Mood: Calm 
Drinking: Twinings Nightly Calm Herbal Tea
Vaping: Vozol 12000 Puffs Cool Mint
Weather: 28°C, clear
Location: Mont Fleuri, Mahe, Seychelles
I’m drinking this herbal tea called “Nightly Calm”, for now the quality of my sleep is actually quite good so the only reason I’m drinking this is because it’s available and it’s zero calories. I’m not a fan of the taste to be quite honest, I won’t be drinking this again in the near future.
My eating behaviour was absolutely terrible today, I ate 2 plates of chips – the first one with pasta sauce, the second plate was chips paired with vegan mayonnaise (my mother gave me her takeaway leftovers yesterday so that’s where it came from – deep fried, oily chips), 2 plates full of edamame pods boiled in soy sauce, 2 sticks of durian cake, 2 cups of decaf tea with oat milk, the rest of the mini Oreo cookies I saved last night, and a chocolate chip cookie that was staring at me in the fridge. I eat simple-looking foods because 1. it saves a whole lot of time to make, and 2. if I eat complicated dishes, it might stimulate my appetite during a time in my life when I am seriously trying to lose weight. So I also keep my meals as bland as possible. So far so good, I’m at 51 Kgs, I’ve lost a total of about 7 Kgs and I’m trying to lose 6-7 Kgs more.
Today is day 28 of my artificial menstrual cycle, which means I stop taking progestin tomorrow. How does this affect my mood? The immediate effect of my stopping Regestrone 5mg affects my mood negatively. I will feel a heightened sense of irritability but this is short-term and will last only a day or so. While I’m on estrogen alone, I feel very much like my old self. That will continue for 2 weeks until I have to take progestin again.
I purchased my disposable vape on 18th March. It’s supposed to provide about 12,000 puffs. My device is already at 40%, which means I already vaped 60% of 12,000 puffs. That translates to about 350 puffs per day. There is no way I vape that much, when 5 puffs already make me feel the nicotine and I probably do about 25-35 puffs each time I vape, which could be about 3-5 times a day depending on whether I stay home or not (I don’t usually carry the vape around with me so if I’m out all day, I won’t be vaping at all). If I round up, I’ve taken about 4000 puffs in the past 3 weeks, and not double that. I assume they have not factored in the occasional spitting of the e-liquid.
I didn’t watch The 2 Popes last night. I received an email from a new client so I decided to spend the rest of the night working. I continued working as soon as I woke up this morning. I’ve not really considered getting back into consultancy-type work until recently. The TIN I registered for the other day was actually meant to be for my digital consultancy business. It’s been on the DL for many years, as I have also mentioned on a previous post, I have paid taxes through my sister’s TIN or our shared TIN. But as this is now officially my own business and I handle it on my own, it makes sense to use my own TIN. I have not heard from SRC yet, I expect they will call me on Monday. I’ll be able to bill my clients after I receive the TIN.
The issue with consultancy-type businesses is that it’s not as relaxing as retail. I do love the working part, but the communication with clients and their expectations do deliver some degree of stress. When the business is not shared, the burden of stress rests solely on my shoulders. But just like a retail business, it starts out very stressful and if you’re able to let it grow, you can hire people to do the parts of the job that you don’t enjoy and that’s when the fun and relaxation begins. My sister and I often joke that we are “semi-retired” because we have the freedom to wake up whenever we feel like it, work if we feel like it, take a break if we feel like it, as long as there is nothing urgent. To be at this point at this age is truly fortunate. We just need to keep our head in the game and keep striving to keep our business afloat.
Today my blog is finally indexed by Google, this happened naturally as opposed to my having to do a manual submission which is a good thing. I want to develop several more websites. I don’t know how relevant websites are in 2024, especially with the emergence and the rapid popularity of AI. I personally no longer search Google for questions because they’ve really messed up their algorithm to the point where questions no longer direct you to the correct content. A quick ChatGPT query answers the question as accurately as AI can deliver, which is good enough or at least better than what Google search results come up with. One day search engines might become obsolete just like web directories.