Sunday, Quiet Sunday

Sometimes, I crawl into my corner and curl inward to wait out cramps, fatigue, and lethargy brought on by physical malaise thanks to a peculiar and difficult menstrual cycle that yours truly was bequeathed in the recent past. Thus, I have not left my apartment since Thursday night, but the night is still young.

Today has been filled with solitude and bliss. I love quiet Sundays filled with baking (Happy Birthday, mom), listening to old time radio podcasts, and social action. Therefore, I am finally going to a meeting of the English-speaking local  Amnesty International chapter this afternoon now that my marble cake is hot out of the oven.

As I have languished about the matter before, I have not been very active in volunteering and social action for quite some time and this lack of involvement, a departure from my mid-twenties, bothers me immensely. For the most part, my daily obligations prevent me from attending lectures, meetings, and giving my time for I have a rigid work schedule, but I am paving the way to create a life well-lived which includes plans to return to school, participate in community-based discussions with like-minded citizens, and contribute to my community in a more dedicated fashion.

In order to encourage the achievement of my goals and share my ongoing insights, I am going to blog about them on my barely there Taking It Global blog and here. Please join me and let’s learn from one another’s experiences, viewpoints, and passions.

Pile-Up

Despite being a voracious bookworm, my literary criticism had fallen by the wayside in the last year. On the one hand, I was reading desperately, feverishly, and with abandon yet my thoughts, notes, criticisms, or praise were not being transferred down to paper or online. Was it laziness or lethargy? In fact, I found myself having to write it down rather than wanting to share my perspective with the world. Although Self-deprecating is a quiet blog, I still did not want to be obliged to transcribe my words, so I kept on reading passionately and thinking critically without recording my thoughts and opinions. Before I knew it, the handful book had turned into more than half a dozen books.

After moving to my condo this summer, my feverish reading came back to taunt me and I am ready to share my humble words and reactions with my fellow bookworms. However, I won’t delve into past titles for fear of obligation. If the fancy strikes me, I may strike up a conversation about Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason, but I am most likely to report on quirky performance artist Miranda July’s short story collection No One Belongs Here More Than You which I have just wrapped up.

I am reading profusely and the world feels warmer, smaller, and oh so full of possibilities.

31

Today is my birthday.

Lo and behold, the day began with a subtle tickling of my throat which by midday had blossomed to a full-rage sore throat. Needless to say, I took a sick day from work which would not have been my option of choice given the circumstances. Otherwise, I was not on my best behaviour today and I would gladly rewind the morning to give another performance in my personal life, a decidedly less grumpy performance: with every mistake, I learn.

As it figures, I do not have a great track record with birthdays in general. Most of them have been ordinary, devastating (20th birthday) or hardly memorable. I never had a sweet sixteen party. Come to think of it, I am not the party kind of gal, except that I did host a party last year to celebrate a housewarming slash 30th birthday party. Then, there was a birthday that I celebrated in a bomb shelter which has been the most fun I have had in retrospect.

Towards the evening, I decided to bake myself a birthday cake and my banana cake turned out to be quite delicious. Oh, I am slowly becoming quite the domestic goddess – all over again. To me, the art of baking a moist, old-fashioned cake is reminiscent of a bygone era and it fills me with warmth and fond memories. More and more, I am discovering that I enjoy the recreation of old family recipes and my mother’s Armenian baking cookbook is coming alive again.

As my life opens up to novel experiences, I embrace my 30s and the wild possibilities and whimsies they bring forth. All the same, I am grateful for my harrowing, fanciful, and passionate 20s that helped me ground myself to full circle. I hope you will join me for the ride.

Love,
Saro

Harried Fumblings

It is time to put the past to rest.

Call it introspective or melancholic, but I am the type of person to mull over a previous life, the diverging paths that former classmates and friends have taken. In this case, most of my 20s is fair game for the slightly neurotic and all-too self-deprecating girl in me. The years roll by, some life events occur, but my reaction to these crossroads may sometimes be more present in my consciousness than I would like.

Perhaps, this is all about me and my inability to forgive myself for disappointing my 18 year old self, but social networking sites like Linkedin taunt me a tad too much about people I may or may not know. In a way, glancing over his or her professional blurb makes me proud of the person I crossed paths with in college, L’s best-friend, or my old High School friend. It also puts me off somewhat for I abhor competition and type A personality like pursuits. So why play this game with myself?

It is time to embrace my beautiful and flawed life with all my might.

As I peruse in my Moleskine and around here, it feels like there is a common thread in my reflections. It is not one of contention or pity, but resilient hope that shines through again and again. In true form, I reflect intensely and fumble on forward in an attempt to live my authentic and joyous life. Life is good, life is really good. All the same, it is so effortless to be bogged down by uncertainty, self-doubt, and lethargy.

In essence, my soul is joyous yet there are certain habitual impediments that constrict my perspective sometimes. Therefore, the focus should be on creating my life map and living my life with pure abandon, a moral compass, and without regrets instead of recalling what else I should have accomplished, the graduate degrees I should have pursued (may still happen), or regretting any work-related decisions. I am snapping out of it with a smile on my face.

After all that is said and done, sometimes I just do not appreciate myself enough.