Maximum Insanity

For those of you who feel invincible, first let me say good on you! But if you want to see how solid you are and how much you can mentally push your body, I suggest you check out this awesome workout program I've been using for the past few weeks called INSANITY. No, that company doesn't give me a dime for saying this and honestly, I don't care. I can only say, I've moved on to their MAX segments (ie. disc 7 onwards) and 2 weeks later it still kicks my ass....I can only say, when they talk about working out in your own sweat, they freaking mean it! But for someone like me, kicking my own ass is a pleasure (oddly). But seriously, every time I do these workouts, it's a real mind vs body challenge, my mind wants to go but my body is like noooooo!


Speaking of mind vs body, lately, I've been trying to find the balance of not getting burnt out (I'm starting to better notice what is my borderline and lately I've been.... well exhausted at the end of the day, but not burnt out). As I've said before, my golden timeframe for concentration has been 35 minutes followed by a 10 - 12 minute break. Usually I can crack it up to 50minutes but after that I really need a good 20minutes to rest the mind. It's still a warzone every day as I fight between people wanting my attention, my work wanting my attention and ol' rest wanting my attention. But speaking of fighting, I've picked me up Sun Tzu and the Art of Business. Yes, for those of you who know me, yes, yet another Art of War book. But it's good revision from time to time.  I was debating whether I wanted to re-read the awesome Art of Deception or this one. So for it's a good read, many concepts that I know and adore but in a different light.

I was also reading a bit about the concept of time and how some tribes don't live by it, but instead use events as their clocks which was a really interesting read. I guess it explains why it's a Saturday night, I'm sitting with my laptop, on a bus writing this at 1 in the morning. Not because it's late, but because a whole bunch of events happened today (that crazy workout being one of them). I guess that's what this blog is about, instead of being a capture of moments in the time of my life and how I think or what I'm thinking, it's really capturing events or my life. Hopefully I'll be able to shift my focus more on events and accomplishments so I don't keep feeling "oh my goodness, it's already 1am and I'm only on a bus on my way home and writing my blog?!"
But then again, even if that's how I'm thinking right now, wouldn't that still be me thinking about all the events that are happening right now? At this time?
Heh, something to ponder for the next 10 days (unless I'm too tired lying in my own sweat!!) :)

Download your update patch

Well here we are, the beginning of summer and I lay on my bed taking a break in between my awesome sessions of getting work done. The weather is fantastic today because it's cool enough to not make me drown in my own sweat but warm enough so I feel limber. I've got around 2 hours before I'm going to head out for some meetings, and good ol' Chinese Open Mic at TakeOut Comedy tonight. I'm getting better and better at organizing my comedy ideas/writing but I have yet to work on a full concrete bit. I mean, I have a bunch of scattered ideas that are funny but nothing that can tie them up together.

I've been watching the Jerry Seinfeld Archives everyday and I must say, each time I do, I get re-inspired to write comedy. As he said on his site, he hopes his videos can inspire others like the comedians he watched and man, that alone is inspiring. Jerry Seinfeld is really one of my favorite comics, not only because he's funny, but because of his attitude. He was the one who inspired me to not break the chain. I have to admit, that's harder than it seems, but it's a kind of pressure that we need to keep things going. So far, I've had to fight through to keep the chain alive for more than a week. But these last few days have been a renewal of my goals and methods. I've realized that I enjoy working in 35 minute bursts and all I need to do is overcome the first 5 minutes of "oh I'm not ready right now, let me first...." and I'm good to go. I've realized that I'm a man who needs things to be convenient or I sure as hell am not going to keep at it. The reason I spend so much time finding the best/better way to do things is not only to save me time, but to make sure there is a maximum chance that I will actually keep doing it. For example, I used to have to pick up my mobile phone and hold it to my ear while I'm at my desk to make phone calls. Just this simple gesture was enough of an inconvenience for me to want to push making necessary phone calls for later. I later invested in a blue tooth device and ever since, a phone call has been nothing more than, just talking.

The last 10 days have seen me do 6 comedy gigs, a heck of a lot of freelance work and the birth of a new song with my band. It was sad to see our vocalist go, but the remaining 3 stay united and are determined to jam it out! So if there are any bassists or vocalists out there who are into heavy metal (like Slayer, Lamb of God, etc.) then please let me know, we want you! :D

My stomach's starting to rumble which is really a good sign because I've kind of figured out my metabolism/eating habits quite well lately... I've learned to listen to my body with food and also decided to stop logging everything I eat. Why? Well it's kind of like how you get to a certain point and you're no longer practicing for technique, but instead, practicing for functionality. I've managed to pretty much have a good idea of how much I should/can eat at one go. Sure there are times you'll find me sneaking into a Ben and Jerry's (oh how good you are to my taste buds!) and gobbling down a pint of ice cream with my friends, but otherwise, I doubt any dietitian is going to complain.

And before my body complains, I better get some food in there! So enjoy the next 10 days! Things are going to be going wild like the weather so let's see if I end up sweating/freezing it out!

The right way to write

Well these last few days have been witness to me reaching burnout points where I was borderline PMS-ing as well as those 'ah ha' moments where ideas just seemed to flow without any effort.
I've been trying to work out a better way of writing comedy because now that I've got more and more material, things are starting to get messy (again).
I've tried keeping all my ideas/writing/bits in Evernote and that has worked out very well... up to a certain point. After a while, I started having bits that were tagged properly but no proper version control over it. For anyone interested, Evernote is my first choice in writing down notes and ideas for comedy. I used to keep my trusty moleskin but I lost one of them and vowed never ever to let another idea of mine slip away. But as a writing program, it fails. Mainly because it isn't designed for that.

And so began my quest for the perfect writing tool.  I've been a very long fan of ommwriter. Yet, I suffered from the same issue where I'd write and then I'd store. But as I kept working on some bits, I'd start to lose the ability to control which version of what I've developed so far was the best. The latest didn't mean the funniest.
I'm a biiiiggg fan of the cloud so I tried online toolsl like 750words.com which being a great too to push and motivate, still lacked what I was looking for. And finally, I came across Ulysses. I'm still enjoying my trial period and so far this is fitting what I'm looking for. It gives me the peaceful environment that Ommwriter gave me, while allowing me to tag and organize my bits and also divide them properly so I know which ones are ready, which ones are still in the ranting stage, which ones are still just concepts. I checked out a few other ones, but so far this seems to be the best. The only drawback? Well it's an offline app, and as much as I can store my files on DropBox, it still lacks that "write once, see everywhere" feeling of things like Evernote. Oh well, let's see how I feel in 20 days when the demo period ends.

On another note, my band, Eve of Sin, had to say goodbye to our good buddy and vocalist who had to leave for personal and work reasons. It sucks because we've been playing together for over a year and it's hard to have that sort of friendship in bands nowadays. Finding a person with the right talent is enough of a challenge, finding someone who is cool to hang out with is even tougher! Oh well :) C'est la vie.

I'm sitting here taking a short break from the hectic workload and life I've been going through, preparing for tonight's comedy show (yay I'm alotted 30minutes!) at Fat Angelo's in Tsim Sha Tsui (enjoy my schedule here). Since I have 1 hour before it's time to get up and get funny, I think it's time to load up Ulysses and work out some magic. Who knows, I may use something tonight that I come up in the next 60 minutes! Tick Tock, chop chop!