Gentle Whispers

So here I am on the eve of my 30th birthday, my very last day of being 29, just about 4 hours left of being a twenty-something. A couple of years ago, I remember snidely chuckling away to myself, when a favourite blogger of mine turned 30, believing that it was so far away, it could never touch me. I'm regretting that now. And to be honest, I thought I would be okay, I really honestly truly believed that I would be greeting this new decade with a casual insouciance and indifference that would normally be characteristic for me, but I'm not. I'm terrified of how quickly my twenties have zoomed by and how little I've accomplished and perhaps that is what is upsetting me. On the cusp of another decade on this planet, well, I feel like a bit of a failure. No, scratch that, I feel majorly like a failure. I'm drowning in self-pity and anguish at wasted opportunities, at thrown-away chances, at my inherent laziness and procrastination, at my never-ending ability to p

Over the last two days, I've slept for a grand total of 7 hours and therefore, I am now finding it extremely difficult to concentrate on the mountain of files piled on my desk and screaming to be dealt with. Instead, I am overwhelmed by the urge to blog, but what about, I wasn't too sure, my writing muse having last been seen cackling madly and disappearing away into the sunset. When in such dire straits, what else is there to do but take up one of the millions of tags floating around the Internet. So without much further ado, here we go: 1. What have you realized recently? That I am not the model of perfection I always thought I was and some changes might be in order.  2. Have you given your first kiss away? I'm not one to kiss and tell. Well, not on public forums anyway.  3. If you were to be stranded on a deserted island, who are the 5 blog buddies you would take? Ahem, hard choices, but fine, The Mad Momma , Una Madridista , Not Quite Nigella , Y

I've been wanting to blog about my recent interest in baking for a while, well if you can call three years recent, that is. But I've always wanted to talk about the joy that baking brings me and how much I enjoy it. The calories, not so much. By nature, I am a rather random person. I don't function very well when neatness and precision is necessary. I like to think of myself as a big-picture person. Not for me the analysing of every detail and the nitpicking and the perfectionism. But it is precisely this side of me that baking, the exacting science that it is, challenges and I actually revel in it. There's something about creaming exactly 100 gms of butter with 50 grams of sugar and mixing in 300 gms of flour. Measuring, measuring, measuring, beating, whipping to create a cake that is so much more than the sum of its disparate parts. The exacting nature of baking allows me to put my vagaries aside and focus with a 100% on the job at hand that pleases me. For someo

This was originally supposed to be a list of resolutions for 2016, but I think I'd rather make this about the year that was. In the last few years, the years have been in a pattern of peaks and troughs. 2012 was great, 2013 sucked, 2014 was lovely and so on... But 2015 really, it's hard to put it into words. If 2015 were a colour though, i'd pick blue. Sometimes turquoise, sometimes indigo, ever so often a bright vivid cerulean and rarely azure, but mostly, mostly it was just plain blue. I'd love to spill it all out here, the reasons, the anxiety, the sadness, the emptiness, but I can't. Not while people I know still read. Not while I still feel too vulnerable to deal with questions and comments and criticism. More than ever now, I wish I'd left this blog anonymous. But maybe some of it, yes? In 2015, so many life changes have happened around me, to the people closest to me, to those around me - jobs that necessitated moving out of the city

We live in interesting times. We’re blessed that way. The world is changing rapidly. The way we work is changing, the way we live has already changed. Entire industries are crumbling, and more are growing on their ruins. People are empowered to express themselves, to create, to become a part of a global conversation and transformation, in a way that has never existed before. What will you do with that? What will your place be in this new, interesting world? Will you have a voice? Will you be a creator, or just a consumer? Do something. Do something interesting. Be a part of the conversation, and say something remarkable. Create something unique, new, beautiful. Build upon the works of others and transform it into your own. How to do this? Write a book. Or an ebook. Write poetry and publish it on the web. Create interesting, lovely or funny videos, put them on You Tube. Be passionate. Write a web app that will solve a problem in people’s lives. Become a watchdog to re

A few months ago, I sat with my BFFs (I think now might be the time to stop reading Cosmo) and we spoke late into the night about life, love and careers. What was going right and where we'd gone wrong. What needed major surgery and the bits that needed a little bit of tinkering. In the contentment of being all together after what felt like a long time. It didn't matter that it was 4 AM. It didn't matter that I had to be at work bright and early the next morning. I didn't even feel the ache in my bones or my eyes struggling to stay open. But that's not what this is about. A conversation came up in which I participated very little. It was about Kindles vs eBooks. 'Books are books', they said, 'Kindles are nothing'. While I sat back chuckling to myself, wondering, what exactly were we arguing about here? I'd be the last person to tell you that Kindles are all good. I love old books and I love new ones. I love sinking my nose into the spine of a b