My feet feel light during my morning walk.
The thought of the park soon being covered with greenery makes me excited. The greenery of April and May has a sense of purity and youth, different from that of summer. While summer’s greenery feels cool enough to empty my mind, spring’s feels light and fresh.
My feet feel light, and so does my mind.
Despite cherry blossom season being in full swing, I don’t really go out for a picnic.
It’s not like I’m busy (but I am). It’s just that I’m not that into it. And I found a good cherry blossom spot in a park near my place. My husband and I went there last night, but it was too dark to see anything. So we tried again early this morning instead of our usual morning workout. We power-walked to the park and took a slow walk after we got to the cherry blossom spot. It’s as good as those famous cherry blossom areas. We might be able to see the flowers more closely if we visit Yunjung Road in Yeouido, yet this spot has its own merit and it’s not as crowded as it is there. After coming back home, my phone said it took about 55 minutes to walk 4.7km and recorded 6,000 steps. Not bad. Not bad at all.
Why bother traveling for cherry blossoms? We can just take a simple walk around the area. I feel blessed as I am fully enjoying this spring.
I got a call from a friend who was out for a walk during the flower-blooming season. After talking about this and that, the conversation led to the topic of learning English and Japanese. We talked about our learning methods and what worked for us and what didn’t.
It is a blessing to have a friend who likes learning languages. A friend with whom I can share learning methods and experiences of trial and error. A friend with whom I can plan to travel together someday and speak those languages.
It is a real blessing.
I realized something once again as I went somewhere by subway after a long time – it is one of the best places to immerse myself in reading.
It is a bit noisy, but with music looping in my ears, that surrounding noise can turn into a flow inducer. Having crowds of people around me can have a similar effect. Unlike on the bus where the constantly changing scenery outside the window can interrupt my concentration, I hardly recognize anything or anyone really if I stick my nose in a book (well, an eBook). That rocking and trembling of the train can give me a sort of calmness, and it would be the best environment if I luckily get a seat.
There can be a problem, though: this concentration-boosting environment for reading can make me miss my stop and take me to the final station of the train outside of Seoul.
Well, we need to get out of the city center from time to time anyway.
Whenever I face that feeling of being stuck while writing, I remind myself of this: Go for completion before perfection.
It’s better to build a habit of completion and move one step closer to perfection, rather than pursuing perfection and ending up doing nothing.
I don’t currently have the time and energy for piano (meaning I have decided to use my time and energy for things that are more urgent and important). Yet, I didn’t want to take the piano completely out of my life, so I started practicing it again. My goal is to play for one minute every night before going to bed. After the whole day’s tasks are done, I do some reading and around bedtime, I sit in front of the piano and play it. For a minute. Just a minute.
After a few days, I found a problem and that is that it never ends within a minute. I can practice the C major scale a couple of times in a minute, but I go over that time all the time. I play a bit of scales and small pieces, and it turns into 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and so on. This sneaky little piano takes away my sleep time little by little, yet I have decided to forgive it. I am watching you, though. Really watching.
My learning speed doesn’t seem to be very fast. I can’t really tell how those seemingly fast learners feel about themselves, but I feel that I am a rather slow learner compared to them. Well, what can I do about it? I have no choice but to go through something 10 times when others go through it once, and 100 times when others go through it 10 times. I can just immerse myself further and repeat more.
While enjoying every step of the way and cherishing every moment, I keep learning and going forward even though I am not as fast a learner as others.
The current state is not static.
The current state is always changing, and always will continue to change.
Everything is in a state of flow.
It’s been a while since I started doing a 2-minute squat every morning, and starting today, I raised it to a 3-minute routine (Yes, I am that hardcore). I don’t normally count the reps (and that’s why I use a 2-minute timer), but I counted them today to see how many times I could do in 3 minutes – it’s almost 100.
Well, 3 minutes pass really quickly (my thighs might disagree). While “100 squats every day” seems like a big goal, a “3-minute squat every day” feels like nothing. It’s something people might look down on, mocking, “Can you even call it a workout?” Yes, it can be called a workout, and it’s quite hard.
Though “100 squats every day” and a “3-minute squat every day” are fundamentally almost the same activity, the latter gives a much lighter psychological burden. It can even hurt your pride a little bit to think about skipping it. And that’s the essence of it all. Although I am worried about my thighs becoming too big and muscular, I will keep going for now. I am not gonna get elephant thighs, right? (Don’t even bother worrying about it).
I have sharpened my kitchen knives after quite a while.
I usually sharpen them once a month, but it’s been a bit longer this time for some reasons. Whenever my knives became dull, I used to nag my husband to sharpen them. Now, after I learned how to sharpen them through watching some YouTube videos, I do it whenever I feel like it. Although I am not sure how well I actually do this task, I think my knife-sharpening skill is pretty good since the knives I sharpen easily chop through carrots.
After soaking the sharpening stone in water until the bubbles stop coming out, I push the knives against the stone and they just glide smoothly. I take out all the kitchen knives I have and put them in the sink and sharpen them one by one. From a big Chinese kitchen knife that looks like I don’t quite deserve to use to a tiny fruit knife that’s as big as my palm, I sharpen them all and they are good for almost a month. Once I concentrate on the scraping sound and the sensations I feel through my fingers, unnecessary thoughts are gone. Here and now, there is only this knife making both rough and soft sounds at the same time. It is almost like a meditative experience.
I have finished sharpening them all again today.
Arranging them on the table gives me this pleasure and pride. Today, I am cooking curry with these knives.
