New Ventures

Yesterday was a new venture by starting a Travel Blog on the WorldPress blogging site. It is called Granny on the Move and will be about my out and about time as I venture forth into the world of tasting and viewing. I intend to go to all the small places here in South Africa and find the gems that are hidden from view. Not the normal tourist places but the smaller ones that we miss. One day I will venture forth into the great world and visit the cultures of the world but till then I will travel around my own country experiencing the quaint towns and the quaint foodie places. I will explore it in the eyes of a Granny.

I will still have my online book store but I do need to venture forth and make things happen. Nobody else will make it happen so I need to move this delectable butt of mine and get things started. It's all about finding ones Passion again and I am going to enjoy doing it. 

The time is now, time is short and very precious so no more screwing around and making excuses. If I don't do it now I never will. So everyone its like Buzz Lightyear says: "To infinity and beyond." 

Finding the Passion again

The last time I posted was on how we loose our passions so quickly. All it takes is the right person to come along your path to redirect you again. Here I have been bemoaning my fate over loosing what I love in life to life itself. I had become my own Victim, one of my own making. I had come across a book called The  top five regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware and I found myself absorbed by the wisdom of the elderly and the dying. I found myself identifying with a few of the 5 regrets but the one that stood out was from a lady called Pearl that spoke about being the victim of ones own making. That the world around you was not there to make you happy or content but that you are responsible for your own happiness.  It was like the proverbial smack in the face.

It is true, we tend to think that those around us must make us happy, that it is the world's job to make things happen for us. We tend to shrink away from being forward and expressing what we really feel. That got me to thinking in a big way. Nobody else but me, myself and I is going to make me happy, truly happy. I keep on falling into that age old trap of expecting those around me to make things happen. I tend to forget that everyone has their own sense of responsibility to themselves. So I joined a lovely ladies group and got to meet a few of the most inspiring women. They both had problems worse than mine and they made a go at life. They did not just sit back, they worked hard at letting go and learning to move forward and to live whatever disabilities that they had. They did not let life stop them from living at all.

So now I am on a mission to find my passion for life again. It is going to be hard but I intend to push forward and motivate myself each day into doing something that will elevate me nearer to my goal. My passions, what are they?

I love the written word, I love to read and discuss books. I love the storytelling. I love to help people yet am an  incredibly shy person. I got to hear about Beta reading and am now trying to research on the matter and hope that I can find my niche in the written word society. I am much better at my thoughts than penning them to paper and have tried my hand at writing but have yet to find what is my field of writing. So I will pen them in private and maybe one day I will be struck with knowledge of what to write on. Fiction novels is a No no as I have tried and I for the life of me cannot do the " talking" parts. But I shall forge forth and I will succeed one way or another or at least go to my grave with the knowledge that I did try even if I could not do all that I desire to do.

So with this in mind I will say Adieu for now and enter into my own adventure of Finding My Passion again....

Lost Passions

When we are children we dream our dreams and live in our magic world filled with stars and rainbows. We are encouraged to continue to dream whilst small but it all changes when we hit adulthood. Then we are told to grow up and stop dreaming, to take responsibility and be an adult. We get jobs, marry, have children and leave our dreams, our passions behind us. There are the golden few that prevail and have it all and to them I take my hat off for staying true to themselves, unfortunately most of us bow down to society and become what is expected of us. To leave all the dreams to childhood. 

Why do we do that to ourselves? Why do we allow ourselves to be dictated by society and put our dreams, our passions on the shelves. To see ones passion die a slow death is liken to throwing water on a raging fire, to watch it slowly die out until it is nothing but blacken coals. Dead. 

It takes a drastic event in ones life for the realisation that we were stupid and weak. I thought my life had ended but in fact it was just the beginning. I needed to reawaken my dreams, to seek what i am passionate about, to reawaken and find myself again. To learn to love myself, to love life and to accept my past as it was. I needed to find the peace that i had lost along the way. Now I have a thirst to learn new things, I want to travel, I want to reawaken my passion in the written word. I am all I can be and the only thing that can really stop me or dampen my new awakening is myself.

If I allow myself to conform to my surroundings then I will disappear again like before. I need to keep it alive in myself. I need to fill my surroundings with my passion, with my dreams. I need to keep it alive or else I will slowly fade away again and I cannot allow that to happen.

I have spoken to a few ladies that I know and have found that they too have regrets which pertain to broken dreams, lost passions. That is the only regret I have so far in my life. To not have lived my life the way I wanted to. To have allowed myself to be sucked in by society and what they required of me. I gave my whole life to raising my children, to having a job. I don't regret my children only that I could have had them and still done what I wanted to do. But, as the saying goes, what is done, is done and no good crying over spilt milk. Now is the time of my life and I will fight to keep my passion and my dreams alive.

Whether I get to do it all is up to the Good Man Upstairs but I will prevail, I will keep them alive. 

We need to live our lives and not just exist day to day. That is not living at all. Fight to keep those dreams alive, feed your passion daily and believe in magic again. 

A new day

A new day, a new dawn as the saying goes. Well, i am slowly learning how this blog thing is going. So far no comments or followings but that is okay. I am using this more as a journal to my life as it is right now. I can look back and know that i have had the case of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly times of my life.

So i have decided to get off my butt and stop being sorry for myself(again) and start my own small business of a second hand book store. Ambrosia Second Hand Books will become a reality and I will push forward, however slow it may start. Rome was not built in a day so neither is my bookstore.  I have also gone and made a veg and herb garden for myself. Nothing like good ole back breaking, manual labour to bring things back into perspective again. I have to keep remembering that only I can make myself happy and not others. The fact that i have hit the Peri menopause stage of my life doesn't help at all. Moods and flame on's and hot flushes are just soooo not in.... then there is the might brain fog that i have.

So, my new resolution (again) is to make myself happy and not depend on others to do it for me and to keep pushing forward with the books selling and my veggie garden.

Captain of our own destiny, time to put the words into action and this time not fall on my own face due to my own making.....

EISH!!!!!

New adventure

I have finally lifted my but and done it. Always spoke if starting a business of my own.  I have always love books and reading and spoke of opening up a book store. Well now I went ahead and started it.

Googled on how to open a business without money and blam this was one of them. So now I am the proud owner of Ambrosia Second Hand book store. Currently in the collection process and working out of the garage for the time being. Have had enquiries but yet to sell my first book.

So I am excited about the whole concept of being a business owner. I know that there is a long road ahead so with a deep breath I will forge forth and slay the dragons ahead.

Wish me well all ye plebs out there.

Writing

Writing and reading should go hand in hand one would think. But nope, nada it sure doesn't, well not with me, anyway. But I do want to write a novel of some sorts. So far I have tried my hand at Poetry (not good at all), a fiction novel based on my life (depressing)so shelved it.

Now I will try to write about the funny and humorous side of my life, which has quite a large amount of material to work from. So taking a page out of Erma Bombeck's books and here we go....
Now just to put the thoughts into words.

What with being a mother of 3 boys, plenty pets and just plain abundance of good work stories I should be able to write something decent.

Dreams on hold again.

Sitting here feeling frustrated with my life right now. I feel lost and unsure of things at the moment. I know the saying of if you don't like your life change it but sometimes it's a bit hard to change if you are dependent on a person. I am trying hard to smile and change my attitude but am really feeling deflated and to an extent feel "robbed" of what I really wanted to do.

In my heart of hearts I want to travel and see the country and the world. But it means finances and that I don't have anymore. Here I sit again being sucked into a domestic life.

I had that for over 26 years and now I want to live my life the way I want. Now I am back to square one again. This is not how I want to live. Broken dreams again. Put on hold for what.....because of my own stupidity of letting a man take from me again.

I have not learnt a bloody thing it seems. Surely there is more to life than this. Stranded like a fool of my own making. I have an urgent need to experience new and different and exciting things. Life is getting short and I have sow much more I want to experience and learn and see.

All put on hold for what? Fustration at its peak... anybody out there who can hear my cries.....