Year On…

Kat doodles about life and speaks about languages:

Just over a year ago, when I started doodling my thoughts on slightly more regular basis and making other people enter my inner world, the really one thing I hoped for to be in a better place in the future. And you know what?! I am in a better place than I was a year ago. There were lot of ups and certainly downs along the way, including the drama, tears and hands covering faces moments, but things are very much looking up. And for a good while, I have been sharing my adventures and more to come with someone new. He turned up in my life-like it was a perfectly written film script.

Post 16: Blog Posts Worth to Mention! 106 to go!

Kat recommends:

I have been collecting links to posts I like for a while and now I feel it is time to spread the message across the world wide web. I have been lot more selective than during 92 Days Challenge, but they all say something I am feeling or have something I agree with. Enjoy! Kat xx

Maison Bentley Style wrote a post about Erik Madigan. He is using the most incredible fabrics and colours together. They have velvet feel and very closely follow wallpaper background in photoshoots. I suggest you have a look and spoil your eyes with that beauty.

As you may have noticed in my previous post, it will be my birthday soon (wink, wink) and if you like to join me dribbling over this beautiful red coat, feel free to join me so here.

Next on the list are two posts from The Eye-Dancers. The first one is about Forrest Gump and him running in a search for love. It’s called To Believe or Not to Believe… Weirdly enough I have never seem a Forrest Gump, but a friend of mine was telling me about the film, then I saw this post and things in my life happened all at the same time by coincidence, which then made me write this post When a man tells he loves you… little too late! .

A lot of my recent posts are about languages, writing and the interaction with other people. Thanks to discovering The Eye-Dancer’s blog I also really enjoyed the post The Effluvium of Hysteria about creative writing process ever since being a child including criticism. It has a very fresh approach, so I highly recommend this read.

Last three posts are quite current issues. LearnerMother writes her view on the case, which recently happened in Scotland, Culture Monk tell us a real life story about homeless man asking for breakfast, but refusing to work for it and The Crazy Bag lady shares my views of dating a girl, who travels.

Post 15: You Are Only 29?/ You Are 29 Already?! 107 to go!

Kat doodles about life and ranting over age:

Last year my birthday was a total disaster. I have spent the whole entire weekend pretty much in tears and I wish I had not taken time off from work. It was the first time in my life that I would wake up in the morning and clearly remember what has happened even I purposely tried to get myself so drunk and forget.

 In about a month or so I will be 29 years of age. What does this mean? It means that I am now starting to suffer with the idea of I only have a year left of my ‘late twenties’, when I am technically free to be myself as much as I can without being judged, because I am still in that late twenties bracket. Of course it is lot less crazy(?) and now more grown up behaviour than in my early twenties, when I did not give a toss about anything and just did as I liked. (Has that really changed?)

I know the word ‘early’ always seems to evoke something better, fresh or younger, but when it comes to an age, late twenties always sounds better than early thirties, do you not think so? And right now I can hear readers in their forties and fifties shouting: “Wait until you get to our age. You are still so young!” I hear what you say, but there is a peer pressure, pressure of social media and pressure from your family floating about. As soon as you step over that mark of 30 you are expected to have a decent job and qualifications, long term partner, applying for a mortgage, child on the way.

Once I met a guy for a brief moment, who made a judgemental comment, that I should make it within my field within three years of graduation. From his experience working in a recruitment agency, he said, he would call me something as ‘written off’ and would not bother looking at my cv further. I was gobsmacked and have not had much to say. Himself, late thirties, was between jobs telling me about this business he wants to start plus this and the other. I met him about a year later at the gig. It was kind of awkward, because after extremely overpolite small talk, I asked him how is his business. And there it was, he muttered: ‘Let’s not talk about work!’ and quickly changed the subject. I could not help wondering and actually enjoying the fact that it would have been embarassing for him to admit there is no business and he still has not quite made it even himself after giving me that big lecture.

If you are thinking that I am suffering some kind birthday crisis, yep, you are exactly right. I am nearly 29, still single, pretty penyless with no full time career going only with bags full of exciting stories and adventures to tell. Everyone around me seems to popping out children or being in sort of long term relationship progressing further. Just to put a cherry on top of the cake one of my  family members had an open discussion with other people online and in between lines labeled me as ‘one of those old mothers to be’. Great! Cannot make me feel any better.

Now where is the wine?! Yes, actually, I will have one or two or more, because I can! I make my own work timetable, so I decide if I party on Monday night, or Saturday night. I decide if I come home at 8am, which I actually did last week. I decide if I want other person I have some sort of relationship with to rule my life or if I let the social media make me feel upset about the social pressure of ‘already/not yet’. I may not have have clothes with the right label or latest hair cut, who cares, I have done things in my life money cannot buy. No one can undertand how it feels sleeping on top of the mountain inside a half open cave watching storms and lightning in the far. Or when you walk for three hours to get home with burning candle making sure it is still going as a part of a certain religious celebration. Or when inner desire for everything strange or unknown opens for you the most beautiful places and people out there.

Some things are simply not for everyone. And may be I am one of those people, who knows. We never know,what life has written for us. I may end up at the age of 45 still single flat sharing with my best male friend, drinking wine, listening to jazz. Or I might be having a baby by the time I am 30. (I hope not).  Whatever happens, happens for a reason.  Knowing myself, it certainly will be interesting as do not follow the usual brief of life. Now rant about age and social pressure is over.

And if you are wondering what I am doing for my birthday this year?! Well then, I am off to London to see a theatre show and party until dawn and dusk in a rhythm of jungle and drum’ n’ base making it memorable(?) for sure!

Back soon Kat  xx

Post 8: When a man tells you he loves you… little too late! 115 to go!

Kat doodles about life:

Forget the Darwin! Forget the painting! Forget how my new interpreting job went! There is something so important I have the need to write about that it has to come out right now! It has been a topic on my mind for the last few years, but I have never felt like it is something to explore further until it happened again few days ago.

So I am having an online chat with a man until early hours of the morning. I consider him now as a friend, but about six years ago he was an object of my affection and was madly into him. My visits at home can be counted in weeks and I always arrive as a hurricane, cause a lot of drama and an excitement without purposely planning to of course and as quickly I arrived I also quickly depart. This particular young man certainly knew I was well into him, but we never really got to the stage of making it into a relationship. The same way I was not quite ready to leave UK due to my university commitments and go back home to be with him.

After not much contact over the last six years although following what we would be up to, we ended up talking and there he suddenly said it! It was that I always thought of you, I always loved you, I never stopped thinking about you, I still love you!  Wow, what do I do with this? Of course I was pleased! What kind of woman would not be happy? But part of me felt like waving my hands in the air shouting: “Why did you have to wait all these years until now to tell me?” as well as part of me, who felt like saying : “That’s really sweet, but I am sorry I no longer feel the same way about you. I have moved on and looking for different kind of man than I was looking for back in the day. ” It was that classic literature moment, when Onegin writes a letter to Tatyana. Was it something Pushkin experienced himself perhaps? That he lost out on a woman of his life and she was never coming back?!

I know I am not the typical kind of girl and certainly live my life to its maximum through crazy adventures I do not fully think through, so I guess sometimes the speed I expect people to react with to my behaviour is not reasonable. But I do give it a fair chance. Like on those other three occasions, when men told me they loved me, still do and if…, but I knew they are not going to do anything about it. It’s because they live in other countries now with either their wives, girlfriends or simply still single waiting for something exciting to wake them up. It might even be that they love dreaming about the idea of possibly something happening in the future. When Adele’s Someone Like You came out, it took  me good few months  to be able to compose myself every time I heard it. No wonder why it became so popular! It is something what every woman has to tell herself, when she looses a man she feels so strongly about.

So what is the result? Well, it is not going to happen. No matter how much they think, wish or believe. They have missed the chance. And although this young man said to me: “It’s never too late!” Well actually it is! It is sometimes little too late. The quote about meeting in different time, in different place is so true! Beautiful example of that is a book called One Day, which describes the story of two main characters meeting each other over twenty years. When I read it, I felt like buying it and sending it to all those particular men to perhaps wake them up, but I never did. It is not my place to tell someone that they should express what they feel. But they should take the consequences when they are  little too late once they express it, because we women have already walked for long enough the same way as Forrest Gump ran through America to forget his pain.

With love. Yours Kat

Day 5: Are you a quitter or a goer? 87 days to go!

Kat doodles about life:

I was hoping to write only about relevant stuff on this blog, avoid my actual personal problems, names or soapy moments. However I will do the opposite today and I am sorry if I offend anyone with my emotional diarrhea. Because it is relevant to this challenge I am working on. Last night, the relationship I was in for pretty much nearly a year, has definitely come to an end. We were together for nine months and two months ago it came to end. Since then we have been both going through moments of sadness to moments of joy we are no longer together and can move on, meeting up and arguing, spending really nice days and evenings together, getting merry and promising each other new hopes. However last night when having another conversation about us giving a second chance to this relationship, he suddenly refused to do so. Hang on I am thinking, isn’t a relationship about giving each other support, working on it, doing compromises, improving for yourself and the other person?! Surely if you plan to be with someone for the rest of your life, you need to be prepared to solve few problems on the way to find compromise. Apparently not everyone shares the same view.

I realized that really- I am a goer. For me quitting is not an option unless I feel I have done my personal best, it appears I do not have relevant skills, or I should think about changing a direction. If I had quit, I would never come so far where I am now and experience so many amazing moments. I have run away from the au pair family. I have been walking around streets looking for a job in freezing temperatures. I cycled miles in darkest nights to wash dishes. I shed sweat and tears during my theatre design degree. I went through hell went my father had cancer and then died. I can think of so many more pretty dark moments in my life and could have gone: “You know what I do not care anymore, I quit, I am going home to that sweet little pink protective bubble”, but I did not and I do not think I ever can. And that is the same thing, when you look for a job or want to really achieve something. A bit like X Factor, some people just want it lot more than others. It doesn’t matter how long it takes to get to it, you know it will happen eventually.

So you know what, I am moving on. In a relationship or in a job, you cannot force your partner to be with you or boss to keep you, but you can learn from it and find someone else, who does. You will push each other further and make it work. I guess I just have to find another goer so we can share our dreams together and make them happen.

With love Kat xx