a new year awaits

Say "Yes" to the new year as 2009 is not going to be anything like 2008, or as I've been told.

Well, that simply means I can't stay inside the shell, nor be cosy in my comfort zone... no longer.

It's time to change. Change is not really a must-have on my list of new year's resolutions but it has become an expectation from me. Stressed? YES. Challenging? YES. That, speaking of a new year with a new start on a new job scope... Demanding? YES.

Well, as you might have guessed, I was in the cinema recently for a good laugh (and I swear that it is really good!) with Jim Carrey. He made me laughed really hard (the hardest I could remember from watching a comedy) and screamed whenever I felt like, unrestrained and totally 'me at my couch'. He made me 'laughed out' (if there was such a phrase) in such a way that I felt relieved... of not-that-I-could-recall and I-couldn't-care-less-for-now, it was just a feel-good and light-hearted show.

So if my starting paragraphs sounded anything like a new lesson from the show... you'll know why. But, of course, the show was not only about saying YES to everything. It was a story that pretty much reminded me of my dear friend and a part of me and everyone else... being shut in a box. Imagine staying in a room with many doors... sometimes we chose to keep the door shut, refused to let anyone in and refused to get out there. Staying in a closed room for long not only shuts us from the outside, but also shuts the outside from us. In a way, we are refusing possibilities (sometimes opportunities) and we are refusing ourselves from opportunities too. Why can't we just say 'YES' when we really want to? That's the baffling thing about humans, or women... well sometimes men too.

So the YES man takes the easy way out to say 'YES' to every single thing that come his way... accept all possibilities, experience all sorts - good and bad. The NO man shuts out all possibilities for fear of the unknown and the bad stuff. But to avoid the bad stuff, you're depriving yourself of the good stuff too. The good and bad always come in a package, don't they?

So, the first step to a new year is perhaps to learn to say 'YES'?

Say 'YES' to life, to opportunities and the unknown.

Heck what the others are saying, live your life. Just do it.

and YES, I can do it.

For 2009, I'll say 'YES' to:
1. a trip to France (be it on an immersion or a backpack trip, I'm doing it after this coming one year long of hard work)
2. staying cheery and happy (keeping an optimistic attitude to life no matter how hard life, or rather work knocks)
3. another backpack trip with my girl buddies (Hong Kong, Tioman, Redang or all?)
4. speaking French with greater confidence (hope it comes in handy at work too)
5. enriching myself inside out (dance, writing classes coming soon)
6. taking part in the 10km run at Standard Chartered Marathon (training is a separate thing from though)

Live and let live

If life is a race course, mine would resemble one with many sharp twists and turns.

I turn when there is an obstacle. I do not stop nor will I choose to hit it head-on. This still sounds like a form of avoidance though I pretty much hate to admit that it is. To me, it's a shift of focus - to channel what could have been negative to something positive; almost like a 'recycling' of emotions - converting what could have been worthless and meaningless into something valuable and more precious...

Not that negativities are worthless and meaningless but lamenting them is. The things that I've went through were not nothing but it serves no purpose to replay the emotions when things have already moved on, albeit not in the most pleasant manner. And so I learned to forget, as always. I learned to forget and be forgetful. It is almost like a brainwashing or mental deterioration the way things just get erased from my mind, temporarily or not. Forgetting things have helped me to move on and look ahead, focus on what I can make happen and not what happened.

Forgetting has instilled a kind of tranquility and Zen in me that I've forgotten how to feel angry.

Let bygone be bygones; that's the only way to move on.

Bear no grudges for they serve no purpose.

Live and let live.

Now, I just want to have a good break.