But then the dawn comes and under the harsh light of the day it seems the expense for dreaming is too high of a cost to be paid. So we turn into realists and cynics. We assume our roles, we put on our masks and we step on stage with the confidence of someone who does not have any dreams to lose. We’ve hidden them well, haven’t we? Who’d know that our hearts and heads are filled with hopes and wonderful dreams?

I wonder…is that why the protests the Romanians are involved in these days take place mainly come nightfall? Is it that only then our ideals awaken, while during the day they’re buried under all our cynicism and our boredom of life and they’re suffocated by our attempts to get by as best we can?

This is how a true idealist protests - OANA MOISIL - Cluj-Napoca

Completely unrelated to the previous paragraph, I’m still waiting on that Christmas present…

Ready, steady, go!

I wish I’d been more crazy, more of a teenager. Even since I was a little girl in 1st grade, everybody kept telling me how serious and how mature I was. So not before long I got to be 15 going on 30 – way too serious for my own age and for my own good. I was a kid and a teenager in the sense that I was on the innocent side, but I regret all the gutsy moves that I never made and that all teens make at some point. It wasn’t even shyness in the true sense, but more of a fear of not living up to everybody’s expectations that I’m the “good, responsible, mature girl”

Like my tagger, I very much regret not having practiced some sport. At 25 (ahem, I’m 25? really?!) I wish I had the time and the energy to work out, but can’t seem to be able to rustle up enough of these to even get me out of the house most days. Back then, I had them both in abundance and simply lacked the interest.

I would write more. I discovered my passion for writing (and in close connection, for reading) in the 9th grade, but got dragged back down in the rut of the Romanian educational system and gradually got discouraged. I’d only write now and then and always being self-conscious and fearful that people would hate my writing and would criticize me – which I believed was a most horrifying experience, to be avoided at all cost! (silly me, silly little perfectionist me)

To be entirely fair with you and with myself, I’d have dared more. Youth…so wasted on the young, don’t you think?

In the background I’m hearing: Augustana – Stars and Boulevards

Oh, almost forgot: Diana! Tag, you’re it!

It may seem cliché, but each time one stage of our lives comes to its end, we feel the need to recap, review and re-evaluate. The past year …the past couple of years, to be completely honest, have been a true rollercoaster ride. Breath-taking highs and crushing lows. Emotionally and professionally, the growth has been an undeniable constant.

I’ve penned down a few big resolutions for the year 2011. The biggest one of them all, I did not keep. But that’s not a real disappointment. Instead, it’s more of a reassessment and retracing of my limits. A book – a novel – is a colossal feat, one that requires hard work, patience and time. Especially time – a commodity which I am not in possession of in endless supplies. I’ve not given up on the book, though, fear not! I shall prevail!

2011 has been a year of many “firsts” –  the first time I’ve travelled by plane, the first time I’ve used the underground to get around a city (both during one incredible trip to Rome this spring), the first time I’ve flown by myself and the first time I’ve set foot on Spanish ground (one of my biggest dreams for at least the last 5 years).

2011 has been a year for friends (as was 2010) and a year for family, too. If I tried to describe how much I care about all of them in words, it would not do my heart justice. I’m grateful to each and every one of them for being there, for being themselves and for being my friends and my pillars of support when I needed them.

It’s been a year of surprises – few of which unpleasant, most of which delightful. The most thrilling of them and dare I say my biggest personal accomplishment – my recognition as a (potential) (growing) writer by my being ranked among the top ten participants in a writing contest. Not such a big deal for an untrained eye – a huge achievement for my little world and a great push forward to keep going down this road.

To wrap things up, I wish you a wonderful new year, surrounded by warm, loving people and I look forward to writing to you/for you in the year to come!

Hugs!

thelastoftheidealists

I’m probably setting myself up for a consistent amount of hate mail if any of my readers are fans or for becoming a pariah in my office in case my colleagues are readers of my blog. But no publicity is bad publicity, right? (Or so they say)

I got so fixated on watching Twilight (yes, this is the movie I’m talking about) because everybody in my office was talking about it. Most opinions were raves. Mine, not so much. In the spirit of full disclosure, I enjoyed watching the first movie of the saga. It came up with a number of elements of novelty and thanks to this, it was intriguing. The action was fairly well built and the actors put up decent performances. Now, I’m not sure if this is in tune with the evolution of the books, since I must admit I have not read them, but the movies just seem to become more melodramatic by the second, the plot more hare-brained and the acting simply not touching in any way.

The latest instalment of the Twilight Saga just takes the cake. I could tell it was dangerously rolling into the realm of the unbelievable (the unbelievably silly) towards the end of the previous movie. But by the end, this one got me going “Are you for real?…” The entire movie left me with a feeling that they were trying too hard – relying too much on the music to poke out emotions from the viewers, taking the plot to a new level of absurd, while at the same time it seemed like for about 90% of the movie’s length nothing really happened. The acting – the word you’re looking for is flat. The only character who transmitted anything close to real emotion was Jacob (and no, I’m not “team Jacob”).

I can’t say I’m terribly thrilled about the way Bella was portrayed either. I’m on the fence in the whole pro-choice/pro-life debate, but showing her having her life literally sucked out of her by something she’s not even sure is a human being…hmm…Even though I’m much less adamant than she is on a number of issues, I think a friend of mine makes a few really great points about the latest Twilight flick. Take some time to read her.

I’m not sure why I wanted to see this movie so much in the first place, since I knew even before seeing the trailer that I was setting myself up for another Twilight Saga disappointment. It must have been all the talk in the office, or all the articles circulating on the web about it. Love it or hate it, lose sweet sleep over it or not, it certainly got us all talking about it, didn’t it? Ah, Hollywood, damn your lure!

As Dan Gilbert, the speaker behind this incredible talk, puts it – we think of happiness as necessarily being a natural, spontaneous occurrence. But this is so rarely the case. And for this reason, so many of us spend a big portion of our existences being unhappy. Our expectations about what would make us happy are the ones that truly lead to our unhappiness. Just because we don’t get what we wanted, it does not mean that our lives are ruined. Just because we’ve had something bad happen to us, this does not translate into our impossibility to ever be happy from now on. Happiness really is what you make it into.

There are so many examples of people who have had awful things happen to them, who have experienced terrible losses – losing all their fortunes, losing their reputations, losing the ability to walk…And yet they calmly and serenely state that they are happier now than back when they had money, fame and mobility in their legs…How can this be true? Surely they must be promoting darn out lies! Well, they’re not.

Not getting what we want can make us just as happy as getting it. Synthetic happiness is just as real and as valuable as the natural one. That’s not to say that we should not strive to make our lives better or to become ourselves more than we are at present. But falling into the pits of depression if we suffer a loss or if we don’t get what we wanted is the biggest mistake we could ever make because it will prevent us from seeing the good in our lives – the existing one and the one to come.

Adam Smith said it wonderfully in The Theory of Moral Sentiments:

“The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another…. Some of those situation may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with the passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.”

Food for though.

Deadlines can be a fairly stimulating factor, but not when it comes to setting deadlines for the creative process. Today’s world has gone nuts – how do you expect anybody to create a masterpiece when the shadow of the deadline is constantly hovering over them, blocking out the sunlight which might reveal a truly incredible story or the indescribable beauty of another Mona Lisa or Girl With A Pearl Earring? It’s simply preposterous, I tell you!

Tick…tick…tick…

There’s just something about the cold season. It starts slowly, almost unnoticeably, with the first copper autumn leaves. A sort of a melancholy you just cannot identify fully. You’ve made its acquaintance before, it has a familiarity about it, but its source is evasive. It ebbs just when you think you’ve discovered why your feelings have turned a shade of blue.

It envelops you more and more, it wraps around your heart tighter and tighter as the temperature falls and as the rime covers the trees and the still half-green grass.

As the fog invades the city, you suddenly feel the urge to hide under the thick woollen blankets. With your eyes closed, hoping to hear a beating heart through the warm, cinnamon scented darkness. A heart other than yours, but whose rhythm, combined with your heart’s own drumming sound would create harmony.

Winter’s come early this year, wouldn’t you agree?

It’s not about ungratefulness. It might have been back when I still had the tendency to sabotage every single good thing in my life. Never pleased enough, always wanting more and better, looking for the faults and flaws without even  realising it. But leaving that stage of my life behind has been the most relieving thing I’ve ever experienced.

It’s not about ungratefulness. It never will be. Not anymore. Family, friends, and for over a year now I can safely add career to that list – these are all my sources of balance and content.

Still, there’s a kind of happiness that only one thing can bring to our lives. That explosive feeling combined with the tranquillity that stems from knowing there’s someone who understands you and wants to walk the same road as you do, someone who will be your rock through the storm and your light through the fog.

It’s not about ungratefulness, but there’s a long, harsh winter in the making and we all know that only a warm soul can make us forget about the cold outside.

It’s sad when a relationship ends because it just doesn’t work. It’s heart-wrenching when it ends because it’s become collateral damage. And again it seems like all that’s left are half-uttered declarations, half-lived dreams, half-dared leaps of faith and fully-missed opportunities.

We lie every single time we speak about feelings, since feelings can never be fully and precisely expressed. That’s why I wish for this Christmas present, to stop being a liar, even to myself. I wish I could express what’s fussing around in my heart perfectly and that you would understand it fully.

Santa, are you reading this?

The very first thing you wake up in your head with in the morning. So sweet that you’d do anything to prolong your half awake-half asleep state for a few more minutes. The last one you think about right before that instant you can never really pinpoint when you fall out of reality and drift off into dreamland. So delicious that you fight that moment with all your strength. You just want to guide your dreaming with your eyes wide open instead of letting it wind around corridors you don’t know and maybe don’t want to know.

I trust my eyes-wide open dreaming to guide my steps home. And I wish for a big white moon and a lone star to light my way each time. I trust my dreaming heart to guide my steps in crossing paths with the right people in this life. And the raw light of the morning sun is the companion I wish for.