Happy Chinese New Years!

Happy Chinese New Years! Hope everyone who celebrates this day had a good one. So we move from the year of the dragon onto the year of the snake. I'm kind of ambivalent about the whole thing because I'm a horse so my zodiac year will be next year.

I spent it in front of a computer (as usual) and then meeting up with family for food. I know that pizza and sushi aren't traditional Chinese foods but I'm not complaining. I think I've eaten enough rice for this lifetime.

I'll pass.

I'm going to keep this post short. I usually do for holidays and what not. Plus, I really don't have much else to say other than yay for red pockets. When you're as in-debt as I am, every bit of money is appreciated for whatever occasion.

In less happy news, I think I may have found out why I'm so sickly. You know, the collapsing lungs, the sleep apnea, etc. etc.. A doctor's appointment later this week followed by some tests may confirm this.

I'll see you guys Wednesday.

Obligatory snake picture.

End Midterms Round 1

I'm done my first set of midterms and I'm not happy. Well I haven't gotten anything conclusive back from the exams but I don't feel comfortable about anything. I've left both my Sociology and Linguistic's exams with that nasty feeling in your gut. Basically, I'm uncertain about way more stuff that I feel comfortable with.

Not fun.

Well I guess I'm somewhat to blame. Let's be honest here, I wasn't taking either class too, too seriously. Sociology has always been in my eyes soft Psychology so I don't respect it as much as I should. If there are any Sociologists reading my blog, I apologize. A little.

But asides from the assigned readings, notes in class I thought I'd be safe for it. I get the general idea of what the course is about.

NOPE. HERE ARE SOME QUESTIONS ON RANDOM STATISTICS WE MENTIONED ONCE IN CLASS.

Oh, and here's some questions and specific things mentioned only once in this paper we didn't talk about in class.

Hoo boy.

Ok fine, Linguistics. Round 2. Maybe it'll go better. You know, especially since he has practice exams and exercises for us online to do. Also, he told us in class that the midterm would be like the practice stuff.

So I go about doing these. No problem for most. Basically fill-in-the-blank, some multiple choice, translate a few things. He said there'd be some short answer but not too much otherwise.

3/4 OF THE EXAM IS SHORT ANSWER. HALF OF THAT IS DEFINITIONS. FORMAT BARELY LIKE THE PRACTICE.

Luckily I can still redeem myself for these courses. What with papers and/or secondary midterms in the near future.

Still, that doesn't make me feel any better with regards to the midterms already done. I apologize for not visiting everyone this week but it's likely to happen again. And when it does, know that I'm actually working hard and not passed out in some corner.

Projects Update

At the beginning of each month I've decided to give an overview of all the projects I'm working on. Whether it be updates, information on new projects, or letting one go, it's important to stay on track.

Also it keeps me kind of pressured to work harder on these things. Few things look worse than people who claims to be doing tons of stuff and only a few weeks later do you realize they stayed at home all day and looked at pictures of cats.

Or ridiculous pictures of dogs.

Project Pitch:

Yeah, I've hit a standstill with this one. 4 pitches, 3 rejections, 1 pitch still sitting in second level editorial. It's been sitting there for weeks and I'm not sure why the editors are ignoring it.

Unfortunately I haven't had time to research a new pitch to submit. It generally takes me about 2-4 hours to research enough content to submit one, and about another 1-2 hours to fix it up to the moderators liking so they can advance it to stage 1 editing. Also unfortunate is that stage 1 editing is where most my ideas go to die.

The most common advice I've gotten is that my ideas aren't outlandish enough, so I'll keep that in mind.

Project Derp:

Progress is going good in Phase 2. It's nice to see virtually instant proof that the work you're doing is actually getting results. That's one of the biggest motivators going for this project.

Unfortunately it's still not enough. I know I said I wanted to have moved onto Phase 3 of this project by the end of January but I realize that was unrealistic. I'd have to write ~1500 words a day for all of January to have achieved that. At my best I managed ~1000 words a day for a week and I was exhausted.

So at this rate I'm probably going to set my expectations to mid-March. Still need roughly 100 more hours of work to do before I'm satisfied.

Small estimation error on my part.

Project Vegas:

Oh boy. Good news and bad news. Quick recap, Project Vegas is me exploiting a loophole that Americans have in their system. Good news is that I've found the Canadian equivalent of said loophole. The bad news? I don't earn/spend enough to properly exploit said loophole.

Yet.

I have another reason to get Project Derp to phase 3. Don't worry, I'm not going to go broke or to jail for doing this.

Project Cold 2.0:

This a new project that I added. The idea was to expand on concepts learned from my Psychology classes, namely, persuasion. I needed somewhere to practice this AND I wanted to earn money at the same time. Unfortunately the original concept was borderline unethical and it wasn't working.

The new direction that I'm taking has 2 phases and I'm fairly optimistic about it. An added benefit is that I'm running around outside so yay, exercise.

At least, it'll be better once the snow melts.

Project Copy:

Another new project that I took up. This one is supposedly going to indirectly help all of the above projects. And if done correctly could help with other projects and have real world applications. This is also the only project at the moment that has cost me something and has no immediate monetary benefits.

But it's only an hour a day, practicing a specific technique for the next few months, 5 times a week, so nothing too strenuous. Will it work? I don't know. But for the amount of work put in for the potential skill gain, I'm willing to try it.


That's all for now. I've actually halted all work on projects for this week. Things will resume once midterms are done.

Incoming Midterms

Ok, enough with the depressing posts. I'm good. I'm pretty much back to normal, as normal as a newly single guy can get. Thanks again for the kinds words but I'll be fine now. I mean, I technically did have the month before we official broke up to be miserable.

But if you don't include that month, I'm mostly recovered after about a week. For a relationship of that length should I have been in the grieving stage a bit longer? I don't know. Some people might call me cold, I'd prefer to call it being efficient. There's nothing I can do to change her mind, there's no point moping about, it's time to move on. I've watched enough people break up, read enough recovery techniques, so I can literally accelerate myself through this mess. Yay for putting Psychology to use.

Some people may also consider me cold because I'm already passively searching for a new girlfriend. But my social sphere has rapidly shrunk, I barely know any friends or friends of friends, and I'm really picky. I'm not the kind of guy who'll go to a bar and randomly pick up women. Seriously, all the people I've dated and considered dating have had long, thoughtful conversations with me over a period of time.

It'll likely be months before I can find someone else.

Better get used to being alone in my cold basement room until then.

Onto business. As usual, midterms have reared their ugly head. But the load is light, I'm taking like 3 courses this term so we'll be only faced with 2 next week, Sociology and Linguistics 101. There's another Linguistics exam later this month but that'll be later.

In the meantime, Sociology is soft. Like, really soft stuff. I'll just need to read through the papers we've been assigned, memorize all the definitions, good to go.

Linguistics 101 on the other hand is learning a new language. I really need to crack open this stuff and start learning it. Making weird noises and what not.

And this is what I'll sound like while reading my notes.

And along the way I've grabbed and started yet another project. Project Copy is underway and will last me until the end of the term. Again, maybe I'm taking on too many of these, but if these keep me occupied and busy, so be it.

I'll give an overview of my projects and updates on Sunday, see you then. I may temporarily switch to posting every 4 days but we'll see how things go.

Not much to say

Thanks for the kind comments everyone. Much appreciated. I'll be honest, recovery from a breakup is going faster than I expected, or maybe slower, I'm not sure. I'm just trying to force myself out of this slump as soon as I can. I hate having emotions dictate any part of my life or decisions.

But it's not easy, I've never ended a serious relationship of this length before. As I've experienced the hard way, emotions tend to come in waves.

Like so.

I really don't have much to say, not that there is much to say. I'll be back to my normal self ideally by the end of the week. I just need a little more time.

For anyone else having a bad week or going through a rough patch, watch the video below. It's less than half a minute long but it makes me laugh everytime I see it. I'd love to pull this off one day, even though it's terribly immature and rude.

I'll see you guys on Thursday. I'll hopefully be feeling good enough to make a proper blog post.

Single Asian Male.

Ok, it's been long enough. I've held out for as long as I could but I think it's time I openly talk about this in the only place I can. There's a reason why I've been pushing myself to be so busy, taking on probably more projects than I can handle, working myself to the point where I'm passing out nearly every night. They were meant as distractions.

Theresa unofficially broke up with me a month ago, and as of this week, now it's permanent.

Somehow, that doesn't make it any less painful.

A younger version of me may have spiraled into depression, self-pity, blah blah but I decided to try and become productive instead. Anything to take my mind away from things. I spent as much time with friends or work as possible, whenever I had a spare moment. I wanted to be too tired to be alone with my thoughts.

I'll be honest with you, it doesn't really help, but at least I can say I worked hard. Apparently love causes chemical reactions in the brain that are similar to that of cocaine. So I've been going through drug withdrawal for a month now. It's not pleasant.

I haven't been this lonely in ages, I miss having a significant other. Someone to talk to at the end of the day, all that mushy stuff. I need my fix, and I'm not getting it.

Starcraft is not an appropriate substitute.

As for why, it's because she wanted to concentrate on school. Being a med student eats up a lot of your time and she felt it wasn't fair to me because she wasn't spending enough time with me. So she decided to break up to make it easier on both of us.

I was never a priority. School and work always came first. Which is understandable. But she eventually stopped making time for me because things got busy. And she did make an honest effort to see and spend time with me but would feel guilty when she couldn't balance everything.

She felt it wasn't fair to her or me. But she wasn't willing to change her study habits to devote more time to our relationship. Again, understandable but that doesn't make me feel better.

Ow.

Some of you may say, "It's just a girlfriend. There are other people out there. You only dated for what? 4.5 years? That's nothing." Keep in mind I'm only 22. I've spent a quarter of my life with this woman and it's done now. I'm not wallowing around in misery or looking for sympathy, but I won't deny that I'm in pain. I'm only human and while I can try to ignore my emotions, that doesn't make them go away.

I'm going to salvage what I can from this. I've learned to be a (hopefully) better boyfriend. We're still on friendly terms which is nice I guess? I'm trying to channel as much of this negative energy into productive work. I came out of this as best I could. As well as anyone could I think.

At least when I started this blog I had a companion, and now she's gone. Where do I go from here? I really don't know. I've been out of the dating game for so long. My social sphere has shrunk, I don't have time to meet new people.

As for how I'm feeling? Not that great. I'll recover, I just need more time. I really hate depressing posts like this but sometimes, a lonely guy needs to vent.

Max Productivity

As January comes to a close I want to see if I've worked as much as could have. Honestly, I think I have. At the moment my schedule consists on nothing but afternoon classes. And on most weekday evenings I'm working at my fast food job. With a schedule like this, I would have taken the mornings off, and just slept in. Maybe stay up later in the night to goof off.

Not anymore.

Ever since I've started seriously working on my projects I've been devoting as much time as possible on them. And that's where my mornings have been spent. Slaving away at a computer.

Unfortunately I can't be trusted alone at home. Knowing me, I'll end up going back to sleep in my nice warm bed. The University is not a good work environment either. Honestly, you can work somewhere comfortable and loud OR uncomfortable and quiet. Or even better, uncomfortable and loud.

But, thanks to a questionable handy coupon code I found, I've managed to snag some office space in the downtown area. Ok, it's not really my own private office, I can't afford that. I only have lounge and communal cubicle access. But there's a secretary who knows me by name and I have free unlimited complementary coffee, tea, and wifi.

Meanwhile, as I'm working on Projects Pitch and Derp there are two men in suits who have traveled from across the country. And they're standing maybe 3 meters from my cubicle discussing business deals.

Needless to say, I feel very out of place as I type on my laptop.

But that's good! It motivates me to stay on task and not run off to Reddit or take a nap. It feels like a busy office nearly all the time with people coming and going. Entering and leaving meetings. I'm chugging as much complementary caffeine as I can to stay focused. I'm in a professional work area, I need to maintain some semblance of productivity.

Then around noon I head back to Campus for whatever classes I have. Then it's off to work at my fast food job. Then I head back home to force myself to keep working on whatever it is I have left to do before I pass out.

Rinse and repeat.

Or morning or whatever.

It took a while to get into the groove of things but this week I've been churning out over thousand words per day, my most productive week yet. 500+ in the morning at the office, 500+ in the evening when I get back home.

It's been snowing really badly over here and that's driven away most of our customers at work. So to be more efficient, I've been typing up things between customers. I sometimes can get half an hour of nothing that I can use for myself. I might not have internet, but since when do word processors require that?

The reason why I'm pushing to get these projects rolling so badly is because I don't want to get distracted or demotivated again and have them stagnant. Plus, midterms will be starting soon and I'll have to start allocating even more time for my studies.

And replace my computers with a textbook.

I've also picked up another project which I'm dubbing Project Cold 2.0. It'll serve the same purpose as the older version but it's actually feasible and more ethical. Unfortunately, I'll be dealing with real people and I have to leave my room.

I've broken it down to two phases. I'll give more details about it later when I give an update on my projects. I start on Saturday so that'll be fun. I hope the snow melts by then.

And now if you'll excuse me, I have more work to do.