Quote of the day

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In life only one thing is certain, besides death and taxes… no matter how hard we try, no matter how good our intentions, we are going to make mistakes. We are going to hurt people. We are going to get hurt. And if you’re ever going to recover, there’s only one thing to say. Forgive and forget. That’s what they say. It’s good advice, but it’s not very practical. When someone hurts us, we want to hurt them back. When someone wrongs us, we want to be right. Without forgiveness, nothing is ever settled. Hurts never heal. And the most we can hope for… is to forget.

Grey’s Anatomy; Meredith Grey

An invocation for beginnings

"Let me remember that the impact of criticisms is often not the intent of the critique. But when the intent is evil, that’s what the block button is for."

Or the delete button, for that matter. 

Revenge is one of the strongest motivators there is

Let me introduce you to one of my favourite bloggers, Xiaxue. If you like reading blogs and you are Asian, chance is that you must have heard of her.

The reasons why I like her are primarily because she is very comfortable with herself and she has very thick skin (she said so herself). I look forward to the day that I get to be that comfortable in my own skin and write with my real name plastered all over my blog.

Recently she wrote this piece called Loving Your Haters that reminded me of two things:


(1) Revenge is one of the strongest motivators there is; and
(2) Success is the best form of revenge.

Watch this space.

Complication

In medical term, a complication is unfavourable, the only defence mechanism we currently have is to foresee it/them, so that we can at least be prepared for them. It is as if the power of expectations can resolve everything. Almost.

In life, it is the same deal. Complications arise, especially during the times that you expect them the least, or during the times that you can least afford to deal with them, be it because you are short on time, or money, or both.


I can never be too prepared for life, can I?

After nearly thirty years of roaming the earth, I am convinced that it is very exhausting to live my life trying to live up to everyone's expectations. When I say "everyone", I really mean everyone. Especially when it comes to some people who somehow feel more entitled than others to have me doing things for/with them, dealing with their complications or to prevent their expected complications from eventuating to reality. With these people, if I make the choice to do one single thing that works better for me and my then-situation (and avoid complications in my life), or if I express my opinion about how inconvenient it is for me with a suggestion with how to do it, I am the bitch.

It is like I am the default bitch because I don't want to put them first.

I am not going to live my life and spend my time to make other people happy. If I live my life on those terms, I have this feeling that I am going to end up being the one dealing with endless complications in my life most, if not all, of the time.

As I have always said, love yourself first.

Running, blogging and turning 30

Running

I went back to running yesterday night, exactly one week after the JP. I so was not in the mood for it. Infested with laziness. Assistance came in the form of a boyfriend who wanted to run and I tagged along because I was desperate to spend sometime with him. Anything to get things rolling. 

As is always the norm when I am not in the mood for running (which is like most, if not, all of the time), I tell myself that it is going to be a light one. I honestly don't think yesterday's run was a light one, but boyfriend thinks it was, at least for him. My standard is obviously different than everyone else's. 

Yesterday was also the first time we ran together again - prior to JP, I was mostly on the treadmill and he hit the waterfront. Running by the water is nice! There is something so soothing, so peaceful about it. 

The run was good. It didn't kill me, I didn't die. I came home with the WORST carb craving in weeks. Damn, it doesn't look like this thing is going to go away any time soon. 

Blogging 

I have not posted a single picture on this blog yet. It is not that I don't want to, it is more like I don't want to just post any picture. It is more like I don't have to take good pictures and then edit them (yes, I edit most of my pictures). Writing takes a lot of time, a lot more time than I thought it would take, especially since I am learning this thing called editing my own writing, which I hardly ever do for the blog previously.

Sometimes I feel like I am running out of time. Between sleeping, working, eating, running, cleaning the apartment, hanging out with friends, writing, blogging, there is hardly any time for anything else. I collapse every night from exhaustion. I woke up extra early this morning so that I can have time to write this. I don't know what life would be without coffee. 

I must admit I am rather surprised that people actually read my blog. I also wonder how many times they return, and why they do. 

Turning 30

I started freaking out again with this whole turning 30 business. I thought I was over this, I was pretty much okay with it for a while, before everything returned full force as of 10 days ago. It is like, shit, this is happening, and there is no escaping it. What the fuck happened to my twenties. 

I have never freaked out this way before - over a birthday, come on. I was excited when I turned 18 because finally I could legally enter clubs and drink alcohol (so overrated), and was even more excited when I turned 21 because hello!! It's TWENTY ONE!! I think I was a tiny little bit excited when I turned 25 (but honestly can't really remember). Actually, strike that, I have always been excited for every birthday. I give everyone advanced warning that it is coming, and I give them a wish list, which I always get, if not for my birthday, for Christmas. Yeah, I am spoiled. 

I have the most wonderful, kind people in my life. Thinking about them makes me want to cry. I am so thankful to have friends like my friends, they are so nice, so kind, so understanding. They get me. We laugh and we cry together. More importantly, they are able to tell me to snap out of things, we don't do bullshit. 

Every time I question life and everything that's in it, it always turns out that the nice people in my life end up making everything better. It is like they make life worth living. I am very lucky.  

Short

Accountability 
Sometimes I think accountability is a very strange concept. Strange because it actually works. This is why people blog. They want to be accountable to someone for doing something - in my case, for practising writing. I could just write pages and pages and pages and no one will know and that would be my practice but I must say that the chance of that happening is perhaps not as high as I am blogging on a regular basis. This is why people set up blogs when they want to get out of debt, or improve their fashion sense, or just do something that they have been wanting to do forever. Promising something to an audience means you have someone to be accountable to. Of course, the best person to be accountable to is yourself, but you are also most forgiving to yourself, so sometimes it is necessary to have other people to be accountable to.

10,000 hours theory
Has anyone heard about the 10,000 hours theory? If you want to acquire expertise in a certain subject area and/or skill, then you need to practise for at least 10,000 hours. This is the whole reason for the blog - to accumulate the 10,000 hours, but I am not keeping track of my hours, I just make an effort to post something every few days. Right now, I am posting this to make up for the fact that I posted a very short entry over the weekend. Plus I am not running. In fact, I haven't run since last Wednesday since I ran for the JP. There are two reasons for this. First is that I have been sick. I don't exercise when I am sick, because it makes recovery that much longer. Second, I am not feeling so motivated. Hey, don't judge okay. I am human and I have feelings and right now, I am not so motivated to run. Of course I want to keep it up and continue running on a regular basis if only for the fact that I need an exercise routine since I am getting older that this body needs assistance to look this good.

Random observation in life
There was this kid who was brilliant at playing the violin and he was being commercialised by his mum who made him play Waltzing Matilda over and over and over again by the street side in Chinatown, so much so that I started to feel sorry for him. He may very well be a musical genius who is being forced to play something that he finds so ... boring. Next to him was this massive poster which basically said he is not even 10 years old and he is so talented that he can play the violin so well bla bla bla. I can't help wondering how many hours he has to spend practising every single day. And if he likes it. Or whether he used to like it and now hates it because he is being forced to practise so much.

On going back to tertiary studies
I always toy with this idea, I think this is because I actually like that place, minus all the exams and the tests that we have to pass. Wouldn't it be nice if there are no exams and we can actually learn because we want to learn? I mean, I get that this is like college and you should be here because you want to be here, but fact of the matter is that, well, some of us don't actually want to be here. We much rather be anywhere but here, but we are here because our parents want us to be here. Gotta love Asian parents (chill, I am Asian, just in case you need the reminder). Yes, my parents put a lot of emphasis on education, but they are pretty hands off most of the time. At times, I do wonder what I would be like if I have one of those super strict parent. I mean, it would be nice to have someone to sit down with me and teach me how to do stuff rather than expecting me to figure it out on my own. Especially on the days that I need motivation, like today.

Being positive
Insisting on positivity has been the theme of my life, really. Because sometimes I feel like I am okay, then other days I feel like I am lacking direction, and I wonder, is it really weird that I feel this way, is it just me, does anyone else out there feel what I feel? It is not that I am not happy, and it is not that I am not contented.  I just feel like I am floating around this thing called life and it is like... for what? Don't worry, I am not suicidal. I like living most of the time, but I can't help wonder if asking questions like these is just part of the deal. Something that I have to get used to, because it is not going to go away. Because the solutions are temporary in nature, and permanent solutions are non-existent. Is that really true? I insist on positivity because I want to be happy. I don't know how to deal with life's uncertainties any other way.

(untitled)

Ok, just a quick one. 

(1) Le boyfriend did something VERY nice last night. I slept with a smile on my face and woke up with a bigger smile.

(2) Currently spring cleaning my almost non-existent closet. Been doing this since morning and got exhausted and so hopped onto the computer and found this. It is short, direct and to the point. I kind of like it a lot. 

(3) Recovering well from my cold, thanks to sunshine! No, I have not re-written that post yet. I don't think I can rewrite it. I will draft something else along similar lines. It is crazy trying to reconstruct something like that. 

(4) I finished the JP run in 40.28 minutes. My goal was to run it all the way through, no matter how slowly I did it. I DID IT okay. That's all that matters. 

Nice weekend! x