T.Notes#30: Damsel Fly

Then there are those days when she longed to be lost - to wander away into a long night. An unrecognizable curious beauty, stirring a glass of red at the back of the bar, and listening intently to Loyle Carner's Damselfly and Ottolenghi. Then there are those days when i desperately wished to be her. This one is about flight.

T.Notes#29: Game for three

Heaven and I know both that my life is like a game of three dice:
Each of us gently stroking one,
a curious orchestra playing in the background,
and the devil, waiting with a third and for the music to pause.

T.Notes#28: Lauryn

I went away to a self discovery retreat because my 'good' friends convinced me that i was hurtling into a serous case of early mid-life crisis. To be honest, i was not really bothered about the prognosis until i started seeing real implications to my account balances - i.e maintaining a mid life crisis is expensive and certainly not sustainable!

So there i was in a lovely country side along with other misfits - literally being force-fed a lot of new-age, self-help propaganda. As you can imagine, i was not very coperative. The facilitators had one particular underpinning theory. They insisted that the key to life fulfilment is by rediscovering the person you were towards the end of your teenage years - because the person you were at ages nineteen to twenty holds the key to the real "you" and therein lies our personal contentment.

The logic is that most of us have already figured out who we are and what we want to become by age twenty. Therefore, every experience or decision after that age is either consciously helping us towards that goal, or we are intentionally adjusting our aspirations to accomodate life, pressure or society.  I told the psycologist that it all made no sense and that she was talking rubbish. My defence was that it is not practical to build one's life on the naivety of teenage-hood.

She asked me if i was happy. I told her my current salary, recent bonus and asked her if she'd be happy if she were earning that much. She said maybe, and asked me again if i was truly happy. In response, I reeled out the long list of people that rely on and benefit from my adulting routines. Their happiness gives me contentment, albeit in a depressing twisted way - i argued, whilst mulling if my life wasn't disimilar to how Paul refered to being poured out like a drink offering.

Before giving up, she asked me to reflect on the things i was doing at age twenty that brought me joy and give myself a break from adulthood to indulge fully in those activities and afterwards take time to reflect. I reluctantly agreed to take up her challenge. So when i got home, i borrowed a bicycle and rode to the local music store - with the wind and fond memories in my sails. I bought a reel of old 90s music and dedicated the weekend to allowing myself space to breathe.

Then for the first time in six years i turned off Bloomberg and welcomed instead Miseducation of Lauryn Hill strumming in the background whilst i read through all 200 of my old posts here - in search of a consistent trend of "who i am". I cringed at  some, prudently archived some, but for the most part, I loved, laughed and ultimately accepted every facet of experience that has brought me to who i am today - with a better clarity of the sum of all those colorful parts.

What does this all mean for monday morning when i resume back to work and the deadlines and stress-lines kick back in? I don't know. I'm still trying to figure it all out. But i do know that this weekend i feel lighter with a lesser burden from the weight of the person i am trying hard to become. And i know that it's a feeling i'm not keen to give up too quickly.

How do you deal with life on your journeys to becoming?

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T.Notes #27: About addictions

I took this picture on a cold dark night as i finally gave up and made my way to my first group therapy meeting. Even though my naturally cynic self considered it all "silly western indulgences", I introduced myself in the required format: "Hi my name is T; I am a....addict." I knew it was the first time i was speaking the truth.

Addictions are complex, often leading to irrepairable psychological damage if left unattended to. People will often blame addicts for not speaking up about their problems, but i found that such conversations are only a waste of time - amounting only to either emphathy or entertainment. Neither of which is helpful to anyone.

Only someone who has lived in or intentionally studied the toxic realities of addictions, is really a worthwhile audience. This is how i met bambi - with her matchless wit and a body that was only fitting to gods. Some relationships are like carelessly throwing gasoline into a raging inferno, but we called it art. Afterall anything you do with Sade Adu playing in the background, can only be beautiful.

Six months into sobriety and still trying to redefine beauty.

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T.Notes #26: Url Change

New url:

Tn0tes.blogspot.com (Note the zero)

I'll try to drop the new url in your blogs so we hopefully stay connected.

Ta!

T.Notes #25: About Changes and a long overdue update

I took a break from blogging because i seriously needed to figure me out. I am not exaggerating when i say my life was in freefall.  I will share details as we go on but i promise you that i can write a thesis about how to f** up your life whilst keeping it all together at the same time. I desperately missed blogging all the while but it was best to keep my mess to myself. Besides I think it is tricky these days to maintain a personal blog that is true to you whilst also hoping people understand the seperation between unfiltered thoughts and real life. In the past i had slowly started censoring this page - partly due to my own maturing but also partly because i started to understand the dangers of misinterpretation. But you see, my own sanity is also hinged on writing my way through to each conclusion. So I want to blog again and i hope we can talk again - on a deeper level than ever before.

I'll be making some important changes:
1. Url change: Tn0tes.blogspot.com OR miseducationoftnotes.blogspot.com
2. Twitter: I will share a twitter handle soon so it's easier to stay in touch
3. Old posts: This is really hard to do, but i will be tucking away old posts into an archive folder.

If i still have your ears, i'll be making blog round in a bit. Trust you are all weĺl? Thanks for checking up in my absence - i truly appreciate the love and community. So let's catchup folks, it's been a minute.

This is a T.Note