1st August 2012: 3 months after the start of my new life.

 

‘What are you doing now?”

This has been the most frequent question I’ve been asked, closely followed by “What are you doing now, exactly?” and far ahead of “How’s the feet? Or was it the knee?”.

The answer changes depending on who’s asking:

• “I’m an online recruiter”
• “I’m a musician”
• “I have a car rental”
• “I’m starting a business”

All the above are quite true, actually.

 

I’m working on Daniele

The first steps into my life of freedom and self-employment were all about creating structure an mindset.

As I wrote already in the past when I started my blog personal challenge, the very thing that makes a difference between me and the people I admire the most is the self discipline.

And if you work on your own, you need a lot of it 🙂

So I decided to start every working day with some physical activity.
The beauty of starting the day exercising is not the improvement in your condition, but rather and more interesting for me the amount of energy that gives for the rest of the day!

The most common activity so far has been going for a walk in the fantastic Vondelpark (I’m not allowed to run because of knee, yet) but no, I’m not an early bird.

Early mornings are for early sleepers. So as long as I get enough sleep, I don’t care of going bed early…

After exercising I prize myself with breakfast. This is actually a technique of self-conditioning: have you ever hear of Pavlov’s dogs? I’m one of them.
With time my body will adapt to the fact that the breakfast is a reward for the morning training, and life will hopefully continue.

Other things I’m working on:

• Creating a weekly schedule with the tasks I have to complete (not that original) and stick to it (very original).
• Finding a balance between READING new things and DOING to experiment them.
• Drinking more water during the day.
• Eating healthier but at the same time cheaper food.

But having say that, I also gave myself the fist 2 weeks of vacation to join Vero in Vancouver and Seattle, plus some long weekends here and there.

 

Results results results

I think this society focus too much on results.
I personally focus on my saving account and on enjoying the process, so I’m proud to announce to the World that all my attempts to generate enough money to pay my bills have failed so far!

But Rome wasn’t built in a day so I continue my learning process, trying to stay positive and remembering when I started Salsa and could not understand which feet move first.

I really like the idea I’m trying something completely different and developing a new skill set, so about the results…. fuck it!

 

Knee

5 months after operation, knee is doing pretty well!
The volume of the muscles is coming back and I started running during the physio training.
I can dance quite freely, as long as I avoid turns on left leg, and I’m waiting for the knee to extend more to go back to some Yoga practice.

Only annoyance is the low-back that hurts when I try to stretch apparently due to the compensation that the muscles are enduring for me walking around with 2 asymmetric legs.

 

That’s it for this update, it should be clear what I’m doing, right?