In recent times...

I would say that this picture adequately describes the mood I'm in at the moment - playful and happy. I've been on holiday for a week now, and I'm finally beginning to feel relaxed. Last term was really difficult in so many ways, although I feel as though I did a lot of growing during that time and it has lead to new beginnings in the form of a new job, so that's something to be both relieved and excited about. I find whenever I begin a new job, I always start to freak out a few days beforehand. I begin to doubt my own ability, and wonder why they hired me, when surely anyone else could do the job better than me? This time round, I'm trying to stay positive (and realistic) and silence those old tapes whenever they start to play. I know that it's true, a lot of the stuff I'll be doing will be new to me, but I am able to learn and I will become better over time. Sometimes you just need to push yourself that little bit further, and you'll find that you'll grow so much from the experience. This year, I not only want to push myself in terms of my career, but I also want to experience creativity more fully. I'm doing that a bit in my fanfiction writing (which is incredibly bad but I still get a kick out of it, so it works for me!). I also want to get back into painting, and possibly sewing, too. I realised that I spend way too much time watching DVD's when I could be doing other interesting things that actually mean something to me, not just tuning out and turning away from the world. Because essentially that's what I'm doing when I'm watching a movie or TV show. I mean lets face it, it doesn't take much energy to sit in one place for two hours staring at a box! so I'm going to start off with good intentions and we'll see what happens.
I've had a good week in general. We've had Ali to stay, which has been fantastic, and have also caught up with lots of friends over the past week. Last night we had a fantastic dinner at Jo and Peter's place (delicious home-made pasta sauce and yummy AUTHENTIC Italian pasta!) along with a lovely drink of gin, which I managed to spill all over the table. But being the lovely hosts they are, they didn't seem to mind too much at my lack of co-ordination and general clumsiness. Tonight we're cooking a roast chicken, it's one of those nights where all you feel like doing is staying in and eating yummy food. I've baked a caramel slice which we're going to have for dessert. It's to die for and is absolutely loaded with evil ingredients - the main one being butter, and closely followed by condensed milk. Oh, and loads of sugar.
I really wanted to go to the dawn parade yesterday, but couldn't quite rustle myself up out of bed. I've been thinking about the meaning of Anzac day recently, and what it means to me, and it still blows me away that people sacrificed their lives so they could create a better world for all of us. Ok, that sounds naive perhaps, but that is how it feels for me. I think of what my Grandad when through during those years - going off to war when he was little more than 17, and how he wasn't able to experience his youth in the same way that we get to. I admire him so much for that, and I admire and respect all those people that did the same. Their loss of freedom means that we get to enjoy freedom today. We are just so lucky.