OK so here's the deal, I do not have any inspiration to write about anything. In between being super busy at work and the little time I have left for life, I am just not inclined to write. And I have lots of things I want to write about. Remember my hype about the "People Series" thing that I got so excited about? Well I still want to do it and I have a list of people to research about, but I just can't get myself to sit down and do it ! I have no idea what is wrong with me from that point of view. Thing is when I get home all I want to do is eat something quick, shower and settle in bed with a book, oh yes I am overly obsessed with reading right now and wish I could just stay at home and read ! That of course is impossible. Which brings me to my next complaint.. I have lost all interest in cooking, I can't believe it ! My poor food blog, I haven't had anything to add to it in ages, which is why I have decided to take it down for now. And yes that means I'm back to eating microwave junk and take-out food. Ugh. But then I'm perfectly happy to do that, as long as I can get my ass to bed early and spend a good couple of hours reading. At the moment Shelfari has been my addiction, who knew interacting with other people about books could be so much fun? Oh and addicting. I have never had the opportunity to have discussions about books with anyone, ever since high school when we had to read books which we then discussed in class, but this is different, you can choose which books to read and heck you can even make suggestions, what more could you want. So now you know the reason behind my lack of posting. I am however pleased that I have been keeping up with my book blog, so far, and I have no plans whatsoever to drop it, like say the food blog. Still I have not been writing reviews as soon as I finish a book, but that's OK because I actually feel like I want to do it, and it's not because I keep putting it off and make up excuses to make myself feel better.
This is what, the fourth or fifth time that my blog has gone into an unexpected hiatus? Some people have been blogging for years, and they have dutifully done so without going blank for periods of times, but that apparently doesn't seem possible for me. You would think I have some problem with commitment, seeing how I get excited about it and then a couple of weeks down the line all the excitement has died down, until the next spurt. I wish I could understand this part of me !
Let's just hope that in the coming days I will get my motivation to blog back, and until then I will just continue to read, read and read. I even have lists of books to read, except the problem is my TO READ list keeps growing and growing much more than I can read. My lists include, the 100 Classic Books List, 1001 Books to read before you die, the Complete Stephen King Books list, and I can't forget about my Wishlist on Shelfari which at the moment has another 15 books, and the books I own which I have still to read. Aaaa why are there so many books in the world !!
I have been back for two days but dang I haven't had time to do anything. The few days I spent in Barcelona were great ! Thanks to the nice people at the reseller where I was doing training, I managed to see some places because when I told them it was my first time in Barcelona they really wanted to show me around. That was a major plus. Barcelona is known as the city of Gaudi, and rightly so since there are so many of his architectures. There is so much to see, I only wish I had more time ! I have to say that from the the [few] cities that I have been to in Europe, Barcelona is the one I liked the most so far and I attribute that to the fact that its a modern city but at the same time intertwined with rich cultural heritage.
I'm in the process of uploading pics to Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/apolskis/sets/72157613783347783/, still got a long way to go though to filter all the pics I took. This is my favorite picture of the bunch, taken from Poble Espanyol, which is an outdoors museum representing different locations in Spain.
As usual after every business trip, I have been super busy at work but it should tone down from next week. I'm really looking forward to that so I can get back on track with everything, including my blogs.
Some times I get this realization that there are so many things I don't know about, so much that I could learn, and when thinking about the vastness of it I start to get this feeling of anxiety, like I really need to do something about it. There are so many topics and areas, it's impossible to know everything, but I feel like I need to make more effort to learn new things outside the subjects I'm more familiar with. Science, history, economics, and so many more, but how do you go about it effectively?
While thinking about this I got an idea, two ideas actually. Number one is to make it a point that every week I will choose a random topic which I come across and do some research about it, then blog about it here. The blogging part is for motivation, and to make it more interesting. The second idea is along the same lines, but instead of a random topic I will choose a random famous person and get to know about him/her. Different people from all walks of life, people that in some way or another made an impact in their life. I already got some ideas of people I want to know more about. Again I will blog about it. This is still an idea and in the end I may or may not really do it, but right now it seems like it will really help to broaden my knowledge, about everything. Apart from that it will also help the blog, because usually I don't have a whole lot of things to talk about, and when I do most of the time I have a hard time saying much about it, so I end up not blogging about it. The thing is that I like the idea of blogging and I think it's fun when you have a topic to write about. My writing abilities are not too spectacular, but I would really like to improve that too. I admire people that can write so eloquently and express their feelings in such an articulate manner, if not even jealous of them.
I get so excited thinking up these little projects, even though not all materialize in the end, but I really want to try this out, and hopefully be able to keep up with it.
Yesterday I just learned that next month I will be going on a business trip to...Barcelona, Spain. I haven't been on a business trip since last September and I was sort of relieved that I didn't have to travel so much anymore. Especially when my business trips involved going to the UK every month just for three or four days. It was fun at first but after a while it became tiring so I was glad when this series of business trips came to an end. Now that it has been a while that I've been on a business trip I am excited about this, even more so because I have never been to Spain before. I will be staying there for five days and apart from the usual presentations and training for the reseller I am hoping that I will have some time to look around. You know there are lists like X places to visit before you die etc.? Well I want to see as much of Europe as possible before I die ! I am still way behind but these kind of business trips help too, heh.
I made a quick search about Barcelona and it looks like there are many interesting places to visit. Apparently there are a lot of buildings by "Catalonia's favorite son" Antonio Gaudi and from the pictures I've seen Gaudi's works are pretty awesome. One place I decided I'm going to have to visit is Parc Guell, I fell in love with it just by reading about it and seeing the pictures, so one way or another I am going to make time to go there. I'll have to check it out more and see which places I can visit while I'm there giving the time I have. If I ever have doubts about my job, something like this is what keeps me motivated. I love traveling, my dream is that one day, sometime in the not so near future, I will be able to take a couple of months off work and spend it traveling. That would definitely be the coolest thing I did in my life. However for now that's pretty much impossible, because apart from not having the funds to do that, it's impossible to take that much time off work. Ah well, but hey I can dream !
Until then I will have to satisfy with going on vacation, preferably to Europe, once a year, and going on business trips. Which is not so bad after all !
I have always loved reading and unless I am going through a super busy time I read every day. Since joining Shelfari however I am realizing how much there is to read, and I want to read all books I see ! Being on that site gives me all this energy to read. For the first time in history I am reading two books at the same time, one book I'm reading when I'm at home and one through DailyLit when I manage to sneak some reading at work. In fact last Friday I stayed in for lunch hour since I had my homemade lunch and spent it reading.
I joined a group on Shelfari called '50 Book Challenge' where basically you set your own number of books you want to read throughout the year and keep a record of it. I set my goal to 20 books and if I kept at this I will be able to reach my goal with no problem, but who knows with me. Another group I joined is '1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die'. Althought it would take me more than a lifetime to read 1001 books I think it's interesting and it's great to get ideas of what to read next from it. I have only read 12 books from the list so far so there's a lot for me to choose from. You can see the complete list of books at http://www.listology.com/content_show.cfm?content_id=22845.
I just wish I had more time to read, but there are so many things I want to do during the day that I don't have enough time to fit everything in ! Such a bummer. Some people read over 80 and some even over 100 books in a year, how do they manage that?? I wonder if you can have a full time job and still be able to do it, because even if all I did was work and read I don't think I could read so many books in a year.
I can't believe 2008 is coming to an end already ! It seems like it was only yesterday that it started and all of a sudden it's ending.
So many things happened this year. After a slow start to the year I managed to get back on track and did much more than that. My personal life has been ten times better than previous years and I'm quite pleased about that. Work, eh not so much, but that's something I'm choosing to ignore for the time being. It's probably not the best approach either but I have given it so much thought and didn't come to any conclusion that I just want to leave it alone for now and see how things go, like going to bed at night and hoping that in the morning everything will be fixed.
I thought about making a list of resolutions for 2009, God knows I am the queen of lists, I got to have a list for everything. This time though I decided not to make a list because I will never get anything done from it, and I will feel bad. Case in point, last June I made a list of things I wanted to do/achieve by the end of the year. How many of those did I manage to do? None. Nada. Zip. It doesn't mean I wasted my life away doing nothing, but I didn't do anything from that list and it makes me feel like I could have done more, but didn't. So there will be no list this time. The only thing I am planning to do for 2009 is to start taking lunch with me to work. I used to do this and it worked great, but I stopped at some point and went back to eating out for lunch every day. This is not good neither healthwise nor moneywise, so for 2009 I plan on making homemade lunches every day. I even thought of using the Bento box again, which I purchased for this very purpose, it might help to make it more interesting. I hope I can keep this one resolution !
This will probably be my last post for the year. I hope everyone has a good end of year and I can't wait to see what 2009 will bring !
Since I started putting my camera on manual to take pics I found out how much more difficult it can be to take pics that are not blurred. I'm still not quite there with taking good pics but at least they're decent, kind of, and they're much better than the pics I used to take so I'm improving. Yesterday I was talking to a friend of mine that owns a huge SLR camera with all sorts of lenses and cool equipment, so needless to say he takes some really leet pics and he suggested I get a small tripod for my camera. By the end of our conversation I had ordered this Joby Gorillapod Original.It looks quite neat and just what I need, nothing complex just a little tripod to put my camera on and take pics of food I cook, because that is the only reason I'm using my camera at the moment, which by the way I am enjoying. Now let's just hope it serves it's purpose well.
Oh and I ordered it from Ebay, because that is the only logical place to buy stuff from. Seriously I think that I have just recently got addicted to Ebay. Apart from the Gorillapod I also just ordered sheets and cookie cutters, besides the other five or so items I ordered the week before as part of my new addiction. I already know what I will be ordering next too ! I know it's crazy...
Right now I have a dilemma, to keep this blog or not to keep this blog. Since I found out about Posterous it seems the obvious thing to do, it's just what I need, somewhere to post absolutely anything I want without having to think too much about the words. In reality I could do the same thing here on my blog, but Posterous is so much cooler (and simpler to use). Besides when I think about blogging I always think that when I post about something I need to go into more detail and not just post something completely random because, well it doesn't seem right to have a blog full of bits and pieces. That's why I'm loving Posterous because in my mind I can post about aything on there and I don't have to make it long. Is it just me that is making this distinction or is it actually like that?
I will definitely keep my book blog, but I just don't know if I will be keeping this blog too.
In other news yesterday I deleted most of the pics I had on Flickr, because once I again I thought they were total crap and they were making my Flickr account look ugly. I know I'm that unpredictable. Last weekend I got to take some pics using my friend's spiff camera, one of those big cameras with different lenses and an extra flash, I don't know anything about it except that it's a Canon and that it takes awesome pics. I actually took pics that looked nice, that had this sort of depth in them, I was thrilled that I was able to take pics like that. So I realized it's not entirely my fault that the pics I take look lifeless and dull, it's the camera too ! Except I'm not willing to spend so much money for a good camera, although it would be uber cool to have one like that. Now if I just come home one day and find a package waiting for me containing a leet camera, wouldn't that be the neatest thing? I can dream...until then my Canon PowerShot SX100 IS will have to do.
Today I had to stay in during lunch hour, on stand by, just in case some nitwit that was doing a conference call with a customer ran into some problem like if the customer got aggravated by his lack of intelligence and inability to handle people, then I'd have to come to his rescue and save him from the call from hell. Isn't that just the most awesome thing to experience? Trying to calm a customer down after your beloved colleague, ahem, I'll call him that for the sake of not being anymore disrespectful, managed to drive him off the edge and his every other word is 'refund'. Fun stuff.
Well while I was eating my homemade mac and cheese, waiting for my phone to ring any minute with a panicked voice at the other end, I got on wired.com, everyone checks that site right? The first article that caught my eyes was Space Invaders Remake Takes Retro Gaming to the Limit. Oh my God I love Space Invaders ! You just got to read that article, it explains word for word how I feel about retro games. I'm not some hardcore gamer myself, in fact I haven't been playing much at all the last year, but I like to play games every now and then and that's enough. But nothing beats those retro games I used to play when I was younger. Simple, cool, games.
Games today are different, all so very complicated, and while I like today's games, some I might even love, I miss my retro games. Reading that article today made me want to buy a PSP or a Nintendo DS, just to play Space Invaders Extreme. The last hand held game console I got was the Nintendo Gameboy Advance SP which was a Christmas gift from my mom. After I went crazy over it and played it nonstop, I eventually put it to the side and didn't play with it anymore. That is the reason why I held off buying a Nintendo DS or a PSP, but oh have I been tempted.
I am so aching to buy a game console, an Xbox or a Nintendo Wii, but I know I don't have much time to play games so it will probably be a waste of money. And since seeing that article the Nintedo DS or PSP are also on the radar. Ack if I could justify it so I won't feel so guilty about it...
There are many blogs that I read, different kinds of blogs, from a variety of people. Moms, dads, college students, artists, globetrotters, geeks, anyways you get what I mean. What I'm always wondering is how do people get so much to write about? Especially on personal blogs. It's either everyone has a super interesting life and I'm stuck with a boring one where the most exciting thing that happens in my week is going to Mister Tiki Mai Tai Lounge with a bunch of friends after work, or else I'm crap at writing about an uneventful day by writing an essay about the little things, like my thoughs on going to the bathroom or how pissed off I got driving home from work stuck in traffic. So which one is it? Or maybe it's a combination of both.
See, I spend most of the day at work, like everyone else that works full time I would suppose, I get home, cook and eat, sit at the computer doing various things (like reading blogs for one !), occasionally watch some TV while I'm on the computer, then shower and get to bed, where I spend an hour or two reading and then sleep, most of the time not because I'm tired but because it's late. What's there to write about? I mean my days aren't always so predictable, sometimes instead of going home after work I go out with a couple of my friends, and then by the time I get home I'm too tired to do anything so I just shower and sleep, which means there's even less to write about. Weekend are different, I'm out most of the time and they aren't so boring as the rest of the week, but still nothing to rave about in a blog post. There are people that do a lot of ranting and complaining on their blog, about how this sucks and that stinks and the other is unacceptable, but me? There's not much I could complain about. In general I'm not one to complain much, I usually accept anything and go with the flow, at work, with friends, anything actually. Unless something is really bugging me, then you will hear me complain alright, but that happens once in a while, and I'm very thankful for that. I could write about everything that happens to me, from when I wake up to the time I go to sleep, but wouldn't that make for a big boring blog? And I don't care for that anyways, I never meant to write about every little thing I do. My purpose to start a blog was to write about my thoughts rather, of which I don't seem to have much !
Well I did go to a shooting range this week. And want to know what I thought about that? It was freakin' AWESOME ! I got to use a shotgun for the very first time and I didn't think I'd like it so much, but I actually loved it. I hit like 2 of the 25 targets, but that's not important, what's important is that I used a gun. You got to agree that it's cool right? We plan to go again soon and I want to try with the handguns, I think I'd like it even better than the shotgun. They had rifles and bows too, maybe we'll try them all one by one. They all sound fun, but I still think I'd like the handgun best.
Oh and because I read www.dooce.com, I caved in and bought her book "Things I learned About My Dad". Mainly out of curiosity, but if it's as witty as some of her blog posts are then it should be good. I'm hoping on that. I got it in the mail yesterday and I can't wait to start reading it, but because I always have to finish one book before starting another I got to wait a couple of days more.
How's that for a blog post on my uneventful life?!
But so little time ! I have so many things I want to do but before I know it it's midnight and I need to get myself to bed to wake up decent for work the next morning. I feel so frustrated when there are so many things I could be doing and I have so much motivation, but instead I have to go to bed. As if having a huge list of things I need to do in the upcoming days is not enough, I have another list of things which are not really that important but I want to do them nonetheless. I decided to make a separate list for these things, to make sure that I do get to them eventually. When I have a list I want to cut out things from it so that motivates me to do more. I am hoping that having this list will help in actually doing these things sometime. Oh and it will definitely help with the fact that I keep forgetting about these thing too. Here is what's on my list so far.
- Organize all the data on the various hard drives I have
- Set up a backup system because if one of my hard drives dies I will go insane
- Read "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" books
- Read "His Dark Materials" books
- Become a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS)
- Put up that website I've been meaning to for a while
- Watch all the movies that I have, that's a lot I'm talking about
- Clean out my car from the inside, any volunteers?
- Clean out my place, it needs it
I know I'm missing some other things but I just can't remember what right now. See what I mean? If I keep going on with these lists I'm going to need a list to remember all the lists I have, heh !
This week I had to go on a short business trip to the UK, which means about an 8 hour flight both ways. I usually don't mind it, I've done it so may times that I've pretty much got used to it. This time however? It was a total different story and if I had to spend another minute on the plane they would have dragged me out unconscious and mumbling crazy things about how I didn't mean to kill the kid but he was asking me to do it.
BOTH WAYS.
The flight over there was a nightmare, or so I thought. I had no idea how worse it could be. I had this nice little family sitting on the row behind me with their two boys, maybe 5 and 3. The youngest one was sitting on his mother, right behind me and he just wouldn't stop messing with the seat in front of him, i.e. my seat. Punching it, kicking it, pulling at it, and there I was sitting in my seat feeling like I was on a ship sailing on stormy seas. At one point I was starting to feel nauseated and if I was going to throw up I would have liked to turn around and do it on that kid. Fortunately for the kid and his mother no such thing happened though. The good thing about it all? You wouldn't hear the kid whine or cry or anything like that, he was as good as a pea playing with toys and talking to his parents about their trip, it actually sounded really cute and that's probably what kept me from hating him. Finally he slept and I was so relieved, for all but half an hour ! I felt like telling him kid you got a long way to go don't you think you should consider sleeping a bit longer?? It didn't seem so. Lets just say that when the plane landed and they opened the door I was out in the blink of an eye.
The flight back home, now that is a real nightmare. Out of sheer luck I had another cute family sitting in the row behind me, again with two boys, this time around 2 and a baby just a few months old. What do you think the 2 year old did as soon as he was buckled up on his mother? Start kicking and pulling at the seat of course ! A couple of minutes in and I was thinking why oh why did they have to be placed behind me? Why couldn't someone else enjoy such a lovely experience on their flight? But wait that's not what made the flight a nightmare. It's the 8 hours of whining and begging from the 2 year old and wailing and screaming from the baby which made everything so darn frustrating and made my flight three days before seem like a breeze. Seriously, don't kids get tired at all? And that baby, his throat must have been burning by the end of the flight, I'm surprised he could still make noises with his mouth. I thank God for my iPod in times like these, it let me sleep when the kid wasn't wrestling with my seat. The two guys sitting near me were huffing and puffing, I thought one of them was going to turn around and wrangle those kids any minute. Now I'm not the kind of person that would turn around and say anything to the parents, because really what can they do, I actually felt sorry for them because it must have been even worse for them. I wouldn't like to imagine what a trip with two small kids would be like. One lady thought differently though, and she wasn't sitting near enough for the wailing to get into her head, but she went up to the parents and went tsk tsk tsk you young parents don't know how to control your kids. When I heard her I thought whattt?? Would anyone really think of doing that? It's not like the parents where enjoying it all and as irritated as I was I still thought that was uncalled for. Who was she kidding? I seriously felt like telling her to shut up and go back to her seat.
The energy and craziness that filled my brain a little more than a month ago is starting to tone down a bit, phew. I'm not back to my old self where I did absolutely nothing and just had no motivation, but I think I'm in the normal range where you do what you need to, have fun and go to bed at night feeling that it was a productive day. At work things are moving on nicely and I've decided that I'm going to stick around for now, which is good and I don't have all these uncertainties which seemed to eat me up.
I still love cooking, that is one thing that has stuck. I have lost interest in taking pics of the food I cook though because I'm just crap at it so I end up with a pic that doesn't do the food any justice, which sucks really because the food would be awesome. I also have given up doing a laptop lunch everyday for work. While the idea was great and I was liking the fact that I was eating somewhat healthy, I say somewhat because I can't go without having some type of candy during the day, nope that's impossible for me, but I thought it was time consuming and instead of making a laptop lunch I throw the food in the first container I find and keep a stash of random snacks at work. Although not as healthy, because I have cut down on the fruit for example, it is working so I'm not going to worry about that and it's still way better than the junk food I used to eat everyday at work.
The other day I went over to my friend Rachel, which had another friend over, Heather. While there Heather was on the computer playing Neopets, and I said man I used to play that ages ago. At that instant she was like OMG why don't you play it anymore it's the coolest thing on the internet. I used to play it when I was 16 or something like that and eventually lost interest in it, partly because i didn't have time to play it anymore, and she managed to get me to play again. I had to make a new account because I totally forgot the password and what email address I signed up, and I ended up playing Neopets again, see me here. The site changed so much I don't even recognize it. Now in the evenings you can find me on there making Neopoints to try and make my pets leet again, and trying to figure it out all again. I might be getting hooked on it again, pooh on Heather. Meet Bjorn86 and Pizu60.
Right now I am planning a vacation in September. Most likely it's going to be a trip to Amsterdam, Holland, to start my attempt at touring around Europe. I'm actually really excited about this and can't wait ! I want to plan everything right, that's the part of me that needs to have everything planned out speaking, so I'm looking at all the places to visit while I'm there. It's fun planning a trip !
This last week I have been wondering, wondering where I am headed to. All the shit that's been happening at work, it kind of threw me off track and I'm left wondering what I should be doing next. It turned out that talking to my manager was a good idea in fact and things actually have started to change, in less than a week ! I never expected him to agree with me on everything I brought up but he did and told me that I was absolutely right. What the heck? If you know about these issues already then why are you keep doing it? Do you really need someone to tell you before you actually do something? So I went in strong and ready to fight for my point, and I got an apology instead. I was astounded because lets just say it's not the behavior I was expecting. So far so good.
For some reason though I still feel like I don't know if I want to stay or look elsewhere. They blew my fuse and every morning I wonder what I'm still doing here. A colleague of mine, that doesn't know anything about my situation, told me that you shouldn't get attached to your job, just go in 9 to 5, do your job and when it's time to get out forget about it. I always thought there was more than that to a job. I'm committed to my job, I put in more time when there's that need, I go home and get on email and do work things and I travel nearly once a month to our office in UK. I would expect that all that would gain you some respect and recognition, but I'm starting to have doubts if any of that really matters, and if indeed you should treat it as a job that you do from 9 to 5 and that's it nothing more.
I am relatively young and still a baby in the work field. I've had experience with one other company and that was only for a few months. I still have so much to learn and I'm scared shitless of doing the wrong move. I need some direction, all this thinking I'm doing about this is distracting me from doing anything else because that's how I am, before I settle a situation and I'm sure of what I'm doing I won't be able to rest. I hate the way I am sometimes, some people just seem like they don't care about anything and are able to take risks without knowing what the outcome will be but I am so not able to do that.
Right now I feel confused and I don't know what to think. I've been at my job for nearly two years and I have always loved it. It was challenging, exciting and I was learning new things all the time. Every day was different and after a day at work I went home feeling satisfied and happy that I have this job. So the fact that for the past weeks I haven't been feeling anything like that is bothering me a little, or a lot. I go to work every morning thinking ugh I have 8 more hours in here how am I going to survive?? Nothing is fun about it anymore and everything just seems so boring. The people in my team are ok, but sometimes I just feel out of place, like I don't belong in this team. I hate feeling this way, because I used to love my job and can't really understand how I ended up in this situation. Things have changed so much, and I don't even want to talk about how people act in this team. I used to be in a team with some awesome people, I still work with these people but we are not part of the same team, and that's mostly the thing that's keeping me from just plain quitting. I don't like working in such a competitive environment where people just do things to get credit for it and have their name up there, who gives a shit about the rest? I used to be in a team where we all worked together, worked hard to make sure we excelled at our job and had fun doing it. Now it doesn't matter if you do a crappy job, its more important if you finish 5 shitty tasks than finish 3 good quality tasks, because the person that does the 5 tasks is going to be patted on the back and everyone else is going to be told see that's how we need to be? And when I hear something like that I'm thinking excuse me?? You mean that we'd rather finish a million shitty tasks than actually concentrating on doing things right? Because I can do that very easily but what the heck? Sometimes I can't even believe that this is the same company that I joined nearly two years ago. Yesterday I was so fed up with everything that I updated my résumé and was looking at job vacancies. Today I was thinking, why was I even thinking about that? My problem is that I keep thinking that things may change again and one minute I want to run away from that place and the next I think it's not really that bad if you learn to deal with it. But how do you know when it's time to move on? Is it normal to have doubts about your job? If you feel that nobody appreciates anything you do anymore, is that a good enough reason to start looking elsewhere? If it is then why am I not certain that it's time to find something new, somewhere when I can be happy with my job again and don't have any doubts about it? Should you try to voice concerns such as these to your manager, or is it best not to? It's so frustrating having all these questions and nobody to answer them, or at least someone to help you to come to a conclusion. My head feels like it's going to blow up with all these thoughts. Partly because I don't think I want to accept it either.
I don't know what happened but since I have been up on my feet again I feel like I have changed radically. My outlook on life for instance, everything seems exciting right now, even little things like going grocery shopping. What's up with that? Besides that I have a list of a close to a million things that I want to do. Hopefully I'll get to do all of them before I die, but it's so long I wonder if I will have enough time, ha ! I also keep thinking that all this energy is going to trail off and everything will get back to normal, i.e. spending all my free time doing nothing, going to work every morning wishing the day would end already and basically just wasting my life away. It somewhat scares me that I would go back to my old ways, because all I want to do is enjoy life at this point, think positive and get out there and do everything I want. A relapse would just mean that I failed, and I sure as hell will be trying my darnest not to. It's like I owe it to myself.
I have gone on a shopping spree too and eBay is my best friend at the moment. I swear I love that site. I'm in the middle of throwing all my old stuff away and literally changing everything I own. And I do mean everything, from my clothes and shoes to the smallest things such as the key ring that holds my keys. Yesterday I just received my new wallet in the mail, isn't it purty?
Right now I'm waiting for a new backpack, a watch and a sleek cover for my iPod Touch. I'm loving this change, and it's about time too !
Yesterday I came across a blog and when I started reading the first posts I realized, am I imagining this? This blog belongs to a 40 something year old woman who wants to find out the things that he likes doing, just like I want to do. There is an age difference between her and me, and her reasons may be entirely different, but knowing that people do find themselves in the same situation was kind of comforting. At least I know that it's not just me, because I actually thought I was half-baked and didn't know what I wanted. My initial thoughts were that at 21 it was a bit late to start discovering who I am because it seems everyone knows their hobbies and what they like to do and I just didn't have a clue. Hopefully taking this step in my life will be worthwile.
I am *finally* free. No more hopping around on one leg, no more crutches, I can walk ! Oh how I love putting on my shoes and bounce around. You never really think about it but being able to walk is a blessing, and I realized that since I have not been able to walk much for the last couple of months. It's so restrictive and it makes everything a hundred times harder. It sucked out all the motivation from me and I just didn't have any energy to do anything. The few days that I have been walking I feel like I was reborn, literally. I have all the energy to do things and it seems like there aren't enough hours in the day, because before I know it it's midnight and I don't even feel like sleeping.
In less than a week I've been catching up on the things that I absolutely hated doing because I couldn't walk. For instance I've been shopping, that's got to be one of my favorite things to do, I just need an infinite amount of money to make it more fun. I have been really enjoying cooking, I never really did cook much before but now I'm on a roll and I'm actually being more creative with my meals. I have even been doing extra cooking, like baking cookies that came out absolutely delicious. Doesn't it feel awesome when you cook something and it turns out great? Something that radically changed is that I want to get out of the house and I jump at every opportunity to go out. Ha all I wanted to was sit at home and going out used to be such a big deal ! Not anymore.
I love this feeling of being free, being able to do anything I like, and most of all this energy that seemed to have accumulated and now needs to come out. It just feels great.
And don't ever break your leg !
I recently came over a site called Etsy and OMG I fell in love with it. Basically it is described as an "online marketplace where you can buy and sell anything that is handmade." There is so much neat stuff on that site that it makes me want to buy things and if I spend too much time on it I can make some real damage. The coolest part of the site is where you pick the color you want and it will search items containing that color for you. The search is actually based on the colors that the image of the product contains, so it's not just entering a color like "blue" and you get products that has been tagged with "blue". It is much more sophisticated than that, you get to choose a color from a color picker and images which contain that color are displayed, see what I mean here. Of course you might get an image where the background is blue and the actual item is another color, but it's far more accurate and fun in finding items in the color you want. I'll give you an instance where this comes in useful. I have decided that I want to redo my bedroom, and I want the colors green and pink. I know that I have a while before I actually get to redo my room but I tried using this fun feature on Etsy to find neat things for my room. And oh boy did I ! There were so many things that I liked that I just wanted to start buying things, but fortunately I managed to control myself, because I know that by the time I redo my room I might have changed my mind on the colors. I guess I'm unpredictable that way, the good thing is that I know it. I *had* to buy something to make myself happy though so I settled on a Wristlet Keychain which I will post a picture of for you.
Click on the image to go to the seller's store on Etsy ! I had a hard time picking one because that seller has plenty of different designs and they are all so spiff. Oh and I have a reason for buying a Wristlet Keychain. I like to have these kind of key rings to hold my keys so it isn't hard to find and not easy to lose, here is my current key ring, I found one exactly like it on eBay.
I have had it for a while and by now you wouldn't recognize the color, so I thought it's time for a new one. That way I don't feel guilty for buying something that I absolutely don't need. The seller contacted me and told me that they will ship it on Monday, and I can't wait to receive the first item I bought from Etsy ! I'm pretty sure it won't be the last time either.
I know that this is pretty random, but I loved this site so much that I had to share it.
I have been trying to start writing this post for the last half an hour. I just have one word to say, Vista. That's the answer to my anger and frustration right now, because precious (or not) Vista has decided that all it wants to do is crash, crash and crash some more, especially the accursed explorer.exe. It crashed when I tried to sign on Windows Live Messenger, it crashed when I was opening Mozilla Firefox, it crashed when I tried to open Windows Live Writer, it crashed when I was saving an Excel sheet, and amidst all this it would not bring up Task Manager. Oh and have I mentioned that issue every time I open Control Panel, explorer.exe crashes. It's so frustrating when you just want to get something done but you can't because your OS just isn't letting you. I did a brief search about this Control Panel crashing explorer.exe and apparently I'm not alone. It is probably some *.cpl file in the Windows\System32 folder that is causing it to crash, and I have to check each and everyone one of those to see which one is the culprit. I want to like Vista and I want to use it, but geesh it just makes me want to run away from it when it acts like this. And you thought XP was bad.
Now on to what I wanted to write about, but I had to let that out before I got on to anything else.
I just finished doing a TODO list. There are so many things that I need/want to do that I keep losing track. I remember something that I have to do and then completely forget about it, until a week later when I remember about it, and then forget about it again...it's an infinite loop. That is why I decided to list all the things, and when I remember something I will add it to it right away. I have 15 items on my list right now, and I know I'm missing some others but I can't remember what at the moment. I am hoping that with this list I can actually get more things done, keep myself focused if you will, because sometimes I know that I have things to do, but they're just floating around in my head and I end up doing something completely different, and useless most of the time. The thing with having a list is that when you complete something and you get to take it off your list, you feel like you have accomplished something and it keeps you motivated.
I wonder how people deal with all the things that they need to do. Do they keep lists? I'm talking about day to day things here, nothing more, not some big project or anything like that. I wonder if people normally just remember things that they need to do, and don't need to write anything. Or I might have short term memory loss, because really, if I get ideas or thoughts or anything that I *need* to remember I have to write it down, otherwise it will be lost in a few minutes when I have other things on my mind. But then I can remember things that happened when I was 3 and 4 years old, so I really don't understand how my memory works. Maybe that's just another abnormal thing about me, but it intrigues me.
And before I forget....someone put me on their blog roll ! Wow I'm on Mack Your Mouth ! Sweet.
Some weeks ago I decided that I want to start doing things that I like. This might sound easy enough, but I had a problem, what do I like?? I always start doing something then get bored in a *very* short period of time and drop it. This always makes me think what is wrong with me? Who doesn't know what they enjoy doing or who doesn't have a hobby? Starting this blog was one of the things towards this step, finding out what I like. It feels weird, like I am getting to know myself, except at 21 I think I should know already? I think it's what you're supposed to do while you're growing up, during your early teen years? Well I suppose it's never too late. My problem mainly is that there is no 'me'. I'm whoever people want me to be. If I'm around people that like anime, then to them I like anime. If I'm around people that like gaming, then to them I am a gamer. But in reality I am not really any of these things. And it's even scarier because I don't know myself what I am. I've realized that I spent half my life doing nothing. It seems the only thing I do well is daydream. It makes the time go by. When I'm bored at work for instance, or stuck on a plane for a few hours, or when I'm at home with nothing to do. I don't know if it's even called daydreaming. I make up whole stories in my head, with people that don't exist, or exist but modified in my own way, how I like them to be. I can make up whole lives thinking like that. Some people might even think it's warped. I don't like this fact, so that is why I have embarked on this mission to find me, myself, who I am, what I like.
So far I have learned this much.
I love reading and books. I sort of knew this because I always read a lot, but I never thought of it as a hobby or something I liked doing, I thought it was another thing you normally do, like eat and sleep. So I like reading. And I'm enjoying this DailyLit thing.
I love food of all sorts, and I enjoy cooking. I'm by no means a pro at it, but it's fun. Right now cooking is a big deal, I am walking with crutches and have to hop on one leg, so that makes things ten times harder, but that should be fixed soon and I will be able to get back to normal. Cooking is fun when you don't have to do it, when you absolutely need to cook so you don't starve, then it's not so fun, but other than that it's great. I am hoping that I can actually get better at this.
I made a Flickr account and started taking pictures. While it is fun to take pictures and post them on a website, I am just crap at it. I don't get the lighting business and I don't really know how to use my camera. I don't get what all the settings are for, for instance ISO 800 or 1200? What is ISO and what does it do? That's just one example for you. When I put my camera on Manual all I see is a dark picture, no matter what settings I adjust, light, color, nothing. That is the reason I leave it on Auto, and that doesn't really work. I know if I really wanted to learn how to take pics I could find out a load about it, Google would probably really help, but I don't, so I'll continue to take pics just for fun.
Well that's a start isn't it?
