It Gets Easier

I went to the gym last night. My membership card recorded an absence of over a month, yikes. I had been busy traveling for work, that's a bummer.

When I go to the gym, I always set targets for myself. For example, when I warm up on the treadmill, I set a very low target of how many minutes I will have to run (say, 3 mins out of 30). If I achieve that, I can basically do whatever for the next 27 minutes, walk, crawl, walk very very slow. I usually run more minutes that intended because the first 3 minutes fuels my body to want to run more.

At the beginning, this strategy seems slow and I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere. Often, we get excited to work out and want to get fit, fast. You want to lift heavy, run fast and long, sweat buckets. I too was guilty of the same trap. I made myself work too hard too fast at the gym and ended up quitting altogether. It was 3 years after that incident that I stepped foot in another gym.

So back to last night. I set myself zero running minute at the treadmill, told myself I just wanted to move my body a bit by walking. I walked 2.3kms and felt fantastic. And then I added a few weight exercise for shoulders and back. Felt even better! I can't wait to go again tonight!

When Leo from zenhabit.com wrote about making change by starting with the very minimal, I didn't believe it could work. Too little progress to keep me going, I said. But last night was prove that it does. If I didn't set myself minimal goals at the gym, I might have not gone at all yesterday. I successfully went because there was very little challenge in 'walking on the treadmill for 30 mins'. I didn't have to think about it, I got dressed and got out the door in 10 mins.

I'm grateful for having the awareness to recognize this milestone of change. To witness progress in all its form, and keep working on being better :-)

Going Places

I'm at Kota Bharu airport waiting for the red eye. Got here way too early and now I'm sitting at a coffee shop, uncomfortable in my work clothes, too tired to read, too full to eat again.

I've had a wonderful 2 weeks of being constantly on the move. With back to back interpreting gigs, client meetings (an attempt to break the fear of expanding my business), family driver duty, I must have easily clocked around 1,000 kilometres of driving. Wait, double the number if you count flying. 2,000 kilometers of movement in the span of 10 days, phew!

I needed this, though. I like it even. Part of it is just me wanting to be out to avoid my messy home (cat hair!) but also, meeting new people at work is rejuvenating. I made friends with a (real) matchmaker, a millionaire bitcoin entrepreneur, an international company's Country Manager, same said company's Chairman, 2 petrol pump attendants and a sound engineer. This is a feat because I used to have only 3 friends, so...

On this Saturday night though, all I can think about is sleeping in and Sunday brunch. Let me call my initial 3 friends to set that up :-)

Bubbles

I met my girlfriends for dinner just now and had the most wonderful time. They formed a tight group back in uni that didn't include me (I was a cool lone wolf back then) and apparently had nicknames for everyone. This is the first time in 4 years all 4 of us got together and long story short, they decided I need a nickname too. I'm surprised and touched when they decided to name me Bubbles. These days I've started to think of myself as reclusive, not properly socially lubricated, and definitely not funny. It's heartwarming that my closest friends thought of me as bubbly, not just funny, or just happy, or just pleasant. Bubbly is all that and more, my God it makes me feel warm inside thinking about it. Thank you darlings!

In the same line of thought, I got assurance from one of my staffs last Saturday. Assurance that the work that I do is no small thing and I'm making a difference in people's lives. We were working in the booth and had time to chitchat. The conversation turned to work and I asked her if she's happy working for me, and she said yes. I thought, 'Shit, why did I put her on the spot like that?' But to my relieve, she wasn't just saying yes to please me but is genuinely happy that she doesn't have to wake up early, dress up and face the traffic to go to work everyday. She's happy that she can take 2 weeks off to travel whenever she wants and I'd be okay with that. I wish I can pay my people more and it does bother me a bit, but I forget that the "perks" that comes from our working arrangement could more than make up for that.

The lesson here? I need to get out of my head once in a while and meet people, in real life!

Hard Work

I'm in the middle of watching Burnt starring Bradley Cooper, its on pause because I needed to write this down. There is a line in the movie where his character talked about working 20 hours a day in a busy French kitchen and I find myself admiring the sentiment of working hard. I thought of functioning on 4 hours of sleep every day and realize that I haven't had to work that hard in my life, ever. That made me feel unaccomplished, like somehow I have missed a rite of passage to adulthood or even scarier, to success.

Younger people nowadays have things at their fingertips and those are probably the most overworked part of their bodies. I'm no better, translation requires nimble fingers and mind alike. Sometimes I feel the need to do manual, menial, hard labour. A part of me suspects that humans are wired that way, to move of course, but also we have an innate desire to stretch our muscles taut, lift more than we think we can, do magic by growing plants and so on.

A friend asked me to visualize my future once. When I do this, oftentimes an image of a white house by the sea comes up but also, I find that I sometimes yearn for a farm house, with cows and goats and chickens, and green rolling hills stretching as far as the eyes can see.