Of Buns

Friday night was a bit of a surreal thing. Got a call from someone I would call now an acquaintance - one of those folks you used to say is your friend but then found that it wasn't really a balanced act and so relinquished the status and life was so much better after. (Dreadful thing to say about people, but it is the truth!)

Sadly, I'm not able to say now that this lil bit of "catch-up" was all that catch-ups are made out to be. In fact, days after, I'm still slightly disappointed.

Perhaps it's just me - my line of thought that if you left people be, they'd go about their own way and eventually find wisdom and grow up.

Perhaps some folks just aren't meant to do any growing up at all, no matter how they are pushed and plodded on.

But to give said person credit, he has guts (well, come to think of it, he's always had blind guts!) to take the stand he took. Callous as it may be, I have but to agree with him, just this once. Buns are never a good enough reason to wise up and be a man.

I can only hope, that somewhere out there, someone else is waking up and realising the same thing.

It's not an easy journey to walk - deciding to open your own bakery and be the baker, the commis and the sales person tending the storefront. If I had my way, I wouldn't want to do it all over again, on my own. But honestly, sometimes it is the only way to go, especially if the potential co-owner is one that you know will run off with the week's worth of buttermilk somewhere down the line.

It hurts now, for sure. But trust me on this - this too shall pass.

Valve Failure

I'm sitting here, waiting for dawn to come. And it's not even 10 pm.

Every pressurized system needs a relief valve.
There has to be a way to reduce the stress, the tension,
before it becomes too much to bare.

I've been hitting the gym or working out Every.Single.Day. Not cos I have a lil black dress to fit into for Christmas or the New Years. I'm much fitter now compared to 6 months before, granted. But that was not the real aim.

There has to be a way to find relief because if the pressure doesn't find a way out,
it will make one. It will explode. 

It's only the middle of the month, and my mind is already 2 weeks ahead to pay day, 3 months ahead to the application date, 6 months ahead to applications acceptance time, 9 months ahead to when results come out.

It's the pressure we put on ourselves that's the hardest to bare.
The pressure to be better then we already are. 

I've spent the better part of the last 6 weeks, running from one government office to another. Reviewing one write up to another. Throwing up one copy after the other. I have yet to strike one clean relationship with a potential customer!

The pressure to be better than we think we can be.

It's worrying me cos in my line of business, it's all about relationship (incidentally, I just took a stupid quiz that told me I'm 100% not-chinese - so much for Quan Xi!) and I have yet to build any with next year's customers.

It's my perfect nightmare. To want to be the employee yet being caught being the employer. To want to be the runner, the salesperson, yet caught being the one having to review every single fine print.

It never ever lets up.
It just builds and builds and builds.

And so I cannot wait for morning to come. So that I can go into the gym bright and early, to kill myself again lifting heavier, pushing harder and running faster. Just so that in the midst of feeling as if I have lost control, I remain in control.

A Can Of...

So it's been a while since I last found the words to put down in writing. Not that anything has been happening any ole ways.

I suppose what's spurring me on to do some wordly deposits tonight, is finding a friend's blog closed off to me. Hi-how surprise! Surprise! But then again, should I really be?

I told Ben last night, that it has been feeling as if I'm carting around baggage that do not belong to me. And how I've been trying to work it out in my puny pea-sized brain if it was me. Cos no matter how I've been turning it around, the only common factor that I could see in each scenario that irks me, is ME. And if it's really ME, then I have no right to come out and throw open the cover to my lil can of worms. 

It's sad cos his reply makes so much sense - friendship and relationships should never be compared to a can of worms. But Cindy Lauper sings True Colours in the background, I cannot help but not be able to finish the line that goes "I see your true colours, that's why I ..." 

The LegalBeagle once told me not to hang a category over our friendship. "Labels only brings about expectations!" I should have listened to that old boy and applied it categorically across the board for everyone.

Then maybe having to occasionally play Charlie Chaplin or constantly being "reprimanded" for not hanging out anymore won't bug me so much. Then maybe I can put aside the lil barbs as just plain stupid whimsical utterances, and not sit and wonder "Why do you have to go and say stuff like that?!"

And while, my gender, is famous for being the gender who speaks their hearts - somewhere along the way, this girl forgot how to go about it.

And so it's now a bulging can of worms. My lil can. With something in it for everyone I know. And I don't know how to throw the can out over the edge for the waves to carry it far, far away. Nor do I know how to slowly pull out on, hang it on a hook and use it as bait.

Life is a funny old thing. Sometimes we hang on to things, people, relationships when it has really gone past its use-by date.

What do you then do?

Beatle Bugs

I have always like to think of myself as having grown, becoming open to the differing opinions, paradigms, perspectives and values.

Perhaps I've been ambitious in my thought. Perhaps I've taken a wrong line of acceptance - isn't it that when you accept you do not question the whys, the hows, the whos and the what? 

I am bugged and bummed out. Cos when it comes down to certain matters and state of affairs (no pun intended here!), there are some lines I cannot cross, try as I may to be accepting. And it was with that that I had to tell a friend that from henceforth, there is one area which I will NOT go there with. That for one part of his journey called His Life, he walks the rest of the way, without me. 

What would you think if I sang out of tune,
Would you stand up and walk out on me?

I'm bugged cos this is the same friend that I had said - anytime, anything just call and I'll be there, in the next barstool. I feel as if I'm bailing out on him. Yet, I've tried and tried till I'm turning blue in my unseen face. And I have to admit defeat. 

Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song,

And I'll try not to sing out of key.

I'm bummed cos everyone else in the same circle seems to take it in their stride, this on-going saga. And it has left me wondering if I may have inadvertently hoodwinked myself into thinking that one day, one wedding and numerous online chats later, a strong bond of friendship has blossomed. Blossomed to the point that I think I know said person well, when in fact, I know them not at all. And the who I thought I knew, I placed on some angelic pedestal. And now he lies in a heap of broken marble on my floor.

Tis sad. Tis heartbreaking.

But this is not a case of asking one to choose. There is nothing to choose. And we're not 8 year olds in the school yard, having a recess time disagreement. 

Oh I get by with a little help from my friends.

While saying I'm sorry may not mean very much here and now, I will still say it nonetheless. Cos that's just who and how I am.

So as I crawl away like a beetle bug, I'm sorry mate. You've sung way out of tune and it's jarring my ears.
 

Timing and The Bit on The Side

When I sat down and wrote about Raphael Selbourne this morning and his book, I didn't think that at the end of the day, it would come back and hit me in the face.

But it only goes to show that in the list of many "perhaps" - there lies the reason shrouded in a puff of smoke that we often use as a screen. And because I don't think YOU heard me the first time round, I'm saying it here again - FOR YOUR BENEFIT:

The key to freedom lies within each and everyone of us. It is a conscious decision to choose and accept the consequences of the path we take.

Enough with the skirting, the excuses and whatever else you wanna hide behind. I cannot call myself your friend (let's not even add the 'b' and the 'f' if I didn't start throwing my shoes at you in quick succession:

Grow some bloody Cojones!

And in case you're wondering: Yes I am pissed at you and with you! Lie to everyone else if that pleases you. But the minute you start lying to US - don't expect us not to be upset with ya!

Free

I've just finished reading Beauty by Raphael Selbourne. It is a book that has made me sit up on my bed, in the middle of the night, with its message.

It is an old one, yet seems to be one lesson that refuses to stick in our heads for some strange reason.

Perhaps it's because we're not subjected to an extreme opposite end of it. Perhaps we're not truly in a state of forced oppression that we fail to remember.

The key to freedom lies within each and everyone of us. It is a conscious decision to choose and accept the consequences of the path we take.

I suppose, living in our democratic world, we do have the freedom to choose and make our own decisions. I also suppose it's the 2nd half of this two-step that many of us fall and fumble with. And while some may choose to hide behind the "why do I need to justify myself to you?" mode - in part, perhaps, it's because we cannot justify it to our own true self.

In this case then, it sure is nice to be a literary figure - your life starts and ends only on paper. And once set in type and print, there is no justification needed.

Coming Of

I really should have written something, anything, last Friday. But things were just so crazy that to scribble anything without much thought, would have been blasphemous.

So yes.... I am now a business owner. I clock my own time, I determine my own direction, I sit in the biggest chair in the office. But really - what does it all mean? There must be something about it that I am missing in the midst of all the felicitations that I've been receiving. Yet, I do not see it.

All I see is endless days of worrying, especially around the payment dates. Sleepless nights of wondering - am I doing the right thing, the best thing for the campaign. Headless days of running around errands that never before crossed my path.

I suppose, after much thought, the point I am missing is not physical or material. It is a mental state - the shifting of paradigm that goes on unexplained. And there are no marks to indicate that changes have happened, had happened. No tangible that one can see in the second it happens.

In the olden days, they would say it is a coming of age, this subtle change. A cross-over point from one stage of life to another day. And because I believe that all cross-overs must have some demarcation, because I am like a cow with a short-term memory, I must mark it.

And mark it I did. Not so much for myself but for the people who stood by my through it all.

So instead of a COACH bag that I've had my eye on for the longest time, I've traded it in for a set of dining chairs, a series of bookshelves and a brand new sofa for the living room of my parents' house.

And it's not because I now have a little more disposable income. But because I've come of age.

I'm an adult now. You can have kids, you can drive your own car.  But truly, nothing hits you harder about that fact than you're responsible for people who are not related to you by blood or social ties.

I'll have to say it again - I'm an adult now.