A laughingthrush jumped down to snatch a snack from some red ants. The bird hopped and shook off the ants that got on its head. I woke up today from a bad dream of being suffocated by a bedsheet. I have been waking up from bad dreams daily, since last Friday. They are not terrifying as today’s. They are mostly work related and gave off a bad taste to one’s morning. I watched the birds for a while more and continued the slope upwards. At the top, I recognised the uncle who goes up and down the slopes repeatedly and we smiled hello. He is incredibly fit and looks like he’s 80. There was a bunch of elderly today whom I don’t recognise – I think they don’t live here. I reached the top leisurely without panting. Someone stopped to do sit ups. I am inspired to do another squat but the ants are everywhere. They are antsy from the rain. It was close to 8am. I decided that was enough and walked down.
My thoughts turned to the birds. They hopped about rather loudly on the branches. If a tree fell in the forest and nobody heard it, did the tree fall? Could birds cause rotten trees to fall in the forest just by landing on the branches? Possibly so – I thought, given a butterfly could cause a tornado elsewhere. Birds will know enough to pick those that are rotten yet continue to still stand. Could the ants have known this in advance – sufficiently advanced to move themselves out of harm’s way? We can’t hear doesn’t mean the creatures that live in that ecosystem doesn’t notice the tree falling. It just means a human did not notice. If a human didn’t notice a sound, the human could possibly also fail to notice the tree or the forest. But even if a tree made no sound, creatures living near the tree would know there was a tree. They would be surprised that it fell. The birds might murmur, ah yes, a long time coming. The ants vexed, throw up their antenna, crossed that they now need to rebuild paths. The dead tree might throw up some tasty morsel. It could also create new opportunities for others looking for a home.
Now here is mine. I cooked this. While it’s not as fabulous as my husband’s nephew K’s vegetarian feast, my mouth did water as I was putting it down. It looked delicious and I decided to snap a picture. My sister in law would purchase praying sessions. I am more DIY, just chanting scriptures that I am familiar. I’m not that familiar. (Again, K is amazing – he knows enough to lead a home prayer session.) I’m just not so organised and in the know what and where to do these things.
Kyith’s musings and my bold and italics:
These sessions is even worse for me because… as a finance blogger for the longest while, it is unlikely you can take the part about measuring intrinsic value, extrinsic value versus what we had to pay. All of these sometimes mesh between
We are going to throw most of these away and these are just paper we burn. Should we spend so much?
But we got to do it in a traditional way. Do we need to buy XXX, buy YYY or are one of these optional (that is not part of the tradition)?
Are we really going to throw these food that is actually eatable away like that?
I wonder if I am doing the minimal and I should do more?
As a finance blogger, he can’t help thinking about value vs the effort. He can’t stay in the moment.
The real value is being in the moment. Saying hello aloud or silently to those who are not in the flesh next to us. Praying aloud or just staying silent. The real value isn’t the amount of visible offerings (all edible if you cook it yourself or buy from a vegetarian shop that you like). He went on further to muse what really is independence. After all, he is a FI/RE blogger. He wondered aloud if we work or desire for FI/RE due to external or internal motivations or fears.
I think the FI/RE movement reinforces fears and insecurities about money. The endless computations and musing trying to figure out whether it is enough, then the endless computations how to take the money out. Thinking of these fears is rather comforting. These fears are legitimate enough reasons to permit inaction. To strike a different path washes away the illusion of safety. But life is unsafe. From precarious pregnancies to growing up as a young adult and eventually as an old person. Life is always trying to kill us. Bankrupt us even for trying. The battle isn’t trying to make the risk as small as possible. (Gasp! But you are a risk manager, Eileen.) Really, it is not. It is just figuring out enough of the path, trying it out, yes, there is enough to go around.
Money wise, I can appreciate why some, like a close family member, choose to be ultra frugal to the point of obsession. It’s part of their joy. (We do love to suffer.) There could be others who take pride in the amount of money that they have accumulated over time. The nice title that they retired with. It is part of their joy and identity.
Which brings me to this news article from CNA of a SAHM, Ratna Damayanti Taha who won the Epigram 2026 Epigram Books Fiction Prize. Those very much into the numbers would be interested to know the prize is $25,000. She worked for 5 months from Feb to June 2025 to earn this money. Some of those who hunker down with a huge portfolio probably have dividends multiple times of this money in a year. Some adults with nice titles earn that much in a month. That is not the point of this prize, I assure you. The point is that she achieved her dream to be published and distributed all over SEA. She has a master’s degree but chose to be a SAHM. Her ambition and interest did not go away. She probably submitted way more often. She revised and re-worked and wrote really fast to be able to submit and win the Golden Point and Epigram Books Prize. That is serious determination and discipline. How did she write that fast? The organisation also took a huge risk – not just on an unknown. How will these books sell with declining readership and everyone’s eyes on a video screen?
I have always been embarrassed and uncomfortable about my writing. I am bad at plotting. I am also bad at just forming beauty. I compare myself with all the literature greats. I am also bad at telling people I write. I have no such hang ups about painting. I started out from stick figures and a D in art at school. Whatever I am doing is a lot of hard work – I have no innate artistic talent. I picked it up mainly because it is something I totally don’t know how to do it. Art is totally unrelaxing for me. It is extreme stress to battle water being too wet or too dry, the colour being too much or not enough. It forces me to be in the moment. Funny that I am unable to stop carrying this ego and unnecessary chatter while writing. I can’t even write a blog post fast. I’m writing and backspacing this thing. It’s a wonder that I can post this.
My earlier post on the musical set me thinking about my art learning experience in a school vs self directed learning.
The key advantage in self directed learning is that you can shop for a teacher who teaches well. Sampling lessons makes a lot of difference in deciding what to consume. This works if you know specifically what you need to work on. It does not work if you lack direction in your journey. It also does not work if you lack discipline to sit down and paint. The other key is to pick up something harder to paint so that there is progress and change.
Being in a school meant for me someone is going lesson plan, to demonstrate, correct and provide me critique. This is the education that I am paying for. I don’t need the teacher to be funny in lesson delivery or empathetic why I didn’t do homework. I want this “pass up art work” weekly so that I am made to practice. This is why self-directed learning is hard. You are not accountable to someone whose job is to make you deliver.
Art is tough business. Making the learning process joyful or making a persons more excited about art isn’t actually pushing the student to be a better artist. If you are lucky, you get a teacher who shares concepts and demonstrates skills. The critique and feedback is most important in a school environment. If you are lucky, you will get great critique that is useable.
Doing art is something you don’t have to socialise. But art cannot exist in a bubble. A teacher forces socialisation, shares what is great or not so great and creates that tension to enable change.
From Norman who writes an audit and risk blog. To be heard and to be seen is encouraged as part of “getting ahead”. A team that is actually working well will just be working without fanfare. Sort of like an experienced artisan just being extremely excellent in their jobs.
Just like end customers, as employees we tend to see management as a single body, working in an orderly manner towards goals they have promised to deliver. That is not the norm really – not even in family business where one might imagine the whole family is working towards more revenue and wealth.
The norm is some volume of “being unsettled” – it could be louder in some places. A management team that is not a real team is the norm because within a team there will be competition to be heard, to be seen. That said, I won’t go so far as to label healthy competition – it’s just the sound energy from working.
Does it ever become dysfunctional? It could when executives try hard at sabotaging each other to the extent that they undermine the firms results as a whole. Yet most firms with a proper scorecard structure can withstand this. A small firm (eg family business) who has less or no support will dragged to a standstill by dysfunction but most founder leaders at this point will sort it out before it goes further by calling it out.
That your husband, children, father, aunts, cousins maybe have commonalities but this is only a small part of them. Just like you they live their own varied lives rich with experiences.
I asked for a referral for my son to be assessed and was turned down. I took out ADHD 2.0 (Edward M Hallowel and John Ratey) not knowing what else to do. I put it on the headset and continued on my excel.
I began to cry right in the middle of chapter 1. (OMG what if someone telephoned me? Luckily that I was WFH from a sprain!) I felt understood. Like someone knows what is like to be me. Someone explained why I feel that my life seems more difficult, why I feel different from everyone else and why every pursuit of mine turned out to be hideously difficult, why I failed to continue writing novels, why I want to study after I retire, why I want to do art. It even explained why I always try and fail to see what others see me as. It’s like going to a tarot card reader or a psychic to ask about your difficult son and suddenly the psychic tells you everything you have experienced in your life so far.
Yet I can’t link ADHD to me. I did suspect I have ADHD when I was younger. I can’t see myself as a stereotypical ADHD person yet it all makes sense (all those years of paying penalties and late fees, multiple planners and terrifying my husband with the fire left on and mostly picking up difficult things out of boredom). I think it is mainly because I haven’t had serious complaints that it interferes with others expectations of me at work or at school. I don’t feel I annoy anyone with this problem at school or at work. It doesn’t affect me as a normal contributing member of society. It annoys my friends a lot and my husband really a lot. I feel my other nicer parts of my personality make up for this particularly annoying part so it evens out.
So what does it mean to me now that I know I might have ADHD. At this age, I don’t feel it means something. If I was told sometime during the first 35 years of my life it would mean a lot. Most of all it will explain why I feel different during those years where I feel it is important to be the same.
I remember thinking about this in my 20s when I was trying to be a writer, then later trying to work on my Masters thesis in my late twenties. Do I really want to wake up every morning and acknowledge I am a failure?
How very interesting that in learning to paint I encounter this question again.
Now that I am an older and have gained wiles and cunning, l would described as a daily struggle towards greatness, the discipline of a Master. (Gag! Barf! Retch! Yet, its true – why paint the difficulty of struggle worse?)
I cannot understand why I have this strong sense of doom, inability & “I can’t do this” for art only..
I wonder if it stems from my inability to really get it. I cannot understand it because I lack a feeling for art. My feeling is either, “Man, this is awesome!” or “Oh, ok.”
I have been having difficulties being a parent to one of my kids. He is 12 and so beyond me I am at a lost – we are at a lost. It is a totally alien space.
I am wondering if I parented him wrongly because of some childhood trauma.
I googled and empowering parents said that I should not feel guilty or accept responsibilities for the difficulties he is facing. After all we all learn to get around our difficulties. If he is working on it and trying I can appreciate and support – but if he is not?
headbirth.com 