Life Update: Teacher Sophie?!

OH. MY. GOD.

I can't believe a full five months have passed since I was last here! What happened?! *shock emoji*

Well, a couple of things:

• Beardy and I moved out of my family home and into a nice little studio apartment nearby (so I get to go home a lot to see Sansa! haha) and we're loving it here.
• He and I got a job in an awesome school in the area (such a relief not having to commute to Manila for work!) And he still has his position from last year, so he currently teaches in two schools on alternate week days, while I have a full time job as a PRESCHOOL TEACHER!!!

*CUE CONFETTI*

I finally get to check that one off of my list of "dream jobs" :) The kids call me Teacher Sofie (Sofia is one of my birth names, while the nickname I've gone by since I was a baby actually isn't? Just a name my mom really liked), and often it's spelled with a "ph" by my colleagues, which I oddly prefer now. The kids can't really tell because they aren't at the age yet where they're taught to spell. Because it's a progressive school! A wonderful progressive school that prioritises the wellbeing and freedom of the younglings over ticking off checklists and getting ahead in terms of academics. Which sounded great to me.. and it is!!!

Anyway, I have a lot of good things to say about the school and I will in a seperate post, probably. For now, I just want to do a little update about things that happened in the past months while I've been gone:

We settled in! Moved our stuff in, bought a pan and a pot, color coordinated a lot (mostly green and blue for everything with minimal additions of red/purple!) and arranged stuff the best way we can in our tiny home. I love calling it tiny home, especially cos I recently started watching a lot of minimalism/minimal living type of videos around the time we moved. We aren't exactly living in a trailer in a forest with minimal electricity; in fact I think we're living quite comfily since we have a common pool outside and we use a/c, but it helped me a lot in acquiring less stuff, owning more mindfully, and detaching from my possessions.

This isn't our house, just the view out our window. It's a tiny room but with a BIG VIEW and that's a nice metaphor about our life right now I guess haha.

But that doesn't mean though that I live in a space that's dull! I still like creating small spaces of interest in the room. But the things I use are usually cheap, recycled, and/or multipurpose. This noteboard on the fridge came from the bottom of a cake box. Can you see the faces Beardy drew on the dino magnets? Hehehehe

Beardy's 26th Birthday!! We had a simple yet special one since it's our first on our own. Just a nice home-cooked meal (greek chicken and veg, tzatziki, tapenade, pan fried pita bread -all from scratch!-, and fresh Moroccan mint tea!) and his favorite Purple Oven brownies :)

Paradores Del Castillo in Taal has such an adorable turquoise/aqua motif!!!

Ihaw Boodle meal at Don Juan Boodle House

Last month, Beardy's family visited us again!!! But this time, it was for two whole weeks!!! It was super nice, even though Beardy and I still had to go to work. We did get to go away for a whole weekend together, it was to Taal and Anilao, Batangas. The weather did not let up, but neither did our spirits! We made up for the bad weather and power outages with boardgames and whatnot. It was such a nice thing to be with them so often, and they were so game for everything! We often would squish ourselves inside a single tricycle to go out for dinner haha. I miss them already.

Eagle Point. We didn't get to swim in the ocean though, just the pool. But we stared at it a lot. The waves were crazy but beautiful haha.

 We also had a nice lunch at Angelfields with my family one day and that was also nice because we were all complete and it's such a beautiful place!

I sadly only managed to take a picture of the tarragon tea. haha! But isn't it pretty? I had soup and a sandwich.

Edit: I forgot to add three events!!!:

1. Beardy and I also had our 70th monthsary! Isn't it crazy how fast time flies? We had dinner at Ziggurat. Cos it's our fave, and it's just downstairs.

(Fun fact: Ziggurat follows us around. When we stayed in makati for 10 days, we were looking for a good restaurant nearby and found out that the #1 Tripadvisor restaurant was just a short walk away from the AirBnb we booked. Then when we moved in this apartment, we noticed there was one downstairs! Whuuut. Too lucky.)

2. My aunt had her 60th bday this month! And our family had a bowling tournament. It was really fun, we don't usually actually do things for parties other than eat, drink and sit around so that was a really nice change. Hope we do more fun stuff from now on! ♥

Some pics from my tita Del's FB:

3. Also, our old neighbors/childhood friends from Alabang came by our house!! It's been YEARS since we were last together! The kuyas of the group live in Vegas now and they visited because their grandma (who we all call Nanay) passed away.

This was us in 1992:

And 24 whole years later!!!!:

Lastly, but very important!!!! Carmen and Aizel FIIIINALLY got to see our new place! Pia still hasn't due to BPO scheduling (huhu) but it was so cool to have them over. We had rumcokes and chats up on the roof while families flew kites, enjoyed the view, and I cooked them dinner! We had a bit of a giggle about how adult it seemed to host a dinner for your friends at your own place. It felt really cool but also made us feel really old haha! We all have new jobs right now and it just felt like a nice stopover before starting a looong road trip in our lives. They're both in Makati but I really hope we get to do it again really soon. With Pia.

So that's more or less my life right now. Just trying to make it work. The first few months have been very draining energy-wise and thus I didn't get to keep up with Youtube and this blog, but as I get more of a hang of my new job I imagine to be able to juggle it with my other interests on the side! Soon I'll be practicing guitar again, I'll certainly be on here more, and who knows, maybe I'll get to upload videos on Youtube again. I DON'T KNOW!! Isn't that great!! The world is so big and full of possibilities.

Post-Romantic Love Conquest: The Dreamiest Life

Valentine's Day amiright?? All the love-themed memeing has got me thinking and reflecting about love in my own life, and what my love "conquest" is going to be now that I'm A-OK in the romantic love aspect.

A lot of us grow up thinking that we are to search life looking for that other person to complete us, and V-day is supposedly about that kind of love. Recently though, I find that people are more sensible about it being a commercial holiday and have decided to own it instead and put their own spin: it's morphed to become a holiday that's about just love itself, and we express it to people who are important to us, not necessarily just our lovers or crushes. Our friends, parents, siblings, even our pets! Personally, I've been spending the past Valentine's Days with either my friends or my family. And now that Emmy and I are actually together on Valentine's Day for the first time?...

 We both spent it with my family. Haha!



I got to try Umenoya for the first time - it's located in the Microtel by Windham hotel that Emmy's family stayed in two Christmasses ago (woah! I almost said "last Christmas", how fast time flies!) Only my mom has tried it before in my family.

I had a Nigiri set meal as usual, and I find this place to be REALLY GOOD. The fish was fresh. The Uni was clean on the palette and service was nice. My mom opted for a private seating room - the kind where you can put your feet down into the floor - not sure what the terminology is! It has interesting decor, but it's muted compared to Ryuma, which is more kitsch. It was more relaxing and intimate. And the prices are lower, at least for the meal I got.

Emmy and I got a picture taken at the entrance - this was where we dropped his family off after New Year's Eve - it was very bittersweet for me. 

The day after Valentine's, we remembered that we had downloaded Sense and Sensibility in January so that it could be our special V-day movie. We figured it was never too late, and since our Mondays are free for now we had a nice Film/Show watching day complete with Mcdo and the long-awaited V-day Bob's Burgers episode.

Today though, I decided to openly ponder, through writing, about my current love conquest. And that is the search for my own ideal life. I want to take a few moments to fangirl over not my dream boy or girl, but my dream life... Aaaaaah.

And because most of pondering occurs in lists, let me list down the aspects of this dream life in bullet points!

• I want a creative life - It seems like it should be obvious that a creative person automatically will have a creative life, but as I grow older it takes more effort to seek creative activities actively. I want to spend more time deliberately painting, drawing, crafting, generally working with my eyes and hands, alone or with friends! My best friends and I have been discussing activities that can make this happen in a communal kinda way, because everything good is better when shared.
• I want to get back with music, and to stay together with it - because it's been hard for me to write songs lately, I've stepped back from singing and playing at all, and that's super strange! Especially since, like I told Emmy a few weeks ago, music used to be what I identified with when I was younger. When I self-identified, I would say "I'm a singer and a songwriter". And for years now, that hasn't been true, and it feels very bizarre and surreal how far away I feel from that person now. I know people change, and if I've naturally moved on as a person to something else then I'd be fine with that, but recently I've been itching to come back to that. It's not gone from me. It's still inside, wanting to come out. I just haven't taken the chance to have a real go at it again.
• I want a lifestyle change!!! - I want to take charge of my daily habits even more.

1. I want to wake up earlier and sleep more soundly, 
2. I want to eat less meat and dairy, and more whole foods, and to drink more water 
3. I want to move moderately and regularly, and form fitness habits that work for my lifestyle (I don't like pushing too hard, I don't want to have to go somewhere else to do it, I like dancing)
4.  I want to use my time more actively rather than passively. Less browsing, more editing videos, writing content, practicing my skills in those areas, and in art and music! And French.
5. I want to be more mindful of my belongings and have less unaccounted-for stuff in my place.
6. I want to start saving for my future and my creative projects. I'm currently in the process of finding a job that suits me, and I gave myself an ultimatum that if I don't find anything else, I will do what I used to do: be a call center agent! Scary! But I found a place that seems less stressful, and again that's just my option for when I don't find anything more suitable.

I've been going towards the right direction but very slowly, and it's a forward-and-back-again kind of process. But once Emmy and I move into our own place, I'm looking forward to really dive into it face-first! That being said, even now that we're still living in my room all of the time, I can still do a few of these changes:

1. Using my free time more purposefully. I'm still struggling at this bigtime, as can be seen through my very sparse posting habits here and on YouTube, but I'm sure I'll get a hang of it, I just have to keep at it everyday. 
2. I'm going to have a major decluttering session! I'm going to apply the KonMari Method (with alterations) to the things in my room, so that when I move into a new space, I will feel like a NEW WOMAN. whoo. It will also help me worry less about the attic caving in from the weight in my room. Haha.
3. Less-intense diet changes. We have trouble keeping our ideal diets when we live with other people, and end up eating McDonald's a lot! But even though we can't make our own food, I've kept on pulling my intake into the reasonable side, which was greatly helped by my #eatmindfully project last year. To be honest, I've been eating a little more, but it's still under control B-) And we still keep our owl water cups handy all the time!
4. Very easy exercise! A little goes a really long way for me. Just 12 reps of weighed squatting leaves me sore for a couple of days! Then I can go again. And I really feel improvements right away. It's pretty nice.
5. Keep learning about how to make things happen. I know I say this all the time, but Gretchen Rubin books are so effective and helpful to me. I love that she takes into account everyone's idiosyncrasies and real data, statistics, and sprinkles personal accounts and accounts of real people in the mix. It's just... So easy to understand and doesn't ring my "THIS IS BS" alarms. Right now I'm reading Better Than Before, which I was thinking about preordering on her website, thinking it might take a while to get here, but suddenly found on a shelf in the bookstore with the minimalistic original cover that I really like!!! Anyway, it's teaching me how to prioritize and effectively attempt change, so that's exciting because I can really use the guidance.

So yeah! A creative, functional, healthy life! So dreamy!!! I hope I make it werqq this year!

Spiralling into inaction thru spiralling into chronic imagination

ALRIGHT. Since I've been finding it hard to sit my butt down and write a proper post and consequently forgot to update this blog about my channel's first vlog (?!?!?!?!?) Let me attempt to gather myself today and do just that.

There. now that's that out of the way...

I have big plans for this year. I'm attempting to veer closer to the edge of my comfort zone (and maybe even... step on the line??? possibly.. step... OUT? of it???! even??) and even though I saw January come and go without much of my plans really working, I'm still daring, still trying, still figuring out what works for me and how I can trick myself into making things happen because I have the worst attention span.

I feel like I have short term memory a lot. It's hard to see my whole life in one picture in my brain, it's always in bits and pieces and I lose touch of what I need to accomplish a lot because of this. 

It seems that the more plans i have in place, the less I get done! Perhaps I can use the fact that we have a dying dog and a sick dog as an excuse, but I spend far too much time playing Neko Atsume and watching YouTube to even buy that.

No, there is no excuse. The explanation though? I had a fuzzy brain for days and have sort of settled into the type of lifestyle that it causes. I can't latch on (focus my attention) to creative activities, except when it's in an erratic and impulsive way instead of an organized scheduled one.

So, things I can't do at the moment:

1. edit things
2. focus on tedious attention-requiring tasks (but some of them that can fall into this category can help if i do them impusively! see below)
3. write in a calculated manner
4. mentally connect ideas from different days into working tasks without INTENSE EFFORT
5. in the same manner, coming back to a task that takes time again and again with breaks in between is really hard ~ once i do something else, i am repelled by coming back to what i need to finish.
6. COME BACK TO MY PLANS AND DO THEM?!

But! things I #1 can do / #2 am doing / #3 should do more of:

1. deep cleaning, any cleaning, organizing, chores (they clear my head and help me get back to doing meaningful things)
2. impulsive writing (what i'm doing right now!)
3. imaginative activities, in short!! bursts!!! (also what i'm trying right now)
4. physical tasks (if i am caffeinated enough and have an electric fan facing me to cool me off cos it feels like i'm a hamster and am constantly shaking slightly and creating heat and have sweaty pits)
5. impulsively singing and turning my life into a musical because it releases tension i get from trying to focus (only counts as a #1&2 this is useless and annoying but i'm turning into Linda Belcher AAALRRIIIIIGHT)
6. DEEP TALKS AND LIKE THINKING ABOUT WHAT I WANNA DO AND STUFF (also writing things in parentheses too much)

So since I have a video series lined up about PURGING MY THINGS anyway i might just shoot the timelapse parts where i show some of the action happening while I'm in this neurotic state. And then I'll do the rest when I'm back in fighting form. Also I'm going to keep "scribing" with my journal and planners to help ground me and remind me of things I need to do. Even though it takes so much effort to focus on that too!

Also yesterday I had a very fruitful date with my Frond Carmen in which we brainstormed about projects of a personal and collaborative and speculative nature. I'm excited about those, but I need to plot them properly in my planners! I HOPE I FIND THE FOCUS TO DO SO

So yeah. I'm just going to work with what I have right now, because it's the best thing to do given the circumstances. I can't keep waiting for the composed, coherent, functional me to surface before I make anything because it's starting to be clear that if I do that, I won't be showing the whole picture. And the point of all this documenting and reflecting that I'm doing with my blogging and vlogging projects is to be honest with myself, and to whoever tunes in, so that I can paint an honest picture of struggles that people like me face everyday, and how I make things work, when I do. I don't want to give people who might need whatever help or insight i can offer the impression that anything is effortless, or a straight line going up, when you climb uphill these things.

And because there's a severe lack of visuals in this here blog post let me impulsively reward you with a taste of my very raw Photoshopping skills. With a takoyaki border. It's what we ate while discussing things yesterday. Hahaha.

 God it was so good.

Friends and FOMO: Let Live Does Not Mean Let Go

FO·MO

ˈfōmō/

noun

informal

1. anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere, often aroused by posts seen on a social media website.

I've always thought I was a victim of FOMO. A fear of missing out. I think about it whenever I feel my face get red from the shame of feeling like an obsessive ex-boyfriend when I see pictures of my friends hanging out with other people on my feed. It makes me feel like I'm stalking their lives, which is silly, because the whole point to a news feed is that the information is fed to you. I didn't exactly seek it out!

Well, okay, I actually make a point to visit their profiles every now and then to check on them. Which is sometimes a futile act because the reason I feel this need is due to unanswered private messages, which are probably unanswered because they were offline in the first place. And I'm pretty sure I'm the one who is online the most among all of us. I'm the one who's online the most, and goes out the least. So yeah, as you can see, it's a recipe for disaster.

But recently I tried to look into what I truly do feel, and I realised that I don't actually have FOMO, per se.

I don't fear that I'm missing out on a good time; I fear that I'm missing out on their lives. I fear that they don't want me in them anymore.

I'm being clingy. 

We are all individual people with complex lives. The beauty of friendship is that you choose to be friends. You don't own your friends. You don't belong to your friends.  You are not forced to be together by some external force like work or being neighbors (although many good friendships can start that way). But you choose to interact in a deep way anyway. As individual people.

So I told myself, and now I guess I'm telling anyone who needs to hear it: It's not all or nothing. They say we should only keep those who always make an effort, but there are times where our friends are the ones who make an effort and it's us who don't notice. So when we feel like they're being absent a bit, we must take a step back and realize that sometimes, a friendship needs distance for the individuals to roam around and have some stories to return with. Sometimes, people just need to put other things first, or just finds a different person really cool to hang out with right now, and that doesn't mean you don't matter. And at times, the best thing we can do to maintain the great friendships in our lives is to let our friends bloom into the people they're meant to become. To offer support and to be there for them when we are needed, but ultimately, to wish them the best (and sometimes help them get the best!)

Of course, I am not including toxic friendships here, I hope you already know that! Some people are just bad for us. But for the people who are good for us but we keep missing chances to be with, we must stop ourselves from feeling abandoned by them. Let live. No need to let go!

This is not to say of course that we should give up on trying to be in their lives more frequently (I sure as hell am not done trying! We'll make this work guys!) but that when things don't work out, we don't need to feel discouraged about the value of our friendships. In fact, when our friends live rich and colorful lives outside the scope of our friendship, we also expand as people through seeing the world through their stories from when they were apart from us! Hanging out less doesn't have to mean falling apart. Sometimes, pursuing other things can decrease the quantity but increase the quality of our conversations.

So yep, after thinking of all that, I hope that like me, your FOMO has been replaced with excitement instead about the next time you get to sit beside each other and talk about ALL THE THINGS!

♥

impulsive "honest-to-blog*" life update for other night owls

isn't it funny how much we change as people throughout our lives? how much of the stuff we thought were the shit just kinda make us cringe and toss around at night? in my case it was how much of what i wrote i derived from the movies i watched, which had very particular language that i couldn't really possibly do that without sounding obvious (*Juno, 2007). luckily i didn't try to get away with that or anything, i pointed to them as much as i could. heck, in my previous about page, i took a .gif from Scott Pilgrim, which was where i got the previous blog title from, "Getting A Life."

i recently had a branding overhaul though - okay, maybe tweak is more proportionate to the intensity - over here and that's gone now. what's left is what i hope would be something more central to just me as a person and the messages i want to send out rather than some big event where i get a life; because how daunting is that?! does that mean i don't have one? maybe i'm fine just sitting here and slowly becoming okay with who i am, you know? so yeah now this blog, like my other social media, will simply be called beawilderment.

now, on to other life things...

recently i started shooting a collaborative video project with friends and it felt really good and natural to be tinkering around with video editors. it felt good immersing myself in something i enjoy, even if it's just for fun. or maybe, because it's just for fun. and it sure doesn't hurt that i get to do it with friends.

quote based on a facebook post by Tara Stiles

other than that, on days where i feel like it, i paint and draw, usually words. i'm still not immersed in it as much as i want to be because i usually don't feel like i'm in the right shape for it somehow, or it's too hot in my room, or my back hurts, or it's too hot in my room.. 

it's usually because it's too hot in my room.

but it's been easier to be fully immersed in the little things that make life good. noticing little things when i'm outside that look beautiful. the way people dress, plants, animals, food, architecture... and interactions with people i love. and finding little cheap stuff i want or need like shampoo, cleaning fluids, or pencil cushions, pictured above.

anyway, i just felt chatty and like maybe i want to just take time to share a tiny bit of life on here off-script. since i've decided to really give this a shot i've been feeling somewhat stiff and formulaic and therefore don't really get to do much posting because i have stuff lined up that stress me out. hahaha. too much pressure. so silly. anyway, i'll try to do "organic" things like this apart from conceptual stuff just so i keep myself in the mood for it.

anyway, if you happen to have clicked on this and read through everything, thanks! hope to see you here more often.

2014 - the year it all sunk in

We've gotten pretty deep into January now but I figured now is a time as good as ever to formally say farewell to 2014, or rather for 2014 to say farewell to me, because I'm the one that's going to leave and move forward. Heu. 

Excuse the duckface but this was how I looked at the start of the year. Microbangs and thin eyebrows D:  I had a really short-lived Bettie Page phase.

I spent my birthday with a couple friends and a makeshift home theater!

I'm making this post about my whole year to look back and reflect on the past year and to move forward into 2015, bringing with me all the good stuff that 2014 has brought.

I started 2014 with my eyes completely set on going to France for the summer. I re-shaped my entire life in order to make that happen, but in the end it wasn't in the cards for me yet. But during the months prior, I found myself expanding as a person in an effort to reach that great height, and even though at the end I didn't make it, I was still a bigger person than I was before.

I also had my camera fixed this year! These are some pictures I took when the shutter was still bad, with the weird bar

Still cute though this dog.

And this was after I had it fixed :D Byutifule.

Looking through these pictures, I am reminded of what my state of mind was like at the start of 2014, and how it compares to now... And the difference is surprisingly huge. I've always said that I feel like I haven't been changing much year-per-year since college, but that sure wasn't true this year.

As vague as this might sound, this is the year that I found myself. Recently, I found out what Being Sure of Oneself means, and that I actually never knew what it truly meant, because I have never personally experienced it. That still sounds vague, but it's such a sublime thing that I can only further explain it by adding more vague ways to describe it, such as:

• It is when you give yourself space to just be, wherever you are and whoever you're with. Letting your freak flag fly, so to speak. To not feel like you have to change to be worthy of the space you are occupying, to not constantly feel like you have to impress people or to blend in with them to prove yourself worthy of their respect or admiration.. this is pretty cool because it also lets you make other people around you feel at ease. and opens you to who they are too, not just who you are. Everyone else is also just wanting to be accepted, better that you be the example by being authentic rather than be the same with everyone who's just following everyone else. If you act like it's okay to be weird, other people will feel better about their own weirdness. Most of the time, anyway.
• It is when you know, embrace, and stand by what you feel and think, instead of being overly occupied with what people around you might feel or think.. This one was really hard to get into, it's easy to convince oneself that they are not guilty of this, but it's such a sneaky dull itch deep in the chest that can easily be simplified as just general unease, especially to naturally anxious persons like myself.
• It is when you are able to give space for the spaces between to just be - to respect the silences within conversations and let them be part of the moment's beauty... To allow moments of having nothing to do to be enjoyable rather than be perceived as time wasted... To allow yourself to search for your words rather than filling in the silence with something less sincere. To allow disagreeable moments between you and loved ones to just be, without thinking things will end, but instead holding on to the knowledge that you love each other and are just sorting things out at the moment. 
• It is when you bask in the beauty of the moment without straining to save it somehow, knowing it's a part of you even if you don't take a hundred pictures of it.

And it's not so much that it's something that I didn't know how to do before, it wasn't a lesson I just haven't learned before - in fact, everything I've been reading have been more or less about this stillness that I just recently gotten to access. It's more of having to practice it enough to be actually sort of good at it. It's like a muscle - I just needed to use it more for it to get stronger. Or maybe my personal Dark Ages were just brought about by hormonal instability from puberty and it had just waned away, who knows.

This year I got my hands dirty

what we made wasn't made to last, but it was beautiful and it was real.

This year I learned to just patiently do what I can do, whatever it was that was happening in the periphery. What was important was that I was walking my own road, being authentic, not giving up, and always trying to work from where I am towards where I want to be. So I got to try and rekindle my old passions like music, painting my nails, stuff like that. Nothing feels as intense as before, but I've also never felt this stable mentally, so meh. I also started new stuff like playing the uke, tarot cards, calligraphy, and watercolor. And there are stuff I was always interested in but didn't really feel like I was good at them till now, like make up.

my under-eye circle correction kit !

..Still not 100% stable, but.. that's just who I am I guess.

In a way it is counter-intuitive; I myself had preconceptions of stillness being tantamount to inaction, but in fact, it's more like my old Float philosophy... Being still enough that you are able to use your surroundings to move up instead of panicking and moving about aimlessly and causing yourself to sink even more. 

This year I also felt more comfortable about the vast difference (haha sounds like something else) between me and the people around me, specifically about faith. I'm finding it less stressful to be an Atheist in a Catholic community. It's a long story, but it's mostly just a change in perspective.

As much as I've always tried to accept things the way they are, I guess I've always had a heavy feeling in my chest that felt like things are not what they should be. But looking back, I didn't need everything else around me to change to get rid of that feeling. I just needed to change myself ,and feeling like I was working towards the changes I desired was calming to me, more than if things just magically changed. Maybe that's why I feel at peace this time, with everything that I used to always complain about in the world around me - I took risks, and didn't just try to shield myself from pain. I felt the pain. And I got out alive.

(One of these days I might talk more about our Singapore family trip if the mood strikes me.)

And it wasn't even damning pain - in the end, Beardy just came here again. Not just once, but twice! And I still got to have an out-of-country trip to Singapore/Malaysia. It all fell into place in its own way, but in a way that's better than it could have been if I didn't even try. 

Beardy blends in more and more with my family. It's very cute.

On both days when he was about to leave, we always end up watching Bob's Burgers, both times we had McDonald's for lunch, too. This was breakfast in August, though.

He and I are settling really nicely into our relationship too... Not in the stuck-with-you kinda way, but in being more and more open and loving and caring and genuine and all the good stuff. Here is a post on my tumblr about a very special moment we had in the summer that I wanted to always remember. Even though I didn't really write it so eloquently.

I have to admit that during the times where I'm actually in the thick of the chaos, I didn't actually feel very zen. It came to me in flashes at first (like when Beardy was here in the summer) and then became more constant later in the year, after everything was settled. I noticed it within my interactions with people, and with myself when I'm alone. I communicated myself more, I was less closed off, and I was able to love bigger, to share myself fuller. I even witnessed my surroundings in a more reflective and happy manner. Birds that would rest from flying near me, or good food, slow mornings... And when happy times were happening, I don't feel like I'm holding on trying to make time stop anymore. And funny enough, this made time go slower, because I'm more present and aware of my surroundings. This part still isn't perfect, but I'm headed towards the right direction.

desserts and baths are very helpful for slowing down/ winding down.. unless you eat everything in one bite

All in all, even with the obvious mishaps and plans that didn't go through the way I wanted, this year was very good to me in other aspects. I spent a lot of time with people I loved, had really great conversations during which I felt very comfortable, open, and alive... And I'm also a lot closer to figuring out what I really want to do for the rest of my life. 

Also, I've been trying to chuck out some baggage from past years where I've felt stagnant like re-evaluating my bookmarks, notes, and to do lists.. Removing stuff that just aren't me anymore, and incorporating the rest back into my life. Like exercise, which I've mostly abandoned the whole year haha.

I've done a lot of redecorating and organizing in my room. It felt great every time.

i also finally bought my very own computer and have successfully migrated my files into it :D

I'm nowhere near I wanted to be by now many years ago, but I'm still far far away from where I started, and as long as I'm moving forward, I can stay happy.

Beacons of Inner Peace: I was going to up-cycle this clock but when I removed the cardboard design I found that it looked good just the way it wasin a rustic unfinished kind of way. Also here is a butterfly that chilled out in my room for a bit one night.

Things around you just fall into place beautifully if you move and exist from a place of awareness and purposeful, thoughtful action.