A step forward

So I mentioned how I hate being friendly to random strangers.

Unless it's a passing comment and no obligatory conversation ensues, I actually would say something ice-breaking...like "oh, the toilets are that way."

Weirdly enough, last night during the Easter dinner gathering for Penang Choicees, I actually walked up and introduced myself while the danna hung back. However, I introduced myself to two people whom I already know but didn't realise.

Yes, thou shalt facepalm thyself. 

One was Jmelda, a senior in school and former parish. The other was Adeline, also former fellow parishioner in IC and I've actually texted her quite a bit last year. Both were quite perplexed on why I was introducing myself when we all knew each other already. During the mingling before dinner, someone sat down at our table and started reminiscing about last year, throwing out facts about our lives that we were sure we didn't share with her, whoever she was!? Found out, it was Jeanne from the publicity department in Choice and I also had been texting her plenty, and even went to the extent of calling her dear/babe.

Surely, despite the faux pas, I could take it as progress in real-life socialising?

Another scenario was a few days ago where I had a meeting with the bosses and colleague with a couple of small entrepreneurials on stocking their gardening merchandise in the gift shop at work. I noticed that Joleen was being uncharacteristically quiet and I was the one throwing out questions (and answering others) and making comments alongside the bosses.

After that, it was a pro-active follow-up... adding and chatting on Facebook (yes, how professional).

I pray that it'll be no more flashes in the pan.
No more quicksilver heats but slow burns leading to (environmental friendly) long-lasting bonfires.
No more hiding behind my armored walls, built on the grounds of personal and emotional safety.


One more thing I would need to learn is not take things personally. The ability to read people and know what they think or feel about you at that particular moment can be hurtful or embarrassing due to the circumstances, whether or not its your fault.


Time to shake off this quarter-life crisis and embark on a self-changing acknowledging journey before I hit my 30s.

Bloody hell, I'm already 27?!!
...and I act like I'm still 17

Raucous silence

For a year or more, I've been having this impending sense of doom... a vague feeling of dread, of things left unfinished, matters left unattended. 

It affects me now and then but I always put it down to PMS until I realise these weird depressing emotions don't follow my menstrual cycle at all.

Perhaps I'm thinking too much. 

Keeping too much inside, a habit cultivated in 5 years of being a partial hermit - active in social media but no where else.

I kept often to myself in Australia and Sabah, albeit loving the environment and appreciating the finer bits, I tend to withdraw from both crowds and one on ones. I would take solo bus rides to suburban places in Tasmania, hop on the nearest tram with no qualms in Melbourne, take mini solo (and prohibited) solo walks in Danau Girang and make those 2hr one-way drives myself from Lahad Datu to Tawau during car services.

Five years of talking mostly to myself.

Ken was the one I talked to the most but obviously, it wasn't a live chat and he only replies when he can. Nevertheless, a reprieve from the crowding of thoughts in my head.

Now, the danna says my mind flits around a lot and he pauses quite a bit during conversations with me since I can, and have, talk about multiple things at once. Long ago, I could hold a MSN conversation with Ying about three different and totally unrelated things at once. If you can imagine, we both type quite speedily and the messages were all so jumbled up that even some international secret intelligence were monitoring us, they would probably flip their consoles FTS!

I can't just start talking to random people. That isn't me. But what is me is that I'm always self-evolving. Adapting to changes in order not to be categorised or seen as in a specific way. THAT I know of myself. Since young, if someone tells me "oh, I see your favourite colour is blue?" I deny and start having more red stuff. If they tell me they notice I like a certain genre of music, a style of dressing, a choice of reads, I deny and deny until the cock crows three times. I've even changed my handwriting every year!

So now knowing that I'm deathly afraid of public speaking, lethally frightened by proactive leadership, I find myself being put into those situations, purely, I believe, by my well-trained subconscious.

What have I done?

Halfway into the first month of the second quarter of the year and what have I achieved?

Flash in the pan

That's me.

Lightning quick starts. Electrocuting impromptus. 

Then no more.

You see, even my #100happydays didn't make it halfway. It wasn't that I couldn't choose between a variety of happy things to focus on each day. Instead, since that last post, it was a slow but steady avalanche of happenings and responsibilities until I was feeling pretty overwhelmed.

I can admit it now, on hindsight, that I'm prone to bouts of depression, yet still partially aware that at some point if each period goes on too long, I will need to seek help and I'm not talking spiritually nor emotionally, but professionally.

I wanted to go home. Even when if I was at home, standing on the balcony in the middle of the night so I won't wake the danna, looking up into heat-lightning lit skies, all I could think of, all I could cry out silently was I want to go home. I didn't even know what that means.

Then came a whole load of work that tired me out so much physically until that I believe it was possible to block out half of my brain activity. A constant dull buzz droned at the back of my head and my thoughts were flitting about and never really settled until exhaustion draped over me.

My last blog post was about planning ahead, in terms of events for the rest of the year. Last week, there was some sort of a follow up on my progress and it hit me that I am still taking things for granted. I didn't take Lent seriously as planned in order to change and during the Holy Week leading to Easter, it was a blow in the face, a punch in the gut.

I was asked what were my strengths and with the answers I gave, my MD said that I 'very quickly went into my weaknesses' instead. How can I tell her that I work better alone, that I have a habit of having a period of silent observation before being proactive? I thought I would carve out some time, an hour or so, to write it all down and as usual, expect to be able to dig myself out from whatever shit hole I fell into.

Somehow, the danna, being the amazing person he is, put things into a different perspective for me. It's like trying to jump out of the shit hole and he's shown me that I can just churn the proverbial butter instead. Instead of being just a shoulder to lean on or being a sympathetic ear, he probes deeper to make me see things clearer. Marvellous, really, that it doesn't take much for him to break my walls. Must be all that badminton he plays xP

So instead of jumping into things too fast or holding back too long, I now know I need to not be adverse on seeking advice from others and listen to that little voice more closely without second guessing it.

It's a new start...close to a week into the second quarter of the year.

Wish me luck