This time last year

Like I mentioned in my last entry I'm now somewhat available. I mean, I can now be engaged in personal interest without being compromised by personal responsibilities so much. Yay! So I've been looking through the folders on my desktop that contain the things I wanted to read, the pictures I really liked and just stowed way for later, ideas I wanted to explore but never got to, in folders called INBOX or NEXT ACTIONS, a la Getting Things Done systems. I want to show my appreciation for my friend Fel J Cruz for showing what life can be like organised, and although I haven't quite mastered the system I think it'll be something that I can attempt during this period of relative freedom (April-July 2013-will otherwise be known as the Teenager Again Times).

Which brings me onto the theme of this entry. This time last year I was in Coventry having had my baby 6 months earlier and slowly trying to reconnect with the world and wanting to find ways to express myself as someone other than just a new mum. So I re-started blogging, opened an account with Flavors, Tumblr, Pinterest and became more active on LinkedIn. It does sound a bit overboard now but at the time I was desperate to join in the debates and be a part of society again. I make having a baby sound like a jail term, and it's not, but it's not easy when you haven been living the 21st century before either.

Thus, I've been unearthing years of my personal self from my own hard drive, my list of bookmarks as well things I've written, and getting to know myself again. It's strangely life affirming to realise that even though time has passed there are some things that remain the same about me. At times of confidence crisis I would recommend keeping and going to a folder called INSPIRATIONS. And looking through my Pinterest boards I found my board called Mood of March which seems to indicate that I was in the mood to get back into shape, as well as trying to get my stuff together. This was a plan to pin images as a visual recordings of how I felt at the time, maybe because images can sometimes say things without even trying to. And an empty board stands for the Mood of April.
So, a year has passed since my journey of self discovery and although I haven't followed through with this plan, and indeed other plans with Tumblr for example (even though I have made some efforts with this blog), it hasn't been a complete time of limbo. It seems I made the decision to start my Masters during summer and processed my application, during which many interesting things happened looking back on my entries such as working part time, making new friends, being a wife and taking it relatively easy in the summer which never happened for me since 2009. And now, since the study started it almost seems like it's nearly over. And back to April-a blank board. A funny deja vu perhaps?

I'll start of April like this and work on it.