The Revival: I AM BACK

HELLO EVERYONE!!!

I bet you are surprised to see me posting again. I think most of you would probably think that this blog is dead, and that I would never post again. I don't blame you. For a period of time, I was thinking the same thing. The whole idea, is that I felt I should focus more on my real life, rather than spend meaningless time blogging and being narcissistic. Maybe it was also to get away from the pain, and everything this blog represented... The reasons it was started... The things that happened... I was also lazy, so whatever. And so, I just decided to abandon the blog and stopped updating for quite a long period of time. But now I'm back!

Blogging and Personal Growth

The main reason I decided to resume blogging again, is for personal growth. I'd finally realised that I am not blogging for any other person nor am I blogging for any financial gain. I blog solely for myself alone. It serves as a good online diary, for me to record and remember the experiences and events in my personal life. More importantly, it provides me an avenue to reflect on my thoughts, enforce positive once, and analyse negative ones. Blogging is hence a very crucial and fundamental tool for one to advance his or her personal growth and development!

With that being said however, I think my past approach to blogging is wrong. Well, there is no right or wrong way to do it, but from what I see, my blogging style has been rather unhealthy. I realised that the way I usually post updates, is by doing a short recap of my day, plus a whole lot of heavy dosage of complaining and ranting about some topic in particular. That kind of stuff is just not what one should be doing for personal growth. As much as I hate being narcissistic, a personal blog should try to focus on self-reflection. Because if you keep complaining about others, it just means you have resigned to fate and believe that everything is caused by the incompetencies of others.

Rather, I think a healthy approach to blogging would be to reflect on yourself. What you have done/achieved, what mistakes you have made, and what can be done better in future. Only then, can we focus on growth and personal development. By looking ahead. SO! Next time you all see me writing a blog post to complain on rant about something, please do leave a comment below to scold me ok? Sometimes I can easily forget these things, and go back to my default emo ways. Change is difficult.

Conquering My Fear of Heights

Recently, I am on course for my work. Basically, you can think of it like an orientation package. 2 weeks of training, lectures, and team building events. So far, I find the lectures boring as hell, but the team building activities are really something else. We spent 2 days doing something like an outdoor adventure camp. I guess it is similar to what you would do in Outward Bound School (OBS)? A bit shiong, but quite fun one lah.

So what happened was that on the first day straight away was the biggest activities already. The first one, is called pampered pole. Basically, it involves getting us to balance, in pairs, on a shaky and unstable plank that is perched on a pole 7m in the air. It's crazy scary for someone like me with fear of heights. What's worse, after that we are supposed to jump forward from there to grab a chin-up bar that is suspended slightly higher and slightly further away from our platform. Crazy shit man!

Naturally, I did it in the end and I am still alive to write this. But it really is as the activity is called, a leap of faith. The only reason I could attempt it is because I didn't want to look bad in front of my peers. After that, the next activities was some rope obstacle course. This one NOT SO high up in the air. Oh I dunno, about 5m high suspended rope obstacle? But I tell you ah, after that jump, the rest of the obstacles became not much of a scare to me. It was just a challenge of coordination and technique to clear the obstacles. To which, I took my own sweet time. lol.

But really, after that one jump and the following activities, I feel changed as a person. Firstly, I realised how fucking unfit I am. So damn fat and not agile. Next, I also realized throughout the day, especially by interacting with peers, that for a relatively young person, I am not at all like young people. I don't act or behave like them. I am quite an outcast. On a more positive note, I also realised that I had conquered my fear of heights! It may not sound like much, but it really took me a lot of effort to muster up the guts and gusto to jump off that 7m high pole. It was honestly fucking scary for me. Like seriously. Hence, I am rather proud of that. :)

I Seriously Need to Get Fit 

Yes, as mentioned above, it had been reinforced to me just how damn unfit I am. I'm so fat it's not even funny anymore. At first, I thought that maybe I'm just a little bit rounder than others, which would make me like a nice huggable teddy bear. LOL. But now I really understand my situation. Jokes aside, it's only natural that girls would not fall for someone like me. As said in an article I read, if you can't even be fit take care yourself, how are you going to protect and care for others. This statement really struck me as like an obvious but crucial fact I missed. Being fitter not only helps your appearance, but improves health, and equips you to be better able to help yourself and those around you.

With that being said, it's not like I haven't tried at all. Seriously, trust me, I have taken multiple countless shots at trying to shape up. And I have failed each time, which makes it all the more demoralizing. It doesn't help either, that I don't have a motivating role model. My dad and his entire side of the family is obese, gee I wonder where my genes came from. Heck, even my sister whos is younger than me is so damn fat. My mom naturally encourages us by buying up lots of junk food to stock up, in case we are hungry. LOL. I thought that exercising more while studying was difficult, being so results focused. But now I tell you, working life even harder to find the time and energy for exercise. Everyday so shagged. I just wonder how people do it.

So, what I am doing now is to research on gyms in Singapore, and see if I can find a trainer or program to help me work out and lose all this baggage. Please, if any of you know of any or have good recommendations, please please leave them in the comments below, or contact me directly via the social network links on the left. Or if I know you, then just ask me out for a chat lah. We can go lim kopi. LOL. Anyway in the meantime, I shall start going downstairs my block for jogging. It has not proven effective in the past few times I tried, but I think it's better than nothing for now. At least until I get a gym program going. #determined

Young Man Needs to BE Young

As I said earlier, I came upon this realisation upon interacting with my peers, I realised that I'm quite abnormal. Actually, I already know this from observation over the years, but it really hit the nail home. The fact is, I don't go out much, I don't have many friends, and I don't go drinking or partying. I'm not your typical youngster. That's not to say I don't want to. I desperately want to be more social and interact more with people, make more friends. I just wish I knew how.

You see, I'm a rather socially inept person. I don't think I used to be like this when I was a kid, but after going through an all-boys secondary school, it became kinda of hard for me. Firstly, I rarely got any chance to interact with girls in general, and my sister doesn't count. But also, I rarely interacted with many people or went out after school. The reason why all that happened is a little complicated. Basically, it involved me going into a school without affiliation, and hence not understanding and adapting to the culture and thinking of the students there. In addition to that, or perhaps because of that, I did get bullied. But that's a whole other story. Hence, I became very reserved and careful, only interacting with a small group of trusted friends. And yeah, they weren't very social either. LOL.

The main point I'm trying to make, is that secondary school days are kind of your social formative days, and carries through further down your life. If you didn't pick up the necessary social skills, it's likely you will end up awkward and socially inept like me. But I'm not putting all this out to justify my actions. Despite all that's happened to me, and the hardships I'm experienced, I do still believe there is an opportunity for change. If there's anything those outdoor activities have taught me, is that I can conquer my challenges and change to a better me. In fact, I have tried! I started talking to the people at the course more normally already. Although, I haven't really started talking to the girls yet. Still not used to it lah... Anyway, regarding this social aspect or things to do or places to go to as a young person, I still need help. So, if you have any advice or tips at all, please do share with me!

Computer Games vs Real Life? 

I recently read some interesting article about why girls don't date gamers. While a lot of it is pretty subjective, and I do know gamers with girlfriends, I think it's still pretty relevant. The bottom line is, if I am always stuck at home in front of my computer, I am never gonna go out and accomplish anything. That's not to say I haven't accomplished anything on my computer, but it's just not the same level of interaction with people, as mentioned in the previous section.

The reason I play games, which I haven't told many people, is for escapism. To escape from all the pain and boringness of the real world, for a more interactive and fun virtual world. I think a lot of people play for the same reasons too. In the past, I have made some friends online. In particular, on MapleSEA I did make a few friends and added them on Facebook. But in actual fact, I have yet to meet them in person. So it's not exactly that computer games make you less social, it's just that the type of social interactions may not be as fruitful. At the end of the day, everyone just goes offline and go about their lives again.

My goal, is hence to play less computer games, and try to go out more often. Especially dota. It's a really skill challenging game that I enjoy very much, but it's all about fighting. There is hardly any chance for social bonding and interactions. I might consider playing MapleSEA again, just to make more new friends, especially younger ones. I used to play on a private server called ExtaliaMS, but global servers don't have a lot of locals so what's the point. I realised that if anything, I should start playing games for the express interest of being more social from my current position of stuck at computer. That is at least the step 1. Next step is actually meeting real people. LOL.

Conclusion? This post is so long it might actually warrant a conclusion. Though I haven't thought of any. I guess the conclusion will be my action plan. What I need to do from here. Step 1, is to start blogging more often, with the right mindset, approach, and type of post. I can't promise how often, but I am targeting at least 2 to 3 times a week? So watch for it, and email subscribe by clicking the icon on the left. Step 2, fucking get in shape man. I need to really sign up for the gym membership and start my workout regime. Step 3, is to be more open and social. I will start by going on to MapleSEA first, but hopefully I will be going out more too. I'm targeting to go out at least 1 day on every weekend. If you all want, please jio me out leh, I very free one, outside of working hours that is.

If you actually read all of that, I thank you for providing a listening ear to a friend in need. And, I really hope you can provide any recommendations and advice to me. Thanks. :)