hahaaha, well, I failed at NoBloPoMo in 2011. … but much of life got in the way of blogging.

But today is a new day and the start of a new year. And this morning, I was compelled to grab a piece of paper and write down a list of goals/resolutions of the new year. The list was pretty good, so I decided I’d post them here.

• Be healthy
• Spend less
• Work hard, but not to the point of exhaustion
• Remove toxic people from your life
• Be organized / Plan ahead / get things in order (including finances, insurance, any life coverages, Bella’s papers, etc.)
• Do more for yourself — stop putting others ahead of you if they wouldn’t do the same for you.
note: going through the huge hardships from this year has made me realize who is truly there when needed and who has a differing agenda
• Continue to travel — even alone
• Run a 5k … as in, run the whole thing.
• Blog more
• instagram most days
• Kindly speak your mind
• Do everything with a good and patient heart
• Pray more / pray often

Make 2012 THE year!!!

Hope everyone has a wonderful new year!

First day of NoBloPoMo 2011!

And already I’m tired. ha.

… oh crap. I think I might fail at this. Better try coming tomorrow…

Yes, I will be doing NoBloPoMo again this November.

This blog has been so neglected. :-(

One of the best feelings in the world is feeling optimistic about the future. Especially cause it seems to be a rare thing.

Today, I felt really optimistic about the future. Here’s to hoping that this feeling is a blessing from above, because I can certainly use that kind of saving grace.

Vacation and traveling is supposed to refresh and revive you so that when you return home, you can approach your everyday life more awake and inspired.

Today was my first day back to work and I found myself far from inspired, far from awake, and far from happy.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m trying so hard to hold on to that vacation hazy hangover, or if it’s because I’m truly unhappy with my regular life. But having been back from the west for the past couple of days, I feel as if I don’t belong. I feel like the things and problems I left before my vacation are still there and that I didn’t get a chance to get away from it. Maybe I need a change. Maybe I don’t belong here anymore. Or maybe I’m just bored.

Either way, I’m not sure if this is healthy for me anymore. I love design and design thinking, and I am working at one of the best design firms in the city with the best staff, but the problems that my job requires me to solve are eating at me and I don’t always find myself inspired enough to solve those problems. I’m tired of tackling HTML and CSS. I’m tired of working with I want and need this NOW clients. Sitting in an office for 9 hours a day hurts my body and dries my eyes and makes my head hurt. I wonder if there’s a way to keep doing my job, but get a sense of variety from it. I’m faced with doldrums of repetition. Commute. Sit. Design. Sit. Commute. Repeat.

And I’m secluded in a desk space for the bulk of my day. Rarely any public interactions. No street noise, no urban life, no clusters of passersby. Things that excited me about the cities I visited on my vacation are vacant in this everyday routine.

Right now, my life is uninspired, which makes my work uninspired.

I’m not sure what my next step needs to be, or when it should be, or if even these feelings are just a leftover effect of travel. But at any regard, it’s not something that I should ignore or hope will fade with time. I don’t want this to be something that eats at me until I’m a void of the world.

I want life. I want to feel inspired. I want to live an interesting life and do interesting things. I want to feel free.

This is a repost from my travel blog.

Ah. The return home. Always such a fuzzy time, having to readjust to reality and the life I temporarily left. It always leaves me re-evaluating things in my life — my goals, the directions I’m heading, if my life is as fulfilled as I strive to be, or if it may mean some life-tweaking needs to be done. Traveling is such a time-warp that plays with your mind and soul, revealing or concealing things that your everyday life pushes aside.

…. that, or I’m still trying to make the world stop spinning from all the various modes of transportation we’ve been taking these last two weeks.

It feels somewhat strange to be putting my thoughts into words, since I haven’t been blogging from the road. I’ve only been taking photographs along the way, letting my mind have a break since it’s been racing for months and just letting my soul grow, my spirit soar, and my heart beat.

As my friend Heather said of the end of travel, Love that feeling… eyes wider, satisfied brain, heart bigger. Good stuff. :)

It is good stuff, and I hope I don’t let it fade away for some time.

My personal recollections of the trip to come. Sorry for not having the chance to post while on the road (minus my “day in photographs” posts); it was tough having only my phone as a way to post. But in a way, it helped me flush out my mind along the way and not have to worry about giving a daily synopsis of the day’s activities. Some things are worth savoring individually, fresh from adventure.

But I can’t wait to share my viewpoint of our travels, and how I’ve let my wings expand all the more.

I am back from a 2-week whirlwind vacation up the west coast. It was exhilarating.

My travel buddy and I have set up a weblog to document our excursions and will probably repost my excerpts from that blog over here. However, since that blog is a little more “public” than this one, I’m probably going to supplement those “reposts” here with more personal thoughts about the trip. It’ll feel more comfortable to me to do it this way, since this is my personal blog and that other blog is shared.

So, in other words, readers of this blog will get a more intimate/personal take of the trip experiences.

(Also, I’m not going to link that blog to this one, as I do want to keep the two separate. I’m sure if you do enough research, you will be able to figure out what the other blog is. Facebook friends, you’ll definitely know the link since I’ll post it there.)