Imagination

Ha! I made good of my words! I kept to my prior failed resolution and I'm posting 2 days straight (alright, I skipped a day). But still quite a small achievement for someone so weak-willed, I must say. 

Small achievements aside, I have always wondered how bloggers come up with their materials all the time. For foodies, they get their materials from food they consume; for the automobile junkies, they attend motor shows and launches (I'm assuming here, forgive my ignorance) and so on. They seem to have some sort of ready material to exploit. 

But what of 'life in general' bloggers, such as yours truly. I think my resolution to blog once a day may hit the dirt sooner than I thought. Let's be honest, who's life is sooo.... interesting that they have material to blog about it once a day (let's not group celebrities' lives with mere ordinary folks' - their lives, I admit, would be sufficient fodder for an hourly update of a blog). 

Think of an ordinary Jane's weekday life, where you get up, go to work (or go to school), do your work/studies, come back, spend some quality time with self and loved ones, update your social life (or lack of) by prowling your friends' FB pages, read some good ole book and hit the sack. Which part about that is interesting? Granted, there may be a day where your alarm clock abandoned you, you get stuck in horrible traffic or your car breaks down, something screwed up somehow somewhere - but rarely does it happen on a daily basis. So what is the easiest ready material?


Therein, I think, lies the interesting part. We can explore every possible topic and let our imagination run wild. Life in general is fascinating, not necessarily due to the events that occur in it that makes it so. The fact that we are able to live and breathe is just utterly amazing. That's the very reason why there are scientists amongst us - to explore this wonder. The reason why poets are able to produce thought-provoking lines based on nature. The reason why we are always thinking about what is out there, beyond the stars and the moon.


So in this sphere, I shall allow my imagination to go where it will while I ponder on all life-related (and non-life related) things. That is my prerogative. That is also the greatest source of fascination - our minds. 

Lost Dreams

I started this blog with the vow to post at least one post a day. Look where that got me - my second post in about just as many weeks. And therein lies my problem. I make vows and resolutions, promising all sorts to ensure that I achieve all that is good, but halfway through, I fall behind, I start lagging and then I'm telling myself, never mind, there's always tomorrow to continue with the project/resolution etc. Once, someone looked at my signature and told me that my attitude was that of someone who cannot follow through with their plans (or so that's what I gathered from the 'humph' and sigh that followed the sighting of my signature). 

I actually sort of gathered that as well based on my own analysis of my life. It's full of half-dreams that never really reached fulfillment, new dreams that never see fruition and all in all, an aimless and at times dis-satisfactory life peppered with non-achievement of dreams. I've always admired people who have dreams and passions and are able to work their a**es off to achieve it. I suppose one would need to have a passion in order to do achieve dreams.    

I thought I was someone without passion, but that can't be true. I love reading (which of course, depends entirely on the material to be read) and reading is something which requires passion to be done (or so I'm told). I seem to enjoy creating little fantasies in my mind (cue the unwarranted wild imagination at times). And therefore, it seems that by putting these 2 'passions' together, I should be able to put my little fantasies into words. Hence, the creation of this little blog that somehow managed to bypass my passion for a week. 

But I put down my lack of passion for the past week due to my own personal failures. This is indirectly caused by my another failure to follow through another resolution. As I've always known it to be, life's quirky. Your past failures will come back and bite you when you are trying to work out a new dream. This creates a vicious cycle whereby if you are already weak-willed in achieving one dream, it appears that you will always be weak-willed in achieving any dream, regardless of the burning passion. 

But I intend to break this vicious cycle as I'm already feeling the effects of being weak-willed and passion-less. Life's offered me many roads and I've always chosen the well-trodden one as it will always be the easiest; no need to hack through bushes and trees; no wild animals that will jump out at you and turn weak-willed knees to jelly. 

So, I'm off to work on my earlier failed resolution in order to be able to make this passion of mine take full flight. It's now still a little bird on the branch, trying to inch its way to the edge.  

Fairytales

It's strange how life has dealt many different hands throughout the years. I was all into reading and writing when I was a kid. Enid Blyton fairytales, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys - all these books accompanied me throughout my childhood. 

Enid Blyton inspired me so much that I took to composing my own little stories when I was just in primary school. Childhood enthusiasm and all got me to take a small little notebook and decide to create my own compilation of fairy-inspired tales in it. I even drew pictures to accompany the stories (though my drawing was quite abysmal even then). I think I got up to about 2 stories and the enthusiasm died off, but not my love for her books. I do wonder where my little book of stories went to. 

I've always admired children books' authors; their creativity for coming up with exciting adventures, fantastical places and heart-warming tales that will remain with you even when you're grown-up and have long known that Fairyland and Toyland do not really exists (but I am still holding my breath to the day I can climb up the Faraway Tree and go off on my own adventures). I always wonder how do they do it? Weren't they all adults much like what I am now? How do they keep their sense of childhood and dreams and yet be able to function in normal society? 

I've tried not to give up on my childhood dreams, but life's not a fairytale. You grow up and realise life expects a lot from you. It's not just a one-way street which tells you "Yep, that's the right way. Can't go wrong with it. Just go straight on." Instead, it throws you curve-balls and hard-balls in so many unexpected ways. You can't just decide to go off on an adventure one day and expect to return and find everything's just as it was when you left.

In a way, I did achieve a childhood dream (well, more like a teenage dream) that was partly inspired by my love for reading, but it's becoming more apparent that it's not cut out for me. Perhaps I am more of a whimsical person who would love to continue living in Fairyland and never grow up (think Peter Pan). But reality's harsh.

Don't get me wrong, I do love what growing up has brought me. It has brought me independence (though I still go running to mummy and papa for all sorts of things), my own hard-earned money, life experience and most of all, the right to legally call my partner of 14 years, my husband.

But now I appear to have reached a point where I am reminiscing about my childhood and thinking of all the little girl dreams I used to harbour. Quite maudlin for someone who just passed the 1/4 century mark not many years back, I would say. But who knows, this may be my baby steps into one of the branches of life's roads which will perhaps lead me closer to what I really dream of. That's one of life's little quirks after all.