Today is June 27. The time is 3:09 AM. I just woke up. It’s an attempt from me to sleep early today which I was sleeping at 11 PM yesterday. So it seems like I have been able to sleep for at least 4 hours. This is a good thing because yesterday I was able to sleep around the afternoon for 4 hours as well, I think I was sleeping from 1 PM to 5 PM yesterday so the total hours of sleep within 24 hours is 8 hours. My mind feels fresh today. I had a dream too, I was dreaming about making a coffee for someone but my hand was full of girl hair that dropped in bathroom sewage. The bathroom sewage makes sense because I picked up hairs to unstuck the sewage for the first time yesterday when I was taking a bath, but making coffee for a friend, I’m not sure why I dream about that situation, that friend is a good friend I would say, but I cannot tell who exactly is. I often love to serve other people, especially the ones I like. Needless to say about the dream, every time I sleep with a dream, I always wake up fresh and feel like I had a very very good sleep. Of course, I cannot avoid the situation that I’m having right now: I’m isolating myself completely from society. I mean not completely isolated, I still have people who live with me in the same house right now, and they are all nice people. The point is, I don’t talk much about building a new network here. I do think about it, but I realize that I don’t have much value to offer, frankly, I mean I can gossip about anything, but I feel like, whenever a relationship is to be built it’s about building a business. I’m not sure if I am too practical about handling relationships, but I have been through years of living and not all friends are worth keeping. Therefore, I believe, that everyone will have a very small circle of comfortable network at the end of the day, and it’s likely to be a small group of friends, and family. After I made up my thoughts, I don’t really think much about the situation anymore, I think I’m doing fine.
The thing that I’m fighting hard every day, there are three things:
- Control the calorie input: yes, it’s all about not overeating and it’s about having good health. I’m keeping track of my weight every day, and weight control is my huge obsession.
It’s not all a sudden that I’m thinking about health and fitness everydays. It’s the fact that I’m see people are dying. And they are dying from bad health, and the example is no where far from my life, it’s my parents are having bad health and so is my relatives. I see my friends parents died. I see people are suffering from bad health everywhere, when ever I see a fat person, I see a dying person. You can tell me that I’m living in negativity, but honestly, I’m just being cautious and fully consciousness about the importance of keeping a good weight and a good health. I mean anyone can die and will die and death is the last thing we want to think about, right? But as mentioned in Stoicism, we always need to prepare for the worst and living the best self today because we might not able to live until tomorrow. So it’s important to be always in best self, and one for the most important thing we can do is to stay in good shape physically. Once you are in that good state, you can do other things that you feel important: taking care of the family, like parents, wife, and kids, your loved one, or building your career by working hard and study hard. But again, health comes first, because that’s the only thing that keep you stable in long-run. By saying keeping a good health, again, I’m speaking about good shape. A good body fat percentage like under 20% for men is perfect. I’m not sure for women but you guys can look it up in google. But BF percentage is not as important as how you look in the mirror and how you feel about yourself physically and mentally. As long as you feel good about your body then I think that you are good in health. Personally, I’m able to reducing my weight from 87KG to 76KG since I came to Canada 3 months ago. The 9 KG weight drop is significant for me since I feel a lot healthier now, I feel good both mentally and physically. And frankly, those 9KG I believe to be mostly fat mass because I do see my body shape changing in a good way, I think BF percentage of mine is around 20 to 23% right now. If I can drop to 70KG it will be a game changer, I might be looking like a model by then, but I leave that to be decided by the future. Also I still can lifting huge weight: Like I can do at least 6 to 7 pull-ups in a row or do roughly 95kg or 210 lbs in squat, 25kgs in overhead press, my bench press is weak but I can still do around 60kgs bench press. And I’m speaking about 8 reps workout and I can do at least 3 sets of this. I mean if I drop muscle mass, I will never think I can lift the same weight that I was in 87KG.
2. Working harder
Yes, I’ve been putting pressure to myself all the time relating to do project tasks. I feel like I always want to growth with the organization i’m working with and I always want to see significant results. And I always put myself in heavy pressure like doing large amount of tasks or at least the most complex tasks I can find, even the small tasks I want to do it on-time but with great care. It’s the agile model I have been following for years, which incremental improvements are so important that a commit of code must be made everyday. Of course it always come with obstacles, this should be discussed in private only so I won’t list my difficulties at work here. But the fact that I always happy to have the jobs i’m doing right now, it’s so comfortable and flexible, and honestly, I feel strange, I don’t have anyone to put pressure on me, except myself, I feel like I am my own boss right now, which is quite strange. Because if you think that working in a corporate that you always have a manager to push you to do tasks right? For me I feel like it’s an automous organization, everyone are required to self acknowledgement and be proactive themself. I don’t think people without proactive mindset can last for a long time because this is not highschool, noone is going to ask for your homework, if you cannot do it, you are likely to dropped out. Despite that invisible pressure, I know from my guts that if I’m stop spending time at work I will be dropped from paystub anytime. But if I can continute to remain stable in my performance at work, I can have a stable income and flexible as well as comfortable working environment.
3. Financial control
This is the last thing I like to mentioning about the block, I don’t want to spend an hour or more than a single article, although, I like to write things to reflect my thoughts. And I’m not being hypocrisy at all, it’s all coming from my mind. Also I believe writing is better than recording video, why? because in future if I want to read back myself at the past momemt, it’s easier to rollback than video. I mean recording video is cool, I used to record one before I went here, and it seems like I am currently doing exactly what I was saying or planning in my recording. And interesting enough, i feel like i selecting my words quite well. I’m not sure which youtube channel I was saving my recording now but that’s enough information to tell. Anyways, about financial control, it’s about thinking carefully about spending money. It’s the big spending that matter, I was thinking about getting a car, or a gravel bike for winter ride, but then I think: let’s wait for the time to come then decide, right now a good gravel e-bike can give a great motivation to travel far away from my room and explore new things. But it costs more than 1000 CAD dollars, and it’s a great expense. I have to think careful about it. You know, if money can be spent easily to build your experience but you can either gain or lose from your investment, but if that is a financial investment like stocks or bonds or building a business, then it has a reward to it, for buying an liability like a car or an ebike, it can only a financially lost. I mean, yes, if you have a car, you can build of your network and so one and your network might bring you opportunities. I have to think clear about that kind of opportunities, like which network and what kind of opportunities. But for the current reasoning, the most important benefits are definitely the convenience in life: which I can travel in a large distance and enjoying life far greater than now. But as I reflecting from my past, even in Hanoi, I used to have a car and a motorbike, I don’t ride that much? I mean Canada might be different right? I cannot tell, beside tennis clubs, coffee shops, libraries, parks and some friends places to visit and maybe getting a girl friend could be a motivation for me to get a car, but honestly for 24 hours, doing project tasks and self-care and self-development tasks are always take all of my time. I cannot even think about having enough time to ride my vehicle, I mean, possibly in weekend, but if I really want to go, I can take buses, train or an uber taxi, right? So yea, this is one of my thought process of keeping financial health in check. If I see people are dying from bad health I see people are also suffering from lacking of money too. I cannot be one, I never want to be one.