My week in words

source: theydonttellyou.wordpress.com

This week's been a really busy week so my words this week are a bit scattered. Projects at work with very tight deadlines, flat viewings (still looking for a flatmate and it takes the life out of me!), friends in town, Vietnam trip planning, you name it! I'm drained! And the more tired I am am, the more I am getting excited about those 3 weeks in Vietnam.

But back to words. I've been reading randomly from various books. I am doing speed researching for my 'love'/'dating' book and there have been lots of things going through my head which I noted down and thought I'd share as well. Some are really good, like some sort of ancient wisdom has taken the form of words in my head, so I am happy to share. Some don't really make sense now but I'm sure they will later. But I also read some inspirational things or things that resonated with me lately, which have now gathered below...


6-word fiction

'We kissed. She melted. Mop please!' -  James Patrick Kelly



 The Happiness Project - Interview with Rebekah Sanderlin.

Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you’ve found very helpful? (e.g., I remind myself to “Be Gretchen.”) Or a happiness quotation that has struck you as particularly insightful? Or a particular book that has stayed with you?

“Keep advancing the ball.”

'When I was a senior in high school, only one girl tried out for my school’s golf team. The school was going to have to forfeit the season. The golf coach was my Ecology teacher and he told me that he would teach me how to play if I would just agree to be on the team, so I signed up. (My grades were bad and I hoped he’d slide me a few points.) I was horrible at golf. The first few times I tried to hit a ball off of a tee I missed the ball completely. Then, once I started hitting the ball, it would only go 10 or 20 feet at a time. I hacked the fairways to pieces. My coach was patient, though, and he just kept saying, “It doesn’t matter how far it goes, as long as you’re advancing the ball.” That has become my mantra. I don’t have to be great at everything, I just have to continually make forward progress.'



Secret of Adulthood@gretchenrubin

'Things often get messier before they get tidier.'

'Make sure the things you do to make yourself feel better don't make you feel worse.'



Wetlands by Charlotte Roche
(Note: this is a wonderfully sickening book which will either make you empty the contents of your stomach with every turn of the page or make you wonder whether hygiene and social manners aren't actually just a little bit overrated)

“You go to the bathroom at a restaurant or train station and as you pull the stall door closed behind you, you’re misted from above. The first time it happened I was really horrified. I thought someone had flicked water on me from another stall. But then I looked up and saw a dispenser attached above the top of the door. It’s actually designed to spray innocent bathroom users with sickening sweet disinfected as soon as they close the door. On your hair, your clothes, on your face. If that doesn’t constitute rape by hygiene fanatics I don’t know what does.”

“I’m my own garbage disposal. Bodily secretion recycler,”

“It’s like a sport. In any room I have to be the most uninhibited of all those present.”


And the list goes on. Read it if you can. It will make you laugh!

And a few words that formed into my head, may mean something to you or not, they definitely make some kind of existential sense to me :)

'Living is an act of creation.'

'The main advantage of going to the cinema alone is that you don't have to worry about the fact that the person you're with might not like the film you've chosen.'

'My ego is reducing me to nothing.'

'My idea of heaven is being buried in books'

'Do something different every day, buy something from the supermarket you never bought before, talk to someone at work you never spoke to before, go inside a shop you wouldn't normally go and look around, smile to a stranger on the street and see what happens'


And lots of other weird ideas but I will finish here for now with the words of my beloved author  Milan Kundera:

 'Experimental thought seeks not to persuade but to inspire.'

Have a great week-end. Stay inspired.