365 days project 2. Day 77. It's all about FOOD

   Food makes people happy. Just remember the last meal you ate that made you say "Life's amazing!" You felt that dish right there helped you touch Nirvana, right? You know what I mean now? :)

   Food makes people go wild when they smell the delicious dishes prepared around them, so they crave what they see even if they didn't feel hungry before. 

   Food is life but also food is a passion. We all need food in order to survive and some have a passion for cooking so why not indulge in the addictive dishes made by talented chefs who come to a food festival?

   Food festivals bring people together by luring foodies out in the open, into a territory filled with amazing scents and colors and the best, carefree vibe that makes you realize it's summer and there's nothing better to do than go out, have a lazy stroll between the food vendors, pick something yummy and enjoy it while you sit down on the grass listening to the live music. 

   What can be better than a food festival? Everybody's happy and well fed :) Ah, life's amazing these days :) And so is The Street Food Festival in Cluj! :)  

Holy(day)

Dear diary,

   Exams finally passed and after 2 months of studying and losing contact to all people around me, everything's back on track: I took the exam I was worried about and I'm still waiting for the results on the other one, but I have a good feeling. 

   So guess what: I'm gonna work in the same kindergarten one more yeaaaar! I'm so happy! I love seeing the kids grow and evolve alongside with me and I can't wait to read them the books I bought for them from Vatra Dornei! 

   Life's good. Really good. And I feel so blessed for having everything I want and need. So many things have changed for the better:) Life's exciting and full of new things! 

   So now I'm gonna catch up with my friends, go out for photos, read wonderful books, watch my TV shows and enjoy the awesome things summer has still prepared for me! It's finally a holiday!

In love with life,

D.

The clean up

   You wake up and you look outside only to see it's cloudy again... A lot of free time on your hands. You're not in the mood to drag your body out of your bed yet so you just linger there and you start contemplating life. Yeah, unlike others, you can just sit in bed and think. You get to the conclusion that the best way to spend this Saturday is to clean up. Autumn is the perfect time for that. 

   You start with things on your phone. A lot of notes of movies you have to see, random thoughts and useless data. You have breakfast and then you start hiding your summery clothes and bringing up the autumn ones. Next. Papers on your desk. So many of them piled up over the last months. And you have no idea how that happened. You stop for a second and realize you're moving slower and slower. You're one with the gloomy weather now. 

   There's something bothering you but you can't really put your finger on it. It's like the dreadful side of autumn got under your skin and now it's controlling your body. You gently take a paper, read it and throw it next to you. You repeat the process until you're surrounded by a big pile of "leaves". You soon cleaned all the trees around you and now the leaves are down there covering the floor with memories you made along the way. Things you'll throw away because you no longer need. 

   Your trees will get new memories next spring. But you'll throw some of them next autumn and the thought of that somehow makes you sad. You'd love to keep all the memories you gathered, all the feelings you invested in. But you know life's not an endless summer. You have to focus and take decisions. What will you throw out? Will you keep things just in case you might need them sometime or will you throw out anything you didn't use in the last month? 

   If it was up to you, you'd keep all the leaves until you had a sea of them in your room. And then you'd float on your own sea of leaves until you got lost in the distance while contemplating life. You'd later wake up on your bed on a sunny autumn day and everything would be perfect again:)

   

The 3 magical days

   "Every miracle lasts only three days", they say. Some days are longer, others are shorter. But somehow miracles end and then you're all by yourself asking if that was just a dream or if it was reality. 

   You already knew that life is a never ending journey across calm seas and harsh mountains. You know the theory. But since you've been traveling on a calm sea for years, it was always hard for you to imagine that sometime you'd have to climb the Everest. And that's simply because you were used to living a comfortable life. All nice and cozy. 

   Your third magical day is now coming to a close and you can feel it. The wind is starting to blow. The sea is slowly becoming agitated and you're borrowing its state. You're starting to tremble in your summery dress and you close your eyes. Black and white gloomy images come into your mind. You will have to continue your journey up until the peak you'll be terrified about. You know you'll want to come back to the amazingly calm sea and clear water, but you also know you won't be able to. Cos the doors behind you will keep closing and you can only go forward. And then you'll want to stop and just lay down for a while and weep. Weep because you miss these carefree summery days, these times when you were just a girl. 

   When you open your eyes you realize you've aged. You're a grown up woman now. That's what autumn does every year. It takes away the innocence and gives back the same sorrows you had last year. She'll keep doing that till you get at peace with your destiny and you accept it. Ups and downs. Happiness and sadness. Sea and mountain. 

   You look away in the distance and you see the waves coming towards you. But you hold on tight and decide to live every day as it comes and enjoy every bit of happiness that's left until the great sorrow. You know the next 3 days will be mundane, cruel, ironic, anything but magical, but you remember you've been through this before and you prevailed. So you take a deep breath and shout to the waves: "Come what may, I'm ready!"

Day 365. The big day

   Today's the last day of my daily journey through my first year of adulthood, the year I started working. 

   It was a project I dived into because I wanted to fight the laziness that comes to us artists from time to time. A project to encourage me to take photos and write in spite of having little free time. It wasn't easy. I had to come up with new photos and new posts every day. Some days I had no idea what to write about because nothing special happened to me then but I still had to do my homework so I had to look deep down and find a piece of mind hidden on a forgotten shelf. Yes, a couple of days I thought about postponing or canceling the project but each time my inner voice told me I have to finish what I started. And here I am now.

   This experiment made me look at my life through a magnifying glass and find emotions and thoughts I didn't pay attention to all the time. 

   These past 365 days I had the chance to analyse myself, my reactions and my choices, my worries and my moments of happiness. It was a bildungsroman I got the chance to read while writing it.

   And like any other bildungsroman, I started with 0 work experience, a lot of theoretical information that I wasn't going to use in the kindergarten, questions, doubts and anxieties. 

I felt my hands were tied and my expectations were too high. I was down...

But I knew I loved kids more than anything.

Because when kids smile and they tell you they love you, it's all you need to move on.

I found little things that made my days beautiful and that made my inner photographer really proud.

I always did what I love. I cooked and I baked.

I read a lot. For me and for the exam I had to take this summer. There were books and movies I'll always remember. 

And a lot of movie like moments. 

I spent a lot of time in the middle of the nature. I saw sunrises, sunsets, gloomy clouds, rain and snow.

Autumn, winter, spring and summer. 

I celebrated Christmas, New Year's Eve and Easter. I finally had the Christmas tree of my dreams.

I gave and received gifts.

I spent precious time with my friends, family and my beloved boyfriend.

 I received an amazing birthday cake from my best friend, I went to my first color fight and I had my first textbook sleepover.

I made new friends. Dogs, cats and people who helped me rediscover my childhood and my adolescence. 

My feet went to a lot of places.

I was sick, sad and worried. I questioned life and existence. I complained.

But each time I fell down, I stood up and moved on stronger.

I learned I still need to work on being patient.

And accepting change.

I learned that I have to fight for what I believe in.

And always find a reason to smile.

That it's good to keep your spirit young especially if you're living an adult life.

Shoot for the stars,

And be creative. 

Love unconditionally,

Be yourself even if the world expects to see something different.

And keep close to whatever makes you happy:)

 It's been a wonderful journey. One that I'm planning to continue. Not daily but still, twice a week. On Tuesdays and Saturdays. 

Thanx for sticking around and reading my posts, supporting me and putting me on the right direction. It was all very helpful:) See you next Tuesday!:)

Day 347. Get ready, set, go!

   Today I was reminded that summer is not all about having fun and making nice memories. It's also about preparing for the winter to come. And this involves a lot of work and sweat. My dad told me that "if you want to be happy during winter, you gotta work a lot during summer." And so we did. 

   Preserving vegetables for winter is a tough process that seems never ending. Especially if you're part of a family who eats a lot during winter. It was certainly another test for my patience. I might have lost a battle or two, but I think I won the war.

   My lesson after all this is that even if you don't like some things, they gotta be done. And working now means happiness after. So it's better to be the ant than the grasshopper. Always.

Day 345. The stillness before the change

   Summer's slowly moving on. I can feel it in the air, in the temperatures, in the fact that it's already getting dark sooner. But these last days are the most beautiful ones. 

   The light is soft and the sun rays feel warm and protective. There's that smell of hay and that stillness that comes right before a big change. These are the perfect days to lounge and take some time off from the everyday rush. The time to read a good book, to make plans for the following months, to put your life in order. 

   The last summers days are like the last spoon of Nutella. You realize how awesome it is cos it's almost over. But you're always looking forward to the next jar to enjoy the same feeling again:)

"A vacation is like love: anticipated with pleasure, experienced with enthusiasm and remembered with nostalgia."  

                                                   - Anonymous

Day 332. Bring color to your life

   I always knew that a day can be good if you choose to make it good. It's always in our power to turn a day upside down from boring to exciting and today I did just that:) 

   The summer heat is always an enemy to ideas worth putting into practice outdoors. So when I heard there's some event going on outside I denied attending it at first but then I was inspired enough to watch a video of the same event in other countries and I was AMAZED! So much color everywhere! And lots and lots of happy people! How could I say "no" to that?:) So I got dressed asap and decided to go after all. I was so nervous of how everything was going to end up. I didn't know if the colors would wash out or if it would be as amazing as it looked in the photos, but I sure for once wanted to try. And now I can say it was worth trying:) Because this event, the color fight, was what changed my day from random to awesome:) And it's part of those chances you have to take, the ones that might happen once in a lifetime, the same ones that bring color to your life. Both literally and metaphorically:) Not to mention I got the chance to meet the mayor in person and actually take a photo with him:) How often does that happen while you're soaking wet and super happy?

   So my lesson today was:

Day 285. That time of the year

   Here we are again. It's that time of the year once more. The time when it's too hot outside to bear. So hot that you wish it would just rain on you till you soak it all up. So hot that you can't think properly and you're not in the mood to do anything. Yep, that's the downside of summer when even time seems to dilate from all this heat. And you can't wait for it to be over. 

   So why not wait for the night to fall and enjoy the upside of summer? After all, every bad thing has an ending. Wait and see. Everything fades away in the end. Even the unbearable heat:)

Day 276. My special game

   I will never forget the 6^th grade when our head teacher proposed a game. She told us to close our eyes and focus on all the sounds we heard around us that we usually ignored. Acknowledge their presence and then try to understand where they came from. The point of the game was to realize that we’re never alone and that a lot of things are always happening around us.

   Today I read on my balcony bathing in the sunset light and I played the game again. I heard kids playing with a ball, a baby crying, a parent trying to soothe him, birds chirping, my dad yawning, the wind gently blowing and I realized one thing: Summer is here!

   The past days I've been upset by the constant in and out rain but… It’s June so that’s normal. All natural for the young, rebellious Summer girl who’s sitting on the other green armchair on my balcony. She’s winking at me and playing with her long, blond hair while the sun is caressing her by sending some mild rays on her fragile body. She’s taking a comfortable position and all of a sudden she seems lost, looking in the distance. Just like trying to figure out if she’s here to stay or she should shake the dust again. She smells like poppies and hay, fresh rain and late summer nights by the lake. She’s a girl and a woman altogether. And she knows it. I don’t dare ask her anything being afraid I might ruin her magic moment so I just lounge on my green armchair and I smile with my eyes closed, bathing in the same sun as her. And when I open my eyes she’s already gone. “See you tomorrow evening, Summer. Same place, same hour. Maybe tomorrow we’ll start talking” :) 

Day 42. Summery autumn

   You wouldn't say this is a sunset in the middle of autumn, would you?:) Now this is the kind of autumn I love. Lovely mornings, sun shining through the yellow leaves during the day, beautiful sunsets and all warm and cozy:)   

   I had a really great day today. Many activities, absolutely adorable kids and productive parent meetings. 
   Every day I rediscover the childhood ME through my kids and it feels like I'm living my childhood once again with them.  

Note to self: You can't solve all the problems in the kindergarten in the first months of work. You need patience, patience, patience!:)