Are You Stuck?

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Because I’ve been stuck for a real long time now.

Not sure what to write. Not sure where I’ll be in 2 years. Not sure where this life is taking me.

It never quite occurred to me until recently that maybe I already have the answer. All this time I’ve been focused on the answer instead of the important part: trying to form questions to an already known answer.

More often than not, we’re all chasing after happiness in life. So you see, happiness is the answer to all our questions. We’ve just been misguided to think that we can only ask ONE QUESTION to get the single answer.

We’re better than the “10 + 10 = ?” question that was asked of us in first grade. We should be seeing ” __ + __ = 20″ instead. Happiness as our answer to life is like ’20’ to ” __ + __ = 20″. There can be infinite combinations to form your question for the single result of happiness.  But there is no one way road to happiness, just many twists and turns.

So stop searching for the right answer. Maybe we’re just asking the wrong question right now.

Let us reevaluate the questions we’ve been asking ourselves and look ahead to infinite possibilities we have to shape happiness.

— itsfruitcakeweather.

Hoarding Memories

Does it make sense when I say: I really want change for improvement in life but continue to be a nostalgic hoarder of objects that remind me of the past? These days, I tend to consider myself as someone open to change and new things in my life. That wasn’t always the case. I remember leaving my first home of 10 years for a newer, more beautiful home. While I was incredibly excited about my new room, a part of me was devastated. I wanted to keep a grasp of the feeling of familiarity that my first home gave me so much that I vowed (as the naive ten-year-old I was) to one day move back there.

None of those thoughts ever made me realize that it was the people, friends, family –loved ones –that made empty objects seem like they held more significance than they deserved.

Like the little overpriced restaurant at the street corner of my former home, it still holds an unexplained amount of significance. I lived in the area during my earliest, most blurry phase of my life and bought meals from the restaurant on what seemed to me as the rare special occasion and once before the school year began. This would make me illogically obsessed with the idea of going back every September. As if not having done so meant unfinished family business or a sign of something misplaced in my little cycle of life. It become a part of my history, my family’s history too if you will.

When I took walks in the summer I often found myself spending extra hours just to visit the place I once called home. The driveway seemed much narrower than the one that remains in my collection of vague memories and different flowers had been planted in place of my favourite daffodils. But my family wasn’t there. Suddenly the hoarding of such memories and giving them great significance meant nothing. But that didn’t stop me from wanting to visit again or stop feeling an odd connection with the place. Walking by the elementary school near the home was a similar story. The hopscotch lines are now covered by the perfect, impeccable pavement. Even the tree I used to climb had been chopped down and thus, remains no evidence the memories I have hoarded over the past decade ever existed.

This isn’t a sad story though. Being too attached to the memories despite having the people who created them with me turned the spotlight away from more significant things that are currently forming me new memories (likely better).

Despite the old box of picture books being of little use today and my refusal to give them away because of the memories, there is no turning back to the time when I most enjoyed them. When I am reminded of the memories I hoarded for so many years, I see a person that lacked the optimism to face a better future ahead. Time is unforgiving and waits for no one.

— itsfruitcakeweather.

Childhood Drawing

Apparently this is what my sister imagined us to look like in the future in a journal entry where she wrote “She is the best big sister that anybody could get” when she was 8. Perhaps the best find this summer.

— itsfruitcakeweather.

5 Reasons To Love The Job You Love To Hate

Being young and soon to be unemployed I’m already feeling the pressures of swimming in financial debt. Today was my third to last full day of work and I couldn’t help but wonder where I could possibly go from here on out in this job market.

Looking back, as much as many of us fail to appreciate sitting in an isolated cubicle sifting through papers or flipping some hamburgers on a Saturday morning shift (often times complaining about work)… there are certainly things we got out of these jobs early in our careers as “young adults”, right?

1. You learned to fake being mature. Depending or where you’ve worked early on in your career, most often than not you had some significantly older co-workers. Perhaps they saw you as a child. Perhaps you felt the need to find relevant topics of conversation to gain their respect. Tough going being young and an adult at the same time. Faked it until you made it.
2. The bills were paid on time. You paid the damn bills. Need I say more?
3. One more experience to slap on that resume. Because more jobs mean more diverse experiences, meaning you’ll more likely be hired the next time around right? Because somehow flipping hamburgers or operating the dish washing machine behind some fast food franchise can magically be come transferable skills on your resume.
4. Your boss/the customer is always right. Provided you kept the job or wanted to keep the job, I’m guessing you learned this point quite well.
5. Even the worse job has something to teach you. Learn these lessons well. Maybe you realized what you didn’t want to do for the rest of your life. Perhaps you discovered how to deal with the toughest of people. I for one, discovered that given the choice, I wouldn’t want to be holding a 9 to 5 office job sitting in a cubicle (some people may call this ideal or dead-end depending on your perspective). So, while we do mourn over the early shifts and harsh managers there is a load to gain after all.

– itsfruitcakeweather.