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Getting back in the swing of it

Head above water.

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde.

This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more.

I decided to start a new journal off the back of my travel journal which gave insight into what was mostly a positive and memorable experience.

Whilst I was genuine in the travel blog I did not pay much respect to my negative thoughts and experiences, at the time I just wanted to make sure it was full of good memories.

The reality is my relationship was breaking down during the trip and my mother was ill back home. I pretended neither was happening.

When I arrived back in Australia in April 2019 my partner Jake and I split up and I learned that my mother’s cancer was not going away.

This journal will open the floodgates of all of my raw and true emotions and the process in which I am taking to get back on my feet and keeping my head above water.

All good things come to an end.

It has been a year and a half since starting “Daily Bizness – Starting Over” and the purpose of this blog was to provide me with a platform where I could open up, unpack and process the deep anguish I felt for a long time.

My sisters were really worried about me when my Mum died. I had already experienced a huge life changing set of events just before she passed and her departure was almost more than I could handle. I withdrew, I was angry, resentful and not honest with my own feelings, I wasn’t mentally well at all. My sisters urged me to seek counciling which I really didn’t want to do but I knew I had to do something so I picked up my phone and started pouring my heart ache onto my screen.

It was raw, it was public and it was effective. The public nature of it helped me stay accountable and when I felt so alone the support I received, even from complete strangers or people I never really speak to really helped me get through some of the toughest parts. It helped me talk indirectly to my loved ones too, it let them know where I was at without having to face them and make them feel akward for having to listen to me.

The impact of using this tool to get through the hardest part of my life, to date, is something I cannot to put into words and today I am glad to say I am ready to retire it.

The exercise of reporting my feelings in their rawest form has served it’s purpose in far more ways than I had ever thought it could. It has not only given me an effective outlet but has also allowed me to achieve a real sense of perspective and a very clear and sometimes in your face time line of my progress as time went on.

I have realised that I have had less and less desire or need to unpack my emotions and thoughts using my blog now days. I am proud to say I am in a healthy frame of mind where I can deal with my emotions effectively without the help of this incredible therapudic tool.

I still love to report on my world and put my thoughts and experiences on the screen and plan to start something new where I can talk about my up coming adventures with Caleb and all the great things I plan to do with my future. The plan is to discover Austrlaia now that (for now anyway) the borders are open and local tourism is on the up and I am so excited about travelling overseas again eventually.

I have a new job that will allow me to afford taking all the adventures I want and I can’t wait to begin. All good things come to an end and this blog was the best thing I have really ever thought of doing for my mental health. It was a very good thing but it is definitely a great feeling putting it to bed.

So, farewell “Daily Bizness – Starting Over” and welcome to whatever I choose to name the next, much happier one.

Peace ❤

Calculated risks

Waking up when my body decides to, sipping coffee in the mid morning and having chats with my housemates, chilling in the sun when it’s out or on the couch when it rains, watching movies in the middle of the day, catching up with friends on weeknights and not worrying about going to work the next day… This has been my life for the past four months and it has been absolutely amazing.

But… The time has now come for me to re entre the corporate world and I have managed to score myself a solid gig as a National Sales Manager for a Valuations company. Exciting times indeed.

The process of looking for work has been humbling at times and I learned a lot about myself in the process. I maintained my sense of confidence and self worth and feel really proud of how I conducted myself throughout the journey. I managed to find a job that pays me what I’m worth, appears to have a lot of growth potential and a boss that wants to impliment my ideas which is excellent and exactly what I’m looking for.

Outside of my job search, my relationship with Caleb has started to really flourish recently. It has been an interesting start for us, both not working at the beginning, spending a lot of time together and learning each other’s personalies, a lot of times the hard way. We met online so we started right from scratch and there were teething problems to say the least. It was taxing but we managed to not only pull through but become quite strong together.

Now Caleb and I speak about our potential future together and what it might look like and that’s really exciting. We want the same things which is something I have been missing in past relationships and it is really important to get that part right in my opinion. Chemistry and compatibility go hand in hand and it’s pretty awesome that we stumbled across each other in a sea of many other people and found both.

Whilst most of the future talk is still relatively hypothetical, it’s a step in the right direction and I feel really comfortable with it. It’s exciting to talk about what trips we will take, where we might live one day and meeting each others families.

Caleb has been the most generous partner I have ever had and the way he made me feel on my birthday in particular was second to none. He went over and beyond to make me feel the most special I have ever felt and I’ll never forget it. He started with a delivery of flowers, ingredients to make breakfast mimosas, an energy drink and some panadol (he knew I was out with my cousin Katrina the night before). Then when we met for drinks he had secretly organised for my best friends Shamani and Adam who are in Singapore and Dave and Nikita in NZ to all join a Zoom call so I could be sung happy birthday. They all had cake too lol. This was followed with us watching the Lion King at the moonlight cinemas and eating Nachos (my favourite).

I was treated so well by everyone on my birthday actually it was probably one of the most special years I have ever had. Katrina treated me to a night of cocktails and moon light cinema, my housemates organised a little suprise party for me, Andrea my bestie from South Austrlia made a video compilation of our adventures together and my family were incredibly generous as always. I am so lucky.

I feel really happy with my life right now, my heart is full of gratitude and I can’t wait to celebrate my third month of knowing Caleb partnered with me getting this lucrative career opportunity tomorrow night.

I know I am lucky but I also know that I have made many of the good things happen to me too. I got to really experience a sense of freedom during the last few months. I had a lot of eye brows raised and a lot of peoole didn’t think I was making a smart choice to quit my job with no job to go to but I knew I was doing what was right for me and was confident I could pull it off. I loved every minute of the last few months and just quietly can’t beleive it all worked out so well.

Since I came back from my big overseas trip two years ago, I have walked through life taking many calculated risks and I stand by all of them. I am super proud of the outcome of those risks so far this year and look forward to seeing what happens from here.

Tuesday thoughts

It’s a sunny Tuesday afternoon and I am in week 9 of my summer off. The time has come for me to start dipping my feet back into the job market and I am ready to be humbled.

I have at least until April to find my dream job and I am looking forward to the opportunities that will present themselves to me.

It took guts to quit what was a comfortable enough position in the midst of a pandemic and I’m prepared for the challenge I’ve created for myself. As I wrote in my previous post, I have never felt so self assured and confident as I am now – I prepared well for this and have achieved a sense of understanding of what I want moving forward that only some time off could have achieved.

I have become a little lazy in terms of what I am doing with my days though, if I’m not careful I’ll end up sleeping in and watching re runs instead of enjoying the sunshine and freedom. I don’t want to get complacent. I have been talking about joining a dance school for some time now, I really should get on top of that!

There has been a weird side of having all this time to think and be in my own thoughts and it’s that I have started to allow myself to think and cry about Mum again. I had not shead a tear for quite some time, for no other reason than the fact that I was suppressing it so I could get on with my life. It feels healthy and a lot less exhausting when I reminisce now, but it is still very hard.

The benefits of this time off have been priceless and I hope the journey ahead yields fruit and I achieve what I set out to, I feel I deserve it.

There are some that don’t understand my decisions and that’s OK. There are some that say I was foolish to take time off but I know I’m not. I know this will make me a far better professional and a far better person in the long run.

As I approach my 35th birthday I have finally gotten to a place where I can truly own my decisions and actions and be accountable to them. It is really freeing.

Well, that’s about it for my Tuesday thoughts. Now, I’m off to get my feet wet.

A great start to 2021

I was asked a couple of days ago if I still wanted to get married and for the first time in my life the answer wasn’t an immediate yes. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a no either, I think I have just reached a point in my life where it’s no longer a goal and it never should have been.

It helps that my Dad has almost discouraged it, he reckons I am better off focusing on my career and travels (mostly career) than trying to find a partner. He says too many people end up divorced despite most of the married couples we have in our family are in fact not divorced.

It’s kind of funny, before Mum died she had all of the wedding photos as the centre piece in our family home and there was a clear spot intended for my wedding photo to be featured. One of the first things my Dad did was swap the wedding photos with all of his daughter’s graduation photos, it became quite clear the difference between my Mum and my Dad and what they valued the most when it came to being proud of their children.

My Mum always wanted me to be married with kids and I for the majority of my adult life was so hell bent on this idea that I very nearly married Jake and would have rendered myself unhappy for the rest of my life. I hate to say it but with this pressure gone it’s been a lot easier to start considering an alternative version of what life could look like and I love that my Dad is on board with not pressuring me to be married and have kids. Frankly I think he feels he has enough grandchildren so I am off the hook.

I’m sure, or at least I really hope that my Mum would understand and still be proud of me if it turns out that I don’t end up following the status quo. I still might, it’s just undecided yet.

I have now reached a point in my life where finally, FINALLY I am happy without a partner. I spent my whole adult life in relationships. After Jake, I was so lost not having a partner by my side and it’s taken a while to get to this point of independence. In saying that (and ironically) I am seeing someone at the moment, it’s only been a month and a half so still early days but it has promise and I am not letting it absorb me. I am at my most independent state right now, I feel the most self assured than I have ever felt and it feels amazing.

I look back at my teenage and early adult years and I wish I could tell that girl what I know now. Life has dealt me some serious blows but every time things have come crashing down it has opened up a new perspective and opportunity. This experience has given me so much faith that for as long as we are alive and open hearted things will always work out.

I am so proud of what I have achieved since coming back from my trip in 2019. It has now been almost two months since I quit my job and started living on my savings and I have had the time of my life. I have woken up when I want, engaged in all the social activities that I want, whenever I want and taken time out for myself every time I have needed it. I have a month left of this freedom then I do have to enter back to the rat race, hopefully to something that will fullfil me career wise.

I feel calm and collected. I’m not completely and perfectly at peace (I don’t know if complete peace can really be achieved unless you’re a monk), there have been some bumps but I have developed a way to handle them so that each bump doesn’t come in the way of my confidence or happiness. I am in a very good place right now.

Since starting this blog I have grown so much and I love that I have a way of seeing that, I am so glad I engaged in such an effective way to understand myself and honestly recommend this form of therapy and self evaluation to everyone, especially those going through a tough time.

As I write this entry I am sitting in the sun with my cup of coffee. I woke up a couple hours ago to my own body clock and have a few hours to spare before I meet a friend in the city. It’s Monday and I feel so blessed.

It’s been a great start to 2021.

When the silence is the loudest thing in the room

It has been 16 months since my Mother died and slowly but surely my family and I have been healing. Seemingly at the same pace.

In the last year we experienced all of our first’s without Mum. We spoke about her liberally and she came up in all of the prayers before meals but then, almost overnight, we stopped talking about her. Mum doesn’t appear in our conversations when we are together anymore, apart from funny anecdotes. During Christmas she didn’t come up at all in any conversation I was a part of, nor did she today during our dinner for my Mum and Dad’s wedding anniversary.

It would seem as though we all, at the same time, just stopped talking to each other about our Mum and I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s just too hard to. I know I try and avoid the topic where possible and it hard to admit that that’s the case. How can someone’s memory live on if the people who are in charge of it don’t talk about it anymore?

I know it seems it but I am not that upset, just astonished by the phenomenon. I know we are all thinking about her, constantly but even my Dad barely utters her name anymore. Is this normal? Is this part of the grief process or part of the moving on process?

If I was to give my own personal take on why Mum no longer is part of my regular topic of discussion it’s because I am not actually past it or OK with it. How does someone just go away like that? How does someone just stop existing? How is someone there one day but not the next? How do you recieve a text one day but are unable to provide the reply?

Accepting death is not possible in my opinion, we simply don’t understand it enough to really properly embrace it as living beings. It’s just a process of surviving through it really and obviously based on my family’s unanimous silence around the topic I am not alone in this process of survival.

I still think about Mum every single day as I know my sister’s and of course (and especially) my Dad does. If there is the slightest possibility that she can see and hear us, I hope she knows that the silence is not a reflection on her impact on our lives, if anything it is the very opposite.

The silence is really the loudest thing in the room at the moment.

Caution to the wind

It’s been a while and a lot has happened since my last post. I have thrown caution to the wind recently and it feels amazing. I haven’t really ever felt this free before but I am apprehensive of what the next year looks like.

Craig and I split in October which was more or less when I posted last. I was pretty annoyed by the whole thing, quite frankly. I even introduced him to my family which was dumb, it was a complete wirlwind of a relationship and I certainly learned a couple of lessons about noticing red flags. Now some time has passed I have come to realise Craig’s role in my life was to help me see that I can love again after Jake and build a future, despite it not actually eventuating. The chemistry was real, it was really nice being some one’s girl again, but the practicality just wasn’t there. None the less I am glad it all happened and the way it transpired.

In my work life, times have been tough. I decided I really could not stomach the idea of returning to work in the new year, I just was not feeling any sense of fulfilment so I quit, the best and riskiest decision of 2020. We’ll see how it pans out. I have no idea what I am going to move on to. If I go back into leading a sales team or try my luck at being a PA or something along those lines. Maybe I might even just make coffee again for a bit til I figure it out.

Some sad news… Dave and Nikita, my best friends have decided to leave the country and settle in New Zealand on the 12th of Jan which is gut wrenching. I am still processing it. It is what it is and I’ll find a way to live with it but it’s not great losing people who are your rocks. At least there is Zoom and I have an excuse to go to NZ now when/if the restrictions ever ease 😑.

Speaking of sad news, this one deserves it’s own post which I will hopefully find the strength to write. Django, one of my closest friends died. I hired him at Verizon back in 2017 and he worked in my team. We became friends and he visited me when I was in Thailand. When I returned he decided he wanted to live in Thailand too so he got an education visa organised and I was meant to go there this March to live with him. We were in the planning stages of it all. Four weeks ago he crashed his motorbike and didn’t make it… It has taken a lot of my energy to try and move on from this and I have not actually allowed myself to process it properly yet. When I get my thoughts together about it I will use this forum as an outlet to help me through the process.

In happier news, there has been some movement in my love life which is pretty awesome, I have been dating a little, dabbling in Tinder world, going for beers with boys and investigating some current friendships. Recently I landed a guy from the states who makes me really giddy and makes me smile all the time and I’m excited to explore where it goes. More on that topic later (hopefully).

I have no idea what the next few months will hold for me let alone the next whole year. Based on the last two years and the imense trauma along with incredible highs I have experienced, this New Year my only resolution is to not expect anything and just enjoy the ride.

Walking bare foot into a Rose bush.

I have been able to establish a sense of calm that I have never been able to achieve in my life before.

It comes from being able to sit here a year after Mum’s death and a year and a half after I split from Jake who I spent nine years of my life with and see that dispite feeling like my world was crashing down and that there would never be a time I could breath again, everything is ok and always will be.

I feel a deep sense of gratitude to have been able to get a perspective about life that can only be achieved when you experience so much loss and confusion within a small space of time.

I used to sweat the small stuff far, far more than I do now. I was so obsessed with everything going to plan and when a curve ball was presented I would become so overwhelmed.

Through out my career I have been in control but there are snippets of my career path that definitely did not go to plan and funnily enough those points in my life are the ones I look back on and think “Thank God that happened”.

In 2014, I worked at a marketing agency for a very short five months before I, along with 20 other employees that had not yet hit their six month probabtion period, got let go, a week before Christmas. I was so angry. I had no savings, no plan B and seemingly no hope of getting through the summer holidays in tact. I swore to my self that I was going to quit sales forever.

That same day, a girl I used to work with caught wind of the mass redundancy and called me assuming I needed a job, stat. Despite swearing only moments earlier that I was done with Sales I decided it would be foolish for me to not investigate this suprise opportunity.

I was in no way prepared to be interviewing that day. It was a Friday and I had gone into work thinking this would be a regular day. Being Friday, I was casually dressed in shorts and a Sydney FC jersey. I also had some temporary blue dye in my hair because I was heading to a big game after work that night. This is how I met my future boss, the one who changed my whole career path and in part the trajectory of my life.

I never in a million years would have applied for this role, it was a step down from what I was doing at the marketing company and was paying $20k less, but given my circumstances I of course took whatever I could get.

A year later I got flown to America to recieve a top achivers award and the following year was flown back for another top achiver award. I, shortly after my second year, became a manager and stayed there for almost three more years and created so many life long memories and made so many friends. I was making so much money that I managed to save for a six month trip overseas within a matter of months. This job allowed me to achieve my dreams and I’ll never forget how it transpired.

They say life is like a box of chocolates but I think its a bit more like walking bare foot into a rose bush. You might get stung by a bee, thorns stuck in your legs and a bindi in your foot but you also get to see a field of roses ahead of you, enjoy the georgeous aromas and take a lot of beautiful pictures. There might even be someone else trudging through that same rose bush who you can share the pain and beauty with that will change your life forever, if you give them the chance.

A year in from losing my Mum and whilst I cried a fair bit in the last few days I know now I can overcome anything if I just open my eyes to see the good in life. Even when at times it seems there is none. It’s always there.

Foggy mind

Recently I feel my brain is full of fog. I have been experiencing a lot of weird and bad dreams that don’t quite make it to nightmare status but keep me up all the same.

I feel like I have it together but then it seems perhaps I am not quite acknowledging how I am really feeling.

My Mum went into hospital for the last time this time last year. After years of having cancer it finally dawned on me exactly a year ago that perhaps she wouldn’t make it. It is a concept that perhaps I haven’t truely come to terms with yet.

I have suppressed a lot for a little while now, I thought maybe I was getting over it or moving on and to a degree I have moved forward. I don’t spend nights crying so much I can’t breath anymore. I am generally happy with my life and I can honestly say that. There is just this feeling of acceptance that I am yet to accomplish and I wonder if I ever really will accept the situation as it is.

I find myself being angry at things that shouldn’t make me that angry recently. I have come to realise I still have a lot of personal development to strive for and if I don’t get cracking on it I may hurt people I don’t intend to hurt and even worse, I may lose them.

I feel like I just need a holiday to be honest but that’s just my flight instinct at play. I know whilst some time to unwind would really do me good it isn’t the ultimate answer.

For now being in tune with the situation and understanding that I have to be mindful of how I deal with it moving forward is the priority.

I hope to figure it out soon.

I’ve got this.

It’s been a trial of a month for me at work this month but my personal life is going pretty well. The balance has kept my head and heart above water and in this particular moment I am feeling very empowered.

I let some changes at work and a less than good result get the better of me in the last fornight and I have been feeling quite sorry for myself. I have felt powerless and unworthy but I have, seemingly overnight, bounced back with fight in my heart.

I have been feeling paranoid and unsure of my achievments recently with changes in a lot of aspects of my role and a sense of underachievment and it caused me to question my worth in the position I hold at work. I know I am worthy and I know I am good at what I do, I have proven myself before and I refuse to continue letting myself question that.

For about a week I had convinced myself that the best course of action was to just run away from the challenges, I decided it all just wasn’t really worth the way I was feeling and that I could really use another 3-6 months off but I’ve got too much pride to let this get me.

I have built myself up from a year of complete turmoil, dealing with my mother’s death and all the other crap that I had to find a way to overcome in the same space of time and I am completely engaged in continuing to put my best foot forward.

I have an incredible boyfriend who just makes me so proud. I have supportive friends and family, savings in the bank, my debts paid off and an awesome life that I made myself.

A shitty fortnight is not going to define me or my self worth and it certainly won’t make me quit now.

My life is amazing and I’ve absolutly got this.

Onwards and upwards.

Mud is good for your skin

I was supposed to be in Italy right now but the Corona virus made that impossible. I look longingly at pictures of the places I planned to visit and watch stories put up by my friends in Italy (who are now seemingly out of lockdown) and ache at not being able to be part of it until the borders open again. 2023 they reckon.

I look at the endless pictures by my friends who are essentilly stuck in Thailand but at least the weather is warmer there. I long for the bungalow home I left on the beach on Koh Lanta where the first thing I did every morning was walk outside and have my feet in the sand.

My best friend had a baby in Singapore in February and I am yet to meet the munchkin, he will be walking by the time I finally get to meet him and that kills me.

This sucks, quite frankly and it feels like an isolated issue… excuse the pun but I am well aware it is not. It’s just another hurdle in this wonderful thing called life that no one suspected would happen and no one prepared for and a lot of people feel exactly the way I do. I guess to a degree that is comforting.. Kind of.

Whilst I dream of a time in the near future where things stablise and become more predictable I know myself enough to know that predicable is also not a great thing for me. I escaped predicable on purpose in 2018 and it landed me in a precarious position but I don’t regret it, even a little bit.

Whilst the nature of the current unpredictable climate is not ideal, I appreciate it none the less. At least I am really trying to. Right now we really have no idea what’s next and we’d drive ourselves crazy trying to guess.

Other than not being able to plan my next trip, the looming possibilty of another outbreak is making me anxious because it will affect my work significantly. Even just the uncertainty itsself is a burden on what my team at work has to do and what they have to overcome in normal circumstances let alone right now is short of incredible. They are really troopers.

My delema lies in being in a pressure filled environment where it doesnt matter what we are up against, we need to perform and I have to choose to appease the numbers or the people, it’s a very difficult task to do both.

I need a holiday, really badly, I am basically settling for a trip to Cairns in the near future but even that isn’t a possibilty right this second, just a plan I can’t quite execute.

It’s all a bit “first world problems”, I am well aware, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling just a little bit trapped.

The only solice I have is that time heals all, I know that full well from many past experiences. Patience is truly a virtue.

For now I’ll just keep trucking along even if it’s kind of through the mud. Mud is good for your skin, they say.

Cautious but hopeful

It’s been a weird year so far and despite everything that has happened in our world in 2020, for me it has turned out kind of well…

It started with a promotion. I had experienced some serious turmoil in my personal life for a solid portion of last year and the begining of this year but fought through it and made sure it did not come in the way of me re-establishing my career. There have been plenty of ups and downs at work and in my life but as a whole I came out of Covid and the rest of it pretty well off.

I have made some solid friendships in my amazing home (which I have made plenty of mention of in previous posts), but by far one of my favourite things to have happened this year is meeting Craig, a quirky inner westy, originally from Mackay, ex-military, craft beer and punk lover. He’s pretty awesome.

There have been many things I feel blessed about, truly, I have been quite lucky. I kept my job intact, I infact managed to score myself pay rise this month. My team reached our sales target at work a month out of Covid, which was a genuine feat and I feel the most at ease I have felt for quite a long time.

Don’t get me wrong, day to day stresses still exist and I am certainly not “happy go lucky” all day every day, I wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t generally a little bit anxious most of the time but it’s nice to feel a lot like my old self again.

Meeting Craig has been by far one of the more fun things to have happened and it has certainly helped me find myself again. He has quickly become one of my favourite people. He seems to get me, or at the very least cares enough to pretend he does. His friends are cool, my friends like him and I can honestly say that I have fallen for the guy. It’s a nice feeling.

With all the tension going on in the world and all that I have experienced, it’s nice to have found a sense of peace and love in my life.

It’s difficult to know what is to come in the future and based on what I have learned during my life so far, expectations can quickly become disapointments if they are taken too seriously. I open the door to July very cautiously but with so much hope and excitment.

I think I’m quite ready to take on whatever is on the horizon. 😊

Shades of grey

I have remained a fly on the wall when it comes to the current protests and debates happening. Not because I don’t have strong feelings about racism, I certainly do but I have come to realise that expressing my views end up in arguments with people who are on the same side. I have been in many heated arguments that never really ended with a consensus, just frustration.

I am seeing people on the same side of the fence arguing about particulars when at the end of the day they actually agree with each other on the fundimentals. Fighting with your alleys can not possibly be conducive to achieving anything productive, surely.

It is a real shame that change needs to come about by people taking action that can be seen as borderline illegal. It’s a shame that we are a society that finds any reason to argue with each other even if we are on the same side.

There were so many shades of grey when it came to how best respond to the virus. So much hate came out of the outbreak of the pandemic. Backpackers were the devil, going outside came with the risk of being photographed and shamed online and even well meaning aquaitences would reach out to advise you they were concerned with your lack of seriousness about the situation.

Making a joke had to be carefully executed towards the right audience and attempting to make light of what was really just a crap situation required a scientific analysis of your wording as to not offend people.

Then Black Lives Matter came into play, we were already on edge and now a new global issue, some would argue a far more important one, took over our lives. You’d be forgiven for thinking the Corona virus just disapeared into thin air.

What should have been a time for unity became an even bigger excuse to bicker. People against racistism but still pro social distancing saw themselves in a civil war with their alleys who believed this cause was more important than needing to social distance. They believe in the same thing, why are they arguing?! We are fighting against racism, right? Not how to fight it.

Some people are simply annoyed that a protest can happen but you still can’t have a wedding. Most people who are annoyed by this don’t even have a wedding coming up so you could argue the beef is just with the inconstancy and lack of logic of the rules in place. Is that really something to be so royally peeved about? Is it honestly worth that amount of energy? In some few and far between cases, people are rightfully annoyed because they have not been allowed to see their dying loved ones due to rules in place and I can see why those select people would be very upset. But at the end of the day we need to simplfy the sides.

If we could just seperate the racists from the ones fighting racism, that would make for a lot less fighting. If we could, as a unit, decide what cause to focus on at the same time it would mean that the lines were clearer and anger could be directed to the right place all at the same time. Unfortunately humans aren’t that simple. There will always be shades of grey

I am finding it difficult to make my own views overt because the reality is I empathise with many angles of this debate. I am first and formost against any form of racism and completely condone racist views. I am glad change is happening. I’m sad voilence on both sides had to be part of that change but who am I to speak against all other historical changes in socity. Violence and volatility is always involved with change.

At the end of the day my desire to scream from a building about my views has lessened as I have gotten older. I don’t feel any less passionate about things like inequality and racism, I just feel the anger didn’t get me that far in my 20’s and I feel like there must be a better way to get my fundimental views across without cause for a fight.

Discrimination is never acceptable. It’s as simple as that. How people choose to express that should be their right but they should always be conscious to focus on fighting their enemy not others with the same views just with different ways of expressing it.

Let’s try and blend the shades of grey and come together and fight in the same direction.