Continue reading “#AtoZChallenge 2024 – Chaotic” →
Continue reading “#AtoZChallenge 2024 – Burnout” →
Continue reading “#AtoZChallenge 2024 – Anger” →
Good morning! Welcome, please come on in and help yourself to a cup of hot or cold beverage and join me for a quick chat.
Continue reading “#WeekendCoffeeShare – A Fun Day at the Arcade” →
Good morning! Welcome, please come on in and help yourself to a cup of hot or cold beverage and join me for a quick chat.
Continue reading “#WeekendCoffeeShare – A Mixture of Thoughts” →
Continue reading “What do you see # 229 – The Test” →
Good morning! Welcome, though our lovely host for #WeekendCoffeeShare – Natalie – is taking a break this week, it doesn’t mean we can’t have a quick chat over a hot or cold drink. So come on in.
Continue reading “#WeekendCoffeeShare – A Long Week” →
Good morning! Welcome, please come on in from the wind and help yourself to a cup of hot or cold beverage and join me for a quick chat.
Continue reading “#WeekendCoffeeShare – Exploration of Emotions” →
A few nights ago, as I was sitting in my room, reading blogs and browsing the web, mom asked me, “Did you rent a car?”
My head immediately perked up. “Why do you ask?” I replied. How did she find out? Was she looking into my Expedia account? Damn it? I shouldn’t had let her use my account to book her hotels in Japan.
You see, mom has this fear of having her own accounts and accounts under her own name. She fears her identity be stolen or that there is some kind of G-man entity watching her. From the time I arrived in the US, I thought it was weird she’d use my name to open her email account. She’d never used her name for anything, always my name. It’s frustrating. Does my name not matter? Do I not matter?
“You’re taking advantage of my not being here and going somewhere, aren’t you?” Mom said. “Where are you going?”
“How do you know I’m renting a car?” I asked. There was a part of me that felt like she doesn’t know, that she’s just phishing like a cop in an interrogation room.
She didn’t answer and before I could say another word, she changed the topic, conversation over.
On Thanksgiving Day, as I was doing a jigsaw puzzle, she tried to convince me to cancel my trip. “Why not be good and stay home?” She said. “Work on your puzzle instead of going out in the freezing weather.”
Seriously? Why do I need to stay home while she’s galivanting across Japan and China? Who does she think I am? A grown adult? A child? Or a thing on a leash?
That evening, after the evening news and we headed upstairs, as I sat down to catch up with the blogs, she suddenly said, “Don’t dip your head when washing your hair.”
“Oh my gosh, stop it!” I spoke loudly. “Who do you think I am?”
This is one of the most memorable quotes I’ve ever posted on this blog. I don’t remember where I got it from. All I know is that I uploaded this quote onto this blog in 2016.
Continue reading “WQ#35: Be Bold?” →
I had the more fun last week than I have had in a long while when my co-workers and I spent the day riding roller coasters and sliding down the mountain in a luge fashion.
Continue reading “WQ#34: Fun is What Comes After, Right?” →
I finally did it!
Continue reading “WQ#33: Something New” →
I am feeling so out of it this week – mentally drained and tired – yet at the same time, my anxiety has taken the opportunity to rev up, making me feel irritable and overwhelmed, and making every moment of this week feel chaotic, like I’m messing up everything and can’t do anything right.
Continue reading “WQ#32: A Chaotic and Overwhelming Week” →Continue reading “WQ#31: Alone” →
Continue reading “WQ#30: Writer’s Choice: Word of the Year Update” →
When I think of the word “Tiny“, I think of all the small things that makes my day more bearable.
Mom has been delivering insults lately, not that she wasn’t before but I’m finding the ones she had delivered in the last week just downright…angering (if that’s a word). Usually, I can take it like my usual backache or joint-pain but this week, it felt extra painful.
She told me I’m a failed investment, that she’s better off buying stocks than invest in me. There was no precedent. I was working, reconciling payments and answering emails when she just came into my room and said that to me.
She basically told me that because I haven’t paid her back the money she lent me to pay off my car and student loans. Guess what, those were forced loans. I never asked for help to pay off any of that stuff. She made me take the money and now expects me to pay back the x-dollar amount, which I don’t even recall.
She said it’s the reason she wanted to adopt a child – she wanted to start over and train him/her to be a better version of me. Why not raise a robot, not a human? A thought came to my mind. One of my professors used to say, “How great is it to put a robot to work? They don’t complain. They don’t ask for raises. They don’t ask for day-offs. They just do what you tell them to do.”
I can never be the person she wants me to be because I’m human, not a robot. It’ll be a miracle if there’s a day when I don’t get criticism or insult from her but for now, I’ll settle for a few hours every Thursday when she’s at the office and I’m at home.
I agree, life is a series of tiny miracles and I love every one of them because, well, they bring joy.
It’s why I love gardening, I think. When I head out into the garden every morning, I notice the tiny little things that I didn’t notice the night before, like how the tiny watermelons are just a tad bigger, how the female cucumber flowers have opened at last to allow either me or the bees to pollinate, and seeing the tiny leaves poke out of the soil from newly germinated seeds.
Seeing these things energize me – like a shot of caffeine without the jitters. These teeny tiny overnight changes excite my optimistic self, it allows my imagination go wild imagining the harvest and the beauty of the plant.
Relaxation is not my jam. Never was, although the need to be constantly keeping myself occupied became exacerbated when I was unemployed for 4 months back in 2018. Just imagine having someone who comes home every night and the first thing they do is scream at you, lecture you, or threaten you, and it’s not just on weeknights but 24/7.
I was not only anxious but I was also depressed. The words she said made me feel like completely worthless.
I was not fired from my previous job, by the way. I told the CEO I quit and he said no. I quit anyway because I’ve encountered some of the most emotionally abusive people on that job. I’ve already have one emotional abuser, I don’t need three other. There are not many people in this world that can make my cry, I’ve developed an outer shell as tough as Kevlar in the recent year, but, man oh man, and it wasn’t because I made a mistake.
It took me a long time to recover between being unemployed and being constantly threatened and lectured by mom. Even after I got my current job, I was living life at top speed but I liked it. It kept me busy, consistently working overtime. In fact, this year is the year I finally stop having consistent overtime. After 5 years, can you believe it?
Still, I can’t relax. As much as I want to just sit back and do nothing for even 5 minutes, I can’t. I either get antsy and anxious and angry or mom will give me a task to do.
I don’t even think I’ve been able to sit and read a book for a few minutes without mom calling me. So it’s not just me who won’t let me relax, it’s other people as well.
Lately, I feel like I’m not spending time on nature, doing walks, and taking pictures. I remember how much doing those things made me feel good. It was one of the few things that made my racing mind slow down.
I want to do those things again so much. I have been begging mom to let me go to Cascade Springs this summer – a lovely spot I discovered last year. “But I don’t want to go.” She said.
“I don’t need you to go.” I responded. The whole point was for me to venture on my own. Cascade Springs is a safe spot. I mean, school kids go there for field trips, how bad can it be?
Of all the places I’ve been, Cascade Springs was one of the rare places that made me slow down and listen to the water from a rushing torrent to a trickling stream. I love the sound of trickling stream, by the way, so peaceful and relaxing. When I’m restless and can’t sleep, I’d play this sound on an app on my phone and set a timer for 2 hours.
Alas, I can’t go out these days without the need to tow mom along, which it’s something I may never understand.
Here are some photos I took when I went to Cascade Springs last August.
Greetings! Welcome to #WeekendCoffeeShare, thank you for meeting me on this Saturday morning. If you don’t mind, I’d like to sit for a moment and marvel at the lush green growth of the garden.
Continue reading “#WeekendCoffeeShare – Potato Harvest, Cooking for Myself, and Summer Party” →
We all blog for a reason, whether to build an identity in the blogging universe that’s totally different from the real life persona or to expand our real life persona into the blogging universe. This week on #5things, hosted by Tanya from Salted Caramel, she’s presenting the opportunity to list out 5 ways in which our blogging self is the same or differs from our real life counterpart.
Continue reading “5 Differences/Similarities between my Blogging Self and Real Self” →
This week’s Wednesday Quotes is all about the concept of growing and I am choosing plants for my muse.
Continue reading “#WQ #18: Grow” →This week’s Wednesday Quotes is all about embracing changes.
Continue reading “#WQ #12: Embrace and Adapt to Climate Change” →
Good morning! How are you on this fine Saturday morning? Come on in and we’ll chat.
Continue reading “#WeekendCoffeeShare – Pink Pancake Breakfast” →
This is Another Story