Good morning!
Happy Super Sick Monday!
I am disappointed that the Seahawks won in our home, but I am super happy for Sam Darnold. His story of resilience is inspiring. Despite everything going wrong, you got to just keep believing in yourself, showing up for your myself, and keep moving forward. It is not a matter of "if" you will win, it's "when" you will win. God never abandons, and his work is never finished. I would put a clip or highlight here, but I have not been awake enough to doom scroll to find one so here's a classic verse.
Romans 8:18
"I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us."
We have officially crossed the midpoint of the quarter, and are now in Week 6!
It sucks that there will be no more NFL, but Olympic play starts Thursday, World Baseball Classic and March Madness in March, playoff hockey in April, and then World Cup. There's a lot to look forward to as a sports fan, but that's not the only thing keeping me going. There is only 7 more weeks until I go back to Japan! This is my motivation and one of the few things keeping me moving forward.
Good news: I am officially cleared to participate in physical activity again. I can go back to training at the D1 facility and REC center. These last two weeks of doing nothing were brutal, but necessary. My body needed the rest. I got on the Kyoto University Ice Hockey team too. I just sent the team an Instagram DM, and they said, "sure." It's crazy how the game is taking me to a foreign country, and I am bale to play there. Glory be to God!
Last week, I had an engineering midterm and a data science quiz this week. When I was studying for the engineering midterm, I thought I was so prepared, breezing through the practice exams, but when it came time to take the exam, the work simply did not get done. I made some silly avoidable mistakes, and there were questions I did not know how to do or where to start. I am just praying partial credit gives me a B+ to an A-. Working so hard to not get the result sucks, but I have to remind myself:
Just have to put the right foot in front of my left and keep moving forward. Data science quiz was pretty hard, but I tried and studied my best. I was completely puzzled on one question that my colleagues said was pretty free, which rubbed me the wrong way. I do not have imposter syndrome, but I get frustrated when I am not on the same page as my peers. 13/20, I am livid, I made the same stupid errors. Maybe I should have gone to Spokane for the PAC-8 playoffs. Granted, I could not play, I still could have showed up for the team. What this midterm season is teaching me is that no matter how hard you work or study, winning is not guaranteed. I can look at it in two ways; give up and say, "What's the point?" or keep on going and hope I get lucky. I am living off that hope factor now 😂. The lord shall deliver me from this pain.
Some good academic news, I got an 11/12 on my ECE35 (course I failed) quiz. I could have gotten full credit if I did not make a silly error under pressure, but it is what it is. Last quarter, I got a 5.5/12 on that quiz, so safe to say I came along way, but there's more work to be done.
Last week was tough, but I still have one midterm on Wednesday. After that, I have a little grace period of peacefulness, then into the final stretch. With my hockey season ending, I do not have any more late Tuesday night practices or games, so I am pretty happy about that, but hate knowing I can not lace up the skates for the next five-weeks. Even though this season or this school year was frustrating, there's something about skating, feeling the breeze, and cold air that calms me. To combat this, I registered for boxing-lessons. Two times a week, Tuesday and Thursday from 12-1 PM, right after my lecture. I think this is good and healthy for me. You know after a bad exam, you just take it out on the bag, but that's not the only reason I registered. After watching a lot of Rocky, Creed, and Hajime no Ippo, I want to find the answer to:
As Mike Tyson said, "Everybody got a plan until they get punched in the mouth." Metaphorically, I have been consecutively getting punched from getting cut on teams, rejected by every other UCs, failing my first quarter, not producing this season, getting concussed, etc. Enough is enough. I need to learn how to hit back, and stop doing the bare minimum of just showing up to life, and getting these punches thrown at me. My first CAPS or therapy session is tomorrow, I never thought I would talk to a shrink, but who knows the shrink could be my Sean Maguire. I expect the shrink to ask me some baseline questions of what my goals are, why I want the things I want, etc. My answer to those questions would probably have to be I want to prove it to myself that I can do it. Even in the rut I am in now, my conscious tells me I am capable of accomplishing so much more, and no matter how persuasive my low self-confidence tells me to quit, I can not. I have to prove it:
With trying to prove it, I understand I need to embrace the process. It's a marathon not a sprint, you know. I do not really know how to tie the clip below into what I am writing as it is pretty much verbal diarrhea, but I think this is pretty important. I watched this video after my midterm on Tuesday, it was definitely unproductive and a bone-headed decision, but this is a bar:
As I am writing this log, I am debating whether-or-not I should see a shrink, but then again, I do not take my own advice, and it would be nice to see where I am at. Even though, I am ashamed of myself for getting to this point, I accepted that I need help. I am sick of being Charlie Brown, and not proving anything to myself. My confidence needs to come back, I need to come back. Maybe I start making videos again, I don't know though, part of me wants too, but the other part always talks me out of it. We will see what happens.
Also, I put a new section to the website, "VIDEO OF THE WEEK," it is pretty self-explanatory. I did not watch that many videos on YouTube besides Togi, but Jelly Roll takes the cake here. It is unfathomably inspiring how he carries himself around, got into such great shape, won these awards, and preaches the Gospel. Here is my favorite Jelly Roll video though:
I think I am going to wrap it up the log here. I got to lock in for my last midterm of the quarter for Data Science (Week 6 midterm 🤦♂️). One more midterm, then it is a peacefulness for a week. I am headed to LA for the long weekend, pretty excited about that.
See you next week!