Spirit of the River

Acceptance, respect, friendship, love, safety - those are things most of us want at a certain level. Some need one of them more than the others, and can live with lower levels of the others. Unfortunately, we often do not get some of those, and some unlucky people struggle their whole life with even feeling safe or accepted in their relationships, be it with friends, family or lovers. We often make compromises, say yes to things we do not want to do - just to please others, make them like us more, make them accept us more, hoping that one day things would be different, and that the constant struggle for TRUE respect and love would be over. Let me get one thing right out of the way: if you have to fight for other people's attention, then just forget about it. They do not care that much. It should not be a constant fight for attention. Respect and love yourself enough to see when you are chasing the wrong person. Everyone who needs chasing IS the wrong person. The right people want...

I haven't been blogging lately - and so far nobody missed my blog, so I guess it's not such an issue. I need to do some writing this evening, or rather, I would like to talk to someone, but there is nobody who would understand my thoughts, and I won't utter them here either, but it'll be good to just do some writing. I have recently moved (yes, once more).People who know me either online or offline always seem to think my life is easy, and I'm content because I never have a break-down in front of anybody, because I am strong, and because I still manage to appear confident and positive when I interact with people - but basically it is not true. I have tried to explain my situation to people, but they just do not get it simply because they have never experienced anything close to what I have experienced, and after a while, I just give up on trying to explain. It drains my energy even more. I always hoped that one day there would be somebody who truly understand with...

I have recently been working with different books about introversion (partially because it was a job, partially because I was interested in the topic as I am definitely an introvert). One of the books I've read was by Laurie Helgoe, and she uses an interesting idea to describe how introverts and extroverts connect to friends. It's only a short paragraph, and I felt like I would like to use this idea for today's blog post. Laurie Helgoe wrote that introverts are like luxury retreats or spa retreats that only have a very limited amount of rooms, while extroverts are like a normal hotel with dozens, if not hundreds of rooms. The extroverts is able to interact with plenty of people as there are usually many vacancies in a big hotel. However, the rooms often all look the same and don't come with a lot of service. You get the basic room service, but usually you just check in, stay a while, check out, and many other people make exactly the same experience. Basically it mea...

.... basically is that they are not chickens.  Beware: this post is unedited, more like a stream of consciousness. I didn't want to write something structured and thought through today. I won't be offended if you don't read this. I'm just writing it to get it out of my system. When I lived in New Zealand, I took care of quite a few chickens for a few years, and even though I did not have a good human friend to talk to, I always had the chickens, especially my dear rooster Frodo (who died last year, without my presence, because I had to move to the UK). Chickens are far more accepting than people. The chickens only cared about how I treated them. Nothing else mattered. Not the colour of my skin, not the colour of my eyes, not the colour or length of my hair. It did not matter to them whether I wore trousers or a skirt. They did not care about my religion, about my race, about my culture. They simply do not judge based on these things. You can be connected to chick...