Tag Archives: Paper

Goodbye Fear

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I never thought things would affect me this much… I had a brilliant weekend, I had the best company I could wish for, I had fun, I was happy, I was laughing lots, there was good food and drinks and the weather couldn’t be more perfect. And last but not least: there were shared confessions, sweet words that I was surprised to hear so I must have been blind and utterly deaf for quite some time I guess… *not anymore!*

And then out of the blue things slowly start to come back and creep up on me. Why oh why do I feel the way I do, why are the effects of the past trying to catch up with me once again. I’ve heard it a few times, my friend MD told me recently, over the weekend to be exact. He said I should stop thinking/reasoning about my feelings till they’ve completely diminished and dare to feel instead. I can’t help but doing it again.

It’s fear… and I don’t have a clue why… Well I do actually. It’s fear of not being good enough and fear of being rejected. And I realise I need to work on this before things get all screwed up again. And I need to be patient, I would like to be patient… and should stop being the perfectionist. So what I’ll do is, I’ll write down what is bothering me on a piece of paper and I will burn it and bury the ashes deep deep down in the soil…

I feel vulnerable but I should know that things are good the way they are, instead of doubting all that I could ever doubt, about anything. Perhaps I see this vulnerability as some kind of weakness and since I need to be all perfect I can’t accept weakness, I need to be strong in order to survive. So the reasoning starts again because it’s so much easier to reason and make up your own logic than having to face the feelings.

I deserve something good… than why am I having such a hard time to accept things the way they are? *Looking for pen and paper*

Origami Wishes

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Today I’m working on my New Year’s ‘cards‘ that I will send to some close friends. I don’t do xMas cards anymore, call me a rebel but I try to make a difference and not follow the crowd blindly so I craft my own ‘cards‘ and try to turn it into something special each year instead of the regular stuff that is out there in the supermarkets. I want those that are special to me to receive something special, it’s about making the effort…

I’ll use my favourite paper that I bought in London at the Chinese wholesaler where I used to get my Asian groceries. I bought loads of the coloured kind and only a few sheets of the paper I’m now using for the ‘cards‘. The girl at the till asked me why I bought that much paper so I said to her that I’m a graphic designer and I just love the quality of it. She just responded with a quiet ‘oh…’ but I realised what she was thinking.

You see, this paper has a totally different meaning to the Chinese than it has to me, to me it’s ‘just’ another piece of beautiful paper that I can use to design something special. Paper made of rice or bamboo fibers with a beautiful coarse texture of ‘laidlines’. To the Chinese it’s ‘ghost money’ and used as an offering to worship the ancestors and to ensure that the spirit of the deceased has all the good things in the afterlife.

I don’t see why I couldn’t use it for another purpose: I think I’m only complementing this beautiful paper. I’ve chosen to hide my New Year’s wishes inside a cute Origami design and since it’s all handmade I’m only gonna send a few to a select company of people. Only those who will appreciate the effort, so instead of the ‘usual’ twenty five xMas New Year’s cards, I’ll reduce that to ten this year. Why only ten people?

Because I’m limiting some friendships… It’s time to shift the focus from others to myself and some of these so-called friendships simply seem too unbalanced so I’d rather nurture the more rewarding ones. I’d like to thank those who sent me a (digital) xMas message, some came as a total surprise to me *happy smile* Mine is -as you can read- still in the making and soon on it’s way around the world *wink*.

‘This above all: to thine own self be true.’

~Shakespeare

©Zesty Gal Beautiful paper… waiting to be cut and folded

©Zesty Gal Beautiful paper… waiting to be cut and folded