This post is also available in: Español (Spanish)

Max here with another weekly update on my life. It’s Thursday August 16, 2018 and it’s 7:50pm and I am at a Starbucks slowly sipping on a small decaffeinated latte made with coconut milk rather than cows milk, while the sun has already started it’s descent behind me and it’s now about 30 minutes from setting over the horizon. (At least that is the time that I started this blog post). And I am sitting in a corner spot while I have my headphones on listening to some jazz on my XM Radio app. As for this particular Starbucks, this one is also close to my house, but in the opposite direction from the other Starbucks. There is less than 10 people in here (not including the 4 employees, and yep, I’ve been to this one before but never to write in my blog.

So I wasn’t really ready to write in today’s blog but remember, the one thing that I must really nip in the butt is my mental disorganization and my mental discipline to stay on task. The task of organizing my life for the success that I want, expect, and deserve. And so this will make week number 2 on my journey to better understand the “time blocking” that my professional organizer Joan as asked me to do. As I have mentioned before, I have made Thursdays my day for inspirational stuff. Currently, I’m not quite sold on the thought that Thursdays should be the day to do blog writing, but like I said in a previous post, right now I am in experimentation mode until I find the best schedule.

Today I was actually going to go skydiving, but I opted out late last night. I opted out because I am starting to feel that I just have way to many passions to try and achieve that I must be able to learn how to switch passions on a dime to better fit my schedule. And as for the skydiving today, I was going to go until the teacher said that there was only one tandem scheduled for today. Now the question is…. How does a tandem affect my ability to skydive? Well, I am glad you asked. You see the plane is a very small Cessna CS182. All the seats and storage bins in the plane have been gutted out except for the pilots seat. So the plane went from a 2 seat plane to a plane that can pack a total of 5 people (including the pilot). And most of all, pack them in like sardines in a can. And well, the owner of the skydive place is very particular as to how he loads people on the plane. Basically the people that pay the most get first priority and then people like me (who pays less because I don’t need assistance jumping from the plane) get lower priority to boarding the plane. So in essence it works this way. 3 people in the plane is usually the pilot and the teacher with the person who is paying to tandem with the teacher. Then the 2 other people can be people like me or sometimes a 4th person is another teacher that is filming the person doing the tandem. And usually the owner who is also currently the pilot usually only likes to maximize the plane with 4 people. The more people on the plane require more fuel to burn. So to him he is trying to find the balance between money and fuel supplies etc. Plus he calls people like me (fun jumpers) He calls us fun jumpers to distinguish us from the others that need the instructors help on skydiving. And usually when it comes to fun jumpers, the owner does not like to take fun jumpers on a jump unless the plane is full. which means that there always need to be at least 4 fun jumpers on every load or some combination of tandems with fun jumpers. And sadly when it comes to fun jumpers, there is just not enough fun jumpers that are willing or wanting to jump as many times in one day as I am.  I personally want to jump at least 3 times in one day and preferably 4 times or more. The more jumps I can get in one day will get me closer to my goal of being able to use a wingsuit. Plus one of the most important reasons why it is important for me to jump at least 3 times in one day is because I live 2 hours from the drop zone (the drop zone is the name used for a place that people skydive. Some times it is just called the DZ) And so since I live 2 hours away, (And this is 2 hours away even with me driving 90 miles per hour or faster) and so since I live so far away, I just feel that I need to get the most from my day possible. Especially when it is 2 hours to the DZ and 2 hours from the DZ. So since there was only one tandem scheduled for today, I felt that I was at best only going to get a chance to get only one skydive in for that day. And so I decided to not go and use my time to do other things.

So how has this week been???? For apartment #01, things have been hella great! I love it. There is progress.  This week I had Mark repair and paint one of the fences, I had my “enigma” do some cleaning and my other guy John is rounding out the last of the things on the to do list. Every day of this week was a productive day. As I think back on the last few days, the one thing that made the most difference is my “enigma”. His name is Eloy. Eloy makes the most difference because he is my extra set of hands.  Eloy does all of my outside work. Outside work like digging, cutting the grass, moving items, garden prepping, shed organizing, cleaning etc. and he even likes to tinker with cars. Just uber great since my car is over 10 years old and I have not been gentle on her. Eloy just does many of the labor things that I used to do.  It is hard to find someone who can do those things without complaining. And when it comes to Eloy, he doesn’t complain. The only bad thing about Eloy is that he, like Mark, is hooked on drugs. But when it comes to Eloy he is hooked on ice. Ice is some cheap version of cocaine. They say it is 10 times more addictive than cocaine. Which in my opinion just makes it harder for Eloy. And truth be told, it saddens me deeply because Eloy has so much potential to make good money. He has so much potential for me to pay him better. But because he never had mentors in his life, and because he cannot see his own potential and most of all, because he is hooked on that ice, he will always have a very hard life long trouble of finding good and better paying jobs. And as much as I want to pay him more money,  I just won’t be able to pay him more money until he is willing to learn more skills. And many of the skills that I want to teach him require mental work and not only physical work. But I haven’t given up on Eloy yet. I’m still hoping that he will stop doing drugs and want more from life. And most of all I hope he does it while I am still around and able to help him. But so yes, all this week Eloy has been my extra set of hands.

The plumber also came to my house this week to work on my upstairs bathrooms. He is close to finishing. From the looks of things, he has about 2 more days of work and then I will finally be able to use my upstairs bathrooms.  Funny thing about my plumber, as I was looking over his work, I will say this, sadly he is not the best at soldering copper pipes. Maybe it is because it is currently extremely hot in my house and the heat can hinder someone from working at their best. Maybe, just maybe that is the reason why he is having trouble making the pipe lines look professional (pretty). I don’t know, but to me as long as it works and works well, then I won’t care too much about the looks of the pipes because they will be hidden in the walls. I’m just someone that whenever possible….. professionalism and pretty is what I like.

I have also still been texting with my brother and sister abroad. My brother loves to fish (something that I never really learned to enjoy since I don’t live near the sea) and my brother is also growing a small amount of passion fruits. I actually tried growing a passion fruit plant and sadly did not succeed. Personally I think that it was a combination of the climate and my lack of knowledge on the plant. But my brother is growing 25 of those beautiful passion fruits. Hopefully I can learn something. I was wanting to try and grow one this year, but I never made the extra time to order it. And it is a good thing that I did not order it because my garden now looks like a jungle. and I was not initially able to get it up and running the way that I had hoped when I first started the garden back in February. But no worries. I am slowly getting closer to getting my garden the way I want. I am quite hopeful for next February. And as for my sister, I learned that she loves art. Oddly enough my mom loves art too. Looks like my life is destined to be around artists. Definitely not a bad thing. So yea, brothers and sisters abroad….. totally a good thing.

Today I also worked on a mountain of receipts that have been on my desk for the last 6 weeks. Ughhhh! Have I mentioned that I HATE working on receipts. That is one task that I will be getting someone else to do. And hopefully by the end of the year. One less thing of something I don’t like is definitely a good thing. I know it is Thursday and it is supposed to be and inspirational day and I know that for me working on receipts is not an inspirational thing, but it is something that I just didn’t get around to doing yesterday. As a matter of fact, yesterday I went to bed super early. I don’t know, I just get really tired these days. Monday was a 30 hour day. And I don’t feel like I caught up to sleep until today. I fell asleep by 8pm yesterday and didn’t actually start my day until almost 8am today. My neck kind of hurts now from being in bed so long, but I at least feel a little rested. Sadly now it is Thursday and tomorrow is back to the club scene and another 4 days of really long night hours. But hey, the upside is that apartment #01 is closer to being finished. It’s like I can already smell the cookies in the oven.

Now what hasn’t gotten done today, well, I haven’t worked on music. I actually can’t remember the last time I turned the studio on to work on music. Maybe at least 6 months or longer. And I haven’t worked on my plane program in over a year. And I also have still not set up my 3D printer. My inner secret goal was that if I was not going to go skydiving today then I should at least get my 3D Printer setup….. or at least partially set up.  And luckily there is still some time tonight. I haven’t quite decided what time I am going to bed. But I would like to be in bed by midnight. I’m telling ya, my goal is to be waking up by 4am every day.  Oh and my brother and sister abroad…….. they wake up at 5am everyday. I don’t know, but for some reason, knowing that makes me smile. Maybe its because it helps me to feel that waking up early is in my blood and that when I can get my real estate to pay all of my bills, then I can quite the club scene, and then…. and then I can re-shape my schedule to where I am waking up at 4 am. And when that happens, then there will be only one word….. Unstoppable.

I am also working on making this blog available in multiple languages. I had thought that it was as easy a buying some computer program or app and presto….. a blog site with multiple languages….. But Nope. That is just not how things work. As it turns out, it is actually a lot of work. Now there are ways to cut down on some of the work and have a machine do some of the translation, but even with that machine translation there is still a lot of background setup to do. And I (Max) know nothing about making websites. That’s the reason why I hired my graphics guy to do the initial set up of this website. But since then he has told me multiple times that I should just learn to do it myself, he said that it would save me money and that it is not hard to do. And he is right, it will save me money from having to pay him, and yes it is also not a hard thing to do, however, it is painstakingly and extremely time consuming to learn. And you know me and time……….. I just don’t have enough of it. So I think that I might use any of my available time at the club to do the reading and practice of turning this blog into other languages.

As for the rest of tonight, I am going to do some personal research on things like flight tickets, boat motors and couple of other things. And then I’ll start my trip home to finally break open that box with the 3D printer. Plus I still need to write in my gratitude journal and my small wins journal. I haven’t done that in some time.

All in all, tonight’s post is a culmination of good things, maybe it is actually good things happening with a few challenging things happening, or maybe it has been me trying to mentally stay focused on only the good. Either way……… Thank you God!

Love,

Max.