Diving in......

Last post I made to my blog was on November 2012!
Wow I didn't realize that so much time has passed, over a year and a half to be exact.
Alot has happened over this time. I've been through major highs and lows. The lows greatly overshadowing any highs I've had during this whole time. But that's not what this post is about, got a little side-tracked there *ahem*.

You know how you wake up one morning and decide you are going to pursue something with all the energy you can possible muster up and you end up going through with it for a couple of days and then forgetting all about it? I think its when you put too much energy into something, after a while it just burns out you know, and there's none left to pursue whatever life-changing thing you swore you'd pursue. I'm not going to do that this time, blogging is something that I love to do, I know I know my 18 month gap begs to differ but it really is. So I'm going back to doing what I love.

If I've learnt anything during this time it's this; the world never stops for your grief, life goes on as if nothing has happened so you can choose to live in your grief-stricken state and be miserable or move past that and try finding the good in life again. Find whatever it is that you love, that makes you happy, focus on that and just BE happy. Happiness really IS a choice, life is made so much easier when you make the choice to simply be happy. Now I'm not saying its always easy to make that choice but its important to try as much as you can to overcome the bad and focus on the good.

After all, life goes on anyway and the world keeps spinning regardless. So why waste your life away?

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future,

 not to anticipate the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.

- Buddha

 

 (borrowed from here)

The past is a ghost, the future a dream, and all we ever have is now.
-Bill Cosby

~~ xoxo

Thoughts on work

 

Find a job you like and you add five days to every week.
- H. Jackson Brown, Jr

and the more popular one,

Do you choose a job that you love and look forward to every day or a job that pays better but one you don't enjoy doing as much?

I've found myself being faced with this question recently and yes it might seem like such a simple choice to make but it really isn't all that easy.

What do we usually opt for? the money or the satisfaction we feel at the end of the day? I mean, most of an adult's life, at least the average working class adult, is spent at their job. So its really important to make sure that you spend this time doing something that is worth while and you truly love right? 

But then comes the question of income. Now I know we all dream of having a job with a little bit more than a decent income, lets not kid ourselves here. So then, if you had to choose, would it be a job that you love that may not pay as much, or a job you don't enjoy doing but pays really well?

 Anne xo

A little Monday inspiration...

All the pictures are from here 
 
"The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours - it is an amazing journey - and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day that your life really begins."
 ~ Bob Moawad. 

Its Monday again and I thought these pretty quotes and pictures might just be the cure for the Monday blues.
Hope you all have a fantastic week ahead :) 

Anne xo

A little piece of home

So a few weeks ago I went home to my mom's and stayed with her for two weeks. It was SO relaxing after dealing with finals for over a month. There are alot of reasons why I love going home so much, other than the obvious fact that I get to spend time with my mom and kid brother, and one of them is the beauty of the place. I can never get tired of it and staying far from home only makes me appreciate it even more. I truly love the city and enjoy living here but (and yeah its cliché) but there is no place like home.

I planned on taking photos of the clear skies we usually have there at night when the sky is just alight and filled with the  prettiest stars, but this time around it was mostly cloudy :(.

I did manage to snap these beauties though. Don't you just love the scenery? I took the photos with my camera phone but I think they still turned out pretty great.

 I was trying to capture something in the last phot but my mom started driving so I ended up with this picture. I immediately loved how it came out like a cross between a painting and a photograph.

I'll try to capture more beautiful places from my home town and share them with you, I hope you enjoy my piece of home as much as I do.

Anne xo

Of emotions and brave faces......

Lately I've been going through some changes in my life both personally and professionally. While change is good, as I keep hearing, it most certainly is NOT an easy thing to go through. This is especially hard for me because I tend to be very private and am rarely comfortable enough to share my deepest problems with those close to me. Now this is not to do with them because I love and trust them dearly, but much rather to do with me. I don't do too well in exposing my vulnerability. So in all these changes I've managed to keep all my emotions and fears to myself. I know this is not the healthiest thing to do but we all have our own ways of dealing with problems and life's suprises and this is what I'm comfortable doing to deal with mine.

This post was NOT about how I deal with my problems, got a little side-tracked there... What I meant to say is that its proving a bit difficult to put on a brave face sometimes when you have all these burning questions and issues inside going over and over in your head, it certainly isn't easy for me. Especially since I spend most of the day at work where you can't exactly just sit around and think about personal issues.

What I'm trying to say here is that, while people put on brave faces, its not always as calm on the inside as it seems on the outside. But its comforting to know that no situation is permanent and everything falls into place after a certain time. I know soon enough I will adjust to all these changes going on in my life at the moment.

- Anne xo

A rut

Over the past few weeks I've veen swamped with school work, finals and finishing up with my post-grad degree. Time went by both really fast and really slow, feels like I didn't have time for anything else, yeah thats how crazy I can get when I'm working on finals. I think it has to do both with the fear and adrenaline, oh well.
I decided to take a few weeks off before I get back to work so now I have all this time to myself. Funny thing, when I didn't have any free time I had all these things I wanted to do but now that I'm free its like I'm stuck in a rut. The mornings are lazy and slow, which is great except I get uneasy after a while. I function well when I have alot of things going on in my life, it makes me feel more alive I suppose.
Time to get out of this rut....
- anne xo

Food for trial

One thing you should know is I absolutely LOVE eating (I had to stress that point). Going to restaurants I'm always the one who tries different food I've never had before. My mom tends to discourage this because she fears I'll end up with something unedible, which has happened in more than one occassion....but it's always worth it because 98 percent of the time I end up eating something REALLY delicious which everyone wants to order next time.....you could say I'm kind of a trend setter *ahem*
I'm also passionate about cooking new recipes I come across. Sometimes it works and sometimes there is room for improvement.
I recently came across this recipe and, it seemed simple enough for my very hungry self at the time.
















The final outcome looked something like this, although I made a few changes based on the ingredients I had, the overall result was pretty great. It was VERY delicious and I'm definitely going to make this again.

-anne xo