It was a good period.

Think about it — if everything is meaningless, then there would be no point of doing anything at all. No point of working hard to prove your worth in your career. No point of thinking about her and the complications that come along. No point of chasing deadlines on responsibilities that you put upon yourself. No point to even level up your Priest character in Dragon Nest.

Nothing, or no one, matters in this life.

Upon this realization, enlightenment happened. All hell broke loose. I was set free.

Free from expectations from others, and myself. Free from ego and pride, from guilt and regret. Free to do anything that I want to. And so I did.

It was a good period. Let me be reminded.

So I did some goal setting activities on self-improvisation, outlining categories – God in the first column, family in the second, career, friends, and so on. Then I scored myself on them on a weekly basis. But there were too many things to remember, I got overwhelmed, and under-performing categories demotivated the rest. It didn’t last long.

For 2012, I am taking a different approach. I’ll go slower, I’ll tackle them one by one. Inspired by The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, I am having a theme for each month, on qualities that I wanted to have.

For January, it is the month of being content. It is important to start this journey knowing that I am enough. I am sufficient. Being content will prepare me for the rest of the other challenges. Most importantly, even if this whole project doesn’t really turn out the way I wanted it to be, I am still content of who I am.

Instead of scoring myself on the theme, I decided to do something that I do best – write. Every time an internal conflict arises, I turn to my trusty notebook and write about how I should be content on the matter. When I write about it, I am reminded of many good things – my comfortable shelter, abundance of friends, well-equipped intellect. By the end of the day, I realized that I have the honor to not just being content, but also being grateful.

Hopefully when I have write them enough, these qualities would be ingrained into my subconscious. They would become parts of me.

The first half of January has been going really good so far. Looking forward to another half, and beyond.

The computer is one hell of a distraction machine. We are on auto-pilot the moment we put our hands on the keyboard, typing ‘Facebook’ into the address bar as if it is a subconscious act, wired into our brain to fill every two-seconds gap we have in this life. Scary, scary world we are living in.

When I am outside, there are a lot of things on my mind. On the train, in the coffee shop, even while staring throughout the window. I think of ideas, problems, and reflections.

The only thing that is left to do is to put those ideas into a tangible manner. Write it down. Don’t let them go to waste.

But first, I need some time, to think.

I used to be a power user of Delicious as well. Every link that I saved is tagged meticulously. Every few months I will go through all of them, one by one, to make sure the details are correct. Links are re-tagged, tags are renamed, and so on.

So I tried moving my bookmarks into Delicious, but it doesn’t feel right. In my browser, bookmarks are the main domain, they are the “sites that I check out for cool stuff”. In Delicious, bookmarks are links to specific article, they are “stories on topic that I want to refer later”. But this is not much of a problem. Rather, it is just a tolerable annoyance.

It became a problem when my Delicious links reached the thousands. Delicious allowed searching by combining tags, but I need more than that. I need to exclude specific tag. My Delicious bookmarks consisted of 90% ‘software’, what if I wanted to search bookmarks that are not?

Back then I wished for a folder/category feature in Delicious, mainly for my browser’s bookmarks, as well as bigger categories such as ‘desktop software’, or ‘web apps’. Recently they had introduced the Stack feature. I haven’t tried it as much yet, but I have long abandoned Delicious. It is way cluttered now, with all those unnecessary thumbnails.

Pinboard looks promising, with a neat and fast interface. I’m willing to pay $10 for it, if only they have the exclusion-of-tag feature.

Guess I will have to roll out my own app then.

I am grateful for my strengths, I do not moan of my weaknesses. Who I am now is the best person I could have ever been.

I open my heart and mind to all possibilities of learning. There is no rush, no plan, no goal. Just, learn.

I am surrounded by a blanket of love from family and friends. I am loved. I will always be loved.