Amanda has posted the last Friendly Friday Challenge as the team bid farewell to this challenge. The last prompt is turning points.
I actually started my blog in 2013 but it looked a lot different from what is is today and I was more of a reposter. In hindsight, I really wished I had written my thoughts on what I was reposting. It was mainly about art with more of a focus on integrating art within our lives and art that made us think. It wasn’t until 2020, that my current blog took life. The Friendly Friday Challenge was one that I had participated in at times but I was not a regular. Still, through this I felt included in the blogging world. So here is to the Friendly Fridays!
I win my first and only art competition when I was 11 years old. My painting gets chosen to be hung in a Children’s hospital somewhere in the country. I paint a birthday party scene filled with colour. It’s cartoonish and I get side tracked painting the sky at school that day and mistakenly make the whole sky yellow.
You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose
Dr Seuss
I was so adamant when I finished school that I wanted to be a psychologist. Apparently I have all the personality traits of someone that you could tell you problems to too. But I get halfway and realise that it’s not the field I want to be working in. What to do. I complete my degree but pivot down the science research path instead.
You don't find out who you are unless you work at itIris Apfel
During this time, I am forced to solo travel for the first time to attend conferences and also was a visiting student abroad. I had a ball. I discover so much. I see so many beautiful things and am even moved to tears by said beautiful things. I have a burning desire to explore our world. I start taking French lessons again for the first time since school.
I take a break from learning French after sitting a DELF exam. I move into my next language that I want to learn: Spanish. So that I can travel to Central and South American one day. That one day came up quickly, following a gut feeling that I should visit Mexico. I act on it and went despite my initial fears. I have an amazing time being surrounded with such great sights, sounds and colour.
It is lockdown 2021. I discover a new music group from South Korea. I had stopped listening to music years ago after not finding many favourite artists. This new group is like a breath of fresh air. I start listening to music again. I start reading books again. I start consuming art again.
One of the creativity exercises I was doing in lockdown was to write a list of things that I have wanted to do but have yet to do. I sit around mulling for days and weeks on this list. I action two of them immediately: 1) to get a helix piercing and 2) to teach English abroad. I choose South Korea.
Only the thoughts that we live out have any value
Demian by Hermann Hesse
Lingo in Transit 
Isn’t it interesting how looking back, you see the points that took you where you are now. Clearly your love for travel primed you for the big move to South Korea. I’m glad that unlike me, you ‘found’ your blog before your time there. I didn’t start blogging until after I left China and I regret that now. Thank you for joining our last Friendly Friday, it was a great to learn more about you 🙂
It was an interesting exercise and I hadn’t really thought about all these points together before. You can always right retrospective blogs about it! Thank you for the Friendly Fridays Sandy.
Turning points, indeed! I only started following you in 2020 (when the pandemic started and your blog took off– perfect timing!), but this post was still a surprise, as I got to know you a little more. I always knew you enjoyed learning languages, but I had no idea that you’d been interested in Spanish and going to Mexico! And then all of a sudden started getting into Korean culture…and now you’re in South Korea! It’s wild how and where life takes you, isn’t it? A lot has definitely changed for me as well, since starting my blog in 2016…but I’m sure for us, we’ll continue to have turning points in the next few years and onwards!
It was the first time I had sat down and thought about these events grouped together. I think I’ve really honed into the ‘act on your gut feeling’ and it’s led me to wonderful places and activities in my life that I needed at that time. I think if I hadn’t acted on it, I may have looked back at regret and moved on with life and wouldn’t be in the right mindset to do that at another time later. You’ve also had many in the last few years. To more turnings points for us.