A small section that I absolutely LOVE from one of my favourite books: "Valley of the Dolls" by Jacqueline Susann...
'I'm talking about love,' he said hotly. 'Not begging! Love shouldn't make a beggar of one. I wouldn't want love if I had to beg for it, to barter or qualify it. And I should despise it if anyone ever begged for my love. Love is something that must be given - it can't be bought with words or pity, or even reason. I shall never beg you, Anne. I love you. You must know that. I shall always love you -'
I've already blogged about how I've deactivated my facebook in a hope to become more productive, and now another point about deactivating my facebook which I only thought about the other day was whether or not this decision might actually affect my results at uni. This is one point that I'm definitely going to follow. I think this semester will be interesting to see whether or not my facebook use in the past was indeed actually affecting the time I could have been putting into uni or not. Hmmmm only time will tell!!
Every year at Woodford Folk Festival at 11:30pm on New Years Eve the festival stops for three minutes and everyone is silent to reflect on the year that has gone past, it’s such a beautiful feeling to be a part of. For my three minutes I was thinking about what I have learned this year, and I think the major issue that I learnt this year was about being single and learning to feel comfortable with being single.
To go from being in a relationship where it felt like you were with the person who knew the most about you, the good and thebad, being with the person you felt most comfortable confiding in to just not having that is an adjustment. It was especially hard when two of my sisters left to live overseas which made me feel like there was this gap in my heart. Not having him to turn to during this time just made me miss him more. However, not just this experience but all the other times where I was upset this year after we broke up, forced me to deal with these experiences on my own, teaching me how to deal and making me realise no matter what, I will make it through anything.
There is this one song by Otis Redding which reminds me of this process, learning to deal on your own after a relationship: I’ve got dreams to remember. I think that often during a break up what people forget is that although this relationship is gone that you still ‘have dreams to remember”, things that you were planning for yourself, travelling, career, hobbies, anything, you still have all these dreams for yourself that just because you aren’t with this person anymore, there is still so much in life to experience without them.
Even though it’s been around eight months since I did break up with my boyfriend I still don’t feel ready to get into another relationship. I enjoy being single right now and I also think there are more things for me to learn about myself before I get into anything serious.
I believe that learning about how you are, discovering how you handle and experiencing being single is something that is extremely important to everyone to go through.
So to finish this post, one of my favourite quotes:
"We accept the love we think we deserve". Now for a bit of sweet Otis Redding....
I want to start my 2012 in a positive way, not in a way where I'm making my new years resolutions and starting them at the start of the year. I'm recognising things I want to change in my life now, starting those changes now so that way when 2012 hits I won't be thinking of things I want differently in life and ways I want to change, I will already have begun that process. Part of this is sticking to a vegan diet for a while, I'm not putting a time limit on it, just for as long as I feel feels right. Like most people I pigged out for about three days over Christmas and although the majority of the food I was eating was really healthy, my portions were huge and I was going back for seconds, thirds and snacking all day. I generally don't have dairy in my diet anyway, but if I'm eating out somewhere, or if someone offers me some of their food and it has dairy in it I do usually have some but for the next while until I feel like I'm back to feeling really healthy.
Another part of my getting ready for 2012 change is to stop wasting time. I've done a couple of blogs about this already and it's something I do so easily! So to combat this I'm going to deactivate my facebook before new years. I'm waiting up until then because I still have one more person to hear back about their email so I can still keep in touch with them as well (I have a couple of friends from the USA and one friend from Sweden). The thing that annoys me about facebook is that I hate how much time I spend on it, and I know that I hate how much time I spend on it, yet I still keep coming back to it. I don't even know what I do on there! I'm just getting sick of it and I also don't like the new timeline layout, so now seems like a good time to deactivate.
2011 has definitely been a huge year for me, I feel like I have changed and learnt so much and I am so grateful for all the experiences and interactions that I've had and can only hope that 2012 will be even better.
These two songs are definitely a couple of many of my favourite songs from 2011.....
I moved to Vancouver, Canada approximately 1 month ago on a working holiday visa. I had finished uni and had been working for about a year, so I felt like it was time to leave the country before life became too settled.
Although I'm slowly adapting to the cold and learning the art of layering, the winter does get to me at times and I'm starting to miss the beautiful Brisbane summer sun. However it's not all bad, and being able to snowboard every weekend is definitely a bonus, something I may never have the opportunity to experience again. The other bonus is weekend trips away, made even better by long weekends. My future plans include San Francisco, Mexico, Hawaii, Las Vegas, New York, Seattle...now these upcoming weekend trips are certainly not possible back at home!
Although I'm missing summer like crazy, Vancouver is such a beautiful city, with beautiful people. I'll always have Australia to go home to, so for now I'll just have to rug up and start embracing the cold!
These holidays so far have not been wasted! The other Sunday I ran the furthest and longest I've ever ran before (one hour and fifty minutes) and now I've finally learnt Incubus's song 'Isadore' from their new album. This song is probably my favourite song on this album, I have tickets to their concert in February aaaand there's a possibility I might be able to meet the band! If you don't know Incubus has their own foundation called the 'Make Yourself Foundation' and to raise money for it, they've created an auction that includes tickets to see their concert AND a meet and greet with the band! Bidding starts at $100, there's 3 days left, and so far I'm still the only one who has put a bid on. If I win this auction, I am going to be incredibly nervous, to meet Brandon Boyd, WOW! For those of you who don't know, since high school Incubus has been my favourite band and Brandon Boyd my dream man... oh wow, to meet the band... oh wow, oh wow, oh wow! Here's their song that I recently have conquered on guitar:
