Compass v.1

• don't nag yourself into creating. - slide smoothly into it. 
• stop speaking/thinking ill of others and stop pitying - focus on making YOURSELF better.
• do not resist the fact that you want to do everything - work with it. make it an asset. but one skill at a time.
• don't guilt yourself over lost moments. - catch new ones.
• stop trying to be unnaturally rigid in habit-forming - work with the tides of your life. a time for being wired in, a time to live under a rock with nothing but a book.
• don't let your uncertainties become insecurities. - be still and certain that this adventure will be great and is only beginning.
• don't be so quick to resist something new - wonder, explore, appreciate.

say yes to life.

Tips towards sticking to your New Year goals

If you're like most people around my age, you probably have stopped believing in New Year Resolutions. Resolutions are like promises, they bind you into a fabrication of a future (which, as we have established, is never in your hands until it stops being the future and starts being the present anyway) while doing almost NOTHING to help you achieve those outcomes. It's all just pressure man. You don't need that!

A better thing to list down when a New Year starts, are goals. Detailed, realistic, time/measurement-bound goals. And, more importantly, What separates the two (because it's certainly not the words themselves, which basically means the same thing) is how a "goal" implies that it's an end point of a process that has a middle. And it doesn't have the stigma attached to the word "resolution". Let's face it, wording is a big thing. Not everybody is willing to look beyond their own personal word associations. Even though in a perfect world, people would try to understand the intent behind the word, practically speaking, it's more convenient to use new words for new positive associations. That being said, if the word "goal" feels binding to you as well, you don't have to use it! You don't even have to use just a word. You can use something as long as: "How I want to live my life in 2012". It's just once a year after all.

What makes resolutions fail? Don't be too hard on yourself, it's not you. Okay, it kind of is, but it's not your incapability to reach them, but probably your method of creating them in the first place. And of course, there's life. What you should focus on isn't being perfect, but getting better all the time. Always be aware of how you're getting better. It's usually enough. :) Acknowledge your accomplishments, be they big or little.

Here are some tips to help you stick to your goals! These aren't meant to sound preachy, but it's things I try to remind myself with, and at the very least they make me feel better. They help me go beyond feeling that I've reached a dead end.

1. Write things you REALLY want to accomplish. Real desire binds more efficiently than any piece of paper can. Imagine yourself accomplishing the thing, and imagine the good things it will bring to your life. If this doesn't get you excited, maybe you don't really want it. If you're one of those people that can't really think of anything but would like to make a change by giving this a try (for some odd reason..) Start by observing your life and how you feel about it. If you feel like something is missing, start there. Write what you don't like about it, and look for a counterattack. If you're perfectly pleased, then good for you! Maintain your outlook. (Actually if you are, you're probably not reading this so....)
2. Write them somewhere you always see. Like your bathroom mirror (tip: whiteboard marker!) or desk, or closet door. Not as a way of feeding yourself guilt if it doesn't get accomplished but as a friendly reminder. If you think about it, hidden resolutions will give you more guilt because by the time you find them again, you've already forgotten what you were supposed to do and you're already off-track! Again, the key is to remember that setting goals is not a way to police yourself into accomplishing stuff, but to guide yourself towards those things. Be your own friend.
3. Begin with the end in mind. Build a process. Especially if it's a big goal or a complex one, like losing weight. Think of what you want, then what you need to have it, and what you need to do. If you can't really imagine it happening yet, save it for later after you've thought about the how's more. The first steps will come clearer that way. List these things down and save them in a file on your desktop, or a notebook you always bring with you. And don't skimp on reminding yourself! put little notes of encouragement in your planner or whatever. If you have the time or are really serious about these things (like I kinda am), Thinksimplenow.com had a REALLY AWESOME METHOD that I used and I really feel like it's given me more direction in general. What I liked about it is how it really gets to the core and soul of things. It really helped me remember what I wanted in life before I became a bit more cynical or disheartened with age. And how it makes you list down the why and how of your goal, so that you're not stuck looking at it scratching your head saying "Yeah, but how?", and so that you always remember your initial motivations. It also makes you list what facet of your life it benefits, to enable you in monitoring how balanced all the important stuff are.
4. Remember that a year has 12 months, 52 weeks and 365 days. No matter how invincible the clean slate of a new year makes you feel, we are still bound by time. So if your goals don't really come with their own due date (ex: graduation, best friend's bridal shower), make your own. Make your goals measurable, so that you can reward yourself accordingly. You can do this as loosely or specifically as you like, as long as your goals are really achievable in a year's time! Otherwise you might stress yourself out or set yourself up for disappointment.
5. Feel free to follow your heart! If even with your initial reasons in front of you, you don't feel like doing something anymore (ex: skydiving just somehow STOPPED seeming so exciting), update your list! Remember that this is all about YOU, NOW. Whenever the Now is. 
6. Keep track of your progress. Have a weekly or bi-monthly check-up on yourself and your goals, or keep a journal, or have a silent staring marathon with your bathroom mirror list, reviewing where you are now. 
7. Keep yourself excited! Read blogs about people with the same challenges, or read success stories, anything to make you feel good and happy about taking this journey. Because no matter what the bad days might tell you, what you're doing is a very brave thing. You trying to be better is what life is all about! Make sure you feel as good about it as you deserve to be!

Listomania

Lists: Think less of them, and see the manifestations grow. Like a riot, like a riot, oh!
(Plus points if you smirked at that)

The new year has clocked in and everyone's talking about resolutions, or not having them. I've jotted down quite a few things myself, but they're motivators, not resolutions. Everyday I will try to be better. It's not just something for new year's!

Things to be excited about for 2012:

1. Graduating! Even if some complications turn up for my March graduation, I can still get my diploma on September / October because I've already taken all of my subjects! So whatever happens, this is the year I become done with school :)
2. My boyfriend visiting me for the first time!.. Yeah, yeah, say what you want about "internet" relationships but we're making it work so far, we treat each other better than most couples I know, and we've been together for more than a year now! Also he's spending his birthday here awww <3
3. Travelling the around the country with him! We're going around to see stuff, most of which even I haven't seen yet so it will be new to both of us! Newer to him than me though, obviously :p
4. Losing weight. Nope I'm not dismayed by the idea of exercise and eating "less" (I prefer to call it eating "better") It's just that I realized that I'm ending everything in exclamation marks and I'm starting to annoy myself!


5. Being able to choose what to do with my time. This way, I can:
1. Set aside time for things like : meditation, reading, creative time (sewing, crafting, singing, writing, practicing guitar and keyboard), "home office" hours (in which I attempt and succeed, even if in small dosages only, to start generating income), and exercise.
2. Regularly pick up after myself, clean my room, do chores, cook food, all the good domestic stuff. Trainin to be a work-from-home kinda person hahaha. It's the new thing isn't it?
3. Go out and explore new possibilities. It will be nice to not be chained to a primary priority you definitely cannot say no to, even if I eventually find myself in some desk job.. I want to treat life like an adventure and go see places and meet people with similar interests.
4. Monitor my family's diet. It would be nice to be able to contribute positively to my whole family's overall health. My mother, who is the only other person in the family interested in being healthy, simply cannot fit it in her schedule to really sit down and make recipes for every day! Busy woman. So I want to be the nutrition guy. hahah. Maybe eventually we'll all start doing physical activities together like walking outside, or walking the dogs, which brings me to the next one:
5. Take care of Seeker. We have three dogs in the house, and Seeker is somehow the one who's "mine." He's the last descendant of our great motherdog Swatch; her great-grandson. I named him after Harry Potter's quidditch position when the first movie came out. I don't know why I didn't name him Snitch instead because he's golden and it sounds more doglike, but I don't regret it much because I like what the name Seeker implies :) I think I'm a natural Seeker in life and I'm getting sidetracked here. As I was saying before I got rudely interrupted by my flashbacks and musings, I want to be able to give him baths and walk him. My older brother is a bit hard-headed about taking care of his adorable dog Mozart, and although we tell him all the time, I think nothing is better than walking the walk instead. (Thank you Modern Family for this lesson.)
6. Designing a planner for 2013. ;)
7. Learning new things :D With time and youth in my hands, I want to make sure I make the most out of my first year out of school. I'll never stop learning, and hopefully, I'll never stop being curious.

I feel that my outlook in life is so much more positive now that I'm out of my teens. Let's hope it lasts and that it eventually pushes me out of my "lost" phase! I honestly still don't know what to do! But now I'm excited about instead of dreading the outcome.

And now, annoying preachy-hallmark card-moment time!

To all of you,(I'm really only mostly speaking to myself, as is the same for this whole blog) Enjoy this year! Set goals, be excited, but be easy on yourself, and make health and your mood your first priority! Don't worry too much about running out of time to the point where you forget what you need it for. (hint: living a GOOD+HAPPY life) Or end up shortening the time you do have because stress kills, you know.

Laugh often, love fully, treat every circumstance in life as if you chose it yourself. Treat everything that comes your way as if it's good news or at the very least, an opportunity to grow. In the end, it's all just a ride. Don't let it get to you! Don't take yourself so seriously. Take it easy and the universe will reflect your attitude back to you. Life is a big game of pretend that everyone is playing, so play! And have fun. :)

Post-Holiday Gift-giving Recap! (copied from my tumblr)

CHRISTMAS CRAFTS PICTURES!!!

SO LATE , I know. but here they are.
My theme for the wrapping paper was peppermint and cocoa, as I had previously stated.
I designed this really nifty bookmark.. the idea came to me after buying those necklaces. (really pretty right?) I call them Polaris bookmarks. the pendant was realllllyyy prettyyy but I somehow didn’t see it as looking its best when worn around the neck, I felt like it would look best dangling.. And I thought “why not from a book??” It’s a really classy bookmark, I was really excited when I started thinking about how to make it into one. 

I ended up designing a way to twist a piece of wire (or paperclip) so that when you pin it at the middle of the book, there’s a ring from where the clasp will be swinging away from without being pulled in and out of the book. I also had to round the edges so that they won’t scratch precious paperbacks my best friend would be reading. :3 My prototype, pictured with The Golden Compass (ISNT IT PRETTY??? I mean, sure it makes it obvious how slowly I’m progressing with my reading, but still) was made with a plain silver paperclip with a plain rounded edge. Carmen’s one, the final product, was twisted in a heart design at the back for extra cuteness, with a brown paperclip cos earthy-elegant-sleek is her style. :3

Also, there’s the mixtape I made for Ma in the making :B

"Be ok with silence."

This gem came to me after realizing that I might have an entertainment addiction. I'm a girl who constantly needs music, and if I turn it off I need to watch Family Guy. Or Archer. Or a new movie I just downloaded. If I stop that, I have to scroll through my Tumblr dashboard, usually putting my music on again. I distinctly remember being extremely uncomfortable whenever I commute without my iPod. I've recovered out of that for a while, but it was replaced by sleeping in the bus. It's as if I'd rather be unconscious than to deal with silence. I can't be by myself.

It takes me hours to fall asleep sometimes. Because I somehow have this pathological resolution that I will get restless if it's silent and I need something to lull me to sleep. Sure, it does lull me to sleep-state, but I'm usually woken up a dozen times afterwards and start paying attention to some asinine Peter Griffin quip. Or my favorite part in a song. Or simply, I get woken up because the volume is too loud. So I walk to the laptop (I position it in the other side of the room) and.... put the volume down. After a few more times, I get sleepy enough to decide to actually turn it off, because I'd be surely falling right asleep the second I go back to bed.

I wrote this on a bathroom tile when I remembered a lesson I seem to have forgotten. I don't want to forget it anymore: You can't pour more water into a cup that's already full. I was masking unease by getting absorbed in music, compulsions, games, and humor, but with it I am also masking all of my potential for creation for the day. Days shrink into minutes, It's like time is junkfood that I'm eating really fast. It does not do the job, and it's a resource that's usually depleted before I know it. Silence is a way of creating a vacuum in your brain, for functionality to seep in. I've been so afraid of facing my requirements that I feel I cannot accomplish.


Well Bea, let these things, tried and tested, reassure you:

1. You fall asleep really quickly when you just fold the lappy onto itself and jump onto the bed.
2. You get used to silence after a while, and it makes time go MUCH SLOWER. At first it feels like boredom, but eventually you start relaxing in this state, and it's just.. calm energy with a lot of  potential. :)
3. After the initial "struggle", working starts to feel more natural, and freeing instead of limiting.
4. It's hard to topple a bike over when it's moving.
5. Thoughts and ideas become so much more tangible and real in silence. :D
6. Daredevil's hearing is fantastic because he has no sight to distract him from sound. Using a lot of senses is a form of multitasking. It's a micro-form of that Napoleon Hill quote:

“Until a man selects a definite purpose in life, he dissipates his energies and spreads his thoughts over so many subjects and in so many different directions that they lead not to power, but to indecision and weakness.

With the aid of a small reading glass, you can teach yourself a great lesson on the value of organized effort. Through the use of such a glass, you can focus the sun’s rays on a definite spot so strongly that they will burn a hole through a plank. Remove the glass (which represents the definite purpose), and the same rays of sun may shine on that same plank for a million years without burning it.“

-Hill, Napoleon; 1925

See how powerful this change can become? Clogging my brain pathways with music and entertainment when it's unnecessary leads to me pushing tasks along, and before I know it's time for bed, and even sleep gets pushed along, so I wake up late, and have less time the next day, which I use by pushing more tasks along. Being okay with silence, immersing myself with the discomfort of feeling my inadequacies, pushes me harder into action.

Be okay with silence.

Eve

It's time for a change. I can see my pattern unfolding once again in this very blog. I have three unpublished drafts staring at me. Three unpolished "gems". I have an ideal in mind, and then I refuse stuff that I feel aren't "it" until refusal becomes what it's all about. A habit. Refusal to perform. To just do the work. Resistance, mighty resistance.

What was supposed to be a hands-on, honest to the core, insightful scrapbook has been reduced to the occasional musing about a lesson learned.. And it's usually only on the mind level. Fuck that. Seriously. That's been my problem for so long. I'm not going to settle comfortably right at the plateau of disappointment. This was supposed to be about body/soul level learning! Not about tight-assed paragraph forming (those were only supposed to come once in a while, when inspiration strikes). This is supposed to be a place where I go beyond the words and honestly try to paint a picture of life and growth as it happens. Dirty gem-cleaning and all included.

So where does this leave us? Well for one thing, I will have more personal stuff to share. I'm not sure where the point was that I got really sidetracked from my vision for this blog. I guess I was avoiding it due to fear of facing who I really am. This blog was really supposed to be about ME, essentially. But naturally I pushed it away from me. Depersonalized it. Afraid of leaving my mark. A behaviour that isn't totally new to me. As I begin to be more accepting of myself, a notion that is surprising to me because I guess I didn't sense the difference between openness and realness, I begin to realize how much out of touch I have been with my true self. I always looked outside to determine how to behave. I always tried to blend in one way or another. This isn't all bad, and I'm not saying I'll stop doing that. In fact at times, it's a really useful skill and a good talent to possess. But what has changed is that I'm starting to find and commit to who I am now. 

It's a very interesting area to inspect. First of all it's something I've always "known" was there. So it's a really funny and curious, the thought that I've actually never seen it before. It's as if I took it for granted. It's like suddenly noticing that you're breathing. You've always done it involuntarily, so it's weird to suddenly feel yourself willing every inhale to happen.

I have my boyfriend to thank for this discovery, on some level. He's the one person I know that is somehow the opposite of me: He's irrevocably himself. He can't (not a self-righteous "doesn't".. he literally CAN'T.) like stuff by default because it's socially acceptable. It always has to go through his own personal filter before his brain categorizes it under pass or fail. I never met a human like him before. It was all so new to me, this level of literally-personal taste. I guess, through some weird form of emotional/mental osmosis, and in a funny paradoxical rhetoric of fate (read: my over-adaptabilityness) it rubbed off on me. Or more likely, I subconsciously started considering this "me"-being hiding somewhere inside myself, who is non-negotiably herself and herself only. In knowing her I'm starting to find that I've got nothing real to lose by sticking to stuff closer to home, because I have a polestar in the form of her. I have a default setting. I already exist. As me. Flexibility is great and sometimes it's the one way to go, but lately it's become apparent that time is finite, and as one human being, this only makes me able to walk forward in time ONCE. My openness is good for synergy, but in synergy I do not have to BE others, I only need to be WITH them as efficiently as possible.

Sorry about my delay, universe. I'm just starting to realize how I'm myself and stuff. That Mulan song really hit it spot on kinda. I don't even fully recognize my own likeness in mirrors and photographs yet. I'm only coming to terms with all of this. But thanks for letting me know, and thanks for staying so weird and mysterious to me. It'd be boring otherwise.

Anyway, this post is called Eve, and yes, it isn't only about this personal eve of mine, but CHRISTMAS EVE! MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! 

I thought long and hard about wearing my holiday outfit, I was half-thinking I should maybe save it for New Year, but Christmas won so this was what I wore tonight:

 In the spirit of Christmas honesty, (on Christmas you tell the truth), I would like to explain that these pictures that I took of myself make me look thin-ish. And I guess that's also how I see myself when I look at the mirror. But other angles in candid positions show me otherwise:

I'm clearly on the big side, especially around my arms. This isn't body-bashing, I'm just plainly saying that I'm not comfortable with this yet. I would like to get muuuch fitter. I've actually lost a bit of weight lately believe it or not. I've also started to eat a bit less. Pictures like this snap me out of the premature complacency slightly-looser clothes have been giving me. That's a good thing for my journey to realness. I can use all of the reality-checks I can get.

What's really cool is that mama gave me a juicer. I was like a child getting her first barbie. I will love making healthy stuff with this. I might also try to do a juice cleanse (proper one, not starving one).. I'm so excited about it, she looks like a little spaceship :3 I'm calling her Hannah. Cos that's soooo a vegan hippie girl name.

Sorry. Spirit of the night and wine is lulling me. To go. to. bed

It's playtime. :)

It's somehow became a trend in everything I read lately: what people regret when they're dying. It showed up in the book I just read, It showed up blogposts and facebook newsfeed updates. All from different people. We are mortal beings. We will die someday. What we have here in front of us, the Now, is all we have at any given time. And one day we won't be conscious of it anymore. We will become unconscious earth matter again. Wasting time is a greater sin than wasting electricity, money, water, anything at all.

Something happened in first period made me disappointed in myself today. It made it so clear how I've let many things that are so near to me slip by. But I'd dare say that actually feeling disappointed by something like that is a HUGE improvement on my part. Because I see now, clearly, how things can be really better. Why it's important to try. Why it's not a big waste of energy. I see that picture in my head, I see what I'm missing. And it all came to me before it's too late.

I feel my higher Self calling out to me, telling me it's time for another paradigm shift.. (I hear Scott Pilgrim in my head: "One of your famous paradigm shifts?")

When I came home, I was so set on making things right. I had a flash of a magical feeling of presence during third period while watching a documentary about Global Warming and I was planning to use it to its full potential. But somehow the afternoon turned into playtime with my nieces. First I was teaching my 8-y/o niece new french words (she likes making me teach her some french that I learn from class) and my 3-y/o niece kept piping in and so I let her join us. Then it turned into a wonderful wonderful time. We practiced handshakes, little tickling rhymes, and other games. Then we pretended to be animals. I was so fully immersed in these activities, fully going for it, ignoring whatever it was in my head that was making me a bit embarrassed about how silly I was being. The distinction between the adult and the children disappeared. All that was left were three children, just one "leading" with more experience and knowledge under her belt. But all of the things we were doing were not below me at all. We were equals.

It's time to look at independent life as one huge playground.

Why? I just put some things together, very recent things (as if the universe was singing me a song), and it all made sense:

1. It's useless to aim for "adultness". Because what is an adult anyway? Weren't we all kids at some point? What makes a kid any less of a human being than a fully grown human being apart from the fact that a child is new and has less responsibilities? I've always felt insecure about the fact that I feel like I'm stuck in a really childlike mindset. This has caused a lot of fear and resistance on my part. But I've now come to terms with the fact that there's nothing wrong with feeling like a kid having adult experiences. That maybe it's not me being a child. It's just who I really am, and that's okay. A person is a person is a person. I should apply the respect I have for children (trying to talk to them as equals instead of manipulating them with my advantages in practical knowledge and experience) to my own self. I am me no matter what age I am and I don't need to act in a way that isn't me.
2. Playtime creates REAL dreams, goals, aims, personalities. I know that treating life like it's playtime and to not take it seriously seems irresponsible. But when I really think about it, when I used to play games as a kid, when I pretended I was a doctor, a mom, a talented violin player, in my head, it was pretty darn serious business. It felt important. It was just pretend, but I really lived and was present in those "characters" much more than I ever have been in my real adult life so far. Playtime generates REAL, USABLE LIFE ENERGY. And if I employ the same enthusiasm and presence to my life now, there will be far more resistance and more enjoyment in every step I take.
3. It's all about self-validation. If this is what works for me, then I should use it! Awakening the child in me shakes off A LOT of the inhibition. It feels good being able to let go of all my preconceptions about how I should act. Or how I need to do things. Nobody else really knows what they're doing anyway.

Isn't this a more exciting concept anyway? Being a kid doing adult stuff? Having fun, doing what you want, but also KNOWING what you're doing and having the liberty to decide?

I agree. It definitely is. And if immersing myself in this paradigm shift is really all it takes for me to make the most of the time I've got left than isn't that just a classic case of "Back to Basics"? Ah well. I never would have really understood its importance the easy way.