Give in to simplicity.
Don't make it complicated.
Don't try and fill all the empty spaces.
Leave room for growth, love, laughter, fun and playfulness - memories for your bliss box, instead of moments gone forever.
Give in to simplicity. Don't make it complicated. Don't try and fill all the empty spaces. Leave room for growth, love, laughter, fun and playfulness - memories for your bliss box, instead of moments gone forever.
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Today is Celebrate the Small Things Friday. Hosted by Lexa Cain, L.G. Keltner of Writing Off the Edge, and Tonja Drecker of Kidbits, Celebrate the Small Things is a time when we all take a moment to celebrate something good from our week. It can be small, it can be big, just something to look back on the week and celebrate! The day will come when I look back these posts and realise how much the small things count. It has been a rough week but yes I still have things to be grateful for....
To be part of this blog hop, all you have to do is put your name on the linky list on Lexa’s Blog, and then post every Friday about something you’re grateful for that week. It can be about writing or family or school or general life. This is the funnest and easiest blog hop ever! (Originated by VikLit)
Birthdays - love them, hate them or love to hate them. If we are blessed they happen with surprising regularity on a yearly basis. Each year grants us the blessing of a year of memories made, and the hope of a year ahead for more memories. Age is just a number. I guess it is, but it is also a number which increases relentlessly each year despite our wish for time to slow down, and there are times we wish it would. The contradiction is the young wish to be older and the old wish to be younger. We never seem satisfied with where we fall on the age scale. 39. Neither a milestone birthday or one which should have you wishing to be younger or older. You should be comfortably living at this stage of your life. Life should have by now settled into a predictable pattern of family routines, school runs, Saturdays spent shopping for the weekly groceries and paying the bills, 8 - 5 jobs which are the careers which will see you into retirement, mortgages, car repayments, friends over for dinner and all the other things your typical 39 year old is doing. If you have tweens you are snowed under with One Direction & Taylor Swift. If teens you are starting the late night pick ups from friends as they start to spread their wings in independence and defiance and your worries will be about drugs, unwanted pregnancies and their career and friend choices. In between all this you are trying to fit in gym, the odd glass of wine with girl-friends, your own hobbies. Your own identity is in there somewhere. I'm a bit in between - my days of school runs are nearly over, the car is paid for, I have by choice not invested in property and I rarely entertain in my home. A career change is not an unthinkable thing at this stage of the game. I have hobbies, never make it to the gym and rarely drink anymore. And in thanks to all that is good and pure I am not subjected to One Direction or Taylor Swift craziness and my baby will be 16 this year. So why is this birthday different - what marks it out for me. The passage of 20 years. 1995, looking back, was in fact a jammed packed year for me. My first year out of school. I went straight into secretarial college in the January and was then offered a job 6 months into my year long course and was a member of the 'workforce' by the August, paying taxes, with a retirement annuity and medical aid. It was the year South Africa won the Rugby World Cup and the year I got my drivers license. Also the year I had my appendix out while my 4 year relationship with my high school sweetheart came to an end and the year I met the man that was to be the father of my children. In between there was clubbing until dawn with friends, seeing in the new day sitting on the beach and gyming, shopping and gossiping - all the things normal 19 year olds get up to. In retrospect most of what took place in 1995 shaped the next 20 years of my life and has led me to where I am today. And it has been some journey. I have few regrets. Hell yes I've made mistakes and some colossal ones at that, however mistakes are a learning curve. Curves I have come to appreciate with the passage of time. I know know that until you learn the lesson it will simply keep repeating in some way, shape or form until you do. Sometimes you need those repetitions. It's okay. I've also accepted I have 'curves' and the gym body I had before kids is alas nothing but a distant memory. Regrets will take away all my achievements over the years. Raising two sons, surviving a divorce, muddling through a second marriage and stepkids, driving again after 10 years, building a career, friendships I have made. All of this shapes the woman I am today. Looking back though there are nuggets of advice I wish I had known 20 years ago as a fresh faced 19 year old. I know I probably would not have listened, being just as stubborn as my boys who also think they know better than Mom who is trying to stop them making the same mistakes. However I do sometimes wonder "If I had known then what I know now, would I have still made those decisions?". Most likely - but here are 19 things I do wish I had known regardless. 19 THINGS I WISH I COULD TELL MY 19 YEAR OLD SELF
I've learnt some good lessons over the last 20 years and I will carry the knowledge forward as I embark on new adventures in the next 20 years. The song 100 years by Five for Fighting has recently had a lot of playtime by me because I see myself aging and knowing that I can't go back - 15, 22 & 33 are years I remember well - lets see where 45, 67 & 99 take me. I intend to make the most of it. FIVE FOR FIGHTING LYRICS
"100 Years" I'm 15 for a moment Caught in between 10 and 20 And I'm just dreaming Counting the ways to where you are I'm 22 for a moment And she feels better than ever And we're on fire Making our way back from Mars 15 there's still time for you Time to buy and time to lose 15, there's never a wish better than this When you only got a hundred years to live I'm 33 for a moment Still the man, but you see I'm a "they" A kid on the way, babe. A family on my mind I'm 45 for a moment The sea is high And I'm heading into a crisis Chasing the years of my life 15 there's still time for you Time to buy and time to lose yourself Within a morning star 15 I'm all right with you 15, there's never a wish better than this When you only got a hundred years to live Half time goes by Suddenly you’re wise Another blink of an eye 67 is gone The sun is getting high We're moving on... I'm 99 for a moment And dying for just another moment And I'm just dreaming Counting the ways to where you are 15 there's still time for you 22 I feel her too 33 you’re on your way Every day's a new day... (oh oh ohs) 15 there's still time for you Time to buy and time to choose Hey 15, there's never a wish better than this When you only got a hundred years to live |
Love Always
You reach a point of accepting that you made mistakes,
they cost you dearly and that you can't change the past. At that point you stop raging against your history, accept it, and move forward into a calmer, less self destructive frame of mind. Archives
April 2020
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