Rambling

Its about that time of the year again when the wheels start turning, and change is coming. The time when you look back at the recent past one more time before you step across a new threshold, before you jump in head first.

Only a third of the year has gone by and already I feel I have accomplished so much more than I'd hoped for. For lack of creativity, my new year's resolutions have always been to be a better person than I'd been the year before. It was never anything specific. Just general ideas like trying to be more patient and less angry at the world.

But this year I actually put my goals into words. I decided I wanted to achieve more at school and try and get an 80% overall average. I decided I wanted to start actively taking care of myself from the inside out. I actually learned to wash and style my own hair after years of leaving it in the hands of the saloon women ( I dare not call them hairstyling professionals because they're definitely not that) and I cut down my daily skin care routine to just 3 products! That might not seem significant to some of you but for someone as self conscious as me, that is a major feat.

Here's my list of accomplishments this year.

1. Learned to let go sometimes and let things take their natural course.
2. Learned to recognise when to say no to certain situations
3. Learned to take care of my own hair
4. In the process of learning to make good meals.
5. Learned the value of simplicity and taking one's time
6. Reduced the quantity of artificial products I use overall

Now that I have put it into words, it doesn't seem like a big deal, but I'm sure you can picture the proud smirk on my face anyway.
And you know that....The best is yet to come.

Call me maybe

Thought I'd share this just for the sake of it :-)

Sunday afternoons

The ceativity and execution of this idea just makes you stop and admire beauty in odd places

When the world has slowed down to a less hectic pace, you are left alone with you wandering thoughts. For me, Sunday afternoons are just so full of contemplation and reminiscing that I often find myself returning time and again to I wrote this for you and PostSecret just to remind myself of the signficance and potency of hope, love, faith and honesty, and to gain a little sense of companionship.

Even from anonymous strangers.

Volte-face

Image from www.apartmenttherapy.com/

I am predictable, I know. And yes, I am very easily influenced by the people and events around me. I might try to deny it, and pretend to be diffrent. But the honest truth is; I am just as unique as everyone else. (oxymoron right there!)....
And as usual, as everyone becomes a little disenchanted with fashion and all things sartorial towards the end of summer, so I have I found myself thinking about the vain and superficial obsessions with current trends and all the pretty clothes. Hence to save any sort of common sense and individuality I still have left, I have turned my attention to the space I live in. A much more sensible and less superficial preoccupation, don't you think?

7 Days of Poetry: I Am - John Clare

I Am

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky. 

John Clare

7 Days of Poetry: How do I love thee? - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, -- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! -- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death. 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

7 Days of Poetry: I know why the caged bird sings - Maya Angelou

I know why the caged bird sings
The free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wings
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.