The fight for everything

 Someone asked me, "Do you hope one day you could do this full time?"
My answer, "No."

Am I missing something because this isn't the first time I've been asked this question regarding one of my passions. As a drummer, I've been asked this question when interviewed with my band Eve of Sin. As a comedian, people who hang out for a drink after the show are curious about this. As a self-employed (who used to consider himself freelance before) web designer, I've heard this, and even as a lazy person, someone has asked this (yes, do you hope one day you can just laze about all day at will?)

Call me greedy, but is it really surprising to people that I'd like to do all of them full time? Yep, I admit, I find myself whining about the lack of time a lot, but that's probably because I'm trying to pursue more passions that the typical person may do so? Maybe I've been too hugely influenced by the multi-talented Leonardo DaVinci or maybe I haven't found the one road I want to be walking?

I'm going to be helping out at a Youth Camp in October and I'm in charge of a self-discovery session where I'll share my stories about growing up and how it helped me better know myself. I suggested to the organizing committee that why don't we present the kids with 100 questions and they can pick any, say, 50 to answer. This idea came from one of the exercises in the book Think like DaVinci but the book required you to write 100 questions in one sitting to ask yourself over the next few days. While creating the questions, I kept running into a recurring term -- "favorite". After writing all those questions, I found I had a problem when I had to pinpoint one thing. Like what is my favorite food? Well it really depends. Is it breakfast? Did I just have a workout? Sometimes I would die for an ice cream, other times all I want are instant noodles. Even when I reversed my question, and asked something like "what is your least favorite subject in school".. again it depended. Sometimes I really hated math, but if it was algebra, I could sit there for hours, but throw in a graph and I'd find myself cringing....

It made me think about a person's passion. I really enjoy drumming, but if you told me I had to drum for 8 hours a day, I'd hate it. I enjoy comedy, but if I had to write funny material all day, I'd be bored and fed up. Ask me to design websites from morning to night and I'd puke the next time I heard the sound of a computer mouse clicking. And honestly, could I expect my body to be able to practice vigorous drumming for more than 2 hours a day? I think not, it needs time to recover. The same goes for my mind...

The more I think about how I live my life, the more I realize it's like how I eat a buffet. I alternate sweet and savory foods because it allows my sweet tooth to be happy without decaying. The interesting thing is while I eat my desserts, I'm not thinking about that bowl of curry chicken at the counter, and perhaps the concept of "doing it full time" could be applied in a similar way. Even thought I may not be using all my 24 hours a day to do one thing, but as long as while I'm doing it, I'm fully immersed in the experience/moment, then I'm as good as the next guy who does nothing but that.

I typed this whole entry while sitting in the train station listening to music and just speaking my mind (with my fingers). I even forgot it's actually quite noisy around me :P Guess someone should ask me if I hope I could blog full time as well :)

The legend obsession

So I'm super late for this entry but big things have been happening since my last entry. First, if you haven't checked out the Albert Einstein exhibition at the Hong Kong Science Museum, go for it. Expect to spend around 2  hours there so you can slowly read and absorb everything. It was really inspiring for me just to read the more human side of the man. Did you know he had sweaty feet? Ahaha, that brought him right down to earth for me. Made him so human.

I've been struggling to find time to study those that I admire but one man that still blows my mind is (you guessed it), Bruce Lee. I'm currently reading his book Tao of Jeet Kune Doe which is a bit abstract but brings me back to the same idea I've learnt about music and performances, where you just lose yourself while you perform. I'm still in the initial pages of the book but it keeps reminding the reader to stop allowing "rules" to stop you from expanding and experimenting. I also watched the extremely kick-ass documentary How Bruce Lee Changed the World and have now started watching the Mandarin version of Legend of Bruce Lee (just watched episode 1), which is a great excuse for me to expose myself to more Mandarin.

I've started to follow Bruce Lee's idea with my fitness workouts where anything goes but it's kind of like you know the rules but you play by your own. So instead of having a fixed routine, I try to mix things up with all sorts of exercises. I've been experimenting with isometric, plyometric, endurance and strength exercises. Making my own combination of exercises as I go along. A combination of P90X, GSP's RushFit, Insanity and all the general forms of fitness. I'm still looking forward to trying to mess with TRX one day, but I've got so many things to mess with right now.

I'm still working on trying to incorporate some of his philosophies into my drumming and comedy.
Had a good jam session with the band guys last night, we're working on new song #6 and so far so good. It's great to see us growing as a band, becoming more experienced at song writing and opening up to new ideas. No longer are we stuck in a "man how can we write something like that?!" when we hear a great song, but instead a matter of "we just have to keep writing and improving and we'll get there". We're still stuck with no bassist and vocalist at the moment, but we're still progressing as a band so that's a good sign.

I've got 2 comedy gigs tonight so it's a great chance for me to give the idea of being totally free on stage a spin and see what happens. I really do enjoy having back to back gigs, especially when they're in different venues, it just makes it more exciting. I've got a bunch of new ideas and bits and so far they're going good. I have to admit, my workload has been pulling me away from writing comedy bits, but hopefully once I catch up with everything this weekend, I'll be back on track next week.

I'm excited to see what happens in the next 10 days with everything because August is going to be a relatively less busy month for me. Once September comes, I'm going to be jam packed with stuff, not to mention I'm going to Singapore to perform! And then October is the comedy festival, November will see me make my debut in comedy in Kuala Lumpur! Woah! Great things ahead! Time to rock!!