Little Update

I haven't been taking too many pictures as of late, because I haven't been to that many pictureworthy places, but here's a few from 2 events I went to recently:

Roppongi Hills Tower

These are from an event in the Roppongi Hills Arena where a good friend of mine was a guest speaker.

The guy in front and the one on the far right I met that night. The remaining four are me and three friends with me being the 2nd from the left.

Awesome picture that was taken after a friend did an awesome, superinspirational presentation on the importance of learning English for Japanese people.

Besides these 2 events, I've mostly spent time with friends, met a few cool new people and I recently got a chance to play futsal. I was the only person spending 10+ hours per week in the gym, so it was a little onesided, but I had a ton of fun nonetheless!

Business is still going smooth. The application is being made and should be done in about 5-6 weeks. The accompanying website is nearing completion aswell and will probably be done in about a week or maybe 2 tops. So pretty soon it's time to get the marketing strategy together. It's about time things would get a little busier, because I've been relatively bored as of late.

The gym's still going great aswell except for a week I had to take full rest, because of a shoulder injury. It seems to have fully recovered though so I'm back at it now. Even though I'm doing a very intense 6 days/week 2 hours/workout program, it's pretty relaxing for me. I've noticed that it takes very little mental effort on my part to complete the training, because I've become completely numb to the pain it takes to push my muscles to failure. The only moment that's actually hard is the cardio, where I can push really hard, which is probably why cardio has become my favorite part of my workouts.

I'm also toying with the idea of doing the Sea to Summit challenge in 2014. It's a yearly event where participants go from the Sea in Japan to the top of Mount Fuji in 24 hours. They start at dawn and reach the peak 24 hours later so they can see the sun rise. It's a 48KM hike with an average incline of 5% and at the end you have to climb Fuji to the peak.
The only issue for me is that I don't deal well with not sleeping. On top of that I kind of like a physical challenge so I'm thinking of doing it MUCH faster in like 13-14 hours, so I can get back down and quickly get to a bed and get a good night's sleep. It seems doable... somewhat, but INSANELY hard. Which sounds like fun to me, so I may decide to go for this.
The event is in July so after I finish my gym program in sometime March I may start training like a madman and try to do this. Should allow me to cross of another thing off of my bucket list while I'm at it which is running a marathon. But I'd want to run it in a good time, like sub 3 hours 15 minutes or something sounds like a nice target to aim for. Exciting stuff!

I also spent a lot more time thinking about life and happiness. I've come to understand parts of myself better and learned a few valuable lessons. On top of that I seem to have somehow fixed something that had been bothering me for a long time(maybe too early to tell for certain), although I'm not sure how I did it. However, thinking all of it over... none of the thoughts really seem significant/interesting enough in retrospect to share. I'm sure I'll blog about this subject again at some point in the future though.

Last but not least, I recently ate this delicious Unagi:
Best Unagi I've ever had

短期幸せの研究

This is the Japanese translation of my last blog!

このブログは九月のブログの続きであると言える。九月には何で偶に落ち込んだかを調べてた。
http://frankiestyn.blogspot.jp/2013/09/dissecting-my-own-psyche.html


最近何か気に成って来た。どうすれば将来に幸せに成るかにずっと気を付けてる。どうすれば将来に幸せに成るかそんなに複雑ではない。俺は何を達成したいかゴールにして、そのゴールを遂げる為に頑張る。

最近どうすれば短期で幸せを受けられるかに気を付けて来た。一日中嬉しいっていう事。凄く嬉しくて気合が入ってる期間もちょっと悲しくて気合を持ってない期間もある事に数ヶ月前気付いた。嬉しくて気合が入ってる期間を好むので、原因を調べようとし始めた。
ちなみに最近気付いたにも関わらず最近始まった事である訳ではない。プロポーカープレーヤーとして働いていたとも念がこう振れてた。もっともっと振れてたかも。あの時にポーカーの結果と結構親しく連係されてた。この理由で大体の人にプロポーカープレーヤーに成らないのをおすすめする。自分の幸せは百パーセント管理を出来ない事に依って振れるんだね。
さて何があってるかを調べ始めたら、何か気付いた。栄枯盛衰は世の習い。変わらないって思うくぜに、どうして偶に気が入ってないか原因に対して何かを発見出来ると思った。自分の人生を観察すると全然分からないから。俺の解決は短期幸せの研究！

 最もプライベート部分を除く

毎日の終わりには当日を一から五まで格付けして、この下に書いてある事を記す。

-なんである格付けをした。

-当日の最高の瞬間。

-当日の最低の瞬間。

-し直せるとしたら、何を変えるか？何を別にするか？

発見したことがある：

１）友達に会うとたいてい嬉しい。普通の日と違うし、交流が好きだし。

２）非生産的とか時間を無駄にするのが大嫌い。他の事をしたかった気持ちは良い気持ちではないから。

その上、数回はある事件の所為で数日から一週間位まで嬉しくなくなちゃった。かなり複雑でそんなに多くの事件をまだ書き記してないんだけど、絶対に気を付けて続ける。

一昨日と昨日はなんとか結構面白かった。良い日に成るはずだったけど、気がまあまあだった。理由は良く分からない。この間肩を怪我したので、運動を出来なかったからかもしれない。運動をするのが大好きだし、日課が変わったし。

他の気付いた事は今嬉しいかどうかに気を付け過ぎるのが自分を嬉しくなくする可能性。人生は永世じゃない事を分かってて、全部の瞬間を楽しみたいけど、そんなに気に成ってたらあまり楽しめない。リラックスすべきかな。

ここから人生の目的について説学出来るが、何れまたする。

他の資してる要素もあるかなと思ってるけど、このブログで相談しない。最も親しい友達はちょっと分かるかもしれなく、一人の人は絶対に分かってる。ちょっと複雑で俺もちょっと分からない事だ。

 是非研究をし続ける。どうして将来に幸せに成るかよく分かるんだけど、短期幸せについてもどんどん分かる様に成ると素敵だと思う！

日本語に翻訳出来た！！！ \(^o^)/

Short Term Happiness Research

(This is somewhat of a continuation of a blog I posted in September, where I was trying to figure out why I was feeling a bit down/sluggish sometimes)
http://frankiestyn.blogspot.jp/2013/09/dissecting-my-own-psyche.html


I've been thinking about something as of late. I've always paid a lot of attention to doing things that will lead to an awesome life in the future and thus hopefully longterm happiness. It's not too hard to know what to do to achieve longterm happiness and (although somewhat harder) it's not that hard to actually achieve longterm happiness either. I simply set goals I want to achieve and I work hard to get there.

Something I've been paying more attention to as of late is day-to-day happiness. Being happy right here right now in this moment. A couple of months ago I started to notice and pay more attention than before to the fact that I'd have periods where I was really happy and motivated and periods where I was not as happy and motivated. Prefering the happy and motivated periods, I set out to try and figure out what was going on.
A little footnote is that although I recently starting paying more attention to this, it's certainly not something new. I had swings like this just as much if not way more as a professional poker player where they were closely linked to how well I was doing in poker. Which is why I wouldn't recommend the professional poker lifestyle to all that many people, because your happiness is somewhat dependant on something that is not 100% in your control and it can be REALLY hard to deal with.
Anyway, when trying to figure out what was going on with my moodswings I realised, there'll probably always be ups and downs, that's the way life is. Nonetheless I felt like I should be able to figure out some causes as to why I was feeling a little down sometimes, because when I take a step back and look at my life I don't see why I would ever be down, unless maybe I am ill and in pain. So what I decided to do was, conduct research on my day-to-day happiness. Here's what I did:

 I had to cut out certain extremely private parts

At the end of each day before I go to bed I rate each day a number from 1 to 5 and write down:

-Why I rated it the way I did.

-The very best moment of my day.

-The very worst moment of my day.

-What I'd do differently if I could relive the day.

I've been doing this to try and gain some insight in what makes me happy on a day to day basis and why my moods have been swinging. There's some days missing here and there. A bunch when I fell seriously ill at the start of October and then about a month's worth when I was abroad. I really wish I would've done it during my travels too, because it could've given me valuable insight. A couple others recent ones are missing too. Mostly unproductive and kind of unhappy days where I didn't bother filling it in. The 18th of November(didn't fill it in) is the only day so far I'd rate a 1 in the past 3 months, although being very ill on the 3rd of October came very close aswell.

Overall I definitely think I am seeing some trends:

1) Whenever I meet with friends I generally have a good day. These days stand out from other days. They're not so monotomous and I guess I also just really enjoy socializing.

2) Being unproductive and wasting time pisses me off tremendously. The feeling I'd have liked to have done other things with my precious time is not a happy feeling.

Also I'm not sure yet, but there's been a few events that caused me to be unhappy for a couple of days up to a week. These are too complicated and I don't have enough of them yet to draw any conclusive evidence, but I'll definitely keep on monitoring these, because I think they may be the(or at least a) key to what I'm looking for.

Yesterday and today have also been quite interesting. For the most part they had all the ingredients to be good days, but overall my mood has been so-so. I'm not exactly sure why. One very possible cause is not being able to workout. I still have the muscle in my left shoulder/upper back that needs to rest for a couple of more days. The muscle doesn't bother me much during the day so it's not the cause of unhappiness, but it's not 100% yet so I couldn't go to the gym. This may have caused me to be less happy, because I enjoy the gym and because of a change of routine and maybe slight lack of structure.
Another thing I realised today while I was analyzing my own psyche on the train is that possibly paying so much attention to whether I'm happy or not is not good for my happiness. I guess I realise life is not forever and time is valuable and I want to consciously enjoy as much of it as I can and I don't want it to be over before I realise it. But doing so and focussing too much on enjoying things may make me enjoy those very things less. Just going with the flow and relaxing a bit more may be a good thing here.

I could probably go on a rant about the meaning of life here, but let me save that for some other time.

One other possible contributing factor is one I won't share with you in this blog. Some of the people closest to me may have some sort of clue what I'm talking about and 1 person knows me so well that this person knows without a doubt what I'm talking about. It's a bit complicated and it may or may not be contributing. I'm not sure.

Anyway, I'll keep up the research and hopefully learn even more things about what makes me happy on a day-to-day basis. I feel like I have the long-term happiness thing down quite well, hopefully I can master the short-term, day-to-day happiness aswell!

I was planning on translating this blog into Japanese aswell for practice, but I've already spent a decent bit of time on this. I may translate it tomorrow or something, because it's bound to be a good exercise. May take me quite a while though! But 哲学 is always interesting, so I may give it a shot.

Quicky

This'll be a quick one, because I don't feel like I have that much to talk about. Reason being that I haven't been up to all that much as of late. Especially as far as business goes, I haven't had to do any work on the application. Development is coming along nicely with no hick-ups, so it's just a waiting game. The accompanying website has had hick-ups, the guys doing it have been bug-fixing for over a month now and every time they fix one there's 3 others that pop up. It feels like the coding is absolutely terrible and thus I'm going to have the same team who's building the application build a website. Fortunately enough a fairly small project, so now that it's in the hands of competent people it should be done pretty soon.

The lack of things to do has made me pretty unproductive. I'm not 100% sure, but I think I work more efficiently, harder and am happier in life when I am busy and have a ton of stuff to do. Maybe because I have to work harder to get everything done? Fortunately enough the JLPT N2 test yesterday kicked my butt and made me realise how terrible I still am at Japanese, thus I got motivated again to work my ass off at Japanese and many other things. I refocussed on my goals and what it is I want to accomplish in the next 5-10 years and hopefully that will keep me busy the rest of the year and next year.

Gym's been going fairly well, until sometime last week when I stretched/injured a muscle in my left shoulder/upper back. It's nothing serious, but kind of annoying. I thought it was mostly gone yesterday and completely gone today, so I went to the gym today, but 2/3 of the way through my workout I felt it again, so decided to be safe rather than sorry and skip the rest. I'll take tomorrow off again and maybe Wednesday aswell. Don't like it, but not much else I can do.

Last, but not least I recently visited Tokyo's #14 restaurant and one of Japan's top 50 restaurants and blogged about it in my food blog. Here's the link:

http://tokyofoodjournal.blogspot.jp/2013/11/1-michelin-star-french-food-at-one-of.html

That's it, I hope to get more done in the next few weeks so I have more to blog about next time!

Here's a picture of the first prototype of the mobile app: