Greetings, Steemians and Steemettes!

Two down, three more to go. I gotta be honest with you, one of the things I dislike about being tied to a 9-5 job is this kind of thinking. Counting down five days out of seven until I feel like life has gotten some quality back in isn't what most people would seem to enjoy, yet here we are, calling exactly that our reality. But let us leave this pondering aside.

This post is about a topic that has been troubling me for a while now and I like to pack it into a fun piece of German culture, if you so want.

Tell me how you like these new designs. I really wanted to try something new for a change.

Not the nicest thread title you are having there!

It would seem that way! And it seeming that way was of course my intention. To my understanding, the German language is somewhat popular to English speaking countries. It is often used as a means for situational comedy or sometimes just to make fun out of how we speak. Which is fine by my, I would make a wild guess that everyone is doing this with someone about someone.

"Schweinehund" is one of the words most people who don't speak German seem to recognize and we have media and movies to thank for that. We Germans actually do use the word our self as well, but not in the sense anyone would suspect.

So in case you were wondering about what to expect from this post of mine, this is it. A bit of popular German language culture explained to you while paired something that has been on my mind recently.

Alright, fine, so whats the deal about these Schweinehunds?!

Schweinehund can be literally translated into "Pigdog". There probably is a deeper meaning behind the source of the word and without knowing it, I am almost sure that discussing it around here would cause me some trouble. Because I don't feel like causing any trouble today, I will make use of a pragmatic yet simple solution to this particular topic of explaining the source of the word:

I won't.

Instead, I will come straight back to the common days. The "Schweinehund", usually prefixed by the words "mein innerer", is usually used as a straw man argument for people who do not do something that they know they should. "Mein innerer" meaning "My inner" should give you an idea where this is going.

Apparently, we crazy Germans live under the impression that there is a monster living inside of us, a terrible creature with features of both a dog and a pig. And this evil and malevolent creature is keeping us from doing the good deeds we set on ourselves.

What a horrific creature!

Absolutely breathtaking, right? Imagine you, a humble member of the human race, setting the fine goal for yourself to start taking better care of yourself. Letting go of some sweets, maybe starting to do some sports or something along the lines.

And then this abomination with trunk and dognose shows it's funny face and rubs all your motivation from you and you find yourself binging in front of your screen, watching some crappy series on Netflix while binge eating things that will get you back into your grace about five years earlier.

Tomorrow is another day, tomorrow for sure!

The worst part about it all is that I am no exception!

I am in that very unpleasant place where I feel like this beast has a firm grasp on me as well! Maybe it is partly because of work taking a lot out of me. I have to learn a lot of things that I really need to learn while working takes up a lot of time over the course of the day which leaves me coming home feeling depleted. Too depleted to do most of the things I actually want to do. Or, worse, not doing them properly which leads to frustration.

And I wasn't always like that!
My levels of motivation and energy, dedication and drive have always been highly context dependent. I can pin point three points in my life where I had it all figured out and was focused on the right things.

1. When I started doing Capoeira.

People who have been around my blog for a while may remember me writing about my time doing Capoeira. It has been one of the best and most fulfilling time of my life. I had a lot of fun practicing, was among people I considered to be fun and interesting and got quite fit and healthy along the way.

This was one of the if not the first time where being active doing sports really was something I considered to be a good addition to my life.

2. That moment when the scales showed me that I hit the triple digit kilogram score.

It was in the year 2013, summer. One faithful day, I stepped onto the scales and noticed that I cracked the 100 kilogram mark. Trippe digits, double zeroes, not one of my greatest moments. Seeing that did motivate me and I did a long run of google researches absorbing anything relevant regarding working out, fitness and healthy eating that was relevant back then. And I applied it, to no avail. And it ended up being worth it, I managed to go down from over 100 kilogram down to slightly under 78. I was overall in good shape, gained a nice amount of muscle along the way and felt good about myself!

Then my father died and I somehow dropped everything again.

3. That moment when I decided to live forever.

This was way later, back in winter 2016. An interesting to not here is that I did absolutely nothing of value or interesting between these two spots. After the death of my father, I was basically not deing anything. At this time, winter 2016, I decided that something needed to change in my life and that this heavy slump needed to stop. First step I took was accepting one of the worst jobs anyone could ever accept. I worked in shifts in a warehouse. It was horrible, but I made due with what I have.

Around the same time, I came into contact with the entire topic of fasting and other related topics like ketogenic dieting. Also some other not directly yet evenly interesting topics. And I was hooked! I spend aa lot of time learning a lot of things about a lot of topics. I applied a lot of them and I felt awesome about myself.

One of my personal highlights was accomplishing a three day dryfast without it being bothersome to me at all. I was amazed at what my body could accomplish and was convinced that I could do everything!

Then the worst thing that could happen to a man with enthusiasm and ambition happened. A female came along my way.

It should be said that women and love have always been a sore topic for me and I could tell stories ranging from hilarious to outright stupid. After a while, I just decided to drop the subject entirely. But then this girl came along and was pretty much everything I wasn't. I considered this to be a good thing because while I had something I was finding myself working towards, I was still in a bad place. There have been plenty opportunities like this and I usually said "no", but this time, I decided to say "yes". Just because I wanted to see me proving myself wrong about my negativity towards the topic.

I was right of course. This whole idea had no chance of lasting long. And it didn't.

In retrospect, I am quite sad that it didn't. The girl had one great surname that I would have loved to take over. Bet this isn't something you hear a man say all that often, huh? The break up actually did not really leave me feeling bad. On the contrary, I felt quite good about it. What I did not feel good about is that the very short time we were together ended up being enough to undermine all the good I have achieved in the weeks and months before. Except for some exclusions.

So where am I standing today?

Today, Pigdog Schweinehund has me in his firm grasp. I find myself having a remarkably hard time for doing even the simplest and effortless of tasks while even the most mediocre of guilty pleasures have a remarkably easy time of luring me in. And of course, it is getting on my nerves massively. There are a lot of things I deeply care about that I want to dedicate my time and energy on, yet I find myself having a hard time doing exactly that.

At times like these, I usually make past memories of success and grandeur appear on my mind as vividly as possible. The first time I was able to perform complex acrobatics, the first time I had a weight I considered to be suitable after reaching tripple digits on the scales.

Yet it did not help. These kinds of memories may be something we look back fondly, but they do not have the same kick than actually experiencing them does, especially for the first time. You can only learn something new for the first time once. Unless some heavy amnesia is involved. Which wasn't the case for me.

So I have to find new ways of making that small spark a burning flare of greatness.

New impulses, new concepts, better, more interesting and yet reachable in order for keeping me engaged. Part of the reason why I wanted to start blogging in the first place was that I have the hope of it helping me to stay engaged once engaged, but especially since I have been working for over a month now, I have noticed that doing so is very hard.

But there are no problems, only solutions. And coming up with these solutions is my task for now.

Or your task, if you so want. If you have any ideas on how to deal with this monstrosity, the malicious Pigdog Schweinehund, leave me a comment.

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