Vision Without Action is a Daydream

2:38am

There are a lot of things I would like to try. I continue to try to see if I can do some of those things, but something inside here [points to my chest] stops me at the last moment and sometimes, circumstance stops my choices from materializing. A heavenly coincidence is the best I can term it. Nevertheless, I’m lucky to have the universe influence the obstacles in my life like this.

On top of that, everyone including my family and those who know me well enough know that I am quite an impulsive person when it comes to wanting to do something. Some of you may not have experienced with that because I do have reservations depending on certain things. This part of me shows up coinciding ‘slow change’, which this entry is really about.

I’m a slow changer, regardless of my sometimes impulsive ways. Putting time and effort into the different aspects of my myself has always been continuous, but what really hinders that isn’t motivation per se. For the last five and a half years that I’ve taken up cycling and only recently an interest in road racing, there has always been one consistent thing holding me back, or rather, one consistent thing obstructing my mentality.

Since I was born, I had always been smaller than everyone in my age range. I sucked at most sports in comparison with the top 10% best of my grade. Though I enjoyed being a floor hockey goalie and badminton was fun before my bike accident. For team-related sports, I always felt I held people back and didn’t like that feeling. You can say that the most important aspect of playing sports isn’t to win, but to play together as a team and have fun while doing it. You’re right, but being me, I feel that I do hold the team back.

I stopped riding a two wheeled bike after my accident. It was not the fear of getting onto a bike and on the road again. It was simply circumstance obstructing my biking interest at the time. I was going through change at the time. After spending four months home-schooled, I went back to grade 10 becoming a bit braver and initialized character development – I guess that’s what I can call it. So I spent those next few years just going through various experiences unrelated to sports. It was a simple indulgence of pleasure, booze, and superficial conquest.

That business failure brought me out of it and I became timid comparitvely. I’m bold today because you have not seen me back then. Back then, it was me versus the world and rejection of any kind wasn’t a part of any calculation. I didn’t need to go for anything. It either came or it was trivial. However, I was an idiot. The biggest retarded idiot you would have ever met. Throwing me over the cliffside wouldn’t have been enough to knock some sense into me.

Well enough with that useless bit of information. ^_^

So in July 2002, I took my brother’s bike out for a spin in the country side. The feeling was quite invigorating. It was a sunny evening and a bit chilly. The bike was a sturdy Sears bike. It was friggin heavy mind you and oversized for me, but at the time, I did not know that and thought adult bikes came in one universal size. I remember in conjunction with Albert’s suggestions for weight training exercises, I did cycling at least three to four times a week. Over the year, that upgraded to two to three times a day, four to six times a week, and eventually I got so into it, that I rode seven days a week, once or twice a day. I found a new love and passion.

The problem was Winter. I rode my bike through snow. Rather, I pushed and pulled it through snow. WInter demotivates me because I can’t feel the wind against my face, or rather, I can but negative degree weather isn’t quite the same. However, the real problem was the lack of flow after my trips to and from Hong Kong. I won’t go into detail, but that was the problem.

In 2006, it was my best cycling year largely in thanks to Pat. Though it was mainly mountain biking, the rides to and from Vancouver were fun as well. I was healthy. I was having a lot of fun. I was free to do the thing I loved to do the most. Last year wasn’t as upbeat, again due to my trip to and from Hong Kong. Plus events last year put my cycling on the back burner.

I am a late boomer for everything I do, but I do start young. Just that the momentum is never enough to get me pass the initial hurdles.

I am not a competitive person, so you will rarely see me do any sports with others unless it’s hiking and camping. For cycling, I am very specific. Pat was my perfect match because he rode at a speed he was comfortable with and I knew that due to his own competitive nature, he tried to ride at the length he can match and exceed. This in turn forced me to keep up with him. The greatest thing wasn’t that though. The greatest thing was and is his laid back personality. He was and is reliable. Even if we got lost, we got lost together and through that calm chilled out duo, we always got out of anything without panic or anger. I like that sort of partnership.

Regardless of my passion for cycling, I have one huge obstacle that I cannot simply brush away. Cycling in my past was always stress relieving to a point, even when I got hurt, bruised and bleeding. However, no amount of cycling can get rid of stress from career stability related issues. Today, this is the biggest hurdle. Unless this aspect is taken care of, I don’t want to put serious effort into this.

I’m like that. When I do something, I want to put my all into it. Whether I get to start it or not is something different.

Anyway, I have to end this entry short.

4:29am

5:43am

Sometimes I wonder if I will ever get on a road racer and do my rounds up and down the freeway to and from UBC because one day, I want to climb the road up Cypress. While Pat, his friend and I drove up Cypress for a hiking trip, we passed by a road cyclist climbing up the road. It looked painful and difficult. I used to have the stamina but not much strength, or rather, I had the strength but not much stamina? Hmmm… I can’t reassess that right now. I just knew I could ride for a long time without stopping. I was still an early hybrid of everything which in fact wasn’t anything. If I were ever to become serious, I would work on my best riding talent. Whether that be a sprinter, climber, or downhill rider is up for challenging. At this point in time, I am nothing and there are many ahead of me.

I once had a road bike. It was green and slim and very light. I bought it second hand and to my inexperience… Well, let’s just say the result was that I was involved in my biking accident with that bike. To almost everyone who’s reading this entry, I know these words don’t mean anything to you, though you may be able to reflect upon aspects of your own life, but this is important to me.

As with my past and recent struggles, I learned that there are others that depend on me.

During my trip to Hong Kong, I contracted something which has only recently started to recover from. My most common and consistent thought was “I need to make sure I work a full year with my company to attain my shares, so if anything happens to me, my family can use those shares to help with their security in the future.”

My blinded right eye is a reminder that others depend on me and my choices can in turn affect others that rely on me to be dependable. So I stand alone and I choose this. Team sports that require hand in hand team work isn’t my forte, but you can rely on me to fill the role given to me in a team that requires only one winner.

A few things in my past experiences taught me that partnerships can only be as reliable as the individuals fulfilling their dispositions. In business, I can’t rely on the other to fulfill a mission if its our common mission split between the two of us. That might not make sense to you, but that means I can’t rely on someone who decides my fate. If I ever give my ‘fate’ to someone, it is because he or she is the recognized leader. If he or she wins, then I have fulfilled my role.

The other night, a friend and I talked about leadership roles and organizing a flow of things. He said that I make a good leader. I told him that I gave up that role a long time ago. If people looked up to me, that is because I have a higher goal and they simply are influenced by my single minded drive. They don’t really see nor feel what I see and feel. So even if I may not look up to the leader, I look up to his or her vision. Is that enough? No.

A vision was what I once had also. It was a grand vision that I cannot share with anyone here because no one can understand it, but there are ‘sacrifices’ to fulfill the criteria leading up to that vision. I didn’t have it in me. I still don’t have it in me.

You see, if I went into a race by myself and lost the race, I would be the only one losing and I can try again if I chose to. However, if went into a race as a part of a team, I cannot lose the race. Period. If I am a leader, I will need to rely on my team mates to boost me to a position of greater power. If my team mates cannot fulfill my needs and goals, then I lose.

So to clarify all of that, I chose to fulfill many roles alone because I found out that dividing roles up to my team mates wasn’t reliable enough. Thus my vision cannot be achieved. Mind you, obviously, it’s not that simple, but I’ll save you the details. Who really reads so much of my bullshit in the first place? ^_~

In my intimate life, I found that to be in a partnership, you have to compromise many things to make the relationship work. When you’re in love, you will naturally want to do things to make things work, but unless your partner is equally as strong or stronger, you can become unfulfilled and you could change to a stale unit. Changing for a positive interior and front is great, but there are so many details that need to happen and so many compromises that need to activate on part of your partner. You have to rely on your partner to upgrade yourself for the relationship to work.

Kristl said something the other night that made a lot of sense to me. In short, to change would be for yourself if you are by yourself even if you are in a relationship. That is very in-tuned with a cycling team rather than a volleyball or a basketball team. In a volleyball or basketball team, you rely on others in your team to help the ball move along. In a cycling team, you just have to make sure the leader wins. Representing that idea is what Kristl said to me. The leader is you. The leader is me. The leader is her and it’s him. It’s not we. It’s not us and it’s not they.

It’s true – there is no “I” in team work, but in cycling, even if we work as a team, ultimately, it is me, you, and him or her. Mind you, this is totally different from sex. Though now isn’t the place to talk about that. ^_~ However, on that note and relating to this, taking a ‘cleaner’ route with less casualness in my life makes everything else a lot ‘easier’. I crave it. I admit. I crave sex and random play. I adore the female body. I love touching and caressing and massaging a woman’s body. Even if sex isn’t involved, I just love the feeling of a woman’s curves and her shape. The thing is though, I find that leading a less casual lifestyle helps me in my working career conscience. It actually motivates me to initialize and work my best to fulfill a goal.

“Why is that?” I asked myself repeatedly. Right now, I thought about my time spent fucking my ex through the best and shittiest times. The sex was great but the time spent on her wasn’t. So maybe that’s what’s holding me back? A psychological obstacle that I am not fully aware of?

I guess, I want to pleasure. No, let me correct that. I want to pleasure and if I receive pleasure, it is a reward of my givings. I used to have sex on whim whenever we were around each other, and I knew that it was easy to receive pleasure from her, but it was very satisfying to see her being pleasured. So what I am trying to get at here is that I seem to do things and choose to do things from then onwards to give to something, rather than expecting some form of reward because a reward is not expected but granted.

That’s a part of where my self-blame expresses itself. Rather than blame others, I tend to blame myself for things even in partnerships because of this number one rule:

I CHOSE TO RELY ON SOMEONE ELSE when I can do the job on my own. If I can’t, then it was my choice to divide self-dependability onto someone else.

That’s not saying I won’t get mad at someone else. For example, if I paid an accountant to do my taxes on time and correctly, then I expect that I get what I paid for. However, rather than blame him or her for mistakes, I tend to either request a refund or work to find a way to solve the problem without forking more money into it.

Simply put: THERE IS NO POINT IN ARGUING which will further tension.

However, I will most likely get mad at myself if I asked my girlfriend to mail something for me and she forgot it. Why? Because I could have found time to mail the thing on my own, rather than rely on her. If she forgets, I tell myself, “Each person has their own faults and obstructions. I should have found time to mail it on my own. Thus the mistake would be my own if any.”

What a difficult path I’ve chosen to live by since high school. Change is so slow and over a short span, I can barely see change, but when I look behind me, that change is so long and gradual and it’s noticable. From here, it’s hard to see what’s ahead, but from here, I can see my past quite clearly because it’s always uphill. Treading up is difficult regardless, but looking back, I can simply say that it’s breathtakingly wonderful. I just wish that I know what’s ahead of me, so I can strive for it, rather than strive for a feeling.

Two major goals in life: 1) stable career, hopefully with my current and 2) serious road cycling. Everything else isn’t trivial, but they aren’t quite in range. Rather, maybe, distanced by choice.

7:01am