Tag: bloganuary

Emoji me

Holy macaroni! Talk about testing your creativity! What emojis do I like to use…🤔🤔🤔hmmm let me think about this.

I looove using emojis. I abuse them in fact. The only problem is that I am not very creative in my use of them. 🙈 I use the same emojis over and over again. They work for me I guess. I see what’s new when I have conversations with friends ‘in the know’ and my nieces.

So what are those favourites you ask? There’s 😂 because I laugh a lot and my friends are funny so I use it often! I use the 🙈 emoji a lot because I overthink the small stuff and end up looking very dilly. For the same reason I use 🤪 a lot too 😂. I love giving people 💐🌸🌼 and I love sending ❤️🥰💕😘 at the end of a conversation to let my friends and family know how I feel about them. Another favourite is 🙏, which I use to say thank you and amen.

Truth be told I am so thrilled someone came up with emojis! I sucked with emoticons. I only ever knew how to 🙂 and 😦 . I felt so illiterate and old. With emojis, I can be an equal participant in the conversation 💃🏽💃🏽😁. Well until I realise that there are new emoji’s then I feel old again 🙈😂.

And now of course, we have the Memoji! Lawd help me! The pressure to keep up! So meet my Memoji below. She looks nothing like me simply because I got a bit lazy halfway through creating her. 🙈😂😂. I love her mouse ears mostly and the colour red is my favourite colour (after black of course). I have yet to name her but I guess she can just be ‘Mouse’ which was my nickname as a kid 😁.

Meet my Memoji, Mouse 😁

Alrighty then! Looks like I managed to actually create an entire blog post about emojis! Whoop whoop 🙌 💃🏽💃🏽. I’ve shown you mine hope you will let me see yours 😉😊

Be Bold Enough to Live Life on Your Own Terms

What does it mean to live to boldly? That’s today’s prompt. I have no idea so here goes nothing.

Lets start at the beginning. The Oxford dictionary defines bold as ‘brave and confident; not afraid to say what you feel or to take risks’. In this day and age of social media, where so many are trying to be something they are not, I would say anyone who is not afraid to be true to themselves fits that definition. Why are we so determined to be someone else? Why can’t we just be ourselves? There is far more power, fulfillment and happiness in it.

“Be bold enough to live life on your terms, and never, ever apologize for it.”

Mandy Hale

Not a single one of us is the same as the other. Not even identical twins can claim this. We each have unique traits and talents. Even if you and are both painters and are asked to paint the same picture, our pictures will not be exactly alike because we interpret the world differently based on our experiences. We will therefore interpret the picture differently. Our differences should be celebrated and not criticized as if they were faults. They are not.

If you think of the people who are most memorable in your community, I am willing to be that they are also the most original. They don’t “try” to be original, they just are because they are themselves. They tend to be ‘a breath of fresh air’. They are not perfect and they don’t try to be. They accept themselves as they are. They stand out in the crowd.

I am inspired by Elon Musk for much the same reasons Steve Jobs inspires me. He is supremely confident in what he is capable of and cannot be bothered with the naysayers and the sceptics. He is a dreamer but a practical dreamer and his actions are impactful. Both have moved us forward technologically through their visions. They have not tried to be anyone else but themselves. They have not tried to live anyone else’s dream. They have built on and being inspired by those who went before them but they have not tried to copy them. To be honest, his personality rubs me up the wrong way a bit but that doesn’t take away from the things he has accomplished.

In a nutshell, for me, being bold is having the courage to be yourself and to follow your dreams. Those dreams are God’s wish for you, in fact, I believe His dreams for you are bigger that you imagined but you will only discover what He truely has in store for you if you have the courage to follow your own dreams first.

On that note I will leave you with these words of wisdom from Oprah Winfrey:

“Every time you suppress some part of yourself or allow others to play you small, you are ignoring the owner’s manual your Creator gave you. What I know for sure is this: You are built not to shrink down to less but to blossom into more. To be more splendid. To be more extraordinary. To use every moment to fill yourself up.“

Oprah Winfrey
Image: Canva

Gratitude Turns What We Have into Enough

Image: Canva

Gratitude. My favourite topic! For the last 3 years I have made December my month of gratitude so that I enter the new year with a positive mindset and feeling abundant. I highly recommend it. Not only do you feel good but a few miracles are likely to occur during the month. I receive one or two surprises between the 10th and 20th December. It blows my mind every year 🙂

Today though the topic is 5 things that I am grateful for. So today I am grateful for:

  1. Another year around the sun completed last Friday. My 49th to be exact. It’s been an interesting journey thus far filled with abundance, love and laughter. All made possible by God’s grace.
  2. My son. What an awesome young man he is turning out to be. This year I allowed him to spoil me on my birthday. I usually don’t because I believe the money he receives for Christmas is his to spend on himself. He usually gets offended when I refuse an expensive gift on those grounds. This year I let him spoil me. I am so glad I did. He was so proud of himself. He took me to dinner and bought me a pair of earings. For his efforts, he was rewarded with an extra discount in store. He couldn’t believe his luck. It was so awesome.
My birthday gift from my son ❤️🙏
  1. Our semi-adopted cats. George and Georgina have brought a lot of love and laughter to our home. I have felt like a behavioural scientist of sorts documenting their every move out of sheer curiosity. Today I am extra grateful that their depression has started to lift and they are eating and playing again. They mum has officially abandoned them as they are about 3-4 months old now. They were heartbroken. It was really hard to watch them these past few days as they refused eat and just wanted to be near us. All we could do was give them lots of love but we felt so helpless. So very grateful to see the twinkle in their eyes again. Btw, I say semi-adopted because we are not allowed pets in the complex but there are no rules saying we can’t let a stray cat or two visit every day…
Georgina (L) and George (R)
  1. My home and everything in it. It is my haven and, thanks to covid, my place of work as well now. Not that I mind. As an introvert, working from home suits me perfectly. My son once said to me that he loves our home because there is a lot of love here which makes me believe that God is here and working His magic through me for him. What more could I ask for?
  2. My job. I have worked for the company that I do for over 20 years. I have worked in largely in the same department and that is simply because I love what I do. I also get to see the impact of the products we make on the people that use them which is what really keeps me going. It has also enabled a few trips to different countries. I just have 2 continents left to touch down on, Australia and South America. I also plan on explorating each one of the 5 continents I have already being to a lot more in the coming years. Lastly, it enables everything that I have today and I have a lot. A lot to be grateful for.

This list is in no way exhausitive. I could go on and on but today I have chosen these 5 to write about. I will leave you with words of wisdom about the power of gratitude by Deepak Chopra:

Gratitude opens the door to the power, the wisdom, the creativity of the universe. You open the door through gratitude.

Deepak Chopra