Without a Trace

“Hold on honey.
We've got forever to taste.
Speed up sugar.
Don't forget our friend Fate
It could disappear without a trace.” - The Parlotones

Any human relationship is fluid – no, fragile, almost brittle - because it deals with human beings
and human beings are somewhat unpredictable. When you find yourself in something that beautiful,
your heart is in constant turmoil. There are parts of you that want to take in all the beauty – but
essentially you are just sucking the life out of this beautiful thing. After a while that beauty is no
longer. So we try to savor it- make it last longer - but there is the danger of deterioration and that
beauty collecting dust and coming to an eventual end. And so we sit on this sea-saw hoping that
rushing things won't ruin it and savoring it won't spoil its sweetness...

It helps to remember that you are not alone in it though. The turmoil is not yours alone, but there is
another heart involved and somehow between the two, a sort of equilibrium is reached – hopefully...

Just Keep Swimming

Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better - so says Pat Riley.

I don't like struggling. To me it is the same as failure because you are not succeeding; you are still trying to. but in this constant strife, you find yourself getting better without even realising it... That's been my experience lately. I feel more equipped for so many things since last year and the only way that Happened was through struggling and getting frustrated at my weaknesses.

These are the things that make us better.... So I guess the only way to get even better than I am now is to continue to struggling as I am now. It is, after all for my own good...

Peace and Lovely Things

I used to think of myself as a happy person. Mostly because I'm generally always in a good mood. I talk a lot, make lots of jokes, but until now, I was never happy.

The kind of happy I'm talking about isn't the fleeting feeling that results from a good song or a compliment. It's a state of mind, I think. It's like reaching the summit after a long climb - a sense of all being right in the world. When that shift happens in your life, it doesn't matter what goes wrong or right everywhere else in your life because you are grounded and none of it can sway you....

So there you have it! I am no longer a happy person. Rather, I am simply happy.

My Little Nest

I have a new neighbour who is building her little home in the tree in my backyard. She caught my eye yesterday as she put her little nest together and I realised how much I related to her. Not so long ago I too was doing almost the same thing. My new neighbour is a bird by the way.....

It's funny how the homes we live in as adults are a spin off of the homes we grew up in. there are those who think of our childhood homes and want something better. They're homes are completely different. The rest of us, however do the opposite; either way, it's a spin off. When my flatmate Charity moved out of the cottage we were sharing I was left with an empty two bedroom cottage with very little in it. All I had was a chest of drawers, a bookshelf, a sleeper-couch handed down to me by my friend Lian and some other odds and ends. My house was empty and I was faced with the daunting thought of decorating it as I saw fit. Now, four months later, I look at my little nest and I chuckle to myself. My house is so much like the one I left at home. The colour scheme is brown and beige, just like at home and just last week, I bought a beige rug not unlike the new one I saw at home when I was there over Christmas! We spend so much of our teenage years yearning to have our own homes with our own rules and what to we do the moment we start our new homes? Passively rebuild the very same homes we were trying to break out of....

Now that is what I call irony! Life is just like that I guess :)

I want to break free

I don't know if it's the Festive Season or the PMS, lately I've been overwhelmed with a feeling of incessant dissatisfaction...

It might be the festive season thing because when the year draws to an end, it draws the last of your desire to do anything worthwhile. Put me in a car and take me home where I can wake up every morning knowing that the whole day is mine and I can be as redundant in it as I like! I'm trying to push myself over the next ten days. I don't want to look back on them with regret wishing I had enjoyed them more.

I'm sure it will be better after this weekend when I don't have piles of marking to do anymore.... Bring on the freedom, the freshly cut grass and long lazy afternoons in the sun with John Mayer crooning in the background. I'm counting down the days.....

If You Never Try, You'll never Know

My very good friend and I have gone for about 3 months without seeing or speaking to each other. It was really strange because when we were not living in the same city, we spoke at least 3 times a week and now we live 15 minutes away from each other and we struggle to touch base with each other...

Anyway, so yesterday we hung out for a bit. It was nothing special at all; we just had MacDonald's and fell asleep to some reruns - I ended up sleeping over. But, that short time that we had together was the best I think I've ever had in a really long time. When you go through a tough time, you often isolate yourself from the people you love in an attempt to protect them from the worst of you. While this isolation is good for retrospection, losing touch with people who know you best is not in your best interest, because it is these very people who drag us out of our black abysses and into the light, just by being around you, all we have to do is reach out to them...

I'm never going to allow myself to wallow  again. It's not good for my sanity.

Just be yourself

The most daunting thing you can say to me! Let me elaborate.....

I like getting things right. And getting things right for me means getting a nice and neat list of  how I got that thing right so that next time I do that thing I know what to do. Unfortunately, teaching does not allow for such lists because there are so many different factors that make the thing (teaching) go "right". If I'm this bad when it comes to teaching, you can imagine how bad I get when it comes to a relationship of any nature. I often ask the other person this question, "why do you like me so much?" and the response I often get is, " I don't know. just coz you're you." What does that even mean?! How, pray tell, do you expect me to draw up my "get it right list" with that response? What if I carry on "being myself" and you change your mind- being myself would then prove redundant wouldn't it?

I realised though, that that's the problem. The fear of getting it wrong and being moved from the good books is constantly wrestling with the fact that I am enough..... So forget the list! I'm gonna stick to being myself because that's enough. Plus, it does away with the admin of the list.....

Here goes nothing...