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.
When I get tired of lying on my bed, looking up at the ceiling, I sometimes lie on the floor. There’s something I find comforting about the hardness of the surface beneath me. It feels supportive and solid, and I like knowing that this is the bottom and the ground is holding me, and that I am safe.
Continue reading “Looking Up”
The British daffodils I bought for 0.99p are dead. They’ve shrunk and withered and yet, they’re still sitting on my windowsill and every time I walk towards the apartment, I look up in search of my window with the dead daffodils. After all this time, I should probably throw them out but it’s just like me to cling to dead things and hope that they’ll come back to life.
Continue reading “Dead Daffodils”
There is no denying the wild horse in us, said Virgina Woolf. There’s more to the quote but that’s the part I like best. Essentially, the quote is about passion which means it’s about feeling things deeply which means it’s about having a heart. Most of the time, I don’t think people feel things to their full extent and I blame that on a lot of things, mainly fear. We are afraid of being vulnerable, and of being too much. Also, we forget how to feel things. Like many things growing up, the permission to experience true emotion is trampled out of us from a young age. It’s hardly appropriate to be fully governed by emotions after the age of two.
Continue reading “Wild Horses”
In sophisticated settings, people are always drinking whisky. It’s a real grown up drink: the classy men and the alluring Anna Kareninas of this world drink whisky. So do larger than life people, and people who are falling in love, and young and stupid people. It’s the type of drink I imagine writers drink, the bohemian ones who smoke a lot of cigarettes and never sleep during the night.
Continue reading “Whisky, Whisky, Whisky”
On the first day of spring, I bought myself a cookie dough flavoured ice cream cone. I almost didn’t. I almost kept walking past the shop, and round the corner, and all the way back to my apartment. But then I thought, why not. Why not get an ice cream cone when it’s beautiful outside, and it’s Saturday, and I would love nothing more than to sit on this bench and join the millions of people, somewhere in the world, probably eating ice cream right this second?
Continue reading “An Ice Cream Cone”
It is a new month, a fresh start, another beginning. Everybody needs a clean slate every now and again. Thank God we get one every every 30 days or so. There is nothing more inspiring than a blank page. Or perhaps, there is nothing more depressing. It depends, I suppose, on the type of mood you’re in.
Continue reading “We Need Spring”
It was sunny the other day. Bright, yellow, beautiful sunshine, as if the world was dripping in honey and it was spilling onto the pavement, and across the shops, and down the sides of empty restaurants.
Continue reading “Remembering Sunshine”
The sky has taught me so much. Not in a pushy sort of way, forcing its knowledge upon me with an air of superiority. But more like the way a wise friend might speak to you, gently imparting wisdom without you even realizing until afterwards.
Continue reading “Lessons from The Sky”
Someone in the apartment next to mine was playing Danny Boy on the guitar last night. That’s what I fell asleep listening to.
Then today, when I was working away at my desk, I heard someone practicing their scales on the piano.
Continue reading “Memories, Collected”
Things I Learned Growing Up 