1st Official Blog Post - hopefully not a childhood diary.

I just stopped in the middle of my de-stressing meditation to document the answer to a question the recording posed to me - what are the top three causes of stress in your life? This is a follow-up to the introduction of the 80/20 principle, the idea that 80% of all of our results and stress in life is sourced from a mere 20% of our efforts and daily events. I completely just combined two versions of the theory into one sentence, but ultimately it's saying that very little action can bring copious results. I always like to consider how much information I learn in the three nights prior to an exam. Practically all of it, and for an entire two days or so, I retain the majority of this information until the effort subsides and so does the knowledge.

Back to what brought me here, however - I've had a difficult semester battling with the balance of happiness, personal fulfillment, and academic performance. I've noticed that most of the problem isn't with my understanding of content, but it's in my ability to ground myself and focus on what matters when it matters. Even by writing this blog post, I'm procrastinating studying for my organic chemistry final this coming Monday. The inspiration from this blog post came from a meditation that I was completing in order to better focus on studying, however, so I guess me being here is a poor sign of its functionality.

The things that bring me the most stress are all mental - they're all in relation to talking myself down a drain of failure and existential conclusions. I completely forget that the only direction we can move in life is forward, and it's about time for me to fully embrace that. Even after ten bad days, the eleventh can set you on a positive spiral into fifty more. I'm writing this to give myself a push to stop forgetting these ideas as easily as I do. If anyone accidentally stumbles across this post, I hope I can push you to remember that even if it's bad right now, it can be much MUCH worse. But it's not, and that's something to be grateful for!

All of this may not have a clear point, but it felt necessary to record, and hopefully I can come back here with more updates on how I'm treating these theories in relation to my life. Hopefully I don't forget about this blog as I have with every diary I've ever started.