the life and times of...
I've just found out that there's not really any easy way to start afresh. There's a large part of me that wants to just jump in and write whatever comes to mind first, but then another part of me is screaming that I have to do things in a logical order. Introduce myself and whatnot. The logical part will win out I think.
This isn't fair. I have so many different ideas of how to kick this journal off on the right note, the perfect words, the exquisite sentences. Trouble is that I cant pick just one, so I end up babbling on for two paragraphs about nothing important at all.
Okay. They say that it's easiest to write what you know. So this is what I know.
I'm nineteen years old, and for now I'm working in a pharmacy. It's an easy job, and I manage to switch easily between my home life and work life. What I mean by this is that I'm not my job. I never will be my job, until my job is something that I absolutely love doing. This is merely passing time for me until I have more definate plans for my future.
For the sake of privacy, you can call me HMB. Of course I'm not going to part with my name here, because y'know how these things go. So my parents live in Vietnam due to my dad working on a powerstation there. Big flashy job. Thankfully I have an amazing relationship with my mum, after a few years of teenage rebellion. My dad, well I'm working on it. It's not that we dont get along, it's just that we dont really have any relationship. We're not close because our personality traits are too similar - we hide emotions easily. This means when we talk, our conversations are quite stilted and awkward.
Back to my mum. She's amazing. She writes novels, poems, everything. She draws and paints and swims well (the medals prove it), and she's my inspiration. My closest friend, even though we're so far apart. They both gave me and my two older brothers the most incredible upbringing, complete with manners and morals to die for. There's just so much goodness they've instilled in us that I'm so thankful, and I'm filled with pride to be their daughter.
My brothers. MJB has moved to Australia, and SMB has moved to Auckland. They're both wonderful. Growing up MJB always kept us entertained by creating games and teaching us things. He's an all-around people person, and there's no one that doesn't like him. SMB and I never got along too well, so it was perhaps a strange idea for the two of us to flat together for two years after my parents moved overseas. We survived, but now he's moved away and I'm in a new house, things between us are so much better. He's loyal, steadfast and dependable, and moving to Auckland gave him a completely new outlook to life.
My friends list is perhaps a little short, but it's not something that bothers me terribly much. JT and JR and I all moved into this house (that my parents happened to buy!) about six months ago. JR and I were in third, fourth and fifth form together, we've been friends for close to seven years now. A card she wrote me on my last birthday sums up our friendship better than I ever could...
"...you and me are like a cat and dog. We fight, we play, and we try to be just as good as each other, but at the end of the day we're family and I promise to cherish you as a sister and my friend..."
...she gets on my nerves a lot, but like she says, at the end of the day we're able to sit side by side on the couch in silence, and just be friends. We get each other.
JT on the other hand, is very high maintenance. I cant and wont get into this now. It's all a bit too heavy for my first entry, but in time I'll go into detail.
Me. I love writing, but I prefer to think that I'm not too good at it so that a)I dont get a big head, b)so that I can always go up in my opinion, and c)so that I dont have standards to live up to. I love reading almost as much. Music is also way up high on my list. I've been making my way through the book "The Real You", by Dr. Kevin Leman. And guess what! I can now say without a doubt that I sit right on the line between Melancholies and Phlegmatics. Brooding, sensitive, analytical, skeptical (good stuff huh?), patient, friendly and indecisive. Yeah. Something like that huh?
'Nuff about me. God. We're saving the best for last here. I've always believed in Him, but sometimes I just forget about praying, forget about reading the Bible, forget about bothering. However in the past few years (and the past months more than ever) my eyes have been opened up to things I'd never known before, and it's exciting and exhilerating and just amazing to know that this life isn't the be-all-and-end-all.
I struggle with faith, the simple things like just believing He's there. Like... how do I know that I know that I know? I beat myself up for hours sometimes and it never gets me anywhere. Logic is so important to me, I need to know and see something before I'll believe it. But with God it's different, He wants us to believe and then we'll see. But I read in a book a few months ago someone asking a question. "How do you KNOW that there's a God?". The answer was simple. You just know. Forget reason and logic and everything that you hold on to, and you just know.
Well, it comforted me anyway. And even though I dont see God or hear from Him personally, I keep believing and - hard as it may be - trusting.
-----
You know something terrible is that as hard as I tried, that's still not me and my life wrapped up in a nutshell. I tried and failed miserably, but I'm sure there will be more attempts.
This isn't fair. I have so many different ideas of how to kick this journal off on the right note, the perfect words, the exquisite sentences. Trouble is that I cant pick just one, so I end up babbling on for two paragraphs about nothing important at all.
Okay. They say that it's easiest to write what you know. So this is what I know.
I'm nineteen years old, and for now I'm working in a pharmacy. It's an easy job, and I manage to switch easily between my home life and work life. What I mean by this is that I'm not my job. I never will be my job, until my job is something that I absolutely love doing. This is merely passing time for me until I have more definate plans for my future.
For the sake of privacy, you can call me HMB. Of course I'm not going to part with my name here, because y'know how these things go. So my parents live in Vietnam due to my dad working on a powerstation there. Big flashy job. Thankfully I have an amazing relationship with my mum, after a few years of teenage rebellion. My dad, well I'm working on it. It's not that we dont get along, it's just that we dont really have any relationship. We're not close because our personality traits are too similar - we hide emotions easily. This means when we talk, our conversations are quite stilted and awkward.
Back to my mum. She's amazing. She writes novels, poems, everything. She draws and paints and swims well (the medals prove it), and she's my inspiration. My closest friend, even though we're so far apart. They both gave me and my two older brothers the most incredible upbringing, complete with manners and morals to die for. There's just so much goodness they've instilled in us that I'm so thankful, and I'm filled with pride to be their daughter.
My brothers. MJB has moved to Australia, and SMB has moved to Auckland. They're both wonderful. Growing up MJB always kept us entertained by creating games and teaching us things. He's an all-around people person, and there's no one that doesn't like him. SMB and I never got along too well, so it was perhaps a strange idea for the two of us to flat together for two years after my parents moved overseas. We survived, but now he's moved away and I'm in a new house, things between us are so much better. He's loyal, steadfast and dependable, and moving to Auckland gave him a completely new outlook to life.
My friends list is perhaps a little short, but it's not something that bothers me terribly much. JT and JR and I all moved into this house (that my parents happened to buy!) about six months ago. JR and I were in third, fourth and fifth form together, we've been friends for close to seven years now. A card she wrote me on my last birthday sums up our friendship better than I ever could...
"...you and me are like a cat and dog. We fight, we play, and we try to be just as good as each other, but at the end of the day we're family and I promise to cherish you as a sister and my friend..."
...she gets on my nerves a lot, but like she says, at the end of the day we're able to sit side by side on the couch in silence, and just be friends. We get each other.
JT on the other hand, is very high maintenance. I cant and wont get into this now. It's all a bit too heavy for my first entry, but in time I'll go into detail.
Me. I love writing, but I prefer to think that I'm not too good at it so that a)I dont get a big head, b)so that I can always go up in my opinion, and c)so that I dont have standards to live up to. I love reading almost as much. Music is also way up high on my list. I've been making my way through the book "The Real You", by Dr. Kevin Leman. And guess what! I can now say without a doubt that I sit right on the line between Melancholies and Phlegmatics. Brooding, sensitive, analytical, skeptical (good stuff huh?), patient, friendly and indecisive. Yeah. Something like that huh?
'Nuff about me. God. We're saving the best for last here. I've always believed in Him, but sometimes I just forget about praying, forget about reading the Bible, forget about bothering. However in the past few years (and the past months more than ever) my eyes have been opened up to things I'd never known before, and it's exciting and exhilerating and just amazing to know that this life isn't the be-all-and-end-all.
I struggle with faith, the simple things like just believing He's there. Like... how do I know that I know that I know? I beat myself up for hours sometimes and it never gets me anywhere. Logic is so important to me, I need to know and see something before I'll believe it. But with God it's different, He wants us to believe and then we'll see. But I read in a book a few months ago someone asking a question. "How do you KNOW that there's a God?". The answer was simple. You just know. Forget reason and logic and everything that you hold on to, and you just know.
Well, it comforted me anyway. And even though I dont see God or hear from Him personally, I keep believing and - hard as it may be - trusting.
-----
You know something terrible is that as hard as I tried, that's still not me and my life wrapped up in a nutshell. I tried and failed miserably, but I'm sure there will be more attempts.