Category: personal growth

January 1

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Starting off the new year with that classic resolution stuff, the inclination to make myself a better person and a happier girl.  I want to feel good about myself, I don’t want to get caught up in my own hang ups about wanting to be more, wanting to be different, making goals and not reaching them.  I don’t want to keep thinking about self improvement, I want it to actually happen.  I don’t want to hide from what scares me through a mask of food or alcohol abuse.  I don’t want to do things out of boredom.  I want to find inspiration in the ordinary, I want to find happiness on my own terms.

Like always, to ring in the new year, for the first month I am treating myself properly by following the right diet.  You are what you eat, I preach it all the time, and it is time to follow my own advice.  Eating properly is the first and most important step for self respect.  This means eating nutritionally dense food that has minimal processing.  Respecting the vegetable, avoiding the sugar.

It is not a diet, it is pressing the reset button, rebooting my appetite, focusing on putting my health before fun, reestablishing a system of rewards that is not based on cookies and bourbon, but based instead on inner happiness and finding peace with reality.

 

A Blazing New Year

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The hustle before the storm, getting ready to party out all the bad decisions of the year before the great January purge.  Dance it out, shake yourself clean, shuffle off regret.  Take a deep breathe to relax your stressed out spirit, for tomorrow is more than a new day, it symbolizes a whole new start.  Bubble your way in a new direction, sparkle your soul, glitter your spirit, confetti your smile.  Most importantly, find the music in your fingers, the beat in your toes, the rhythm in your perception.

Gifting and Expectation

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I am scrooge and I do not like Christmas.  It’s not like I don’t like giving and making presents, it is one of the last joys as an adult, to reconnect with childhood and really think about the person you are aiming at.  But it gets hard when you want to show your love through a gift but you can’t, you don’t know how to personify through an object, or you don’t have the time, or your packages get stolen, you have the best intentions but life gets in the way.  There is a lot of pressure to make someone feel as special as they are.  This is why I don’t like Christmas, the personal feelings of not being good enough at this American holiday.  I try so hard to remember what this is supposed to be about, about family and appreciating your friends and realizing how everyone enriches your life.  It has gotten so backwards that you have giver’s guilt, that you manifest present regret.  Why have I sucked everything good about this holiday and made it about myself?  It’s hard when you want to express your love, but you don’t have the right material possessions to do that.  I am trying to make this holiday about what it should be, not about a fat man’s generosity.  Peace and love my friends, and may your heart be satisfied with what you can attribute to this world with your warm fingertips, tight hugs, and diamond eyes.

Dear Diary, A Teenage Inspired Adult Entry

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I need a lot of wine to function, I need a many a taco to operate.

I need a hot passion and a cool demeanor to balance my feung shui soul.

I need your heavy hug and I need your soft skin to calm my stormy weather.

Do porcupines cuddle? Is softness just an abstract?  They say that you like the way a person smells when you like them personally. Do you like the way someone feels when you like them?

I want to be excited but I am afraid.  Afraid of failure, afraid of waking up early, afraid of making ugly art, afraid of being bland, afraid of being too bold.  I am afraid of making spelling mistakes, I am afraid that my outfit is too eccentric, I am afraid that I have nothing to say. I am afraid of running out of ideas, I am afraid that my concepts are crumbling.  I am afraid of not prioritizing properly, I am afraid of butterfingers.

I want to feel excited and pumped and so sure that I am making a winner.  Something super cool.  Something that people will get excited about.  Something sweet, but not too sweet that you miss the subtly involved in creating superb experience.

Today I tremble.  Tomorrow I hope to be bravely bold and smoothly savvy.

Actions are louder than Moments

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Messing up, having bad ideas, going the wrong way on a one way street.  Making concise failures, having the abstract not the concerte, admitting the foolish thoughts.

Having the most humiliating moments in your life, thoset “I wish nobody saw that but everyone did” moments force you to remember that yes people do and will forget.  At some point, they will forget the worst thing you ever made, just like how people forget the worst pimple you ever had.  Because everyone makes mistakes.  If you are not making mistakes then you are not trying hard enough.  If you capture the stars on the first round, then maybe you should aim for the moon, or mars, whatever is your ambition.  I am from the moon, so I aim for Saturn’s rings.  Although I am terrible at basketball, why did I ever pop that shot?

Point being, people remember your spirit, not your actions.  Impression is made with invisible sounds, not always with physical acts.

Talents is louder than words, actions are louder than moments.

An Adult’s Wish

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I wish I could learn everything about human history and the cultivation of civilizations.   I want to know the effect of outside religions, ways of life, learned skills, agriculture, cultivation, art, craft, and mood had on cross cultural exchange.  I want to unravel how these scenarios evolved into an entirely new society.  I want to dissect how civilizations rivaled different enemies both cultural and elemental.  Adoption is amazing and I what to study that in global, historical, and culinary profiles. (Yes culinary, you are what you eat, and our ancestors certainly pertain to the same rule.)

Yes, there is the internet from whom I can learn, in my pj’s with visuals and easy to find information, with a glass of wine and soft blues in the background.  There is an abundant and a variety of sources from which to choose, a plethora of information, countless accounts of collaboration and rebuttals.

This is exactly why a good teacher is irreplaceable.  Because it is too much information for one person to digest in a timely and attentive fashion.  I want an authority on the subject, someone to explain the importance and the motivations behind these changes.  It is important to know what happened and why, and also to get intimate with the influencing parties.  The interpreter is the most important part to unlocking the mysteries you wish you to decode, the creating clarity in that you seek.

The Sexy Robot and the Hungry Human

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Robotics is a sexy term.  It’s a buzz word, it’s popular, it’s trendy, it’s an enviable career, it’s what the cool kids are doing these days.  But the question begs, why do we build robots in order to improve the daily life of people who make too much money when we have an over population problem?  We need help to do things yet we have a problem with unemployment.  Let’s free up more money for the living people instead of sinking it into a machine.  Spread the wealth around amongst the breathing.  Why have a robot to do your laundry, chop your vegetables, answer your phone calls, open doors, scan your groceries when we can be creating jobs?  The money involved in developing new and cheap machines should be going towards paying rent and buying groceries, supporting our communities instead of having a sexy career.

TV Teacher

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Cooking shows do no in fact teach you how to cook.  So you are correct when you say you watch them but you still do not feel adept in the kitchen.  This is why they have morphed into reality show programs based on celebrity gossip, wild hair, eccentric personalities, and showpiece spectacles.  The shows cannot sustain as a cooking demonstrations because it is not working.

Learning is not fun, it is not passive, it cannot be done in your pj’s while eating cereal.  Learning takes time, concentration, note taking and information review, the active process of thinking.  TV does not make you think, that is the beauty behind it.

Cooking show are not working because things are not done real time.  The ingredients magically show up, ready to be tossed in the pot, the final product mysteriously has a twin that has already been cooked or assembled.  Gathering ingredients, sourcing, choosing the right one, measuring, chopping, peeling, all around handling, are the hardest parts in cooking.  Knowing when something is done or when to check it and  determining what heat to apply are the intuitive factors that come with calculation and experience.

The host is not actually handling the raw products which in turn makes them unidentifiable. This creates a distance between you and the knowledge of your food.   It makes you not know what to look for at the grocery store, it makes you not know how to eyeball amounts of things, you can’t register the texture or moisture content.

And of course, you cannot smell through the television, so I am not sure who thought this was a good idea.  Feeling, smelling, and intuition are large parts of knowing how to cook, instead of merely following a few recipes from Rachael Ray.

Lucky Girl

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I have said that I have no luck, terrible luck, nothing goes my way, that if my fate were left to the powers of the universe I would be alone, poor, and unloved.  Things don’t tend to go my way out of the sheer generosity of the universe.   I have never found anything, won anything, had good in luck my career or in my love life.  I have had to work very hard for the few things that I have, and strive to squeeze all the good that life has to offer.

But that is simply not true.  I am very lucky right now in particular.  I have received many outstanding gifts, material items that I could never afford on my own, that have been donated into my life because people can see how much I need them and want to see what I am going to do with these tools.   I have many outstanding friends who have changed and enriched my mundane life, who are doing amazing things and adding color to the world.  I have traveled to the farthest end of the world, and I am set to do it again.  From Pune, India to Johannesburg, South Africa, with the rest in Chicago, Illinois I am bombard with opportunity.

I may be poor in those green bills, but I am rich in experience, rich in love, rich in personalities, rich in opportunities.  I wouldn’t change my luck for all the golden dragons, red envelopes, four leaf clovers,  horseshoes, or rainbows that the psychic world has to offer.

Diary of an Optimist

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11/1/2015

9:25 am

Dearest diary,

Today I boarded the train 9 mines earlier than yesterday.

I pushed the snooze button once time less than yesterday morning, only 3 times.

I considered stretching before I left for work and once again solidified the resolve to do it every morning.  The actual act did not come into fruition, but the yoga mat remains unfolded, ready for action.

After work I will do laundry and then proceed to straighten my closet.  I will not go to the store for a bottle of after work wine, I will not buy a burrito for dinner.  Water and leftovers will provide all the happiness and satisfaction that my body desires.

Although I did leave the house without preparing myself a healthy and hearty breakfast, for myself, I did fill make coffee to go cup with water for the train ride.  It’s not only because I am too lazy to make coffee, or the fact that it is free at work, but I need to make sure that I am getting enough hydration, and the train is so dry.  Endless espresso awaits me at my other home.