Days Like These

There are always days like these.

Days when you feel so shit you just have to revel in it.  Days when demotivation is like a cloak you curl up in, a familiar blanket, a snuggle rug.  Days when you wonder who you are and why and most importantly, how?  How how how?  How do you know, how do you find out, how do you live yourself each day and not lose yourself and still love yourself and not give yourself over to the darkness under the blanket, under the thick, warm, familiar blanket?

Days when you just have to swear out loud, SWEAR in capital letters, even if only in an e-mail, days when you are grateful to have a friend who has shit days too, who swears back, who laughs when you laugh because laughing is the only option left aside from despair and I would choose laughing any day.

Days when all you can do is wrap yourself in musical words, in the thoughts you had that other people wrote but better, in the melody of lyric and verse.  Days when all you can do is drink wine and toast to the darkening sky and be here now because later is too much to contemplate, later is in the too hard basket, later is like the dishes in the sink that you leave for tomorrow morning (when they’ll be so much muckier).

If you’re going to give yourself fully to the good days, why not give yourself fully to the shit ones?  This, too, is life.  This, too, is living.

There will always be days like these.  Today is one too.

The World Needs Us!

Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do.

~ Voltaire

Planet Earth sustains and supports us – lets give it a little support back, eh?  It takes 2 seconds of your time and none of your money.

This December, world leaders, including NZ Prime Minister John Key, will meet in Copenhagen to decide what the world should do about climate change. We must give John a strong mandate to do the right thing in Copenhagen, so please Sign On today. This is a great chance to make a difference.

You could sit around on your ass using up resources and doing nothing, and just vaguely hope the world will be around for your children and your children’s children.  Or you could take 2 seconds to Sign On.  Your choice.

I am only one, but still I am one.
I cannot do everything, but still I can do something;
I will not refuse to do something I can do.

~ Helen Keller

I don’t ask for much…

All I want is for my mum and sisters to merge into one person, who is male and falls head over heels in love with me.  And also is hot, intelligent, funny, sweet, loving and loyal.

Then all he has to do is fix me, marry me, have my babies, love me for ever and ever no matter what, and also tell me what it is I’m supposed to be doing with my life.

I mean, really, I’m not asking for that much, right?

You Have No Choice

A Beautiful Revolution by Andre Jordan is pretty much one of the awesomest blogs I’ve ever stumbled across.  So much expressed so simply and so perfectly.  Love it.

Don’t Stop Leaping

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows, we guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.

~ Agnes de Mile 

Embracing Uncertainty

Uncertainty is our fuel.  It’s what makes us do what we do, and keep doing it.  If we all knew how great we’d be, we’d never put in all the effort required to be as great as we are.  Uncertainty keeps us guessing, keeps us trying, pushes us further.

Embrace it.

Chasing Cheese

Long ago, a brilliant psychologist proved that if you present a rat with 3 tunnels, only one of which has some cheese in it, the rat would explore all the avenues until he finds the cheese. And, after reinforcement, he will ignore all non-cheese tunnels, and go down only the one with the payoff. Then, if you take away the cheese, he will soon learn that it’s gone, and will begin to explore all tunnels again, looking for the reward.Human beings, in stark contrast, will go up a tunnel looking for whatever ‘cheese’ the situation is, never get any, but they proceed to go up that same tunnel for a lifetime. And what’s driving them is reasonableness,or rightness. That is, they get to say to themselves, quite logically: ‘I saw cheese go up that tunnel. It’s got to be up there. I’ll find it, goddam it, if it takes me a lifetime.’ So they get to spend a lifetime without cheese, but always being able to explain (to wives, friends, acquaintances–anyone who will listen)that they’re up a very reasonable tunnel. And they find people to agree that the cheese really belongs up that tunnel. (Those people are called really close friends!)

If you’re running your life up a tunnel (or a series of them) with no ‘cheese’ for you; you’re beginning to get what I’m driving at: that running your life being right is pointless and I don’t mean that what you’re doing is wrong; I simply mean it doesn’t work, and that should be the main criterion…

From EST: Playing The Game The New Way written by Carl
Frederick in 1972

Sometimes it’s ok to stop and go back.  Sometimes it’s ok to choose a different tunnel, even if everyone around you likes the one you’re in.  Never settle for an aimless chase – the cheese is out there.  Never stop believing in it.  And enjoy the fact that you’ll get to see a lot of tunnels in the hunt for it.

Good Things About Old Friends…

* You can randomly burst into song at any time and place and they don’t think you’re weird. In fact, they join in.

* You know you could decide the purpose of your life was to be a street sweeper and they would still love you.

* You can call each other a dork and a shithead and know it doesn’t mean anything.

* You can do a really big belly burp and they don’t think you’re disgusting. In fact, they join in. (And I wonder why I’m still single… )

* You can go a day or a month or a year without seeing each other, and when you do it’s like you never were apart.

* You can talk about your deepest emotions, the latest goss on Brad and Ange, or sit in utter silence, and it’s all equally as comfortable.

* They ‘get’ who you are in a way that only someone who knows your past intimately can – because they lived it alongside you.

* You can laugh your head off about past mistakes and they find it as hilarious as you do.

* You know each others’ preferences well enough that you can eat the bits they don’t like off their dinner when you go out.

* You can stuff your face with donuts and you don’t feel self-conscious. Probably because they’re joining in.

* You can sleep in the same bed for a week and it doesn’t seem weird.

* You don’t care that your house is an utter tip when they come to visit – and they don’t mind the crumbs on your bench (or in your bed!).

* You can whinge about boys and they don’t get sick of it. Yup, you guessed it – they’re joining in.

* They don’t just know who you are, they know who you always have been, and will love you no matter who you become.

Celebrate the good friends in your life. Never forget what – and who – really matters.