2022: Life Captions Posted As Life Unfolds
Grace & Gratitude
31 December 2021. Taveuni, Fiji. Celebrating new years’ eve with a stranger I am pretending to know, and I am not talking about my alter ego, he is real for once. I guess that counts as progress? Lobsters and Veuve Clicquot in the middle of the jungle, bye bye 2021, welcome 2022.
01 January 2022. Back to Suva. To board on the tiny Fiji link plane, yours truly was weighted with her hand luggage, both on the scale at once. Thank God I am wearing a mask.
02 January 2022. My new year’s wish list is set on repeat, yet louder and more assertive than ever. This year, I added: “ 2022, the year I do not have to force anything”, what was I saying earlier on about me being more assertive than ever. I am developing some sort of split personality disorder.
03 January 2022. I have put on two parallel columns what I want more of and what I want less of in 2022. More than resolutions, my new year’s intentions look more like the shopping list I diligently compile before going shopping, to then forget on the table, nonchalant me.
04 January 2022. I think I got some sort of decompression sickness, or I just overdid it during the holidays. First day back to the office, I think I need a break.
05 January 2022. I will not lie to you (and me). I am overloading my journal with what self-help gurus would call positive affirmations, they are totally unintentional, they just land on paper effortlessly.
06 January 2022. Pouring down — not counting — my blessings.
07 January 2022. In Fiji, people wear full denture smiles 24/7, and it is not the half self-imposed, half out-of-courtesy kind of smile I am used to, it is a smile genuinely curious-about-the-other, present and profound.
08 January 2022. I need to do like Buddha and invite Mara for tea.
09 January 2022. Happy three-months in Fiji anniversary. Instead of having it fast, can I have it furious?
10 January 2022. Radical softness: do no harm, take no shit. Read this today somewhere.
11 January 2022. One step forward and two steps back, applies also to baby steps. In case you are wondering how I manage to wear out the sole of my shoes.
12 January 2022. I am putting on weight and it is NOT that I am not seeing it coming. WTF.
13 January 2022. At the beginning of 2021 I made a list of of verbs to guide my year, on top of the list I had “shock yourself”, no idea how it got on paper, but it was there and I had written it. In 2021, after years of hesitation, I quit my super-safe job in Prague and moved to Fiji. Please understand if now I hesitate putting down anything on paper.
14 January 2022. Totally hooked on kundalini, I would not know where to point but there is something magic right there.
15 January 2022. Signed up to the signuppable, that is soooo like me.
16 January 2022. Jackpot. Found a companion for stand-up-paddle-board, we start mid February.
17 January 2022. My family is my biggest blessing, while I could not be luckier, I miss them to the Moon and back.
18 January 2022. When you keep scratching rock bottom thinking it is a scratch card.
19 January 2022. Bring it on, guess who is ready?
20 January 2022. This receiving is so encompassing. Period.
21 January 2022. The breeze, this morning, when I was trying to meditate, felt like a lover’s breath, too close to ignore. Simply sexy. Thank you, I love you too.
22 January 2022. Fasting gives me such a sense of possibility, how can I possibly keep forgetting it. My meditations are getting longer and longer, feeling so blessed.
23 January 2022. Training in the park, 33 degrees and 90% humidity, even my glasses were sweating, I kid you not. Group training works because you can rely on sheer collective energy, and still use your individual surplus of calories.
24 January 2022. Totally loosing it yet catching myself before hitting the ground. “Life lessons repeat themselves until we learn them” said someone very optimistic.
25 January 2022. Goosebumps all over, setting the mood for the week.
26 January 2022. I know it will sound like a cliché, and most likely it is all in my head, YET, when the muse grabs you by the hand, makes you write for two hours non-stop, making you forget time and space, it is as close as it get to Nirvana on this planet. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
27 January 2022. I give it a final shot, I swear this time is f i n a l.
28 January 2022. The hardest is to accept and appreciate the infinite possibility of being a constant work in progress.
29 January 2022. I resigned to the fact that January was a month of resting and restoration, of quiet growing under a dim light. Not doing anything was the best I could do to help myself and the Universe . For someone tending on the over functioning side, it has been such a lesson. Thank you.
07 February 2022. The pain in my knee is bipolar, ranging from “I can not sleep from the pain” to “let’s go dancing tonight”, and they are both sooo real. Icepacks help, but I am at a loss.
08 February 2022. Something magic is happening, I can not quite put my finger on it but it is there.
09 February 2022. Split personalities: there are days I wonder how come so many people develop split personalities disorder, and there are days I wonder how can someone NOT develop it. Today is the latter.
11 February 2022. As I was leaving the office tonight, I mistakenly switched off the lights in a room where a worker was fixing some cables in the ceiling. I heard someone asking to please turn the lights on, I apologized, turned the lights back on. Someone came down from a ladder, I apologized again, he smiled, he asked me to show him the light switch, and so I did. We politely said good bye, and while I was waiting for the lift he said from a distance you look sexy in black, with intimacy, like someone who had seen me wearing dresses of all colours, or no dress at all. I thanked, smiled and jumped in the lift. Yeah, so sexy in black, wait and see the other colours, I heard me saying.
01 April 2022. Yes, I am back, at least until further notice.
2–3 April 2022. With an overdose of selfcare and self-indulgence, Saturdays are always over-promising and Sundays under-delivering.
03 April 2022. The days when I pay respect to my need to be alone by myself. Bless me.
25 April 2022. There are days, when I really struggle with finding meaning in what I do, and the only thing that makes sense is the one hour spent training and sweating my ass off in Albert Park.
26 April 2022. I find it hard to trust people whose carotid arteries do not pulse with rage every now and then. It is not always graceful, but respecting the entire spectrum of our emotions is healthy.
27 April 2022. Just because someone never loses his sh*t, it does not mean s/he has his sh*t together. Overpreparing and perfectionism may be just another expression of not feeling enough.
28 April 2022. I have managed to publicly confess that this week I have been feeling very angry about extremely silly things. Patting myself on the back.
29 April 2022. The urge to write poetry. It feels amazing. It doesn’t look pretty. I love it.
30 April 2022. I submitted two new stories and one poem on the same day. It is a good day to be alive.
01 May 2022. Waking up to find 24 notifications on my Medium account. This kind of fuel can keep me going for months. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
14 May 2022. I set a commitment, hitting 100 stories before the end of the year, letting go some of the chronic impulsive overediting, and showing up rawer than usual.
15 May 2022. Updating my CV and preparing job applications is so destabilizing. Impostor syndrome even for jobs way below my league. Yet, I can’t deny the grounding effect combined with a sense of possibility. Bless me.
16 May 2022. OMG today. Most beautiful energy today and straight from the heart. I don’t know who to thank, the full moon, the eclipse, yoga this morning, meditation, Abraham Hicks, the sunrise, the breeze, the amazing sunset layered like a mille-feuille. Or maybe was the fasting and no sugar. I need to find the exact algorithm because I want more of this stuff.
18 May 2022. When it comes to imposter syndrome, some days it is you to have the upper hand, and other days someone overtakes you to wave a glorious “ I t-o-o-o-l-d you“ sign straight to your face. Today it was the latter.
24 May 2022. Feeling at my craziest and freest, it feels soooooo gooood. Today, during a casual conversation among colleagues, I uttered the following: In the history and vastity of the Universe, our agonies and triumphs, also called lives, from our first inhale to our last exhale, are like farts to the Universe, a negligible temporary embarrassment. Laughers at first, then the faces of my colleagues once they actually processed my words, oh Dear me. I defended myself, saying that I was not likely to formulate such finite sentences, and that most likely it was a quote from someone whose name I could not remember. I will be honest, I am not sure, whether I can claim ownership or not, it still felt like the best thing to say in that moment.
17 June 2022. I caught myself still in time to make it right, fully aware of being just about to self-sabotage myself, and still dove in head first against my best judgement and deep desires. I just want to bang my head against the hardest wall, to crack it open and check what the f*ck is inside, most likely some heavy gas out of a constipated brain. Honestly, I had been waiting for that moment for weeks, and when the stars aligns and the perfect moment comes I dismiss it, him, me, with the most banal: no thanks, I am good.
FFS Cristina, you are 47, aint’ it just about time you put your act together.
20 June 2022. Getting a second chance and jumping onto it. Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou. Cherry on the top, breathtaking view during outdoor training. Bless me.
05 July 2022. Staring at your CV for too long is not healthy, do not ask me how I know, I just do.
06 July 2022. Butterflies in my stomach and loving it.
07 July 2022. There are pains so monstrous, that even when they do not touch you directly, they still manage crack something in you.
