Hugo's Blog

Whole new continent, whole new culture, whole new community, whole new phase in life (first full-time job)...

One of the most influential things I learned in helping my survival here, is to bounce back quickly. Obviously there are times that are rough. I think I experienced the first rough bits just under a year ago. Ugly rough is when those rough bits last multiple days: a week of struggles with myself in my new context. Rough patches still happen, but the thing that makes the biggest difference is that they no longer last longer than a day!

It took some work, I recall consciously trying to swing my mindset back into positive, and feeling success every time I succeeded. Faith restored! When another rough patch hits? When doubt plagues again? Another opportunity to learn to swing back to positive. Victory was recovering in only a couple of days.

Now victory is always recovering with sleep.

It feels like I can now wake up fresh and rejuvenated every morning — no matter how insecure and down I felt the previous day. A good night's rest, or even a not-so-good-night's-rest, permits me to forget the woes of the previous day and positively recommit to the second year's work (for now I'm thinking no more than a year ahead).

Somewhat recently (could have been September?) I recall two days' roughness back-to-back, but those were still two independent days, not one big blah. Yesterday (Tuesday) was extraordinarily rough as well, but today was wonderful again. (Even if I didn't feel productive enough.)

So there, the first navel-gazing post. There might be more of these, for example on the topics of which are the things that cause these rough patches, and on the flip side, what things makes me happy (and they might not be imported). Now you know what kind of post I was talking about in the previous post. (I have not yet stopped pushing them to Facebook, but I will. At the very least, I'll be selective.)