YouDoYou

Regardless of the disdain many (most) people seem to have for "inspirational" quotes, I've always liked ones that ring true to me. 

The ones that make me think. that push me out of my complacency.

I value a good bucking-up, or maybe i'm just the kind of person who needs it.

Maybe you don't. Maybe most of you don't.

But in the mutual admiration society we have going on in social media, sometimes a genuinely solid nugget of wisdom is better to absorb, for me. 

i get too drawn into the circus, i need the reminders of "this is not real".

Maybe you don't.

Maybe you're stronger.

I know I'm self-aware enough to know I need the reminders.

SO, I'll stick to my reminders... and you... do what works for you.

the cropping of questions

Are we most susceptible to taking advice from our own selves?

Is that the reason we have to evolve our sense of understanding, expand it?

So that, with experience (self or borrowed), we are able to give our own selves better suggestions?

Are we most convinced by our own logic?

Can we muscle out of the mind-space we occupy, and genuinely entertain another perspective?

How long does it take to change? The mind, the action, the belief that thoughts step out from and flutter around till we actually do something different from patterns of the past.

Who do we allow, in?

Whose thoughts are we most affected by?

Whose opinion?

Whose perspective?

Whose belief is allowed in, to vibrate deeper and actually mull over.

One, is someone we admire... for qualities that we decide to admire and want to emulate.

What are those deeply personal definitions of admirable qualities?

What is heroic?

Does everyone even want to be heroic? good? better? better outwardly or inwardly?

Better than someone outside or better than past me?

Of course, an understanding of goodness is deeply personal.

There aren't just two sides, there are millions... most of which we are unfamiliar with, in ourselves and others.

If we don't think about changing, we can be so oblivious to recognising it.

If you think you know yourself and you're satisfied with that assessment, that may be true for a while... but since change is inevitable, at some point, the version of you, that you know, will become the past you that flickered around before being affected into transforming into another being.. with new thoughts, responses, tendencies.

Knowing ones own self is a continuous process. Perhaps that's why it's easier to put others in boxes, keep them neatly categorised for years, for decades... Easier, than admitting the unfamiliarity in even the closest relationship-one's own with oneself. 

Habits are such an easy way to delude oneself into thinking "I'm still the same", the world has changed.

What is read, eaten, done as employment... if they're the same-ish, surrounded by the same people, you can feel the same. Even if, if you're honest, you no longer respond the same way to what you're eating, drinking, reading or working with and around. 

Maybe that's why some people love to travel, such an obvious way of enjoying a change, something different, before we go back to what looks like the same life. 

I definitely like travelling, and mainly any destination by a welcoming water body.. I also deeply enjoy recollecting the best, most peaceful memories travel has bestowed. 

But it's not a trigger for change, maybe we just notice it more easily after an outward journey.

A mini-milestone of sorts, a pause, to notice different patterns.

Are we all searching for the same thing?

Because, le savoir

Novelty, to not "draft", but delete.

Because, will chime when requested :)

Worth it

Moments like now, justify this blogs active presence.

The option, to express the tiny changes in the flow of thoughts.

Irrelevant yet mattering.

Inking away. 

Worth the oscillations.

"Meh"

Ups and downs are the constant. 

#notjust2020

Mine

I woke up wanting to (re)read books by my author.

Emphasis on my.

MY.

The books that landed into my life 'coincidentally'.

I think a milestone regarding reading was going into the bookshop at juuuuust-before-11 and browsing around for my birthday gift. I finally settled on Braithwaite's and Rowling's second(before the craze, also.. happened to not notice it was the second in the series. Hah.)

I'd remember voluntarily reading for pleasure since I was about 8 but it was at this time that I devoured Rowling's book whole in the span of probably a day and a half. I insisted on dragging Mum back (Thanks Mum!) the next day to buy the first and third book in the series (the only ones published at the time) and managed to consume them on a train ride to the Grandparents (heart heart heart)

So started the strong association of any-cash-given=must-buy-books. Which also meant I had zero interest in spending that dough anywhere else or on anything else.

I also started browsing through this one particular bookshop because it was closest to then-home and getting to know the people. They started figuring out my preferences and one day recommended this new series that had just been purchased. I read one, and the next day came back for the other three in the series.

A person I know through academics has called them 'simplistic feminist tales' but this person was a boy and has no clue what reading such 'simple' feminist tales can do the imagination of a young girl searching haphazardly for an idealism that would echo inside. It seized me.

I felt changed with it.

I felt inspired because of it.

I was charged.

Its love has propelled me into multiple degrees and pushed me to want to research the genre.

When I went back eventually to get More by the author, the staff informed me embarrassed that they had accidentally sold me books specially ordered by another person and now they were re-ordering them.

I don't think this was a coincidence. That I walked in on a day when these books were waiting for me.

I don't think it's a coincidence that I spent months and years collecting everything I could ever find by the author and ordering them through that bookshop (#daysbeforeinternetshopping)

I don't think it's a coincidence that 17 years later I'm writing about one quartet and that I'm waking up wanting to reread the other books.

And it isn't a coincidence that after all this time and half a dozen plus re-reads, they still make me laugh out loud and fill my heart with warmth.

Sometimes, the world needs more simplistic feminist tales. 

Experiments

Tiny Bubble

Floating with the breeze

ephemeral

Knowing not what a simple touch would do

to you

and the touch.

Will you make a mark?