Eggs on tap

I've been a bit slow off the mark in 2020. I usually like to post something in the new year, but this time round I feel different, like breaking the mould or the routine or whatever else comes to mind when I hang up the new calendar in the kitchen. The end of the year finished differently for me and so it seems like I should start a new one like that. Maybe I just couldn't be arsed. Well, whatever, I have an excuse anyway.

Not that I really need one, but I guess I try to find one to get me here. With all the passion in the world you may have for something, for all the natural talent you were born with, sometimes you need to be pushed to do something that you like doing so much. Sport has been an important part of my life and will always be like that, but there are times when I really need to push myself and get my arse moving to the hockey pitch or the gym. That extra effort takes me over the line and I often thank myself for helping me do the things that I really want to do, like still busting my balls on a hockey training pitch with team mates 20 years younger than me on a cold and humid winter evening. 

This last year while driving along the motorways of my mind I have found myself asking in what direction I am going. When it boils down to it, I find it doesn't really matter, as long as it is forward, always forward. Never backwards, unless you can moonwalk like Michael Jackson...that's a really cool exception.

How many times have I said it is about the journey and not the final destination. I know I have never really had a destination. When English people ask me after years of living in different countries if I am going to settle in Barcelona or if I think I will ever come back, I now answer, what makes you think I am not settled now? Do I need to stay in one city or country to be 'settled'? We see people changing cars every couple of years, yet we don't ask them if they are settled in what they like to drive.

What I have reinforced this last year is the journey, not the destination. The journey is now. My executive summary to 2019 was about staying present and aware. Carpe Diem has always been my mantra, and this last year I have gone much further in to those words, to read between the letters and to relly try to understand the importance of being. To conciously live in the moment and not let your mind take over. But that's the hardest part, isn't it? The mind is a wonderful tool when used in a creative way - it is what this blog is about, how my mind can travel and bring me to writing here about my journeys. But then it can lead you in to a dark tunnel where light is only a hope, it can be your worst enemy. Be in the light, or even better, be the light.

When I go to the in-laws in Sicily, I love picking the home-grown lemons off the tree in their garden, to squeeze them in to a glass of water every morning. It's a great start to the day, I can't get enough of them, inevitably I squeeze in a second one before breakfast. I have just recently come back from my brother's place where his family has 6 hens in the garden who each lay an egg every day. I love having eggs on tap, I appreciate the abundance I have before me in something so simple, again to start the day in the right manner. I was gutted this time round when it was a period that they weren't laying.

Simplicity. Humble beginnings with basic things. The sturdy foundation, the building blocks of life. I finished the year in the nature of the Philippines; connection with our world, branching out from our foundations like a tree bearing fruit. At the end of the day, I suppose I'm writing the same shit as I do at the start of every year. And this year I'm deadly serious. Because all my life if you have given me an inch to joke around, I have always taken the mile. But hey, that's me, and another basic of life is not to take yourself too seriously. How the hell do you enjoy anything in this life if you do?  

read more stuff like this here: Passion   Sicilian lemons

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