It’s 5.26 am. I have to start teaching at a bank at 7 am. Then I have to be at a different company at 9. In the afternoon I have to teach a private student. In the evening I will be teaching Dutch from 5.00 pm till 8.15 pm. I don’t enjoy teaching Dutch as much as I enjoy teaching English.

All my students are women today, except for the really nice guy I start this day with, at the bank.

I feel overwhelmed by sadness and am wondering if this sadness is ever going to pass. If there is anything I can do to improve how I feel about life. Preferably fundamentally, radically. That might be the wrong approach. Maybe I should find some things to be happy about…

    • So I try to lift myself up by:

Writing this on a hometrainer

    Watching an interview with Robert McNamara. A man who had to make some tough decisions, somebody I would rank as a war criminal whom I respect for practically admitting on camera that he was a war criminal and that the war in Vietnam was started under false pretences. I do appreciate humans who open up.
    I try to focus on my students. They are all flashing through my head and asking myself what I can do for them makes me feel a bit better.
    At least I don’t have to work in a factory
    Am not in Yemen.
    I will have some time to learn something in between classes
    I will get to listen to the stories of my students.
    I have some very nice students, with some of them I can have some nourishing conversations
    I have an other chance to get a grip. Am on my home trainer, I did push-ups. I can get back in shape.
    The last couple of weeks I have managed to curb my neediness when it comes to women. I haven’t been maniacally on the seduction path. Zuzana says I might finally be realizing that seducing women is not going to make me happy. Although she does worry that in six months I will be again where we were before, there is hope
  • I have a responsibility to the world to not spread more negativity, so I feel like I have to shape up and go out there and spread a bit of joy, a bit of positivity, a bit of encouragement
  • The conclusion seems to be: the more I focus on my own emotional state, the more I focus on what I think I need to be happy the more unhappy I become.
    • The main factor in happiness seems to be serving and believing in some higher purpose, not being a believer in any traditional sense I feel like summing up that higher purpose as:

Kindness

    .
    But how I would like to be in a situation where I could organize my life EXACTLY as I want it. Instead I feel like I can try to control only how I feel about how my life has turned out and hope for the best…
    A clear factor in my unhappiness is that I don’t feel like I am building towards something big, something bigger. Am afraid that my situation will still be the same in 20 years.

There is no end in sight, I haven’t hit upon the formula to make myself happy, but the list above will make this day bearable.

I have to go and wash my hair now.