First blog of the year! There’s a lot of things in my mind right now and I feel like writing it down.
So it’s only been 29 days since 2014 started and I’ve been into a lot of stress already. When I was given the responsibility to handle my own team, I was shocked but very honored. Finally my bosses saw that I’m already capable of taking on leadership and trust me to make my own decisions on handling a project. But I never thought this task was so exhausting (and demanding) as I expect it would be. First of all, I’m not the best of having good social skills so it’s scary for me to tell people what to do and not thinking if they hated me for giving those tasks at them. I was always the one accepting those tasks and working on them, alone with my mind and just get into the zone of coding. But now, I have to think about a lot of things, like the state of our project and making decisions on how to improve our apps, thinking how to make the customers (and the bosses) happy, thinking about how to make my team do well and them not secretly decide to hate me for making them do things, and still allow myself to enjoy alone coding without thinking of those other things.
It’s crazy but it’s good crazy. I was comfortable with what I’m doing the past years but I think this opportunity made me step up my game and actually improve on other things that I never thought I’d be doing. I talk so much about it now and it’s only been less than a month. I’m hoping I’d still keep my sanity on this and actually get on with it. I actually like it and it’s something I like doing.
Also, I never thought I’d say this, but I recently decided to get more serious about going back to reading. I’m that guy who always have a book but takes months to finish it. When I was in my early years in college, I enjoy reading a good book and then start a new one. That was before the online games and social media, when it made me easily distracted because there’s a lot of things online than reading a book. So I made a promise this year to get back on reading and finish even at least 20 books before the year ends. For me, that’s a pretty big deal because I was never able to read that many in a year. I’m thankful to have friends that enjoy burying themselves on books and help me decide what to read for the challenge. I’m proud to say I’ve already finished two novels in just a month (Dan Brown’s Lost Symbol and Sidney Sheldon’s Master Of The Game) and I really enjoyed it. I’m still 10% to my goal but I’m happy with the progress.
Also, I will do my best to get back on running. Last year was a lazy year for me in terms of working out and getting back on the road. I promise to get back in shape and be more aware of my physical well-being.
I told myself time and time again that I’ll be a better person every year. I think the decision to not be scared to explore other things that I know I can do, taking on bigger responsibilities, working out more, and going back to the joy of reading helps me to be the person that I always desire to be. I hope it won’t scare the shit out of me and back out when a little shake-off happens. No pain, no gain, right?