No Second Thoughts

I start work tomorrow. No second thoughts allowed.  No pun intended.

Life will return to normal aka mundane.  No staying up till late for no other reasons than staring at the ceiling.  No getting up early in the afternoons.  No longer will there be breakfast at 1 pm.  No longer will I be looking EAGERLY forward to lazing around.

is anyone starting work tomorrow??

Hmm.  I do not know what the “President Elect” will do when she starts work tomorrow!

I can only speak for myself.  This one will have NO time in her hands, because she will be in the hands of TIME, at TIME’s mercy.    

• The alarm clock will wake the reluctant me up every morning.  No second thoughts, no defying.  Downing cold cold cereals in the cold cold morning is something I wouldn’t want to start my day with.
• Get dressed.  Tick-tock.  Skip the make-up.  Tick-tock.  Walk to the bus stop.  Tick-tock.  Scratch that.  Run.  Tick-tock.  Tick-tock.  Run for your life.  Tick-tock.  Tick-tock.  Run till you can’t breathe any longer.  Tick-fkin-tock.  Catch the bus!  Yaye!!!  Miss the bus.  Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock.  Run.  Run till you drop dead.
• Clocking-in.  Aaargh.  You are now officially clocked in.  You are officially “working”.
• Hungry?  Starving??  Don’t feel like eating???  Who the folks cares!!  The clock says it is a certain hour and you HAVE lunch – eat, nibble, chew, devour, swallow, sip, slurp, throw up if you must later.  It’s THE lunch break.
• Watch how the hour hand never ever budges off its lazy warm ass.  Watch how the minute hand tortures you, teases you, bloody “harasses” you till you break down into million pieces.  The only good friend is the second hand, goes all the way in the same tick tock tick tock rhythm.  The second hand is your best friend – period – for the next three months.

click HERE for Image Source

I am doomed for the next three months cause A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do and also cause Money still don’t grow on trees (no matter how many times you wish on the shooting stars).  I can’t believe I start work the same day the first US Lady President does… but she can’t stop after three months.  So who’s the winner eh!!

:GRINS:

via Daily Prompt: Second Thoughts

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Never a Copycat

I have always prided myself in being original. I have always wanted to do things differently and often I was therefore the alien among my peers, but that didn’t faze me a bit.

Some evidences:

• My Fashion Sense.  I am not a fashionista and I don’t spend thousands on clothes and accessories or all that ra-ra-ras.  But I love FLASHY shoes, sparkly, glittery, sequined – well the more the better for me.  Judging by how I look and what I wear this usually gives people the shock of their lives but what can I do, that’s just Meh!
• My Crazy.  Growing up, I wasn’t allowed to watch any live sports match on TV or anywhere else.  I go craaaaaazy, either happy-crazy or silly-crazy or just raging-mad-crazy.  On the other hand, my parents and my brother are such calm audience, they can just sit calmly and watch the entire match even if their side is losing.  How is that even possible?  Maybe they aren’t into it as much as I am.  Well, who am I kidding!  I’m just crazy original or original crazy.
• My Choice of Music.  The only musician who’s got me completely is Tracy Chapman [Wanna know more about her?  Click One.  Click Two].  I have never been much of a “music person” but her music was something, is something.  I have all her albums – some gifted by my amazed friends.  Also, I do listen to other musicians but you know what I mean.
• My Singlehood.  This was an original idea, hatched out of my LOVE for independence.  Actually, I might as well be the Copycat here, because the idea had struck after seeing my school principal, who was single then.  Maybe she is married now and has a dozen children.
• My Life So Far.  I have tried to sketch it a little in this post.

I don’t mind being alienated for being different, but rather fear being copied.  I have never liked Copycats and I have come across many of them.  My BFF says I have the tendency to “overdo” things just so that people won’t copy me, and I hate it when she is right [which is ALWAYS] 😦

via Daily Prompt: Copycat

Urgent is Nothing

From the time we are “conceived” or maybe even before that, life is all about urgency.  My parents met and then there we were – two children for them to take care of.  I’m sure they couldn’t wait for us to grow up and go away.

I see my friends – girls and boys alike, running from one direction to another, ticking away their boxes on their list.  Find a partner – tick.  Make some babies or at least one – tick.  Can’t make babies, seek medical help – tick.  Try IVF baby – tick.  Baby, yippiee – tick.  Baby crying – tick.  Baby babbling – tick.  Baby toddling – tick.  Baby speaking – tick.  Baby needs to go to nursery – tick.  Find a nursery – tick.  Baby needs to go to school – tick. TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK…

All these tick-tick-tick could very well be the time ticking, because for everything there is a “time.” There is the biological clock, for instance.  There is so much to do and so little time.  Then there is…

“…promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.”

Fortunately, for me there is no urgency… nothing is Urgent

The friends (and family), who are busy ticking away their boxes and feeling oh-so-accomplished, often look up from their list and look [down] at me.  What they see gives them shivers down their spine.  They see a “lone” woman, without a man/ woman (to love in sickness and in health, till death parts us), without a steady job, without a child, without a family to call her own, without any a.c.c.o.m.p.l.i.s.h.m.e.n.t.

Sometimes, they offer to find all “missing” elements that are missing from my life.  Whaaaaaaaaaat?????

IMAGE SOURCE

 

via Daily Prompt: Urgent

Crushing on ‘Promise’

I remember a time when I was obsessed with the word “Promise”.  I woke up one day and just plain out of nowhere felt how beautiful a sound the word “Promise” actually made.  I kept repeating the word over and over again and every time I repeated it, it felt even more beautiful, serene and just out of the world.  The obsession lasted a few days and although I do not feel the same way [at all] now, I still remember the feeling I felt.  I even thought of naming my child [who I’d adopt] Promise.  I used to worry if any other child would be named ‘Promise’ and I couldn’t wait to grow up to adopt a child and name this person ‘Promise’. It was [then] such a beautiful word to just let it be limited to a word, there had to be a person named ‘Promise’.

And thou shalt be named “Promise”                   PC

I used to daydream a lot about how Promise was going to be.  Some daydreams had Promise as a little girl with chubby cheeks and uncontrollably unmanageable leaving me in a dilemma whether or not to reveal that she was actually adopted.  Other daydreams had Promise as a serious looking boy but very quiet and suspicious and getting mixed in “bad company”.  I couldn’t decide which Promise would be a lesser evil.  I couldn’t decide the right time to tell Promise about being an adopted child.  Oh the pain!

Looking back, I can see how silly I was.  The worst bit of the silliness is that I don’t even know why I liked the word so much.  I can’t relive how I felt then.  ‘Promise’ now is just a word.  It’s kinda like your high school crushes and the what-was-I-thinking feeling you get when/if you see them now [apologies if you’re married to one, I’m sure they’re still the sweethearts]…

Strange how prompts like today’s Promises can bring back memories of a phase [almost] forgotten!

via Daily Prompt: Promises

Odd JOBS

Well, my transition back to the BIG city has been anything but easy. Life in the country may have seemed difficult at times especially when one just wanted to go out and dance or when one wanted to splurge on designer outfits (not that one would have ever dared do anything like that anywhere)… You know what I’m h saying.  So yes those were the shortcomings there and so I had to pack my bags and head back…

Only to realise how tougher it’s got to actually SURVIVE here… there’s just no space to lay back to lead a laidback life.  But then again I’m not in anyway saying I want an easy laidback life. Life here is just about running from one end to another in pursuit of making ends meet.  Almost two months down, I am exhausted. I’ve become a zombie sans cannibalism and thanks to the timely Christmas respite, I’m respiting (I know there’s no word as such but no other could justify how I’m feeling now). 

Okay… Now in the course of the last few months I’ve taken odd jobs here and there and thence have come to know why they’re called odd jobs.  Well because they’re not EVEN and these jobs are so far from being fair.  The pay is less but to give them up was like giving up your whole day’s effort (in terms of your game) to the hyenas and vultures swarming down for your carcass.  So I took the jobs, I worked like a workaholic gone madly workaholic… Last weekend I worked from sun up to sundown (no biggie I know) to sun up to yet another sundown.  So I’ve witnessed unwillingly the pale sunrise, the invisible sunset (because I live in the city now, duh!!!), the twilights, the new moon and the breaking dawns.  Not the movies… Aaargh!!! The real ones…. And if you are interested to see them for real (the way I have), work like a workaholic going madly workaholic and I guarantee you, you will see them.

At the end of the day (read blog) I’d like to.wish you all…

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

And here’s hoping year 2015 will bring joy to  everyone and to me a nice comfy job which won’t turn me into a zombie for peanuts.

Standing Out

Daily Prompt: Standout

by michelle w. on August 15, 2013

When was the last time you really stood out in a crowd? Are you comfortable in that position, or do you wish you could fade into the woodwork?

                                  _/ \_

Standing out has always been a cakewalk for me, somehow. Maybe it’s my voice or it’s the way I am, I mean my personality. I do things I like to do regardless of how I may be regarded and that’s why or how I may have been an easy spot in the crowd.

In school and college, I was scared of any kind of limelight and I sailed through those days without being noticed to find out later I hadn’t quite succeeded. SO MANY PEOPLE REMEMBER ME as the one who stood out in the crowd. People remember things I don’t remember doing or saying and I retreat [in my mind] trying to recall if they’re telling the truth or if they’re actually making it up. How could they even remember me? The jitters it gives me bumping into anyone from that ERA :sigh:

In my family, too, I am considered as the go-to-cousin in terms of picking out the right career path and crazy things like that.  How’d I know? If I knew, wouldn’t I be doing the right thing?!? But no, if I don’t “counsel” I am the cousin who’s got an air about me. Seriously!?! I really want to know when or how did this whole go-to-cousin thing came about, I seriously do need to know because only then I’d be able to CTRL+Z then.

Laugh as you may but I am the most sought-after friend for relationship advice. My friends know about my eternally single status and yet. Honestly, most of the time I only listen to them. They spill out their pros and cons and then they think it’d be ideal to stick to point 1, 2 and 3. I nod my head. Next thing I know they’ve decided to go with point 11 and I have my nod ready steady style. They go back hugging me for all the worldly advice I’ve just given them especially for that point numero 76. Only at the end of the day, I am the one standing wondering “what just happened?”.

Last but not the least, I know how big a failure I am but people think I’m a story of success in the making [never written]. At times, I can’t resist myself asking them why why why…. why do they think so!!?  Well, they tell me I am a success in terms of being content. Well, what’s content? Isn’t that the thing that comes in the first page of a book about items or topics or chapters within!?!?!?

However, all this unintentional standing out  does come with a price. Some of my friends have accused me of trying to be the centre of attention and many have told me to tone down. Indeed, I have always stood out in a crowd but only from the crowd’s point of view…. never mine.

Anyway if at 42, I am delivering a speech like the one below…. then I’d have stood out from the crowd from my own point of view —>

I’ve come a LONG way

Daily Prompt: Pat on the Back

by michelle w. on July 31, 2013

Tell someone you’re proud of just how proud you are.

I do have come a long way. Yes, indeed I have.

I was barely a teen when I learnt that it was okay to be embarrassed of your own parents –> you’ll find a little insight here. Ever since my dad forgave me for hesitating to be seen with him, the lesson sort of backfired.

It was then that I learnt that I could hide who I was and no one would be able to tell the difference. The confusion of who I actually was and who I was pretending to be paid its toll especially on my self-esteem. And then, people happened. And then, peer pressure happened.

I wanted to become a boy [my teen self assumed that if I were a boy, it would solve all the problems in my life]. I started sneaking into my brother’s shoes [3-4 size bigger than mine], stuffing them with socks to fit my tiny [size 3, even now] feet. I cropped my hair short, wore hoodies and spoke like someone not me.

From an A grade student I came down to C’s and D’s. My teachers were stunned to see me backing out from writing competitions and elocution.  I alienated myself from my schoolmates, family and basically everyone around me. On top of that, I was constantly at a battle with my anger issues. I was becoming a prisoner of my own vice. The days of experimenting with strange drugs were on the rise. I was doomed, well almost.

But times were a changing…. In high school, I met this amazing friend who accepted me with all these vices. I’m still and will always be grateful for her for what she did to me then. She saw the sensitive side of me beyond the anger. It was strange and I never admitted then, but her acceptance was the beginning of my real self’s comeback. I wrote for the school magazine and was the ghost-writer for two of my friends.

Then I hit the couch where my therapist told me that my anger was actually a shield to protect my hyper-sensitive self. It was too shocking not to be true. Although, I managed to laugh at him and never saw him again, it was still too shocking to be true. But true, it so was. That’s when I began looking myself in the mirror and I actually saw me. The meek me was pathetic but it was good to see ME after so long.

Slowly but surely, I let my guards down.

And today, when people make fun of me my sensitive self starts sulking… But I don’t change for their sake. Instead I let myself heal. I know that there’ll always be people who’ll find me funny. So be it!

And today, when people say I’m acting silly, I nod my head in agreement. I let them know this is who I am, in silliness and in sanity. I know that if I’m not acting silly maybe I’m not acting me and I’d rather always be me.

And today, when people accuse me of being too selfish and self-centred, I shrug my shoulders because I know I of all the people MUST love myself. 

And today, when people complain about how I’ve changed into an insensitive being, I smile. Only I and my new-found self know that the ride has been and is still going to be worth it.

And today, I can take everything coming from people. Even acceptance.

And today, I feel free.

And today, I know myself better.

And today, I am comfortable with myself.

And today, I accept me with the flaws and the scars.

And today, I do pat myself on the back.

And today, I tell YOU I’m proud of just how proud I am.

[p.s. This is the best coincidence actually. I was thinking of writing this post when I saw today’s daily prompt… some days you are just meant to write what you were meant to write… after all]