wanna dese days, i tellsya, wanna dese days
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Well, I figure this is the best time as ever for the week to make my update. It's been a beautiful day from start to end.
I woke up late as its a wednesday, Lessons weren't making me feel anxious over anything, whilst having tennis the clouds looked really nice, then it began to rain, so we went to do some PT. Still, it didn't dampen my mood, and on going home I chanced across perhaps my most ideal and cheerful weather scenery. It's one where the rain is somewhere in between moderate and light, and the sun is shining in-between low lying, silky clouds. If I could write poems as nicely as Joel, that might have made for a good muse.
Anyway, as I mentioned, this blog post is about getting some material off my mind, so I'll begin in the paragraph below.
Whilst I was having a late dinner on monday from Tennis, (usually arrive home at 9+) my dad came down to chat with me. He asked me, "Do you think education makes a person more demanding and more impatient?"
I deliberated for a while, then I said, yes, education makes an individual a more demanding person, but it doesn't contribute to a person being impatient. Upon hearing my answer, he laughed and said, "So you're very consistent,"
Apparently he was doing some housekeeping for his email, and he chanced across this email I sent under his account to my English teacher in Sec 3, when back then I didn't have broadband access. The essay was on the very same question, and he said between then and now, my opinion hasn't changed. He also mentioned it was quite convincing, when I asked him if I did a good job!
Anyway, after that he was just sitting there for a while, so I brought up some issue I had that was troubling me a little.
I can't recall the exact conversation that we were having, but recently Yichen told me that I fit the bill of one of the personalities he was studying for sociology, or whatever the hell it is he learns there. When I prodded him, he reproduced a set of traits that my "type" had, and I found I had fit many of them very well.
- competitive
- high need for achievement
- works fast
- extremely alert
- high stress level
- very aggressive towards others
- exaggerated sense of time urgency
- impatient
- restless
- tends to have tense facial muscles
- constant feeling of time pressure(copied without permission of Yichen. Like it matters. Lol...)
Except for some of them, (extremely alert? Heh. I can be damn blur in games sometimes. Plus, I've nodded off in lecture more than once before, though i'm sure every JC student is the same in this light.) I realised I was more or less the perfect example of this demographic, and that I seriously need to calm down.
Compare it to what i'm sure must be him in essence,
- no desire to compete
- takes time out to enjoy life
- not preoccupied with achievement
- works at a steady pace
- relaxed
- not aggressive
- does not suffer from time urgency
- seldom impatient
- not easily frustrated
- moves and speaks slowly
- seldom lacks enough time Did I mention I wear my watch everywhere? And I do mean everywhere. I only take it off after I bathe to let the water dry off, but other than that I have it when I bathe and when I sleep. I have an estimate of how long I take to do almost anything, and they vary in accuracy, I have a mental schedule of when to accomplish what, and on weekends, no matter how tired I am, (barring an exceptional case) I make myself wake up before 9. (that isn't much of a problem though, I usually wake up at 7:30 without an alarm.) The rationale; I'm wasting precious weekend daylight asleep.
I have quite a few more examples, but time isn't on my side, so I'll end with the examples here. Basically, Yichen enlightened me to the fact that I could be giving myself a lot of unecessary stress, but I didn't know to what extent I should adjust, if any at all. I mean, come on. This is a guy who advises me not to do tutorials simply because they don't need to be handed up. He also adviced me to skip my ridiculous CLB lesson on tuesday that makes me wait 3 free periods. Both of them are strict no-nos in a JC, or MJC at least.
I thought about it for a while, then I came to the conclusion that I should be a little less scheduled for everything, and a little more calm should something negative happen. It's a bit like an unsaid new-year's resolution.
My dad also gave me his two cents on impatience, and he had some interesting stories to tell. I myself have much more to blog about, given the long absence, but I think I ought to leave it for the next time we meet.
posted by joseph at 6:13 PM