Reflection

Last Monday I was on the phone for two hours with my aunt in the Lowlands, she is my friend, my ‘mother’, my mirror. We always seem to have deep conversations about life and lessons to learn. That day I tried to explain to her what was going on here in London and while I was telling her about goals, dreams and realities she suddenly made me realise how much I’ve achieved over the last year. How I was thrown in at the deep end, how I nearly drowned struggling and how I slowly start to get back on my feet… I had to let go of a million things: personal things, most of my possessions and friendships, only to make room for new ones.

People tend to forget about you when you’ve left the country. Emails come in sparsely over time or even the odd reply seems to take much longer than usual. At first, friends, were a major reason for me to move back to the Lowlands if I feel I had no other option left. These days I realise it has become less important. It seems to be shifting: I couldn’t do without the friendships I have in London nor the ones online. I still value some in the Lowlands but I realise most don’t have a clue of what is going on here and it seems the interest isn’t there either. It’s life, people have their own path to follow and they’re slowly untying the relationship.

I understand because I’m in my own process of untying/tying and although I have accomplished a lot it’s odd how I still need others to remind me that I have. My aunt is a reminder and so are some of my [blog] friends. I’ve learned about different realities over the past year, my own and those of others but I’ve learned to respect one in particular. His taught me patience and gave me freedom to roam my creative realms, his made me grow and fed my hunger for knowledge. His showed me what contemplation looks like in all it’s different shades of beautiful blue. His taught me how to ignore poisonous words of others.

His gave me comfort, support and the most beautiful gift, a new reality… I have been quiet for days because I couldn’t find words to describe this feeling, I’m not even sure if I want to. Sometimes things are beyond words and don’t need to be written down to become real, I know what’s real and what isn’t. Sometimes reality stares you in the face and you suddenly become aware of it’s wonderful colours. It doesn’t blind you that particular moment because you choose and wish to see the beauty in it’s perfect reflection. It’s when you find yourself speechless, in stunned silence and almost in tears but with a huge smile on your face.

So it’s best to just be quiet and contemplate and since I love the wonderful smell of fresh baked bread in the house, I decided to bake a nice garlic and rosemary focaccia for lunch today with a plum tomato and feta omelette. Cooking is a way to relax to me and find my balance. I’m practising to get the perfect result so I can give in return one day what others gave me earlier this week, I think I came pretty close to ‘perfect’ ;)

I wish I could include aroma with a picture ;)

Garlic & rosemary focaccia with a plum tomato and feta omelette

Mental Detour

The weather has been pants for a few days now: I’ve had thunderstorms and vertical rain. I don’t really mind because I don’t have to go anywhere and have been extremely busy sorting out chores that have been on the to-do-list for ages already. I finally started to mend some dresses and skirts and I finally finished my chocolate satin dress. I don’t know what happened but last week one thing led to another and all of a sudden I was sick and tired of the mess that has been lying around for some time now waiting for me to fix it or finish it. Oh… I remember what caused it: be prepared to dive into my warped mind…

Last Friday I received a wonderful surprise in the post all the way from New York, the package from Ismoyo that I’d won a while ago. Thank you, it’s totally sweet! So I wanted to take some pictures, I always take pictures of everything and that’s what it all started: me wanting to take pictures. I have a small desk near the window where my sewing machine sits and it’s the best spot to take pictures since the light conditions are always perfect. But the desk was piled up with dresses that needed fixing. So basically I ended up cleaning up the mess. Halfway I decided to sort out my CD collection too, all the archive CDs that is.

And before I knew it I was throwing out stacks of old CDs that my Mac refused to read and burning Gigs to DVD, reorganising years of archiving. Then I got all hyper and realised that I only have two LaCie Porsches that I really needed to sort out because I don’t have the extra backup space anymore. Well I do basically but it needs a lot of reorganising. So while working on websites for clients I suddenly realised that if one of those Porsches would crash I would have a serious problem: I don’t have the extra backup available, the second Porsche became home to my music collection instead.

What happened next is that I started my online research for internal and external HDs to see if I could afford one. I asked Christiaan for advice since I had a slight idea what I wanted but wasn’t sure if that was the best option but he confirmed my feeling *thank you!*. So I decided to buy an extra 500Gig internal HD since that is the cheapest way for now and I do need to invest in this if I don’t want to get myself into trouble. Over the weekend I ended up wasting time waiting for others to help me so I lost a few hours there but have been catching up these last few days.

Why the detour you wonder? Because I need to get rid of clutter: all the clutter around me on desks, the clutter on my Mac which used to be organised but most of all the clutter in my head. I’m probably over-criticising myself again because some from the past told me I was the most organised person they’d ever met and I guess I can see why. But you see, I can’t design new projects if I don’t have a neat place to work: neat place clean of clutter means no clutter but room in my head… So I decided to throw out and declutter starting with the pile of clothes waiting to be mended.

And since I finally have a clean window desk I finally took some pictures. Now if you’ll excuse me I need to get back to decluttering so I can start some web design soon!

I’ve finished my chocolate satin dress, more mending to be done…

Lovely surprise in the post all the way from NY

Cute Japanese generosity I received from Ismoyo, thank you so much! :)