No Days Off.........................

Being a second generation African English citizen my parents are traditionally always at work due to having to put a roof over their sons' heads. As a young child I actually remembered being looked after by various relatives and family friends as a favour to my parents or them asking me to be a 'responsible child' and look after my brother. I will never forgive my selfish thoughts as a child thinking my parents didn't want me or didn't care to be in my company. I'm an adult now and as someone who seemed resentful of my parents seemingly natural affinity to work it seems as though the tables have turned. As the reality gradually dawned on me that I had to earn a living along with maybe a skewed perception of my own self worth; ironically I've had less time for everyone else. DON'T get me wrong, being goal orientated has allowed me to improve my lifestyle, albeit what about my family?

I'm afraid interaction has been reduced to hi and byes and 'No days off is a code live by something my favourite rapper has repeated emphatically  to the point where it has become my own personal mantra. Make no mistake, it's given me an astounding sense of self motivation but it's possible I may have taken it a bit too seriously to the point that I've considered indulging in the age old habit of having a routine drink after work. As I say this I wanted to refer to a lyric I particularly related to, from a recording artist called Isaiah Rashad.

                                    'Finna to be a workaholic, an alcoholic or somethin'

I finish this particular article by saying don't work yourself to the point of needing a vice and spend time with your  family.......PEACES

Guard your heart.

So friends, family, lovers and even colleagues are in contact with you all the time. These are all social entities that we can't avoid, but what I realised is that we must be wise with how we invest our emotions in any of them. I personally have been guilty of opening up to quickly or 'loving too hard'. The problem is betrayal  or disappointment can happen to anyone, infact I suffered first hand at the hands of a girl I used to date and someone I still consider a very good friend. I'll leave it to your intuition to decide what happened but its safe to say it was definitely a painful experience.

And its not only my own trials, In the last seven months I've had three of my friends suffer dramatically from severing ties with people that they either loved or thought of highly.

My friends uncle and I actually debated quite thoroughly on the subject. Eventually he told me people come and go; they love and hate, but always remember to guard your heart..

Family the best competition or the motivation...... Or both?

As youngsters my brother and I were probably the most disagreeable kin you could ever come across. Our parents could not decipher our animosity towards each other to the extent where he managed  to stick a fork in me on one incident and myself assaulting my brother to the extent of being chucked out of my home for a period two weeks....... Yeah, it was safe to say we didn't get on. At all.

Whiles attending uni though I realised our relationship had almost mended itself and we began to communicate more and enjoy each others company. I mean we're still not perfect but who is?

Right so we both started going to this new gym, and to be fair I wouldn't have got back into it if it wasn't for him I think I would have still been quite happy being complacent about my fitness and settle into a couch potato lifestyle.

So my brother is now one of my new gym buddies, and I have to say he's holding his own at the moment. Not to say that he works at the exact tempo as I do but he makes sure I push myself and the exact same goes for visa versa. Having said that we still can't shake that sibling rivalry off. Case in point, 2 weeks ago I went up a weight on the dumbbell chest press, immediately after that set I increased on, he went up by double my progression! I was both proud and anxious of the fact that he was doing so well; but anxious that he could possibly surpass me if I wasn't careful. 

So now its become the norm to push each other as well as compete with each other  Which I'm particularly proud of considering how incredibly unhelpful we used to be to each other. I don't know yet whether this will translate to other aspects of our life but I'm optimistic!

So push your loved ones and try to beat 'em, I think it'll be hard to go wrong with that philosophy....

Life Admin.......

It's 0920 and I'm still in bed. Often this is the time I ponder on what ifs whys and hows. Not the healthiest thought process, I'll admit but its only temporary. I have work in just over an hour but I feel no urgency. Don't worry it'll come to me. At  that moment, I realised I needed to develop my life admin skills. Life Admin a good friend mentioned to me last night. Another friend mentioned to me that I had to try and declutter my social life. I looked around bedroom. A tip as usual, not for lack of desire but lack of time most likely ill spent on trivial thoughts when I finish. Keep telling myself tomorrow will be different but I'm finding I waste time on not one but a number of social networks. I can't help but see a link between all of these these things. Ironic really seeing as my current occupation requires a considerable amount of organisation and accuracy. You see I'm an FX dealer. Not as glamorous as it seems if you take into account I studied marketing as a degree. I need to develop tunnel-vision  and blank out all distractions.  Life Admin definitely word of the day.