Thus, the journey begins.

After a long time, my stomach pain has decreased a little bit. Before, I would get sharp and strong pain attacks and now its more of a burning pain. My body is responding better to it than the sharp pain. I usually have a fever and my body is a bit weird in a manner that sometimes I am unable to breath and I feel suffocated. My doctor says that if my ulcers get better than all the other stomach related issues (infection, bleeding, etc.) will decrease, thus my overall body will get better. The foundation of all my health problems is the ulcers, so I have to cure that in order in indirectly cure all the other problems.

So Mr. Ulcers, here I come, I am going to tackle you down. My whole body (specially my mind) is stronger than you. I keep telling myself that my body is my own enemy, but I don’t take any action against it, which I think it’s time to do. I need to make my body my friend (my best friend) and be at peace physically and mentally.

I am past the phase of loosing it and not doing anything about my pain and health. I took off work and just didn’t do anything but sit and cry about my pain. That went for a while, and that definitely didn’t help. I cut off connection and started slacking on my work and school and that also doesn’t help. One quality that has always been part of me is that no matter what condition I am in mentally and physically, I have got myself up, have had a strong head and kept moving.

I still recall, I was doing a dance performance and my knees were really hurt and I was in tears a minute before the dancer performance, but a minute later, I got on stage, I put a smile on my face and it must have been one of my best dance performances. It was at the festival of trees in Boise, ID. I didn’t let my commitment to dance team down (meridian dance art academy) and I didn’t let my dance team down.

I need to revisit that and bring my mental strength back of dealing properly with pain, but not loosing what I have, or my aspirations and dreams.

Plus, if I distract my mind and do things for myself that are good than maybe with my mind, my health will also get better. For a while I had lost all my ambition, motivation, inspirations, and goals and I was not doing anything to make any part of my life improve. Instead of digging myself a deeper a hole, I am going to get out of this hole.

I do need to bear in my mind that my health is yet utmost important and needs more of my attention than anything else. I have developed a eating schedule, a rest schedule, and meditation schedule. Also, I will continue having my special brown bag which has fruit, nuts and other healthy food that is always on me, so in any instance, I can eat no matter where I am.

I have lost of a bit of strength in my body, so I need to gain that back up. I have developed a set of exercises, stretches, and yoga poses that are good for overall body and stomach that will improve my strength.

No one else and nothing else except me can improve my health, and I need to do it well and soon, so things don’t get worse even later in life.

I need peace and sanity and I am going to provide that to myself.

And, people who have made my health worse or have anything to say against me or my health specially when I have helped you in any way shape or form; I curse you and I hope that you go through 50% of what I have been through. Only 50% because that will be enough to teach them a lesson and I don't think they can deal with half of what I have dealt with, let alone whole.

My goal of simplifying my life is close to accomplished, everything I don’t need or use has been trashed, the important things are neatly organized and placed.

I am back on my feet and strong brain and need to get work done, projects done and catch up to the speed of everything.

School

1. I have two weeks to do 4 projects of the semester. The whole class has done 4 projects in 4-5 months, and I need to do those projects in 2 weeks, in fact by the end of this week to be able to do the 5^th project of the semester.

a. Project 1: Sketch, Refine and Finalize design for the german poster with placement, scale, color and in style of piet zwart, max huber and theo van doesburg. Final 6 posters (11x14)

b. Project 2: Text, graphic element and photo choices for Vision, put it together and apply in 4 environments. Final 4 posters (billboard size)

c. Refine book sale sign 6-10 times and create a system branding from book design. Final 6 designs (book bag, gift card, book mark, calendar)

d. Time and measurement design with dance. Final 4 cd cased of dance timeline

2. Crossing borders journal. Just for few hours before 11/30/09 I need to sit at create a collage for 15 different words to form a book of collage of 15 terminologies. This shouldn’t be that difficult, just grab images related to term and paste it on page (text is fine too)

3. Type forms branding to recreate stationary of Post-It Notes Company. (Logo, letter head, business card, envelop and notepad)

4. Final portfolio for type forms

5. Final portfolio for visual literacy

Work

1. 50-100 web channel research to benchmark (50 completed)

2. 50-100 events/tradeshows/conferences to research and benchmark for 2010

3. Competitive analysis projects (completed, but need to be updated)

4. Analyzer vendor list?

5. APAC business development- country focus India (benchmark 10-15 from a list of 50)

6. EMEA business development- country focus Russia (done!)

7. 3 Presentation creations from concept to execution (Reseller, End User, Analyzer)

a. Outline done, basis and concept done; work on creation and execution

I need to finish all this work before I go to Boise, ID. Forgot to mention that I have booked a ticket to go to Boise because I really miss my mom and I am going to surprise her by showing up at home. My goal is to get all this done before I go, otherwise I won’t go. 2^nd week of December!

After that, I will have an entire month of school and nothing for school to worry about! I want to thank my professors, lian, teddy and Michael for giving me a lot of flexibility this semester. Lian has done it for two semesters now. Thank you guys for understanding and reiterating to me that health is more important and I should worry about that more than school.

Those are all my short term goals.

To keep in mind my long term goals.

Education

B.S Communication and Psychology (completed)

M.F.A. in Graphic Design (in progress)

M.B.A. in International Marketing/Business (future) I have selected a school, Golden Gate University, and will apply there in about a 1.5 years. I have my mind set to the curriculum, and the requirements for application and slowly I will start working on that once a lot of other stress in my life is decreased.

I am still working on the book I want to publish, it’s getting harder and harder. When I thought things were coming along, they are actually diminishing a bit, but it’s ok, I can put that aside to focus on more important things (health) for now and come back to it at a better time.

I need to get CCNA to go higher in my industry (IT) and I just emailed a community college that offers CCNA training courses for 2-3 months that apparently guarantees passing the CCNA exam, which my company pays for. If all works well, that can get rolling when I am off school for a while.

I have always been a steady and committed volunteer for an organization in each city I have lived in. Ever since I came to bay area, I haven’t done any volunteer work. My only reason for doing volunteer work is that it makes me happy. I need to research an organization here where I can be a committed volunteer. I have made a decision to volunteer in what makes me happy and is less stressful. No more marketing related volunteering, etc, I am going to do mentor volunteering of helping kids and people with life and career skills and just spending time with them. Instead of lending my skills to people who back stab me, I should lend it to people who would appreciate it and will truly play a piece in making this world a better place. Life coaching would also be something part of this, but it might be a bit stressful.

I still want to paint, draw, have my paint brushes, canvases, and other materials.

I have always wanted to be an educator and have always seen myself as a part time professor. Teaching is not something I want to do as a full time career, but something on side because I love it so much. I have come up with a strategy of tutoring as a starting point. If time and health allows, I would like to do that. In my spare time, I did come up with a resume for it, but didn’t do anything else. Let’s see how I am in a couple months and then I can think more about this.

Last, but not least, DANCE! I love dancing and I always have. I want to be dancer, do performances, have a team, and spend few hours in a week to dance. But my body doesn’t allow me to complete dance. I can do a little bit, but not much, not completely dance. I have not come up with any strategy to be able to fully dance. There has always been a problem in this, whether my knee, my stomach or my whole body. I think once I spend some time taking care of health fully, then I can come back to this and re-think it.

J I have so much going for myself and my life with all these goals, motivations and dreams and most importantly my ambition! Instead of focusing on all this, I was paying attention to and wasting energy dealing with useless things. This just reminds me once again that I need to work hard, and achieve these things. They are worth dealing with stomach pain and fighting to make my health better to do these things. Thus, the journey begins.