Writing, Whining & Winning

"If you attach your sense of self to the success of the business you are on a path to misery..." Chris Williamson

This week's post is my fifteenth blogpost. When starting this journey I did not know how long it would last. I have surpassed all of my expectations. This writing has become a certain part of my routine. Some weeks I write every other day a little paragraph. Other weeks, like the week at hand, I start writing on Saturday while having some random keywords that I have thrown into my note-taking app during the week. I just want to demonstrate what I had as notes for this week:

• Holy Cow 15 blogposts? That's mad.
• Thu 2. Dec. morning full of klaxon. Loads of fun and swearing.
• First dissertation.

Then begins the writing process. When writing every other day said process is more feasible since once I start writing on a Saturday I seldom go to sleep before finishing my first draft. This being with or without preparation.

Other than the bullet points brought forward there was not much exciting this week. Last week I got my best prepa grade, this week I got my worst one so far. Last week I played good volleyball, this week I also played good volleyball. To sum it up: a usual week with its ups and downs that cancel each other out.

Now to the second bullet point: a morning full of klaxon. I will start by saying that it is not completely unusual to have noise during the night, but usually it is just drunk uni students stumbling home. The noise rarely lasts more than half a minute. To put things into even more context: Thursdays and Saturdays are the days I get less sleep than usual because I come back from my volleyball trainings at eleven. Okay now that we are all caught up let's go back to Thursday morning.

The first klaxon occurred and I thought of it as any other thing that will just pass on by. Slightly later the same sound. And then again, and again, and again. Then there was a break. I was drifting back to sleep. And then surprise, surprise: a klaxon of 10 seconds without break. That is when I jumped out of bed, opened my window and was ready to scream my lungs out. One of my neighbours bested me. The klaxons stopped. I climbed back into bed and curled up. As soon as I closed my eyes my alarm went off.

The reason for my ungodly awakening was that a car was trying to get out of a garage and some nice person had parked precisely in front of it, blocking any way out. My alarm went off at 7 AM and when I left the house a few minutes before eight the car was still blocked.

On Saturday I wrote my first ever dissertation. That's no joke of a task. The structure is very strict and it is extremely easy to go off route. When discussing the writing method in class the teacher said "Oh well in three hours you do not have time for much, so only five to seven pages." I had never written that much before in so little time. I am proud to say that on Saturday I managed to write five pages of pretty coherent text.

The following day my volleyball team played the league's third best team. I got playtime in two sets and I did very well smashing 3 points down and one even into the 3 meter space. We won the game three to zero. This meant that we overtook them and are now third in the league!

For the past few weeks I have been listening to Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal. It discusses how people who have achieved something like building a following, a company or even an empire got to where they are. I really enjoy topics related to keeping balance and staying present while still putting in the work. Episode nine was the one that really got to me. The guest in said episode is Chris Williamson. They discuss this idea of being stripped of all achievements and titles. Once that is done they suggest you ask yourself if you still like the person you are and whether you believe to still be worth something to the world and your close ones. Needless to say I had to reflect on that for a while.

That is all, see You next time!