Power corrupts. Power over your own body corrupts absolutely.

Now an orange belt.

April 17.

We were sitting at a bar. Nearly empty  - after all it was still during normal office hours. Top floor. From my bar stool I could see the solar panels right outside the patio. "That's our neighboring  business's, - said the bartender. And  added how they had to strictly ban smoking on the patio so the cigarette buds do not fall on the panels and do not accidentally damage them".

A wall of liquor bottles, top to bottom. And beer taps, mainly microbrewery left to right. Once upon a time I worked in a place with bottles on the shelf, left wall to right. Now I am here after work, and after a period of a hard work, and after all the work I've done I'm trying to put my thoughts together and think clearly and I feel like I'm in a fish tank, and everything around is surreal.

Gusty wind was throwing around newspapers, plastic bags, debris - looking especially  cute  with the French-style light jazz playing in the bar. Here the wind is dancing with the traffic light trying to knock down the pole, and here - no, it can't! And now a tree branch is lifted up in the air, and now - it just missed somebody's car! Hell, I barely had been blown off my feet while walking a block away from my car!

- ... So we decided you all could take the rest of the week off! - I've heard our Audit Partner's voice. I mean I had been hearing her well all that time, but at that moment I thought I did not.
I asked her twice to make sure it was not a joke and neither a mistake.
I asked if everyone in both offices will take 3 days off.
I asked if no one will for sure show up and that there would be no objections from the firm partners.
I finally realized that there's no mistake and no small print, and 2 other partners just confirmed it, and.... by the end of the week I will have my life and myself in better shape. For sure.
And then there was a little bit more oxygen in my fish tank.
And between the blood orange IPA and driving to daycare, I realized that this must be the most basic, practical example of happiness for me - complete freedom, with no strings attached.

Yellow.

Even in times when all energy seems to be drained by all first-priority commitments and not really replenished due to little sleep and unfortunate changes in my diet - there seems to be a hidden reserve that helps me stay active when I need it most. Yep, after this tax season I'll probably drop dead and remain a disoriented zombie for the next couple of months, but right now - on a typical working Saturday I nailed all urgent stuff in the office for a couple of hours, changed on the way to Dojang, at 11 was in Dojang revising poomsae, basic motion and stepping and stretching, had an engaging and tiring but fun test, and by 1pm left Dojang with a yellow belt, two halves of a broken board and a medal for perfect attendance (which goes to Belking for without him watching the kids there would have been no attendance at all). Then go back to the office and work for another couple of hours before returning home for a shift of being a caring, fun and patient Mom.

Breaking the board, actually was the only completely nerve-wrecking moment on the test. Seeing an inch-thick board suddenly made me think of the busy season at work, having little kids, playing the piano and another 1/2 dozen reasons I could not afford to have my palm broken :) Funny to remember just 10 minutes later when the board has already been hamer-fisted into 2 pieces and my palm had no bruise or scratch...

Got my white belt.

A beginner's achievement, but still feels like an achievement. Especially since I passed the test 2 days after having another vein treatment, being completely distracted by news on my license application and changes in firm staffing, hungry and exhausted after 1.5 hour drive in traffic.


I guess if not by New Year, then - by my birthday I should get Yellow belt to avoid Tax season.

I think it is safe to say this little stubborn bunny has accomplished goal #4 for 2017

And has come back to running! Apart from stubbornness it took of course:

•  change of speed to 5.7 mi/hr,
• wearing compression socks 3 days a week (under suit trousers),
• taking my time stretching before and after running,
• including more of various stretches in the "before and after" routine,
• changing trainers.

Next stop from here - booking the 10K Harmonie Geneve pour UNICEF for 2018!

Only late in the evening did I start to realize the whole meaning of the news.

No more exams. No more tedious studies for the exams. No studies through Tax season! No stress of missing the deadline for credit expiration. No more of living hell of being stuck in uncertainty.

Freedom. Empowerment. Ability to move on in life. Ability to chose what to next.

I've counted 900 more work hours I need at the firm; the interesting thing here being - my old hours from 3 years ago expiring for licensing purposes and I am gaining new ones. In any case, I estimate 6 months as the latest I will need to wait before the official application process.

I already went to my goal page to cross off the goal on passing the last exam this year, but then I realized the goal actually read "to have the license in hand". Well then, just a little more time...

By the way, when I was going through my books - to give them to a next potential candidate - I found a sheet of paper folded and stuck between pages. In FAR book.

I don't know how many times I've changed today.

I think all I did was running around, changing clothes, accepting calls and messages, rushing-rushing-rushing...

From a hairdresser appointment at 7am (yes, on a  Saturday morning), to a swimming class for Chill Sr (while trying to pull Chill Jr away from the side of the pool), to quick lunch with friends and Liz (we stole the idea of catering with Mad Greens from my firm, from the lunch we had there yesterday), to Room Escape quest game (with a spy theme, and 1 hour is definitely not enough! Unless you want to cheat and cash in all your clues and prompts), to rushing back home and chinchilling with Chills who woke up soon after we came, to going to Von Zobel's favourite Helga's to fight off his deschnitzelization (yes, it's a condition), to working (Birthday is not an excuse to miss a day!) and finishing up Chill Jr's scrapbook (because the younger one must have anything the older one has... not to create precedents on playing favourites).





Sometimes I feel like I crushed into my Terrible Thirties full-speed: starting a completely new challenging and interesting job, starting up.... a start-up; a professional license, 2 kids, running 5Ks, taekwondo, articles on personal efficiency, productivity and time management, UN volunteering, reading all of Shakespeare works and researching options for Masters degrees and PhD...

But then I remember I've been in my Terrible Thirties for a long time now. Maybe my life shaped accordingly. And still, there is so much now I've always wanted and raced for, and that I now enjoy having and feel so grateful for. And do not believe anyone who says overachievers can never be happy as they always need to have more. We do long for more, but we are happy with what we have here and now, and we are happy in the process of moving forward, exploring, doing and experiencing. If I were to complete this life now - I would die completely satisfied of what I've done so far ( and curious of what the next life will bring!)
However, I still have an unfinished business in this life...

This beautiful sunny morning my native country

has given me  yet another wonderful gift: a six-meter high fence. Simply speaking, Russian PM and ex-president has blocked me on Twitter.
My best guess is that was somehow supposed to teach me a lesson in how to ask a politician uncomfortable questions in public place (social media). Yep.
My best guess #2 is that many people who know me personally would love to be able to mute me in critical moments simply by pushing a button.

Second postpartum recovery is complete:



Ran my first 5K postpartum - which technically indicates I'm back to pre-prenatal shape - without killing my ankles and lungs. And judging by the photo it only took me .02 mile to get my phone ready and document the achievement.

 

While it's still impossible for me to win a game of chess with AI,

- I now came to the point where I can at least revengefully leave it nearly piece-less...

God knows who else plays chess with computer on vacation...

The shell is cracking.

In the past couple of weeks I've been keeping losing objects - in one way or another - that I would use a lot. My old clothes gets completely ruined all out of sudden, I run out of cosmetics and makeup - several products in the same short period of time, things stretch, fade, break - so they become unusable and can only be thrown away.

I guess part of it can be explained by the fact that I am an anti-hoarder and at all times I  keep only the necessary set of good quality things that I know I'll use regularly, and only get new items when replacement is needed. That can explain running out of a set of eyeshadow, a lipstick, a bottle of perfume and a body lotion simultaneously :) But it does not explain running out of ink in 3 pens in a row within about 10 days. Or - my weekly agenda has a couple of pages left because, obviously, it's second half of December. But nothing explains why, for instance, half of my clothes become unwearable  :)

There's no scientific reason for it, but it's almost as if getting on a new pattern of thinking, feeling and self-realization changes my daily surroundings, at least those that I touch a lot. Or that now that my own energy flow changed, it started to re-shape the material world outside. To start with cracking the old shell and eventually breaking it.
It is the first time this is happening - at least in such an obvious way,  but I'd like to think I'm right at figuring out the reason.

Finally. It's spring.

 It's about time this long uncomfortable winter was over.

What's good about being 6 months postpartum - is starting to feel human again. Change of the seasons might have something to do with that too, but I prefer to blame the hormones for the veil of dumbness over my brain for the past half a year, as well as for the behaviour and thinking pattern that were not quite... typical of me :)

I like the motherhood experience. I like the actual idea of motherhood: it shows you your strengths and weaknesses without sugar coating, makes you set your priorities straight, poses a lot of new questions and challenges, but may also help work out some of the old ones. Not to mention a booster in time management and patience ( yes, the latter is especially fun when being hormonal :) ).
Motherhood does not allow you to give in in certain moments of your life - there are pros and cons to that.

Now that I feel like I'm being more objective, reasonable and adequate  :)  I would say that the experience of being pregnant, having a baby and bringing him up for the first 6 months did make me stronger, smarter and wiser. I know it won't really get easier   unless I actually get a full time family in town  but I do already see it work as an upgrade for myself in many ways.

UCSIC is definitely was the best investment in my life! =)

*** Feel free like a bird and - hurray!!

I logged out of my second International Markets Finance exam

 with a strong feeling that it is as bad as it gets: the final tasks was to summarize Dodd-Frank reform: one sentence for each title...

Nevertheless, the Bank Analysis project proved me completely wrong.
I looked at the task list and understood that this project alone should weigh full course worth credits. There was so much to do, that even with the instructions and UBPR already distributed to us I could hardly imagine where to begin to get the best use of my time (which I barely had).

By the time I fished out all the numbers and was done with the calculations for DuPont analysis I got pretty optimistic about finishing this project by the end of summer semester :) NIM and Burden analysis got me completely lost in UBPR: could neither understand where the numbers in the example came from, nor - how the calculations in the example were done and results were obtained if the formulas in the instructions were used.

By the time I got  to peer analysis I realized I would only finish this project when I retire.
The analysis itself was, as always, the least painful part. The bank sucked badly compared to its peers throughout my whole analysis sections - luckily for me, since the actual entity was shut down in 2008...
With project and tasks like this, I sometimes feel it's not even possible to get the bottom of it ; but eventually,  with just a bit great deal of persistence, flax seeds oil, coffee and Visine - I manage to break through. Some time after that the story repeats itself =)

The bottom line and the note to self: to go over this post if I ever decide to go to grad school.