The Unofficial Guide to Life
We know that life can sometimes be challenging, lonely, or down-right exhausting. On such days, we embrace creativity; we recognize the beauty surrounding us; we seek peace through simple pleasures. Here, you’ll find prose to warm your soul, soothe your worries, or just get you through the tough times. Consider this your ray of sunshine on a rainy day.
It’s the time of year where people are drawn towards pastel coloured nails, and soft skies, and flowy skirts, and gentle music. People take pictures of budding blossoms and the daffodils covering the meadows like a golden carpet and post them on Instagram – I do too. The gardens repopulate with flowers, the night stays lighter a little longer, and everybody everywhere is taking pictures.
Continue reading “Hope”
There is something that I think everybody loves, at least a little bit, and that is a sunset. Some of us purposely take time out of our days to watch it. Others are lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. Sunsets are cherished images in love songs and puzzles and travel photos and maybe even pictures taken in the city you grew up in.
Continue reading “Sunsets”
One time, when I was very sad, I saw a picture of the sky that someone posted on Instagram and wondered how it was possible for people to be happy and post beautiful pictures of nature when I felt the worst I had ever felt. I wanted to look at the sky and feel like maybe life wasn’t so bad. Maybe it mostly isn’t – but it took a long time to remember all the reasons why.
Continue reading “Skies and Sadness”
At long last, it is sunny, crisp, windy, chilly, rainy, cosy, sometimes all at once. I have been waiting for this. I didn’t realize how badly I was longing for fall until suddenly, one ordinary morning, I felt cold and had to hug my arms to my chest. Fall is here – finally. And all I want to do is wear an orange or mustard coloured sweater.
Continue reading “Seasons”
Reading on a windowsill is not just sitting on a windowsill with your nose in a book. Since the beginning, it’s meant something more to me. The image of some ideal life I wanted to achieve, a symbol of being luxuriously lazy, of having an infinite amount of time, of being young enough or old enough to be free from real life.
Continue reading “Reading on a Windowsill”
On Saturday I walked into town with my hair in the type of high ponytail that swings back and forth when you walk. I was carrying The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime which is a book I bought a long time ago, never read, and left in Canada. I bought another copy of it in a messy bookshop in Glasgow because it was £1 and hardcover and because I really wanted to read it.
Continue reading “Romanticized Summer”
Life can be very, very blue until suddenly it is not. I often think about those winter mornings when it was always dark and I was always cold, rushing to places I didn’t want to be and worrying I was too old when I was really very young. There weren’t too many good things about those mornings – being half-asleep and fighting for the spot by the door on the skytrain – except for the sky.
Continue reading “Pink Skies”
Cherry blossoms combine every lovely, soft, and delicate thing in the world. I see them and I think about happiness, and their petals in puddles, and that spring I spent in Japan, being very young in a very old country.
Continue reading “Blooming”
In the time that I’ve sat here doing absolutely nothing, the sky has turned dark and I can no longer see anything outside my window. I’m not surprised that the darkness came; I’m surprised that the light lasted this long.
Continue reading “Light at 9pm”
Things I Learned Growing Up 