Thank you for all the congratulatory wishes. I finally finished my last day at job number 2. But I still have two jobs. Seven years at this one though, can you believe it?
I think I was a little bit drunk last night, but I rode home just fine. I felt ok too this morning. Just felt a little thirsty though. I think it’s all the sugar in the ginger cider I was drinking. Obviously, I didn’t regret it. I didn’t regret drinking cause it felt right. It felt like this, all of this is meant to happen.
I decided when I woke up that I don’t want to go to the studio today. Today is my only day off this week, and it’s not even a whole day off, I still have to go to a work training tonight. I decided that I wanted to take it easy– folding my dry clothes, cleaning and then grocery shopping.
And can you believe it’s already December? It’s always a funny time, I think. Everything is heightened. End of the year and the month tips over to the start. Do you measure your achievements? I always feel somehow slightly failing. I’ve done so much but it feels like it could’ve been better. But when I think of the past eleven months I couldn’t even remember most things that happened. It just felt somehow short.
I’m drinking a cup of hot ginger and lemon tea with a teaspoon of Portuguese honey that belongs to Ale. I drink the same tea almost every night. I can’t remember when it starts becoming a thing. Ginger tea after dinner. I didn’t even grow up liking ginger and still dislike pickled ginger in some Japanese dishes. When I was about six years old, my father owned a ginger plantation. I don’t have a lot of memory about it, but I remember a whole entire hill full of ginger tree. I’m not so sure why he stopped, but I’m guessing it was because the plantation was a total failure. Maybe we had lost a lot of money. His biggest success was his chilli plantation. I recall our house was full of chillies. It was a mountain of red and green in our storage room and garage. His workers would then pack them up into sacks, load them on the trucks and I never knew what happened with them after that.
Sometimes I never really know how my parents knew everything they knew. How did they know how to start a business; plantations and properties. How were they so gutsy in taking chances? I just wished they talked more about their failures, so I don’t feel so scared of failing. I know it must be hard though. And by the time your children grow up, by the time they achieve so much, not only that they will hold you responsible for your failures, but they could also be your biggest rivals.
I’m drinking ginger tea right now. It’s one of the best things that happen to me today. All I want is just so simple. Just some more time to sit around in the garden, to read a book, to work on my art. Perhaps to kiss, if I’m lucky. But I just want a little more freedom and to live my life… authentically.
It’s less than a month to 2019. I think twenty nineteen is going to be a funny year. Somewhere in between moving forward and embracing changes, but all at the same time, a time of the unavoidable regression.
20-19
At least subliminally. I imagine myself thinking of wanting to move backwards. But perhaps, that is nothing new for me.
KITCHEN THINKING 