RSS feeds on my phone but I also have my macbook with me wherever I go, and my kindle, so now I've got a conflict of devices :P I know I can easily do all of them on each device, but I'd rather have set up workstations for each thing on my list.

I also reached my 1 year end to my PRO subscription of Remember the Milk. Oh what a great year it has been and I'm proud to say RTM is definitely the to do list for me!

I've finished reading the book Sun Tzu For Success! Definitely a very easy read, a lot of it I already knew from my studying of The Art of War from before but it had a few good pointers I felt was good for me to "revise" :). It talks about kicking the ladder away where basically once you've climbed enough, kick the ladder underneath you away so there's no turning back. I guess that's really life, like now that I'm running my own web design business, there's really no turning back. I won't see myself working in an office or a full time job, I just won't be able to do it. Just the idea of now being able to work at my own time would drive me nuts! And oddly the "monthly salary" is absolutely not attractive to me in comparison to the freedom I enjoy now :P
 It also talks about how many great leaders make decisions not fully on information, like 1/3 of the time it's a leap into the dark. Again, that's life, you can't expect greatness without the chance of extreme failure.
And of course, the lesson that is my favorite is the one where it says integrity is a key factor in a great leader. Integrity doesn't necessarily equal success, but lack of it is instructions for disaster in the long run. As I've said before, the saying from Guy Kawasaki where it is more important to make meaning than to make money, has had a great impact on the way I think. That also is probably why I like to live the lifestyle I live now. Sure I know people my age who probably easily make lots more money than me, but I guess everyone has their preferences. I'd rather have a diary full of cool things and experiences for the month than just a big fat pay check in exchange:)

Well now it's back to work, because as much as I've been going on about loving freedom, I still need to get paid something ;)

Enjoy the next 10 days!