Can I have this last dance?

Wow what a weekend it’s been.

What this really means:

1) I didn’t do anything substantial.

2) I didn’t step out of my house (apart from getting food with my parents which doesn’t count).

3) I’ve basically been wearing the same thing since last Friday night.

On Friday at lunch, I told my colleagues that my weekend looked empty af and that I would be bored outta my head and only got sympathetic looks 😦

Audrey was begging me to trade 1 day with her as her weekends are basically swamped with kids (ferrying them everywhere for enrichment, tuition, classes, meals). She declared her weekends as infinitely more packed than a typical work day and said she would give up everything just to have a weekend, all to herself, doing nothing.

If we traded places, I suppose I would be envious of me too. No debts, no duties, no responsibilities, no housework, NOTHING! Omg- I must be living the dream of so many overworked mothers and yet I feel sorry for myself. I really should be shot!!!

How my Saturday went down:

– woke up

– went on social media

– ate breakfast and lunch

– slept somemore

– googled sad emo stuff

– read, borrowed some online books

– had vietnamese for dinner (highlight of my day)

– slept

How my Sunday went down

– woke up

– ate breakfast and lunch

– read

– worked (you know you’ve reached #nolyfe when you’re logged on at 2pm on Sunday)

– ate

– slept

I’ve decided- I shall catch the incredibles 2 myself!

Tata. Update again tonight.

***

Didn’t realise my previous post didn’t publish.

So I decided to be real spontaneous and watch a movie.

And I’m sitting in the theatre between this family of 4 with 2 young kids and a couple who can’t seem to stop making out.

Tbh, I really really really do enjoy watching movies alone. The last thing I want when I’m watching a movie is explaining things to other people! Maybe that’s why I always say I don’t like watching movies? It’s not movies per se that I don’t enjoy, but the experience of it. So there, my secret is out. I’m just really anti social LOL.

Here’s me really hoping that the movie would turn out to be good. Please, my Sunday needs to turn around.

***

You know how some days you really really really miss the past and you would really really really really give everything just for one more day?

That’s exactly how I feel. These are some of the things I really miss:

1. Someone to share my meals with. I have a tendency to want to try everything but only eat a bit of each and sharing food is justifiable because the other person can get fat and rolly polly but NOT ME. i iz fat already. sobs.

2. Someone to whine to and complain to. I am omfg the most annoying partner when I’m in one of my ‘moods’. Some examples below-

• Complaining about the weather incessantly (i hate it when its humid, i hate it when its raining, i hate the heat). My idea of the perfect weather would be lots of sunshine at 20 deg – SWEATER WEATHER.
• Complaining about my appearance (everything from my double eye lids to my thighs to my finger nails) and criticise myself relentlessly. At this point, i don’t even know what it is i am looking for. Reassurance that I’m not as ugly as i think? Reassurance that even if i am ugly, i am still loved? blearghs.
• Complaining about going out, and complaining about staying at home.
• Complaining about having nothing to do, and complaining when i have something to do.

In short, there’s just no way to please me when i am moody.

3. Someone to talk to me about the most inane things. Trust me when i say that i have lots of superficial thoughts. Amongst my favourite subjects to talk about include: keeping a meticulous food diary with calories tracked and going through a list of what i had at the end of each day; whether miley cyrus is still engaged (she was my fav actress growing up – don’t judge); and thinking about whether to do this or do that and because i spend so much time deciding, i end up not doing any.

There’s a lot more that i miss. Importantly, i suppose i miss the feeling of being attached to someone. I guess I’ve always just been a more relationship kinda girl.

***

By the way, incredibles 2 was pretty good. Not the most mind-blowing movie I’ve watched, but yah it was good.

Highlight definitely has got to be jack jack!!!!!!!!!!

***

On a side note, i wonder what i was ever complaining about when i said i had the weekend free. I don’t suppose I’ve ever counted my blessings and how lucky it is to have the weekend free.

Things I can do: 

• not wash up since i have zero social obligations 
• nua endlessly
• scroll through fb and be up to date with everyone and their aunts/ their friends/ that guy you had a crush on in 5th grade 
• watch yuca kinoshita and be amazed (again and again and again)
• eat all the peanut butter toast you want 
• sleep. sleep on the bed, on the couch, on the floor. basically, sleep is life. 
• read and pretend to have developed a new perspective on life

That aside, I’ve borrowed so many new books!!!!!!! but i really should get down to finishing the one i have on hand – the last lecture by randy pausch.

I suppose i’ll make another gratitude list when i finish the book because its almost always like a slap in the face when i read about other people’s troubles and compare it to my own.

Anyway, can i just say that i am super psyched about work? I have an early meeting tomorrow and I’m just totally looking forward to getting this project done and dusted with.

Yes, #priorities.

Goodnight world – will write more inspirationally in my next blog post cause i suppose neurotic ramblings can only be so interesting ahhhhh.

 

Insecurities and the rug

I wonder why i am so unbelievably harsh and cruel towards myself. Its true – we are our own harshest critic. If i could list down the number of  negative things i think about myself, you would most likely picture me as a troll, with no iota of self-esteem.

I am most definitely not a troll, but the lack of self-esteem is something that i am working on, but evidently not succeeding in.

Here are some examples of the criticism i hurl at myself on a daily basis (multiply it by a gazillion times).

1. I have a fat and protruding stomach pooch, and therefore, i am ugly.
2. I have cellulite on my legs and my inner thighs touches each other when i walk. Therefore, i am ugly.
3. I am currently undergoing an acne phase (WTF PIMPLES WHY YOU START APPEARING AT 26) and therefore, i am ugly.
4. My face is too wide, my skin tone is uneven, my brows are unshapely, and my eyebags are horrifying. Therefore, i am ugly.
5. I am ugly, and therefore i do not deserve to be loved.

I don’t know when i started associating mere outward appearance with beauty. Is beauty really only skin deep for me? but i find so many people beautiful, and even when they are not conventionally attractive, i still find them so beautiful. i believe that i can see beauty in everyone else, and that beauty exists everywhere – so why can’t i see the same for myself?

Some nights, like tonight, all my insecurities are so overwhelming, i think i might just drown.

Have you ever had the feeling when you feel like you’re not good enough? That no matter what you do or how hard you try, its never going to be good enough for society, for other people? And this makes you feel like you are unworthy of love, respect, someone else’s time and attention?

Is there a rewind button somewhere?

My eyes are blurry and my thoughts are half-baked and this post is depressing and i am having writer’s block.

Till the next.

 

 

Chasing Slow

Disclaimer: A slow chase, but still a chase. 

This post is self-explanatory. 

This post will be filled with quotes that both inspired and comforted.

I hope you find the same. 

Note to self: to read this book over and over and over again. 

***

“They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.”

***

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honourable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”

***

“I later learnt that thinking about living is not the same as living. It was perhaps a classic case of being a young gal with far too much time on her hands, with far too many thoughts swirling about, with far too much selfishness at her disposal.”

***

If marriage is woven by everyday moments, if the thread that holds together a lifetime of commitment is made up largely of morning breath and lost keys and fingernail clippings and snooze buttons, then truthfully, we had been unravelling for years. 

I couldn’t remember the last time i’d kissed his morning breath. 

We hadn’t paid our dues. We hadn’t made the time. We hadn’t done the work. Our love had been handed to us, our fate written in the stars, and we thought ourselves defenseless against the sky. Hadn’t it been determined years ago? Wasn’t it a given? Weren’t we promised happily ever after?

But we hadn’t earned it. We said yes to marriage, yes to a leap of faith, to a cross-country move, a star-studded life of Hollywood glitz and glamour. We sealed it all with a kiss, then twirled off and promptly forgot one another, dancing into separate sunsets.

Where was the after in our happily ever?”

***

“There are two ways to get enough: one is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.”

***

“More, she said, is a never-ending immeasurable. It can’t be counted or valued or summed or justified. More is always by the definition, just ahead at the horizon. Thats why we never stop chasing it. 

More is never enough.”

***

“Who could have known that more isn’t what we truly need?

Who could have known that more would make us feel like less?”

***

“All that remains is what you love. 

Do you love it because it remains?

Or does it remain because it is loved?”

***

“I’d been raised to think of beauty as perfection, an arrival point, an effortless destination. An after. 

It is not, of course, perfection. Beauty is fought for, and the bruising is plenty. 

But where there is bruising, there is tenderness.”

***

“And we have told the truth. I have finally told the truth that I’ve known but could not yet, admit, that we are but fragile creatures, every last one of us. 

That on most days, we’re not perfect, but we’re fine, and on some days, we’re not fine, but we’re okay, and on a few singular days of the year: nothing is okay, not even a little and everything is terrible, and forever, amen. 

And that this fragility, this delicate nature of being, is the life we’re commissioned to celebrate.”

***

“Freely you have received; freely give. 

Matt. 10:8″

***

“It hadn’t occured to me that when you offer a roadmap to another, you no longer have your own. That if you don’t know your whereabouts by heart, you risk losing yourself in a great big, and beautiful world.”

***

“But goodwill is not what we have been promised.

What we have been promised, is grace.”

***

“We can chase more, in the fast lane. 

We can chase slow. 

Or we can throw the metrics to the wind. We can pitch the scale, the ruler, the yardstick. We can look in the alley and see a cat, small and roaming, and we can finally understand what it means to accept this world for what it offers. 

We were never meant to keep an eye on it. 

We were perhaps only meant to see today.”

***

My top pick for living a slower life:

1. Detour. The word detour sounds better than the word interruption, so i find myself redefining the setbacks in my life as detours, as little more than simple changes of plans. Burned the soup? Detour to pizza. Trip to the ER? Detour to perspective. Canceled appointment? Detour to free time. 

 

And mine’s a deeply imperfect, but beautiful life 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

Somewhere between here and there

Maybe the purpose of life is not to seek happiness, but to seek meaning.

Maybe happiness is overrated.

Maybe everything is.

What gives?

Meaning?

***

Friday nights are not for ruminating.

***

#1 

Congratulations by the way is the convocation speech everyone wished they had.

I remember when i was 23 and sitting in the convention hall.

I remember clutching my graduation robes and watching the yellow and blue balloons and confetti popping in the air and thinking, is this the part where my life changes? Is this the part where i miraculously have an epiphany and start adulting? Is this the moment where i cross the bridge between youthful idealism and mature pragmatism, forever?

I remember the hand shakes, the photographs, the teddy bears, the cameras, the congratulations, the you-made-it, the speeches.

I remember the relief when the ceremony was over, the pride on my dad’s face, the smile on my mom’s.

I remember the flowers he gave, the hugs we exchanged, every photo we took that day – the 5.5 years we shared forever immortalised in memories.

I remember 101 small moments from that day.

But i forgot to remember the dreams i had when i was 23. I forgot that i once wanted so desperately to save this world, to help this world, to make this world a better place.

Things i had wanted (do i still want it?):

1. Be a nurse
2. Be a teacher
3. Build a nursing/residential home for the destitute, the poor, the elderly, the abandoned
4. Be a friend to the bullied
5. Be a journalist
6. Be an activist
7. Be a superhero. 

Who was it that said life can only be lived forward, but understood backwards? How much or how little have i understood?

***

If i could reproduce George Saunder’s entire convocation speech here, I would (but I’m terribly afraid of copyright laws). He ditches the cookie-cutter content and focuses his speech on how to be kind.

For is there anything else that is more important than kindness?

Sharing some of my fav quotes-

“Still, accomplishment is unreliable. Succeeding, whatever that might mean to you, is hard, and the need to do so constantly renews itself (success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it), and theres the very real danger that “succeeding” will take up your whole life, while the big questions go untended.”

“Be a good and proactive and even somewhat desperate patient on your own behalf – seek out the most efficacious, anti-selfishness medicines, energetically, for the rest of your life. Find out what makes you kinder, what opens you up and brings out the most loving, generous and unafraid version of you – and go after those things as if nothing else matters. 

Because, actually, nothing else does. 

And someday, in eighty years, when you’re a hundred and I’m a hundred and thirty four and we’re both so kind and loving, we’re nearly unbearable, drop me a line, let me know how your life has been.

I hope you will say: it has been so wonderful.”

Always a reminder to let kindness be my anchor.

#2

“We should all be feminists” is a strangely poignant yet unnerving read.

Chimamanda is fearless in her account of her experiences and courageous in her pursuit of equality.

I can only hope that one day, i will raise my children to be even half like her.

Some of my key takeaways from this book:

1. Raise your boys to be kind and brave, and let them know that expressing vulnerability isn’t actually a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength. This will enable them to be kind, compassionate, expressive and loving, both towards themselves and towards others.
2. Raise your girls to be fearless, and strong, so that they know their value in this world. So that they can stand up for the injustices, so that they can break the glass ceiling, so that they can be respected.
3. Raise them all to be loving.

Being feminist doesn’t mean you hate men and want to see them suffer. Being feminist is simply part of the equation of what it means to be human. For humanity is segregated and differentiated into 2 camps since day 1, and there is no way to have shared humanity unless the oppressed group is heard and liberated.

There’s something wrong with how we treat females, which is a symptom of everything that is going wrong with our culture. But we can put a stop to it. Everything that a man can do, a woman can do, and sometimes (maybe a lot of times), even better.

And so i hope if someone ever asks if you are a feminist, i hope you would say yes – after all, being a feminist means standing up for equality and respect and going against oppression and unfairness.

***

My lids are heavy and my thoughts are fragmented.

Abrupt end but its time to sleep.

Goodnight world.

 

 

 

 

As a Man Thinketh

As far as self-help books go, James Allen’s ‘As a Man Thinketh’ comes out tops for its emphasis on how the human mind has far-reaching implications on basically everything – from happiness to success to even health.

Its premise is that what we think in our minds, we sow in reality. So if you want good things to happen to you, think good thoughts and naturally you will cultivate an environment which would help you reach your dreams. Basically, the human mind can make heaven out of hell, and hell out of heaven. Only you can create your own version of reality.

I don’t know what to feel about this book – my gut feel is that it is too absolute and deterministic. I wish i had more time and energy to really digest and exercise the truths of this book, but today is just not a good day. I ironically felt slightly worst after reading this book, almost like my own mind failed itself, which i believe was not what the author had intended.

However, i refuse to let this website be a collection of my morose/neurotic thoughts. I SHALL STAND BY MY OBJECTIVE IN CREATING THIS WEBSITE: TO SPREAD POSITIVITY, INSPIRE MEANING AND LIFT MYSELF OUT OF DEPRESSION.

Sharing some of my favourite quotes for you reading who cannot be bothered to pick up a copy of this book…

1. “It is a great thing to form a habit, acquire a reputation, of always talking up and never down, of seeing good things and never bad, of encouraging and never discouraging, and of always being optimistic about everything.”
2. “A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.”
3. “Man’s mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or allowed to run wild, it must, and will, bring forth.”
4. “The dreamers are the saviors of the world. As the visible world is sustained by the invisible, so men, through all their trials and sins and sordid vocations, are nourished by the beautiful visions of their solitary dreamers.” 
5. “A person is limited only by the thoughts that he chooses.” 
6. “Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.” 

On a side note, my weight gain is so real. My binge eating habits are so real. My depressive thoughts are so real. Really trying to tell myself that none of this physical appearance thing matters for if i die, i am reduced to dust and back to the earth.

Things to remind myself whenever i am feeling fat and ugly and unloved

Just because I am not conventionally attractive does not mean that I do not deserve to be loved and happy. I know society tells you that you have to be a size 0, have the body of a VS angel, and flawless complexion to find true love and be happy. THIS IS A MYTH- NOT TRUE.

1. Case in point: My father is overweight and happy as can be. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him complain about his weight, ever. In fact, his potbelly seems to be the least of his concerns.
2. Case in point: Halle Berry was cheated on, Sandra Bullock was cheated on, Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie both got divorced. If being attractive = happiness, their happiness rating should be over the roof. However, i secretly think they might even be depressed.
3. Case in point: I have always been envious of this couple that i see on FB. The wife is overweight, not conventionally attractive, but the husband loves her all the same. They seem to have one of the most respectful and loving marriages around. This brings me back to my point – what’s essential is invisible. Indeed, a loving heart and soul is worth more than a pretty face.

If i have to apply what James Allen is preaching, I pray for my mind to be enlightened…

This is what i will wish for:

1. Be kind towards myself, and towards others. Don’t let life take away the belief that mankind is innately kind and good.
2. Accept that life is filled with suffering – accept it and let it go. Don’t try to change what can’t be changed, instead, focus on all the good things that awaits in the future.
3. Always be loving – whatever the question, love is the answer.
4. Also, i pray that one day, i will meet the right person to share my life, hopes and dreams with. i hope that this person will share my beliefs on life, be kind, be compassionate, be empathetic, be optimistic, and be a loving loving loving person. I promise to be the same. 

Ending this with James Allen’s post on calmness, peace and serenity. I hope this gives you all the strength and faith you need to live another day.

“The strong calm man is always loved and revered. He is like a shade-giving tree in a thirsty land, or a sheltering rock in a storm.

Calmness is power. Say unto your heart, Peace, be still!”

Goodnight world.