it's one of those glorious days that stretches indeterminably ahead. been on the go most of this year, be it at school or traveling, and it's nice to finally have a few deliberately empty days to recalibrate. i find the older i get, the more downtime i need. i also find the older i get, the faster life becomes. more things to do and people to meet squeezed into a shorter time. someone described it as high octane recently, and how i'm 20something (haha) going on 17. not entirely an insult but it did get me thinking, especially since the culprits escalating this are a good decade older. in that funny space between wanting to catch up with friends from near and far, and wanting to make like a hermit and not leave the sofa. the longer i'm away from singers, the more i want to cling to these tenuous threads that bring me home. and new people! oh hello new people :) have had the privilege of making a number of new acquaintances this year. sometimes i wonder if it's a function of time, like if we'd be so close so fast if we weren't all london transplants, or if serendipity hadn't intervened. but that's academic now, isn't it. what is, is. it's no secret that i'm a sucker for interesting people and had to stop myself from going into fan girl mode when i finally met an old friend of the mister's. without going into too much detail, this friend was even more articulate and engaging in person than on paper and despite the full-blown URTI i couldn't seem to shake, i pepped up for dinner. there's something to be said about being philosophical about it all, because the flip side is an inevitable sadness and sense of loss. my short attention span isn't something i'm proud of, but i do get like that with people sometimes, and wonder if it's a borderline borderline personality. or just life, really, getting in the way of things.
what i am proud of, however, is the coterie of close girlfriends who somehow haven't dumped me yet. and this summer has been a bit of a girlfriend jackpot, with one relocating to london from canada and more meet ups with R (NYC then london) than we've had in the last few years. these are ladies i'm in constant whatsapp contact with (god bless whatsapp) and to finally have literal facetime is such a bonus. and there are girlfriends in sg whom i can't wait to see. late 20s is an exciting age, milestones left right and centre with marriage, babies and/or big career moves. it's like this explosion of newsworthiness and occasionally the what if-itis gets to me. then my darling sister tells me how she remembers my time as a lawyer, funnily enough, quite different from the rose tinted episode it remains in my mind. hand on heart i don't think i'd it that bad, cocooned in the nurturing goodness that was the best team on planet earth. then i have coffee with two fresh off the team and feel great sympathy for what they've been through. so maybe it was an unreal world after all.
i've been reading lately, an old love i only recently returned to. might've been about two months ago on a particularly relaxed rotation that i finally picked up a book again then went through a phase where i was reading a book a day. which, too, was short-lived and i'm back to a more sustainable pace. it's escapism in a way and again with this short attention span i don't always finish what i pick up. there's a book i was reading over new year's in the maldives that's still on my nightstand, but with ebook and kindle it's a glut of options. maybe that's the problem, too many options, something a dear friend lamented about boys in NYC. but that's another story.
back to the mister's friend, who is among other amazing things also a published poet. in fact, a lifetime ago, a friend from lawsch gave me an autographed copy of said poet's book and i was blown away. so to actually read drafts from the next collection, and to discuss it over dinner..?! mind blown. the mister said something funny after that. he said he was impressed to hear me talk about poetry. like after seven years, it was still a facet he's yet to really see because it's not often that i'm in lit mode. i mean, it's usually law/biz/med when we talk so to suddenly delve into kant's notion of the nouminal self was a change from regular programming.
so there you go. the fourth week of summer break in a nutshell. two to go then it's back to school. have mixed feelings about fourth year. third was by far the longest and hardest, and fourth is reputed to be get out of jail. but i may or may not have been overambitious and organised some crazy electives where the pressure is on. no room for sloppiness, less room for failure. the mere thought of bringing my A game tires me. just when i thought i'd get a breather from the steep learning curve, might've just jumped onto an even sharper one. but again, that's life right? carpe that diem etc.
one of my favourite photos from NYC that already seems so long ago
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