I managed to save my head on Tuesday. I could make significant progress before Monday evening. Now I am productive.

I am learning karate!

It is awesome. When I joined the class I expected it to be quite relaxing. Somehow I expected it to be more like a choreography where you relax and learn a bunch of moves. I don’t know why I thought of it like that. Perhaps because I have heard something like that from my friends. But no, it was not at all jokes and giggles. It was intense! And I love it for that.

I like the teacher. He is tough. He punishes us when we do something wrong or we act weak. It feels like he really wants to teach you karate. He really wants you to become tough and not just do a sport for fun. And I like this toughness. During the class I just submitted myself to his command. I was like, I will do whatever you say, sensei. He teaches respect – both towards the sport and towards the fellow players. Perhaps it is the core of karate. In any case, I like it. It reminds me of the days when I played football in school around the age of 15-16. My friends and I used to train with players from a team of another school in the stadium of my town. We treated each other with respect. We never entered or left the field without touching the ground. I felt nostalgic when I saw the teacher doing this – bowing before entering or leaving the dojo, even if it is for a quick step out. He greeted the player with a bow whenever he wanted to teach a move using one of us. I like it. I like the intensity. I like the atmosphere. I like the teacher. I like the sport. Of course, it is a first impression. Let’s see how it goes.

Self-discipline is not a piece of cake

No, it’s not easy to keep ourselves in check. We need an external force to keep us on track. We need deadlines to finish a project. We need our doctors to tell us we need to stop eating bad diet or we would die. Companies, science collaborations need external reviewers to function productively.

In my case my sleep schedule goes from 10 pm-6 am to 2 am-10 am if I don’t keep tabs on myself. I start spending money impulsively if I don’t keep reminding myself of my budget and goals. My mental health becomes unstable if I stop doing sports or working on my hobbies; it affects my work as well as my personal life. I start eating a bad diet when I stop exercising because then I do not think about my body’s condition anymore. There are many things like this in my daily life where I try to keep myself in check. I fail a good number of times but I manage to balance myself for the most part.

This blog is one of the things that keeps me stable. I talk to my friends. I socialise with people. I go on adventures, but at the end of the day I feel the desire to spend some time with myself. My behaviour changes quite a lot if I don’t do this because in those days I do not get the chance to reflect on my actions and fix them the next day if something is out of place.

Moreover, this blog is a nerdy hobby of mine. It makes me happy. It gives me the daily/weekly dose of mental stimulation. I rarely used social media before. I have been using quite a lot this year because I realised I could use it like a media blog. I do not post pictures or videos here to keep everything easy to manage. But it is also because I use this blog to write my thoughts like I am doing now. Social media is fakingly happy. The blog conveys true emotions and in depth. I would not want to spam people on social media with such posts but here I can write whatever I want. It’s my home. I can be myself at home. Social media is like a social gathering where I do the small talk. It doesn’t make me happy. It is just useful. This blog makes me happy. Moreover, this blog gives me time to think privately about my daily life. (Then I go on to write about it publicly to make it everyone’s problem, 😜 at least for those who read this blog.)

Ciao!

Shab bakhair!

P.S.

What the heck! I went off topic. I started to talk about self-discipline because nowadays I am having a hard time managing multiple tasks.