Pickled cherries and celery soup

I must say I'm pretty pleased with how things've turned out thus far. Home isn't as faraway as it seemed. Life isn't as bad as once feared. It's pretty good, actually. The sun's shining, The Corrs are playing on Winamp, and people no longer think of me as that snotty-nosed kid - got income, you see. Having a job, no matter where, changes your image in peoples' eyes. Probably something to do with I'm no longer being fed by parents/organisations/what-have-yous. Well, but that's another story for another day.

Never mind that work has reduced me to a restrained humourless robot-like, er, robot. I've now become a far cry of my free-spirited, floral-design wearing days of youth - college, actually - but who cares if my life lacks that laughter if I can, er, laugh at the fact that I am a humourless ogre. Haha, ogre!

I don't mind slaving away as an obedient employee to anyone if I can pay bills and afford that island holiday every once in a while. Have I sold out on my principles? Isn't life more than money? Yes I guess, but a paycheque pacifies that easily. After all, money makes life better simply by having you not worry too much about the lack of it.

Anyway, all this talk is really filler from what I was wanting to say. My life has seen me seek this elusive thing. I call it freedom but it's not freedom that you and I expect. It's not freedom of speech, nor is it freedom by not being imprisoned, etc. It's freedom of choice. What I love about things now is that I have found a freedom to choose how my life turns out. I can choose to smoke a cigarette knowing that it would kill me; I could choose to spend a whole day shopping if I wanted to. I also have control over crucial things; where to live, what to do with my money.

Yes, I've never felt full freedom like this before, perhaps you have. I've always, for some reason or another, felt like someone was watching my every move, felt restrained by some form of authority. I no longer.

The most beautiful thing about life is knowing that you determine it. Sure, God ascertains it, but you determine it.

  ¶ 10:12 AM 1 Comments

  Beansprouts When I said that my life can be broken off into different fragments, I didn't think it would be literally so. I am now where I have been for the past three years, the festivities that come with december coming and going as usual. The cold january coming and going as usual. Yet everything seems so different - I am isolated from the world, and seem like I have holed myself in a self-constructed sphere of gloom.

Phone coverage dwindles and is mind-numbingly low, yet not low enough to not make a call or catch-up to anyone of my friends in the outside world. It becomes an excuse not to keep in touch, almost as though I am keen for time to pass by as I wither away in my focussed, yet possibly futile, pursuit of a healthy career progression.

As emotion withers away, I am but a skeletal embodiment of truth. I am a banshee in the open galaxy, hovering in the darkness of the midnight sky. At last I see life, the universe and everything as it really is. Nothingness. Quietness. Silence. I hear no sound, but I feel time passing by steadily as she'd always had been. In the end there is nothing. 2008 passes by, as does 2009. 2010, and so on. And then I qualify.

It's as though time has stopped for three years, until I qualify. Need my life be so entwined with this ruthless obsession?  ¶ 11:16 PM 1 Comments

  The Villager At the rate I'm updating I might as well not, but I felt compelled to declare to the three or so of you that I'm alive and kicking. Things have been good in the past two months or so, and I shouldn't complain, although I occasionally do given my insatiable nature.

The house is good, quirky housemates and quirky me have taken to each other well, and the town is old, bare and rustic, perfect for the absolute change in environment I needed. I haven't mentioned this much, but I tend to think of my life as being cut up in a small number of distinct, very different chapters, maybe seven or ten of them. The school years were probably the first, the time from college to university was second, and I'd like to think this would kick of the third. If you don't know what I'm on about it's because you're not quirky enough and would probably not fit into my house.

It gets strange though when people ask me about whether I love my work. I never know how to answer. I do like it and all - it's probably as good as it gets at my level - but love implies that I'd forsake sleeping in under the warm cosy duvet for it, and because of this I'm unlikely to ever love any manifestation of work. Happily though, my colleagues, after a drinking binge, reveal themselves to be a what-has-my-life-come-to fataslistic, self-depreciating bunch with a pitch-black dark sense of humour, much like myself. I love it!  ¶ 12:22 PM 0 Comments

  Pilot Often the hardest part of making a decision is accepting responsibility of its outcome, rather than the actual process itself. Mine was as straightforward as could be, but all-too-predictably I just fell into a sea of emotional turmoil, meandering about aimlessly and agonising over it for a good half a year for no particular reason.

Only time will tell if I had made the right decision, and even then, evaluating alternate life paths which never existed could prove a tall order. Having said that, I've made my choice based on what I wanted and what I didn't want at this point of time, and I'll hope that's enough to justify making it.

Now's when the hardest part comes. My father talked about taking a family photograph with the kids next weekend, and I almost burst into tears. I sometimes wonder what life would be like without my family.

But that's something I never want to explore.   ¶ 3:06 PM 3 Comments