out-of-the-box is IN!

I've been pretty steady for the longest time.   
Yet the path to steadiness was not paved in bricks.
Strength that's like second wind comes in the guise of so many names.
StoneCold.  Unyielding.  Bato.  Callous.  Uncaring.  Insensitive.  I was reduced to a Kris Allen song once. (Grossly unfair!)   

Peach calls it survival.  Bill calls it insensitivity.  Max calls it repression.  Jess simply calls it as it is.  

I call it knowing what I want. (Though you'd expect a word warrior wannabe to come up with a fancier term!)

My theory on self-obstinacy and the concept of delayed gratification may actually fly with this one.  Maybe my life's experience honed me to be no-nonsense and rational.  All this came with territory.  I crave the control.  I need it to tell myself I'm on the right track.
Boxed the old child and locked her up in my put-away box in the meantime and let her rest  grow up quietly.

Yet over the weekend, I surprised myself by doing something that I didn't normally do.

Like a guy, I'm pretty linear.  I'm very straight that way.  It definitely felt good although it wasn't a signature move on my part. 

  
LIFE, I put in perspective.
Things I have to understand in entirety and not be swayed by appealing bits and bobs.  I used to be glammed by the trimmings that I felt for the package. Wrong and naive as it may sound now, I ate it all up.

It took me more than half a decade to become the way I am.
I trained myself to be this way.  I hard-wired myself to survive.

Everything simple is the way I prefer it.

But I was confronted with a definitely...maybe which I hadn't been in awhile. 
Maybe because it didn't fall into any of my psyche's scattergories that it still nags at me. In varying degrees.

I haven't been that individual in a long, long, long, long, long, long time. (Yes, that very long.)

I wonder now and then about that free-spirited ciccia- the one I bade goodbye to after I crashed and burned.

But I do tend to put her back in her box and focus on the hard facts of my so-called fun life
St. Augustine has said, "Lord, make me good.  But not yet." (That sounds sooooo me!)

I've had a good think about it the last few days and I reckon it's a new action that I didn't expect from the steady me.

Chow-a-chat with Melissa at the Brasserie Boheme.

I haven't seen my friend Melissa in a long, long time.  We are the type of friends who pick up right where we left off.  The last time I had seen her was in Cindy's flat in Fulham with Robs I think. (More than a year ago.)

There is a thing about Melissa I must tell you.  She reads auras and she's usually pretty spot-on.

We always start our meets that way.  She reads my aura.

She says she likes my aura now.

More solid, more grounded and definitely back in my groove-- she happily reports that she sees a semblance of the ol' high school me back.  It was very good to hear her say that.  I do feel lighter and more in touch with the geek girl who was one of 'em boys.

I tell her me now that I didn't feel at home in London.  And that although I had work and all, I had a nervous energy.  It was true.  It was constricting.  Yes London was an awesome place to experiment and bring out the old free-spirited, laugh out loud individual.  I test-drove the new-improved Sadrina in London.  The Underground was my training ground hehe.  All that aside, I found and healed myself.  It was a survival sabbatical that gave me back my bearings.

It's true what she says.  I do feel more attuned to my old self, but of course a bit more mature now.  Still stubborn and an idealist but in more digestible bits.

But hey, Lennon did say that-

Maybe this is life- the way it's supposed to be.

Alas a new box has opened.

The old out-of-the-box has been revived, deemed active and updated to include all the new features of a better individual.

Hmmm.  I wonder if she's ready to stay out of the box for good...




Lord, make me good.
But not yet.