Livenews

She must be a bad mother. Her child forces himself to smile, forces himself to look angry. And if he doesn’t, there are seven people present to make this 5-year old do what the ‘creative’ director wants from him. He asks the photographer ‘how many more do I have to do? I want to go home.’ Everyone smiles to cover up the awkwardness, cover up, I hope, the feelings of extreme dislike towards the star-struck mother of this boy. Does she want the money? Did she miss her own boat like fathers and football?

I might not agree with all aspects of my work but I am an adult and choose to do this. This kid though, he is five years old. Yet now I am watching a fucked up form of child labor. The kid now learns that he is funny, that he is the center of attention, that he is better than the kids in his kindergarten, because he has posters of himself, and he is told by everyone that that is very cool. And I am here wondering if my own role makes me just as guilty as the mom. Sure, we can pose together. Come here kid. Smile.

My plan to study when not working sounds good in theory. And actually, it is. But on the practical side, the contrasts are tough to deal with. From luxury travelling around America, drivers, star hotels, fancy sets with fancy people to a chair, a table and a book.

So far, I haven’t managed to study while working and travelling, that is another level of motivation and focus I have not reached yet. Not sure if I will ever reach that. Right now, I am already finding it pretty hard to start a new course. No more coffee being brought to me, I have to transport myself per bike and I’ll have to wipe my own ass, but in the grand scheme, I am moving along. I keep on telling myself this is a good thing. And I believe it too.

I know I know, it’s been a while. A combination of personal things, realizing LiveNews has about 20 readers left, and write-cheating for two different websites kind of pulled the plug a bit out of writing for LiveNews. But now that its face has been lifted, I feel it should start again. Ewout as my neighbor, what more inspiration for life and writing could one want!

I am not scared of you anymore. You are now done intimidating me from the corner, Mikael. Your complicated being has stopped me from approaching you, from touching you, from trying to reach out and understand you. But now I am tired of it, you have lost your spell over me.

For more than a month I avoided you, pretended that you weren’t there. But your piercing eye kept on following me. Touch me, you dared me. Try and figure me out. Once, I tried. Once I tried to look back, but I quickly gave up again, overwhelmed by the explanation of how to figure you out.

But no more! Now, I will not be scared away. I will not stop until I’ve shaped you into what I want. From a two-dimensional being, I will give you a third. No more fear. Yes, my IKEA file cabinet, it’s you and me now. Built you shall be.

Still getting up early (a bit earlier even) and still liking it. The most amazing thing so far is that I hardly have any trouble sleeping anymore. A part of this is probably also because I can’t feel the difference between my right ankle and my left ankle, but I also think it’s because of my drastic change in sleeping pattern. It is pretty crazy if you think about it, I think since I was 18, I could have counted the amount of times I went to bed before midnight on two hands, and now I do it a minimum of five times a week! For the rest, there is no point to this entry, except to document that I am still doing this.

I am a proud to announce that, since I’ve bought the Nike+ running equipment a year and a half ago, I have now ran 1000 kilometers with it!

I’ve been getting up at 6:30 for a while now. A while, no, that sounds better than what it really is. A bit more than a week now. Man, it feels like a lot longer. I’ve been getting up earlier and earlier, for about a month though. That already sounds better! Every morning, I make a little list of three things I want to get done for sure that day. No matter what else I do, if I do those three things, I had a good day. It’s made me study well, it’s made me tackle my administration (if you can call a big pile of unopened envelopes full of trouble ‘administration’), it’s just been making me do a lot of things I don’t feel like doing, but feel great once I do. There are many more things I’d like to do, but I am starting slow.

Why am I doing this. I am doing this because let’s face it, I can be pretty lazy. And I have this view of myself of starting and quitting too many things these past few years. This kind of got me scared of starting anything in the first place, which is both not smart and counterproductive. The thing is, If I could be lazy and actually enjoy it, I might just leave it at that. But I am not good at that. I’ve seen lazy people, being terribly happy doing what they’re doing (not doing) and I admire them, in a way. But it’s not for me, I get all kinds of Calvinistic guilt, all kinds of ‘you’re wasting your life’ feelings. And that has made me terribly down, more than I’d care to admit. This is why I am trying to change bits and pieces in my day to day life.

Why like this. Because of an article in Time Magazine, which had a list of the 25 best blogs in the world. One of them was ZenHabits.net. I’ve been reading this site for maybe a year or something from time to time, and early January, I decided to do something with it. Not everything on this website is for me (I would rather cut all my toenails way too short than become a vegan, and I am not trying to de-stress my life, I am actually looking to stress it a little bit), but I like the ideas on many points.

Why am I writing all this down. For one, I haven’t really told a lot of people about this, because I have been feeling a little stupid and self-helpy, and I now decided that there is no need for that. Also, because I am afraid that this is something I’ll do now and quit again, so I thought it better not to tell, so only myself and a few others know of my newest failure I’ve now decided this is silly too. I also decided to write about it because I am a little proud of the beginning I made, and I am aware that this is only a beginning. Maybe writing about it can help me to keep going.

In the words of the late George Carlin: ‘I have no ending for this, so I’ll just take a bow.’

But then I stand there, before coming out, music pounding, people watching, and I notice I am sweating. And it’s not warm. All this tough talk about how easy it is, but in the end I am still a wussy on a runway.

It’s been done in a minimal amount of time, so not quite perfect or polished, but just a quick impression of a special experience, the half a marathon on the last day of last year.

HalfAnM

Some stats are missing. Okay, maybe a lot of stats are missing. But not as many as should be missing, really. I had a massive cold for about a week, which stopped me from running for two weeks. Somehow that made more sense when it happened. Also my brother isn’t exactly feeling 100% with pain in his heel and a cold. So the preparation these past weeks have not been how we would have wanted, but it doesn’t matter anymore, the half a marathon is tomorrow morning at 11 in the morning. The woohoo-nerves started this morning, and now I can’t wait anymore. Also it’s going to be nice for it to be done, it’s been quite an intense and time-intensive training for the past three months. I had all these plans of running under a certain time, trying to be this and that much faster than my brother, but it’s all out the window. Tomorrow will be about getting to the finish line. That’s all. The only way I’ll stop is when my ankle would tell me to. But how it’s been these months, I am not worried. Wow! That is a stupid thing to say.