Timing and missed connections

 

(photo Credit:Giallo)

Yes, this blog has been retired, but every now and then, when I'm in the mood to ramble, I'll be here. 

Something great happened months after my third book came out. It was completely unexpected, and I wasn't ready for it. I'm still not ready for it.

In this digital age, we have so little privacy, and everything about us can be found online. Some of it has to do with the fact that we want to share everything. Maybe we want to show our authenticity and let the world know that we have similar struggles. This is all good and fine, but sometimes, I like to keep a few things private. These are things that I’m not even ready to share with a close friend or a family member while I’m trying to make sense out of them myself.

But I can’t keep everything bottled up inside. So I journal, and then shred what I write. I don’t want someone to find it.

I couldn’t sleep last night. I finally pushed myself out of bed at 5 a.m., and grabbed a notebook to journal. I was really surprised that I had missed discarding some of my thoughts from 2017-2018. As I paged through my past struggles, I realized that I have been making improvements in many areas of my life, but I still have some unresolved issues. I started to work on these challenges a few weeks ago, before I became aware of these forgotten pages. I guess that’s a good thing. It means that when I journal, my brain starts to work on doing some house cleaning. What I do have a problem with is why did it take this long to start resolving my other issues? Perhaps, what I should have done was to keep my pages for a few days, reread them, and make a list of things that I wanted to change.

(Photo Credit: DOM J)

And this brings me to this point – Timing. They say that Luck is when preparation meets opportunity. If you are not prepared, then you miss the opportunity. It’s best not to put things off and be ready for all the great experiences that the universe will bring. Life is all about timing. If the timing is off, then things will not work out, and we miss having an amazing experience 💔 But may be, just maybe when we are ready, our train will come back and lets us experience what we missed.

There is no time for death

I’m to go to a funeral. It’s for someone I really care about. It just happened so quickly right when I was trying to get all these things done before my father comes into town. I really want to spend time with him and so I need to get a bunch of stuff out of the way.

When I heard that she passed away, I got sad. I cried and remembered my mom passing away not too long ago. Then I started thinking about how I was going to find the time to pick out a basket of floral arrangements, look up two addresses on the mapquest on how to get there (I hate the GPS. It always gets me lost. Mapquest has worked for me 99.9% of the time), and spend more than half a day at the memorial and reception when I have so much to do.

Shame on me right? Of course I want to go pay my respect and mourn with the family. So, why the tug and pull? I know that nothing is real and meaningful in this life except the relationships we build with one another, but even then, it is so easy to get lost in the game we call life and lose all perspective.

I start to think about my own mortality. When I’m on my deathbed, will I be saying, “Not now. I don’t have time. I have so much work to do?” How ridiculous am I to think this way. I just have to keep reminding myself not to get caught up in unimportant temporary tasks. 

Nothing in this life is real except for human connections. Everything else that surrounds it is just fluff. So yes, from now on when there’s a funeral, I must slow down and make time for death just the same way I make time for life.

The Nostalgia of carefree lazy days

Photo contributor: Rosemary Ratcliff


Today was neither a good day nor a bad day. It was just a day. A day to reflect on life, love, family, work, leisure time and being just lazy. I haven’t had any lazy days lately – no time for it. Although I have had lazy moments, but it’s not easy to enjoy lazy moments because I keep looking at the clock to see how much time I have left before my next task. I find that the older I get, the more complicated life gets, especially since my elders, once middle-aged are now moving into a the senior citizen category with aches and pains and many complaints. As I watch them complain, I often wonder about my own mortality. Will I become like them? How much life I have left ahead of me and will it be a quality life or will I end up in some nursing home?

When I was a child, these thoughts never even entered my mind. I used to watch my grandmother write and recite poetry, sew and Iron. Sometimes when she didn’t feel well, she’d sit in a squatting position. “What’s the matter with grandma?” I’d ask my mom. “Her stomach is bothering her,” my mom would answer. And perhaps I felt bad for a minute before my brother would whisk me off to play hide and seek. I was completely in a different world, oblivious to life’s tragedies and disappointments until after college when I was running a retail store and the responsibilities kept piling up.

And responsibilities don’t always bother me. I like being busy and having lots to do, but I also enjoy having quiet time. So here I am today missing my carefree days and wondering if I will get them back. 

Age gives you wisdom that the young will never know

Photography by: Tom Curtis

“Youth is wasted on the young” ~George Bernard Shaw

Today I’m a much happier person than when I was in my 20s and 30s. My whole life, I have never been a sheep by following other people's path. I have lived my life exactly the way I wanted and have done everything I have always wanted. So if I happen to die tomorrow, I will die a happy person with no regrets. But many people are not like me. Their eyes are always on what someone else has and does - they compare themselves to those around them. However, this is not a good philosophy because it makes them feel unfulfilled - the more they have, the less satisfied they feel.

When living your life, you must ask yourself what is it that “you” want to do with your life and not what the society wants you to do. Many are so concerned about impressing others with their careers, their competitive streaks and their successes. They have this need for the world to envy them and in the process they lose themselves and become nothing but an empty shell with little character. Of course, when you’re young, you don’t see this and you think you’re on the right path.

It is important to set goals but it is just as important to make sure that you enjoy the process of reaching them. And your goal can be as big as wanting to be a CEO to as small as wanting to have a small beautiful garden by next spring. But nevertheless, they are both goals and the person who enjoys the process instead of focusing so much on the end result is the real success. This is just my observation on life. I may be wrong or I may be right but it doesn’t matter. My goal today was to write a short article and I have not only enjoyed the process, I have accomplished what I set out to do. So, if you happen to pass by my blog, remember to enjoy life and worry less about how the world perceives you. Life is short and whizzes by at a lightening speed. Fill it up with love, family and friends and finding happiness in the small things.

Life is a gift

I found this poem by Mother Theresa and wanted to share it.

Life is an opportunity, …. benefit from it.
Life is beauty, …. admire it.
Life is bliss, …. taste it.
Life is a dream, …. realize it.
Life is a challenge, …. meet it.
Life is a duty, …. complete it.
Life is a game, …. play it.
Life is a promise, …. fulfill it
Life is sorrow, …. overcome it.
Life is a song, …. sing it.
Life is a struggle, …. accept it.
Life is a tragedy…. confront it.
Life is an adventure, …. dare it.
Life is luck, …. make it.
Life is too precious, …. do not destroy it.
Life is life, …. fight for it.