The Times they are A-Changing

36 days until I start school. It hasn’t really sunk in yet. Calm before the storm I guess, I’m not panicking yet. I’ve already started making a few necessary sacrifices and they’ll be more to follow. I traded my beloved Mitsubishi Lancer in for a much less exciting Dodge Caravan. I’ll save a lot of money in insurance and car payments now but no longer can I sail down Groat Road doing 90km with Daft Punk blasting from the mp3 CD player.

I’ll be moving to another place soon and I’m a bit excited about that, even with the flak I’m getting from my parents about it, since it’s a bit more expensive and further from school than where I am now. School is going to be my number one priority for two years; I’m going to do it right this time. Kung Fu has been my number one priority for seven years and it hurt me the last time I was in school, I don’t regret a thing about it but this time it’ll have to come second. On that note I may have to stop teaching my class on Mondays and Wednesdays. We’ll see how it goes and how much spare time I’ll have. I’ll have to give it up if I should be home studying. Ugh I’m going to have no life for two years but it’s all in the name of progress!

Away

It’s been awhile since I’ve made a journal entry. I’ve been very busy the past couple weeks and haven’t found time to stay on track. I’m writing this on a laptop in a hotel room in Fairview after working 13 hours. Over the past 10 days I’ve been home for 3 of them. I was in Calgary last weekend and in Jasper for most of last week on vacation. I got home at 7:30 last night and left for Fairview this morning at 6am, I won’t be back before Thursday. My Jasper vacation was a blast but I’m not happy to be out of town working right now, I feel like I’m falling behind in things and I can’t teach my class.

Being away from home for awhile and it being under varying circumstances (party pleasure, nature vacation and work) has made me think about routine and free time. My routine has been completely broken and I haven’t been contributing much towards a few UBBT goals. I could be making better use of my free time, I haven’t been completely wasting it at least, but being out of routine has been making certain things difficult, like pushups. I could be doing pushups right now in the hotel room but I don’t feel like queering out my co-worker right now and explaining everything, I’ll probably end up doing it tomorrow anyway though.

I think a person can learn a lot about themselves and their work ethic when they’re forced out of their element. Getting put into different situations and experiencing different things can be healthy. It throws new perspective on everything and forces you it break form. This is what I really like about traveling, the way it forces you into dealing with life directly and without the ties that can often hold you down from habit. Seeing if you can still maintain your focus and work ethic under completely different perspectives can be very interesting.

Lazy Sunday

Sundays are my days of rest, my mini vacations each week where I set aside what business I can and dedicate the day to relaxing and recharging my batteries. I wouldn’t have it any other way, I love having a day dedicated to doing whatever I bloody well feel like doing. Sundays are almost always the days where I have the most free time available but I’m probably less productive, speaking in the sense of “forward progress” type activities, on Sundays than any other day of the week and I don’t feel even a bit guilty about it. So I often spend a lot of time on Sunday’s reading, playing games, watching movies or hanging out with friends.

I’ve noticed that if I spend too much time reading or playing games I reach a strange state of mind. I kind of get sucked into whatever I’ve been doing and confuse it with reality. I’m not speaking psychosis style, “I CAN’T TELL WHATS REAL OR NOT” state but I become withdrawn and reflective with my brain chugging away over this or that, mostly over fluff that has no bearing on anything I’m doing, and kind of zone out and lose awareness of the present. When I’m in this mood I feel half awake and unmotivated to do much but sit around, it takes a healthy dose of exposure to other people to snap me out of it. To others I appear unhappy and quiet. While certainly quieter on Sundays I’m certainly not unhappy, I’m usually just in a hazy state of contentment and indifference so if you see me and want to wake me up just be friendly and boisterous.

I bring this up because I had a very laid back day at work today and read for about four hours. Now all I can think about is stowing away on trains, the importance of self conduct and beautiful, wealthy merchant’s daughters (especially the later). In short, I’m a bit spaced. I think this takes away from the rest of my day so I’m beginning to think I should try to avoid putting myself in this state. Strategy video games are the worst for this, a couple hours of Empire: Total War later and all day, no matter what I’m doing, I’m constantly planning the next conquest or expansion of my Swedish empire while maintain a general instinct to distrust Russia. Everything in moderation eh?