Affirm, Enthuse, Support
There is no real reason why we shouldn’t support others in their endeavours with great gusto. I can’t really think of any reason, but for a long long time I have been fairly indifferent to other peoples plans for their future. I haven’t felt that I could be involved. I have felt that to ask too deeply about one’s hopes and dreams for the future was to pry, was more of a social gaff than a friendly enquiry. In some cases that is true, and sometimes it is not. I am coming to realise how important it is to really share with others your own dreams, and to questions others about theirs – openly and without censure. Yeats, summed it up sweetly in his poem ‘He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven’:
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Not only do we need to tread carefully when someone is sharing their deep desires – the true desires of the heart, but I believe we also must take part in nurturing those desires as well. Affirming that those desires are worthwhile. The progression of fulfilment of desires is a journey that I believe we should be travelling with our close friends. Over time, ensuring that your friend is still aware that you remember this desire, and that this desire is important to them, through gentle enquires and, to put heavy emotional words to it, grieving at the failures, and joyously celebrating at the successes with them! It is through such support that we can all journey towards the goals we have in mind…
2010 Blogs to Watch
Just a short list of 3 blogs that I’ll be watching this year:
- Zen Habits (Life Skills)
- The Sartorialist (Fashion & Photography)
- Ma.tt (WP)
They are in no particular order.
One step forward…a couple back
I’m sitting at work in a near-empty office, listening to White Noise by Lauren O’Connell (watch it on YouTube). I was introduced to the song by Chris Brogan through Twitter (the new media WOM). It was this song that enticed me to come back to my blog and write another post, not really because it struck something in me but rather it is the type of song that I like writing too. I’m pretty inconsistent with postage in general – but I hope that will change…soon. I should set up a playlist of writing songs – or should I say, songs that entice me to write – and then I might be able to sit down and get to it.
Which leads me to my plan that I set up about a year ago to build up another blog with book reviews on it…and it was going pretty well – until I lost momentum. I’m not really sure what happened now, which means it might be a bit hard to learn from my mistakes. Maybe it was just a gave up too easily, and I should have kept going, building momentum as I go rather than losing it. Maybe it was a matter of thinking it didn’t really matter – the only person the outcome really affects is myself after all – maybe that was my illusion (or delusion?). Either way, I gave it a go and got so far, and then stopped without really putting the hard efforts in – the set up is the easiest part of a blog after all. Reading and writing the reviews continuously would have been work – and that is truly the, most probable, reason I stopped. I should plaster that reason all over my laptop – and hopefully then I might be able to get past it. Learn from it, and push through that wall next time, and there will be a next time. It will happen every day or every month in different ways – and I can’t give up.
2010
It’s the new year already – and I’m finally back at work – its a little bit weird to be back but good as well. Having a month off work to chill out and start to remember all the good things about life is great. I fully recommend taking 4 weeks leave in one go at least every two years so that you can reset your creativity and relearn all the good things about life – family, friends and fun.
It’s one of those things that while at school and possibly uni that you can take for granted – long holidays where you have time to go to the beach everyday, meet up with friends and chill out – and generally have fun to that degree – and when you start full-time work your 2-3 months worth of holidays each year is reduced to a measly 1 month! Which I find it’s really easy to use in little dribs and drabs in order to make the most of long weekends and short – 1 week – trips away here and there. But do you ever truly relax like you used to in those early years? I think not – I recommend the disconnect (electronic & work-wise) for a full month to really reconnect with you family and friends – and perhaps one of the most useful reasons – to reconsider why you are where you are. So many people get sucked into the vortex called work that they forget how to put work into a life perspective. Taking a full month (fully disconnected) from work means that you get pulled away from the vortex, and can re-evaluate your life, and your goals.
For me the last month on leave has been a fantastic time – I spent 10 days with family over Christmas, just chilling out and enjoying sharing time and company – reconnecting a lives for those 10 days at least – and it has made me reconsider why I moved away and whether I still want to be away. I haven’t come to a decision but I certainly didn’t feel or think this way before I took the break. In addition, as my last post states, I hadn’t considered fully going back to university, sort of but not really. I feel more certain now about going back to university in 2011. I had considered doing a Masters this year but the Masters I was looking at was not as in depth or detailed as I wanted to go, so I have considered and 99% decided 
that I will go back next year to do another Bachelor degree (God willing). This was definitely not something I was considering in any detail 4 weeks ago, but here I am, one step closer to changing careers. 
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