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College Personal Self Discovery

disconnected dots

It’s been awhile since I wrote anything meaningful here. I find less reason to, now. I think I prefer to keep it to myself.

I also draw a blank when it comes to writing a new post. At the same time, I’ve been jotting more things down in my handy diary.

People ask me, what do you write in your diary? I think to myself, everything from quotes I like to books I’ve read to to-do lists which I love to self- affirmation statements, and smile and say, oh the usual.

I am more confident now, since I arrived back in Vancouver. I am more calm. I find myself stepping back and just being an observer, more and more. It’s made my piano playing more controlled. Perhaps I know more what it is that I am doing with my life. Or maybe I am just content with who I am. I know I have more faith in the approach I am taking to life.

I miss travelling. The conversations with strangers that either reaffirm who I thought I was or challenge who I always thought I was. I’ve become more like myself– I predicted I would, before I left. I think that in the midst of challenges, life experiences, and the stress of travelling alone, I could only hold onto the core of who I am… everything else I shed little by little in each community I visited.

I’m more ready to graduate than I thought I would be. Undergraduate studies is too broad and faceless for me. I want to do something more meaningful. I guess that’s the whole point of undergrad, anyway, to push you to figure yourself out. Some people already know– they don’t need the extra four years of school then I guess?

The city bothers me. But at the same time it’s my home, and so I love it. It’s a little like how family works, I think.

People also ask me how it is that I juggle everything I do at once. I like to say, I know I’d be so afraid of dropping any one of those things that I will push myself to my limits trying to juggle it. And I know that I will always push through; I always do.

There are some people I haven’t spoken to in such a long time, who have said important things to me when I needed it most. I doubt I will see them anytime in the near future. There are too many people around in my life. I’m thankful that there are two or three that have stuck by. In psychology we learn about how important community support is– It’s too bad that some people don’t realize this until it’s too late. Another note: I don’t try as hard (or even at all) to please other people anymore. What’s the point? I prefer to direct that energy to thinking about the people who need help in this world, wondering how it is that I can make myself one of those leaders who can make a change significant enough for those voiceless, nameless, faceless people in our world.

Also, I am afraid of falling.

Categories
Personal

recycle those envelopes!

How to make gift bags from envelopes from RecycleNow on Vimeo.

Categories
Personal

water is precious.

This morning I woke up at 5:30a.m. for some reason, so I decided to wash up some dishes before settling down to finish some work. As I was washing the dishes, I became extremely conscious of how much water I was using. The past few days, I have been really noticing how much water I use, and how little of it I actually drink. Back in the village, the water used to wash dishes and clothes were all carried by jerricans, from ‘bore holes’. Bore holes are the places in the village where water pumps have been installed, so most villagers make a morning and night trip to get water, often having to walk for a good half hour to and from. Girls and women usually do this job—in the morning, women do this with babies on their backs; in the evening, girls as young as 10 years old do this job as part of their after school chores. Thinking of all the times I passed by on my way home from work, I remember when those girls would walk along the dirt roads, heads held high balancing the 5L yellow jerricans of water on their way home. Seeing me, they would excitedly extend a hand to wave, sometimes tilting their head a little to keep the water balanced. And my account of how people get water in my village represents a better story than most in Africa. Knowing how effortlessly my water streams out of my tap, I keep reminding myself not to take it for granted, as easy as it is to do. If the twelve kids in our summer kindergarten class were in my kitchen while I washed my dishes with such clean water, they would all be rushing to drink the water that trickled, wasted, down the bowls. All the times I leave the tap on carelessly in the year before I went to Uganda, I could have accumulated enough water to supply the village for a good summer.

I know that my saving water really won’t have much impact on the Ugandans who I think of. But it’s a matter of principle. Water is such a precious resource, and we’ve been spoiled in the richer countries to the point where we’re oblivious to the fact. We treat it as if it were nothing, ‘it’s okay to waste it, what harm does that do to anyone?’.

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