あけましておめでとう。
Wanna take a guess about what does that mean if you don’t know Japanese? I’m starting with a sentence in Japanese because I’ve officially moved to Tokyo since last September. It was a significant experience especially because I came to create a new business entity here and then it could sponsor my own visa. I should be writing more about this topic from now on, as it really takes a noticeable part of my energy nowadays.
Coming into 2024, I wanted to write more in this blog as I used to. Specifically, I started the site (and also running this brand to target clients outside of Taiwan) in January 2014 and I wrote 27 posts that month. This time things will be different. The current goal is to write a post every week (very likely on Sunday) with at least 1,000 words.
Not just because of echoing what you’ve started with 10 years ago is pretty cool, but I’ve been longing to find my own voice in the past years. I don’t know how the others can do it. There are people I know (in real life or on the internet) that can always talk in a way as if their opinions matter. I mean, they do matter to me as I’m listening to what they said or wrote, but I’m just amazed and hoping one day I can express myself as fluently as they do.
One thing occurred to me was that writing should help me to find my own voice again. It has helped before. So this will be an experiment to see how I will change in this year, with 52 posts and 52,000 words afterwards.
The posts don’t always have to cover all of these areas, but this is some sort of blueprint I will base on:
- What have you learned
- What have you failed
- What are your non-negotiable habits recently
- Who inspires you most recently. This can also be books or movies.
- What achievements to celebrate and how are you going to celebrate it
- What conversations I had with people worth to write down.
I’ll come back to update the list when needed. So let’s get started.
Morning routine
I’m not an early person and my morning usually starts after 8:30am. These days, especially after I moved to Tokyo, I’m living in a great apartment that has very sufficient sunlight (because it’s south facing), so I can usually do Yoga when bathing in the warmth of sun lighting.
I recently also added two things: Sun exposure and meditation for a few minutes after Yoga. I was a meditator a few year back, before I started to regularly do Yoga. Before Yoga, my favorite exercise was actually Jumping rope. But after discovering I have PSVT and been in Emergency rooms for a few times after some cardio exercises, I switched to do Yoga and luckily stuck to it ever since.
After these activities, it would usually pass the first hour since waking up and then I’ll brew my own coffee and while having it, I’ll start an hour of Japanese learning on Duolingo. Thus I barely have time to touch any work before noon, which is something I would like to change by getting up earlier (if I could).
What I have failed
I failed to finish this awesome YearCompass to start this year stronger. It took too much time than I expected. I was there for 4 hours or so and still haven’t finished the review of 2023. It looks to me a smarter way is to pay more attention through the course of this year so it wouldn’t take that much time to wrap things up. But also I found some of the questions it has were confusing. That surely made me a bit reluctant to finish it.
I also failed at building a new cycle to sleep earlier and so I can wake up earlier. It has been funny that with my sleep tracker on my Apple Watch, I seem to have a tendency that, if I get consecutively sufficient 8-hour sleeps for a few days, I will then drop into a very weird sleeping schedule like staying up till 3am but still am not tired at all, and it then kinda of ruins my mornings (which I barely can have because I will sleep till almost noon). I suspect this has to do with my hormones cycle, which seems to explain a lot of things especially after I came into 40s.
Channeling positive energies
One of the reason I would like to write more often was because I see it as a way to channel positive energies. As we grew older it’s getting harder and harder to withdraw ourselves from negative vibes, or at least that’s how I felt in the past years.
The pattern is like there is always something to ruin a good mood, while it’s already hard enough to have one to begin with! I’m determined to break this pattern.
Unexpectedly, YouTube has been helping me greatly in this matter. I have no cable in my apartment (both in Taipei and Tokyo) anymore and the main thing I watch on smart TVs is YouTube. So does when I’m on my iPhone.
To bring the best results, I’m very picky about what it recommends to me. Just one-click away, the “Don’t recommend channel” is the best you can do to control the canvas of your mind. And which was not possible with traditional cable services (both the recommendations and block features). So I’ve been happily paying for their premium subscription as it’s much cheaper than any cable program you can get.
Closing
That’s pretty much everything for this week. I feel like I have more I wanted to write. But I also wanted to challenge myself not to perfect things so I limit the time I should spend on writing it (two hours at most) and don’t do any grammar check with ChatGPT.
Oh, and I hope you’ve guessed it, the Japanese sentence I started with for this post meant: Happy New Year.
Until next week. Let’s start this year strong.
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