1st October 2021
There’s a saying that if you don’t take time out for yourself, your body will do it for you. That’s exactly what happened to me this week, and it wasn’t pleasant at all since it was the worst cold that I’ve ever had (thankfully, it wasn’t COVID, so at least I can breathe a sigh of relief whilst also coughing up a lung and having my ears blocked, along with only being able to speak in a whisper), which meant that I couldn’t focus on anything at all, no matter how hard I tried, along with the fact that doing business-related things were the last things on my mind.
However, I felt really guilty for taking time off, and I’m not sure if it’s because of what society says, or if it’s because I’m used to working all the time (on average, I work about 50 hours a week by working pretty much everyday by doing this stuff during the week (the hours vary, but I usually do around 6 hours a day on this stuff), and then working a part time job on weekend mornings (6am-2pm on Saturdays and Sundays) because I need money as well as some actual work experience), so no wonder why I find it hard to relax if I’m working all the time (well I like to keep my evenings free, but I’m not sure if that counts), as well as always having the feeling that I’m always behind with everything ever, no matter what I do, so maybe I need to lower my expectations a bit.
I guess I really did need that rest, although as I’m writing this, I’m still dealing with that nasty cold, and I’m still finding it hard to form a coherent thought, so if nothing really makes sense, it’s probably because of that. I think the main reason why I find it hard to relax (along with also feeling guilty) is because I don’t want to end up feeling sorry for myself because I’ll end up dwelling on it forever, and I want to focus on something other than feeling rubbish since that’ll make me feel even worse. I guess there’s a very fine line between taking care of yourself and feeling sorry for yourself, and it’s all too easy to cross that line.
One of the rubbish things about having this stupid cold is hallucinating more often, and I’m not sure what causes it since I had weirder dreams than usual (and I normally have weird dreams as it is, so that’s normal), along with feeling like a kid in an adult’s body, dissociating a lot more often (oh how I hate that), feeling weirdly spiritual for some reason (I guess that’s what being on the verge of death does to you), finding it incredibly hard to speak (not because of anxiety or anything like that, but because I physically could not speak) and just feeling a bit out of character for most of the week.
I finally got back to my senses (well as best as I could at the time) on Wednesday, but it already felt like I was behind on everything despite having to take two days off. I still found it physically hard to speak, but I had no choice but to just do it anyway (and I guess with colds, you’re not sick enough to take a day off, but you don’t feel well enough to do the things that you’d normally do, so you’re just stuck in the middle, grinning your way through it all whilst feeling like you’re dying at the same time), along with trying to at least get something done.
Later on in the week, I finally managed to make a start on things, and get some things done. It wasn’t the biggest thing that I did, but at least it’s a start, and at least I somewhat managed to make up for lost time by creating one prototype as well as determining my target audience, so at least I did something for the week. I also started a side project this week (well not entirely from this week) by deciding to do an electronic experimental music project/form a band since I found some oldish music I created earlier this year, and decided to release it (well, it officially releases in three weeks’ time, but it’s up for pre order now) just to see how it goes, also because I don’t want to sit on it forever (or worse yet, delete them so that they never see the light of day again because I spent time on them), so naturally, it made sense to create my first prototype for that side project.
I’m still working on creating the brand identity (for my side project rather than the business as a whole), but so far, I managed to design the album cover itself, come up with some logos, and design a homepage for the project, so at least I’m getting somewhere. The theme for the first album that I’m releasing is focused on the 90’s aesthetic (think 90’s hacker aesthetics, code everywhere, that kind of thing, although all the music on the album is wildly different, but that’s the whole point since I like to break boundaries in order to create new things, although it’s really hard to do, and also because this is an experimental album, so I can kind of get away with it). I also think that by starting this side project (and creating some prototypes to go with it) helped got me out of research hell, because I personally find it easier to make it up as I go along instead of over researching everything ever to death, because I won’t get anything done otherwise, so the secret is to just start somewhere.
So that’s it from me this week. Hopefully this silly cold just goes away on its own, and I can make a start on creating prototypes that actually work, as well as creating a roadmap so that I’m not just aimlessly doing things whilst running around like a headless chicken, along with making the business actually become a thing instead of it becoming a figment of my imagination, so that I can have something real that I can work with instead of just a bunch of abstract ideas floating around inside my head that are very hard to grab when you really need them.