Don't stop me now

1st December 2007

How can I be so exhausted and so energized at the same time? I don't even understand, but if someone can explain this to me, well, I'd really appreciate it. You should see my desk in the office, and also the desktop of my laptop - post-it notes everywhere, task lists, timelines for meetings... I think I've never had such a number of post-in notes (both physical and digital) as in the past few weeks!

But this mess and rush is what I enjoy, I don't even want to give you a sense of complaining cos I feel so good! I just love times like this - I just realized not long ago that if the world is not turning upside down and everything is "normal" for a longer while, I need to create my own mess, otherwise I get bored. Come on, that's what makes life exciting!

Anyways. There's really a lot to do nowadays, and by these weeks I've started to see the results of all the work done so far this term. I'm happy and satisfied. And excited! And this keeps me energized, makes me go on. Honestly, I don't know how I do that, but I can wake up now early in the morning, after less and less sleep, to go to the office, or for meetings - and recently I was in time in almost every case! Something magic must be happening.

During the past 2 weeks I've started some new projects - I needed to develop some new approaches towards certain things, cos the old and usual ways were simply not working. Restructuring my team of local VPs, pushing exchanges to happen, I am AIESEC addict campaign... and my favourite one (cos this is personal), Discovering Kenya project. This one is about pushing my focus from work-work-work to work-work-discover - as I mentioned earlier, I haven't seen Kenya so far! And lucky me, I have cool partners in this project, Melissa and Emma.
Though so far I'm not really satisfied with my own performance, cos I was planning to go for a wedding today and a Nairobi trip tomorrow - but I've been working both days. I'm sad especially because of the wedding. It was Joram's one, and I really wanted to go, but I had to go for a company meeting, which lasted much longer than I expected it. I have to set clear standards for myself to follow up and measure this project. (Don't laugh, I know I'm an AIESECer! :-))

Oh, btw, I have to tell you, I've just realized this week as I was rushing from one point of town to the other, that I'm actually more and more comfortable with finding my way within Nairobi! It's a really cool feeling, when someone tells me once how I can get from here to there, and I'm not getting lost at all by now.

I realized one thing not long ago: the typical "touristical" descriptions are totally missing from my blog posts. I mean all those things that people used to mention as differences, shocks, nini nini. I was thinking that maybe once I would write a post full of these things, but I rather propose to everyone who's interested to buy the Kenya guide from Lonely Planet - I must say I definitely don't agree with the writers on certain points (I just have to think they didn't spend enough time in the country) but all in all it's quite a good description.
You know I could write about the Kenyan way of building better roads, for instance, but as long as you don't see and experience it yourself, it won't make sense at all. Though for me it's a daily challenge, especially the dark Marcus Garvey road, in rain and in high-heel shoes, hahaha...

Ok, I think that's it for today. I have started to write so as to take a small break in work, but now it's past 11pm, I need to go to sleep soon (though I'm pretty sure I'll find something to do in the next 10 minutes and I'll go to sleep at around 1am again). Anyways, tomorrow I have to wake up early, to get to USIU by 9am.