managing stress in a fast-paced world

Babies are always cute!

I ditched the other guys today for lunch and headed out to the farmers market. At first I walked to the right, the strawberries looked good… really good. Only $7 for three baskets. Then I walked to the left, $6 for SIX baskets. I had to have them. I’m eating them now and they are sweet too.

I finally bought it, my early birthday present…

Greg was telling me that Cheryl just didn’t understand the enjoyment of fishing… I was reading something and came upon a quote which pretty much sums it up for me.

“The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope”.  ~John Buchan

Today has been just one of those days… a long story, so I’ll just get to the point. Last night I caught wind of an upcoming coupon for a $1,500 Dell computer for $750. Only thing is it wasn’t valid until after 6am today… so I woke up at 5:30am and took a shower, before leaving for work I ordered the Dell, nice case, Windows MCE, 3.2Ghz, 512MB, 160GB, Dual TV tuners, 17″ LCD & free printer. It’s going to become my new bedroom PVR.

So after I got to work, my co-workers finally got in after a few hours. John got there first, we chatted a bit and then I asked him if he needed a new computer because I just got this awesome deal. I told him the details and he was pretty interested, but eventually I think he needed to run it by someone else first. Later Mike showed up and I told him I ordered it… he doesn’t need a new computer so we all went back to work.

Eventually I took a break and looked at the deals again… I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, I asked Mike to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. It was sort of comical the conversation we had, counting the number of LCD’s and CRT’s we had. I went ahead and ordered another one… because having two just isn’t enough. Later I cancelled that order because I found yet another way to save more $, and because I found the deal for my camera at the same time.

So today has been a bit of a shopping disaster, at least I was able to get my new PC, I’ll use it with the 20.1″ LCD’s I already have. To offset the costs I’m going to be selling some old stuff, older LCD’s, ReplayTV’s, and probably my old desktop PC.

Almost forgot to mention today was another employee apprciation day. I had a lay in the morning and the company bought us lunch. I had to leave early to go to the DMV and renew my license. Although it took an hour, I passed the written test and got a new picture taken… when the lady at the counter asked me if I was the same height and weight I just said yes, I wonder if that’s gonna come back and hurt me later.

And so here I am at Cafe Aroma waiting for John to get home so we can go play with his new camera which he got today. I’m going to try and make the rest of today more relaxing, more calm, and not shop anymore.

Someone asked me what I wanted for my birthday this year and I feel really bad because there isn’t much that I want that is cheap enough to be a gift from someone. This makes me think that you can tell alot about someone by what they buy or want to buy. So I’ve decided to publish my wishlist, not that I’ll buy all this stuff, maybe someday… I do think it says something about my tastes and may give insight into the type of person I am.

I just ate one of these from The Cheesecake Factory for lunch, Stormi my co-worker said to me as I was leaving the kitchen “wow, he eats like me” then 10 minutes later when I return with an empty plate… “you’re DONE?”

The plan was simple, get there and fish the incoming tide. We had a nice Cabezon which Greg caught on the first cast out… almost immediately. Then a seal showed up and all the fish went away. We lost the tackle on just about every cast out, it was unreal.

I spent part of saturday afternoon in Redwood City at the BIAC (Bair Island Aquatic Center). We joined DieselFish in one of their practice sessions. It was fun, I didn’t enjoy the rowing so much, but getting out an into the water was nice.

Afterwards I picked up John and we went over to Mel Cottons to check out the Fishing Expo they had over the weekend. Once finally back at home, we had so many people over and the weather was so nice, I decided to have a BBQ. It was good to cook, lately I’ve been eating out alot which I don’t feel so good about.

It was a strange night, John announced he had ordered a Canon 20D, so the whole night was spent playing around with cameras and lenses. It’s funny because out of 5 guys, we have 3 different brands of camera. Mike, John and I use Canon, Nelson has a Nikon, and the other Mike has a Pentax.

Here’s Mike after dinner, preparing for the fishing trip! Reading Reports!

And John’s 10 second photo of Leeya’s orchid.

I often find myself questioning if I’m really happy, I can’t help but think that there is more to life than this. This meaning really work and life at home, it’s not that work is so bad or my life outside of work is bad, there really isn’t a whole lot to complain about. It’s just I can’t help but think that maybe this is not what I am supposed to do, and until I am doing the right thing I’ll probably always feel this way regardless of what I’m doing. This probably doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, the best way of describing it is that I am just not satisfied with life yet, as if something is missing but I don’t know what it is.

At one point I thought it was a home, but the more I think about it, a home is a big responsability. Once you own a home, you are locked into working and earning income to pay for that home. Gone is the luxury of taking extended vacations and not having to work.

The way in which I deal with feelings like this is by telling myself that everyone is in the same situation. Maybe not everyone, there are those rare few who are doing what they truely love in life. They probably look forward to going to work in the morning and can spend their free time working because to them it’s not work.

That’s what I want, to do what I love and make a living off of it. I can’t say I’m doing that now… This has always been my problem, and that is that I have many interists and can be very good at many things in life. It makes me wonder if by turning a hobby into a career, you eventually grow tired of it and want to move onto something else.