*Takes a deep breath

This week was a roller coaster and the weekend as well. Right now I am cooking. The dish is on the stove. It will be ready in about 10 minutes. I baked some veggies as well. I am cooking more than what I need for today so that I have to do less tomorrow and the day after.

This is good. I am following my plans to some extent. To some extent, not properly. Well, anyway.

I am trying to stick to the rules I set up for myself a few weeks ago and it’s helping already. One of the rules was to spend as less as possible. It helped me on the last two outings. Once I went out with some friends for drinks and I spent only 2 euros. I bought the cheapeast drink. By the way, the drink was absolutely disappointing. I asked for lemonade and expected to get a fancy glass with some mint and ice, but what I received was a small glass of water with a bit of lime juice in it. WTF! They literallty gave me the lemonade, which I asked for, I know, but it didn’t have to cost 2 euros! Anyway, that was my drink that evening. I didn’t order anything else. Before I set the restrictions, my bill used to be around 10 to 15 euros for such outing. I brought it down considerably. And I was happy that evening. I wasn’t suffering or anything. I was satisfied with my lemonade. I had gone there to enjoy and enjoyment can come without spending too much.

Another instance of spending less happened on the King’s day. I went to a music festival with some friends. The entry cost was 8 euros, so before I went, I told myself to not spend more than 6 euros on drinks there. I didn’t want to go cheap that day because I felt that King’s day comes once every year and I was excited about attending the events ever since I came to the Netherlands. I ended up going for three drinks instead of two, but it could have easily been five or more drinks if I was not careful. I have spent like that before. I didn’t do it this time. A few more instances were there this week where I spent considerably less than what I would have if I was not careful. My restrictions are working.

I have set the rules to make me live a consistent and balanced life. I have to wake up early so that I get at least 30 minutes with myself every morning. I go to work early so that I can finish on time. I finish work on time so that I can exercise in the evening. Until now I just go to the university sports centre, but from this week I will also make time for biking. I am starting to get bored from the university sports. After sports, I come back quickly so that I can have dinner early. After that I have reserved 30 minutes for doind dishes. Yes, dishes. It’s a task that piles up really quickly if I don’t do it regularly. Until a few weeks ago, I often ended up with the whole kitchen counter filled with dirty dishes on the weekend because I kept postponing the cleaning during the week. Now I try to do that every week so that my kitchen also stays clean. I like to keep my house clean.

After the dishes, it’s time to relax and read before I go to sleep.

This is for the weekdays. On the weekends, I do almost nothing on Saturdays. Saturday is the day when I get to be lazy, but it has to change a little so that I don’t feel pressured on the Sundays like I am feeling today. This weekend I woke up early on Saturday and Sunday and read for a few hours. It felt good. So from the next weekend onwards, weekend mornings are for reading.

I reserved the weekend evenings for writing but that didn’t happen yesterday. I was busy vibing to Eminem. I was feeling low this week and that feeling was amplified yesterday. I wanted to print some photos to put up on my wall. I went through the photos of friends and family and that brought back some unpleasant memories. Broken friendships, lost family members, old friends, home, my parents and family members. In short, I shed some tears.

When I feel sad about something that’s related to the Netherlands, I listen to Indian music. Lately I have been listening to Haryanvi music a lot. I found some new songs accidently on Spotify and I kind of liked them. Usually, I am lyrics person. I connect with what is being said. I do that with those Haryanvi songs as well but it’s mostly the language. The language gives me strength. I feel the most strength within myself when I speak in Haryanvi, my mother tongue. These songs (or maybe the language) made my daily life much easier in the last few weeks.

But yesterday I was sad about a lot of things. There are a few songs from Eminem that have carried me through the hardest times ever since I was in school. Beautiful, cleaning out my closet, lose yourself (especially this one), mockingbird, when I am gone, stan, sing for the moment, and maybe a few more. These songs gave me strength when I was going through a very hard time in my bachelor’s. That’s when I really made a special place for Eminem’s songs in my heart. I have been listening to these same songs over and over since then because I associate these songs with those memories from old times when I was on my own doing something that was very hard and I needed to be strong, isolated, and independent.

I was in that zone yesterday. Eminem’s words were blazing out the speakers for a couple of hours.

I am becoming stronger every day, and a part of the strength is coming from sticking to my commitments. As per the rule, I had to write an article today but I am writing a blog post, but I mismanaged my time for most of the weekend and here we are. One of the new rules I set for myself is to not mess up the whole schedule to save one task that went out of schedule. Writing an article takes time and peace of mind. If I started doing that when I started writing this post then I would have ended much later and that would mess up my sleep time. I will write it next weekend.

Caio!

I am sleepy now. I am not even sure if I said all I wanted to say in this blog post but I am too sleepy to read it. Good night! *Yawns

Time taken to write this: one hour 10 minutes