"Do one thing every day that scares you" - Eleanor Roosevelt
Amazing things happen every day and when they do, I feel that I could just laugh and giggle, shout it out and dance like a crazy person. When my soul dances, I need nothing else... just lean in the wind, smile and enjoy the ride! Everything else is just background noise.
May the rest of the year be as great as these first 3 months!
"You are a woman with a brain and reasonable ability. Stop whining and find something to do" - Downton Abbey
It is the first spring Saturday of 2014, so I overcame my laziness and went of the riverside to have breakfast. Music playing in my ears, sun shining and my body overflowing with serotonin. I love these quiet moments, when time seems to stop, the air is vibrating with optimism and all is good in the world. These are the moments I want to soak in, absorb them and put them away in jars for rainy afternoons.
After a long and stressful week this morning was the perfect reward, an escape from reality and a chance to recharge, as next week I will be crazy-busy. And this spring... This spring will be something else, alright! So buckle up, people, because I am going into one of my crazy-busy, unreasonably happy periods and I can't wait. The year of the tiara starts now, and it's going to be one for the ages! Let's see if I can check everything of my list for this year.
May you have the best weekend ever, with silly happy friends, sunshine, parties and love, any kind of love you have laying around ;)
The song that makes me dance around the house today is not necessarily an optimistic one, but I love-love-love it!
"It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense." - Mark Twain
Let me start by asking the most important question: do you think that there is such a thing as absolute truth or just versions of it, as truth is different for everybody, making it a subjective concept? In a legal sense, of course, there is a truth, you are asked to speak, "the whole truth, nothing, but the truth, so help you God". But I'm asking about everyday truths, what defines our lives and reality, who we are and what we do.
Could we even live in a world where there is nothing else, just the absolute truth?
A very dear friend of mine, said a very insightful thing about the truth a long time ago, and it sticked with me, as it is the best advice I've gotten about speaking the truth: telling someone the truth only makes sense if that person can truly understand the truth he is being told. The logic behind it is, that we shouldn't tell the truth just for the sake of it, as we can do more harm than good, acting for the wrong reasons. In my opinion telling the truth just to get something off your chest and not considering how this may affect the other person, is a wrong reason.
For telling someone the truth, has the same catch as everything else in life: as Robin Scherbatsky said it in How I Met Your Mother "Timing... but timing's a bitch.". So we wait or we should wait, if it is appropriate, and time it carefully and maybe, just maybe, we get it right.
Don't get me wrong, I am vehemently against lying. There is no double standard about this, no excuses: a lie is a lie, period. But sometimes not telling the truth, the whole truth, is the best solution for the moment. And we do have to accept, that people have different understanding of what is the truth, because we are humans, and we are looking at this crazy world trough different eyes.
Let's do our best to tell the truth, time it as well as we can, and hope for a favorable outcome! I really think that this is all any of us can really do: do our best.
"I'd fight a bear for you. Not a grizzly. Or a brown bear. Or a panda. But maybe like a care bear? I'd fight one of those sonsabitches for you."
People are usually really good at math and economics when it comes to relationships: they invest a certain amount of time and energy waiting to get the same in return. It is logical, straight forward and simple. But, somehow, this seldom turns out to be the case, as we get less then we'd hoped for or not in the way we expected it to. And then we blame the other person, our feelings get hurt or we lose friends. My question is: should there be an equality sign in that equation? Should we get the same that we invested?
One of the most common mistake of mine is that I do make relationships an equation, I give all and expect people to do the same. As I got older and not necessarily wiser, I ended up thinking this wasn't fair: just because I am a perfectionist not everybody has to be one, a perfect friend, a perfect colleague or a perfect girlfriend. Slowly I am giving up on my idea of perfect people and trying to find out what are the flaws that I can accept and live with, and be as up front about them as possible.
Looking as objectively as possible, I understood that I am capable of giving more in any kind of relationship than the average person, and this is not as good a thing as it seems, as I give it expecting something in return. So I am changing, because progress is more important than perfection, or at least this is what wise people say. As the last few months show, I can get to care about people without expecting anything in return, because I started accepting them for who they really are: grizzly, brown bear, panda or care bear, aka sonsabitches. How crazy is it that you can care for sonsabitches and accept them as they are: their only use being the ability to make people laugh?
I am blessed with friends I can laugh with at crazy stories about care bears, people with whom I can't even count who invested what, for how long or how much. And these are the people worth keeping, fight the grizzlies for. The rest are just entertainment and background noise, but the laughs are priceless! And once in a while I get to meet someone, who will prove me right, that people are worth investing and fighting for, and how great is that?
"Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition." - Alan Alda
Far gone are the times, when we were meant to live in one city, be born - live - and die in the place that defined our possibilities. I lived in a few cities, far less than I wish I had, but new beginnings are the only pure things left nowadays. Starting fresh, without memories, mistakes and previous choices sounds great, doesn't it? But it's not that easy, because nobody can promise you that it's going to be better, just that it is going to be different and new. Brand spanking new!
So if you are looking for a fresh start, a clean slate, my advice would be to just pack up and go! Don't look back, build yourself that new life and know, that if this doesn't work out, you are not sentenced to live there for the rest of your life. I'm not a fan of quitting, but sometimes you just have to cut your losses and move on.
I moved back to my home town 18 months ago, and it turned out better than I expected it to. I love living here, but I feel like I have to go again, start new, build from ground zero. It's like a burning desire, just telling me to try a new city, get lost on the streets, feel the joy of finding new places, meeting new people. I haven't decided when I'm going to go, or where, but it's there, among all those plans I know I have to make come true.
It's really not that hard, if you are used to packing up, leaving and feeling at home in rooms you've never seen, liking street you've never wandered on before... and mostly, if you feel there is nothing really keeping you here, in the present. No need to be melodramatic about this: it gives me the kind of freedom most people only dream about. My only questions remain: when and where to?
"If I got rid of my demons, I'd lose my angels" - Tennessee Williams
Mon âme est une danse chaotique par des démons et des anges. Parfois, ils peuvent s'entendre sur les pas de danse et la musique, et parfois ils ont juste sauter autour de différents mélodies et s'amuser. Mais j'aime mes démons, car ils ont ce pouvoir inexplicable, mystique et magique, me montrant que je ne connaissais ou soupçonnés. Mes anges sont blancs et or, dansant autour dans les champs de lavande et de ne jamais juger, quand ils me voient attirés vers le côté obscur, parce qu'ils savent que les vérités sur moi.
J'aime mes anges , mais je suis tombé en amour avec mes démons. Je sais que le bien du mal et parfois je choisis sciemment de faire une promenade sur le côté sombre parce qu'il me donne le frisson, la connaissance interdite sur moi-même. C'est agréable d'être dans le lieu noir de mon esprit maintenant et puis. Il me donne le sentiment de pouvoir sur ma vie, l'esprit et les sentiments. Le prix est de laisser aller de la blanche et or, et la lavande, mais de se rappeler la route que je dois marcher en arrière sur mon propre. Démons seront toujours m'accompagner sur mon chemin vers le côté obscur, mais jamais sur le chemin du retour...
Je vais toujours choisir la lavande, sur le long terme, mais je n'abandonnerai jamais sur les promenades qui excitent mon esprit. Peut-être que je suis la plupart du temps un ange, mais j'ai besoin de mes démons pour me donner ce sentiment exquis je vais toujours chercher.
"She took a leap and built her wings on the way down" - David Brinkley
I love it when I can learn completely new things about myself, feeling like I just surprised myself with a hidden secret or an unexpected present, because the best thing we can do for our self is getting to know the real person, behind all the masks, social expectations and "should"s.
I said good-bye to "should"s a long time ago, when I realized that living by other peoples standard or giving into social expectations is the most reliable way to be unhappy, especially if you are a nonconformist person and a stubborn one, on top of that. All I should do now is what makes sense to me and makes me happy or serves a personal purpose. It doesn't get me a lot of admirers, but at least it is an authentic life: crazy, chaotic and lovely.Lately I'm all about pushing my boundaries, trying out all the unexpected things possible, just to see what I like and what is it, that really makes me tick.
The best people are the ones who know you, or, if you are really lucky, understand how your inner mechanics work. I feel blessed, because I have a person like that in my life, and he is capable of confronting me with all the things I avoid so carefully, but I guess sharing a birthday does that to two people: they get to call you on your BS and point out your mistakes. So lets see if I can implement the advice I got.
In a nutshell here it is, the week that was hell on earth at work: steaks were raised, friendships consolidated with wine and good advice and limits pushed to the wild side, because above all, I want to feel alive. New things come into our lives, as we shove out the old, even if they are challenges of the size of a mountain, but I'm sure I will survive for 10 months.
“How people treat other people is a direct reflection of how they feel about themselves.” ― Paulo Coelho
It's Monday morning, the sun is shining through my bedroom window, good music is playing and I'm about to go hold the most difficult training of my carrier. So basically, life is good!
As it turns out, once again I got disappointed by believing that there is good in people, even if they choose not to believe it about themselves. I sincerely believe, that if I treat people right, they will, at some point, treat others the same way. The world is really making it hard to keep at this, and it turns out that a twisted friend of mine was right: I am attracted to all the wrong kind of people.
But there are so many good things going on in my life, that one little disappointment doesn't count. I finally learned to skate, my social calendar is over-flooding with things to do, carrier-wise I am headed to great things and I am having the time of my life. And I will not give up on people, I just really need to choose them better, I guess. And stop with this bad-boy phase, it's getting old.
On the brighter side of things, I did fall in love this weekend once again.
The song that says it all: Sunrise Avenue - Welcome to My Life.
“When nothing is sure, everything is possible.” ― Margaret Drabble
All we know in our lives is just a perception, an opinion and it's always based on our previous experiences. So I ask myself: is there anything absolute out there? Because circumstances define, things change in a heartbeat, people come into our lives and walk away.
But as it turns out, this uncertainty can be the biggest comfort. Everything is relative: by choosing to look at the bright, beautiful part of everything, to smile when the odds are against me, to laugh when things don't turn out the way I expected them to, I didn't ignore the realities of life. Instead I learned to enjoy surprises and just let go. Let go, because if it doesn't work out, it means something better will come along, as life has a wicked sense of humor.
Learning to enjoy uncertainty was not a cake-walk, but when I really understood, that everything is really possible, I felt like a kid in a candy shop (make it a marshmallow shop, just to be sure).
I'm writing this from the city that held the craziest surprises for me, the one I hated and loved while living here last year, but turned out that has given me the possibilities to the life I really wanted. It is one home away from home.
A great unknown song, one of my favorites, that expresses this idea perfectly. Change by White Plastic Tape.
"When you're happy you enjoy the music, but when you're sad you understand the lyrics." - Frank Ocean
There are so many songs about music and how music can save lives. I think it's a tad over dramatic, but nobody can deny that music does help, sometimes when nothing else can: it can comfort us, express our joy, sadness or anger, is an outlet for our emotions, or help pick up the pieces. May I say, that music is like a quick in-house psychologist, just one click away.
My YouTube playlist is filled with songs that remind me of certain people, situations or places and when I play that exact song it's like traveling back in time and space, blown away from everything around me. I listen to music all the time and consciously use it for mood alteration: I ended up knowing myself and my taste so well, that when I feel a little blue, I know the exact songs or type of songs that will make me break out in a laugh in minutes.
The crazy thing is, that there are so few songs I actually know the lyrics of, by heart. So many of them are just feelings, memories and ideas, flouting around in my crazy universe that I so much enjoy. And the best songs of all are the ones that make chills run down my spine.
One of my personal favorites: it was a ray of light in a pretty challenging time.
I saw the best Disney animation in a long long time, and it made me believe in magic again. I thought I have lost the ability to believe in fairy tales and wonderlands, and it seems all I needed was a beautiful story about two princesses, a reindeer and a crazy little snowman. After so long I ended up reacquainted with my inner child, and she danced and sang through the whole movie.
This is why I ended up wearing a tiara for 2 days during my New Year trip to the mountains. I looked silly, but I didn't care as it was a statement to myself: it doesn't matter how hard life tries to silence her, she will always find a way to stand up and dance. It was a long journey in the last year, filled with hope and accomplishment, dreams and disappointments, but most of all learning about who I really am, and what I really want.
2014 will be a great year, I'm sure of it. I have so much to learn, to see and to try out. I hope it will be as exciting as 2013 was, maybe with a little more happiness.
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