What Does Happiness Mean At 22?

Most of the time, people mistake ‘happiness’ as the life goal. A destination we have yet to reach. But you have heard of that ‘Instagrammable’ inspirational quote which says that happiness is, instead, the journey.

Unfortunately, quotes don’t solve any problem. And sometimes, they are so simplified that we tend to misunderstand them. Yes, I agree that happiness is the journey, but it doesn’t mean that our new goal is to now be happy all the time. That’s where people get the concept of happiness wrong: it is not constant. Your journey doesn’t have to be always bright and beautiful. There will be storms.

It’s time to delete that misconception from your neurotic pathways. Happiness is not constant. If, after reading the quote, you’ve set yourself to achieve 100% happiness in your day-to-day, you are bound to failure and disappointment. Happiness isn’t the destination, but it is not entirely the journey either.

So what is happiness? And how dare a 22-year-old like me lecture you on such ‘wisdom’?

Post-Graduation Blues: What’s Next?

This is the post that I’ve been struggling to write. It’s this post that I couldn’t bring myself to publish. I didn’t blog for a month because of it.

I could just have brushed it off and removed it from my schedule. But I do insist on putting it out there. Then, we can go back to posts like the one I wrote last week on Asian movies.

Among all the blogs I’ve written, this is the only one that is still going strong 6 years later. Among all of them, this is the only one which I deem to be my ‘personal’ one. A blog that’s for everything and anything. No niche, no marketing. Just you and me.

And that’s why I wanna share this part of my life with you.

Have I Given Up On Travelling?

Honestly, this post was so hard to write. My thoughts are all over the place and I apologise.

***

I’ve had this blog post idea for a long time now. It’s been on my list of ‘topics to write on’ for months.

The original title was “I gave up on travelling.” But I decided to change it. Why?

Who I was months ago had a different perspective and mindset when she wrote that title. Who I am now has gone through a lot of post-graduation thoughts about the future… and some kind of epiphany about who, where, how I want to be.

Back then, even though I didn’t seem like it, I was against travelling as a student, unless you could afford it, i.e. your parents are freaking tolerant about you spending their money (mine aren’t).

The 4 Core Values I Stand For

On Friday 17th February, I completed my internship at Mossery, a stationery brand startup that crafts beautiful customisable planners, sketchbooks and notebooks to the world. However, what I really found special about the company was its huge emphasis on nurturing and communicating values.

Throughout the 2 months and a half (or so) period I was there, I eventually started thinking about my own values. Everyone has a set of values they live by, but I was never really conscious of mine before. Finally, after some deep soul-searching, I figured out 4 core values that I’ve been following pretty much my whole life. And I’m sharing them here, in the hopes that you too will be inspire to look for your own.

1. Ancora imparo.

I am still learning. Okay, so it’s funny but this is the slogan of Monash university, which is basically how I discovered that beautiful, empowering yet humble phrase. At core, we, as human beings, will never cease to learn. If we want to grow, we have to keep on learning.

5th Blog Anniversary | Reflecting On Where I Stand, My Future Career, My Vision

Actually An Evil Nymph’s Blog blog anniversary was on the 1st August and it wasn’t until WordPress congratulated me on that milestone that I realised it. I knew 1st August was something special! Dang it!

Anyways, at that time, I had just published a post a few hours earlier and so I decided to wait a little more before putting up a proper ‘Happy Blog Anniversary’ post. However, yes, since I’m back to school and new into my third year, my responsibilities got in the way. In fact, I would have completely forgotten about blogging it if it was not for my Google Calendar, in which I have set a goal to blog once a week.

That’s how crazy life gets when the semester starts and you are involved in many things, including being a (High, sometimes) Distinction student. I literally need my phone to remind me of everything, haha!

Anyway, it’s been five years, guys. Five years since I started blogging. I can’t describe how much it has opened my eyes to the world… and my own. My blogging style has changed a lot throughout the years, but I believe that the main reason I got so immersed in blogging was not only my passion for writing, but my search for who I am, an identity, to find myself. 

12 Pockets of Advice a.k.a. 12 Ways To Not Let Life Kill You [Guest Post]

1. Those nights out or in with your friends, taking you away from your responsibilities when you so desperately need to pay attention to them, are not going to make you smile when you are wondering why you and the group drifted apart. Friends build each other up. Friends look out for each other and study together, or, friends make sure you study too. Friends are not supposed to have fun with you all throughout college or university then dump you when “real-life” calls. Those people have always lived without realism, just the kind of people you should stay away from.

2. Even if you think people you care about don’t care about what you do for them, do it anyway. Whether it is your family or significant other. Because when you’ve had enough, your conscience is clean- suddenly why do you have to care about undeserving people anymore?

3. Have a degree of selfishness- because years of selflessness and then the sudden downhill slope realization that you must be selfish- will kill you.

21 Lessons Learnt On Turning 21

On Tuesday May 3rd, I turned 21.

Although some might say the opposite, 21 years is a pretty long period of time. 21 years feels like a lifetime, for all the positive and negative experiences I’ve gained and endured. 21 years is 252 months of existence on this Earth. It is around 1,095 weeks. Approximately 7,665 days.

It is freaking 6.623e+8 seconds.

Of course, in comparison to the time of the universe, this lapse of time is very very very insignificant, but it is all relative anyway.

Without further ado, here are 21 lessons that I learnt (most of the time via the hard way) during those 21 years and that will probably stay on with me for a very long time. Moreover, I wanted to make this post a little special, therefore, each lesson is presented to you in a picture-text form, designed and personalized by me.

Why I Believe that ‘Lucy’ is Misunderstood

After months of an internal conflict between watching the movie ‘Lucy’  for psychological curiosity purpose and not watching it because it is based on a scientific myth (that we used only 10% of our brains), I finally gave it a go and YOLO, I watched it, not expecting anything extraordinary.

Well, erm. Verdict…

The Past, Who We Are and Other Thoughts

It feels like it’s been ages since I last posted on this blog.

This was mainly because I’ve been doing a lot of thinking (which eventually also includes writing, reading and watching anime/TV series ^^).

Three months’ school holiday is way too long, although it’s been filled with seeing new horizons, since I’m in a foreign country, but at some point it pretty much fucks your mind, especially if you’re living on your own. You start getting all deeply philosophical and start questioning every aspect of life.

Or is it just me?

I’d like to share a few of those haunting thoughts that have been following me for a while… and hopefully read your comments afterwards:

1. On Mirrors

I don’t know if I’ve talked about this here but I moved to a cheaper residence at the start of the year and among the furniture available in my room there was no sign of a mirror! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not your vain narcissist typical girl, but I enjoy making up outfits in front of a tall mirror and… well I simply have this ‘strong liking’ for mirrors. Therefore the mirror chase was on! My friend also joined me because she happened to want a mirror as well (peer influence XD). We were of course looking for the cheap options so we looked a little everywhere and took our time before we finally settled on those specific budget-friendly-but-nice-quality mirrors…

Anyway, this whole ‘chase’, that lasted about a month, made me think of something very peculiar about mirrors. It all started when my friend taught me how to know the difference in quality in the glass of the mirror (quite simple actually: just look into both mirrors one after the one and check for any ‘deformities’ in terms of how your body is being reflected… If your head is way bigger than your body you obviously know it’s not a good mirror…). She thus wouldn’t choose a mirror because it didn’t reflect her ‘normally’ i.e. the way she thinks her body is.

This was when the discussion started and my thoughts started to grow.

But how does she know how she is? If one thinks about it, no one can see oneself, except through reflecting glass, like a mirror, but if my friend just proved me that the mirrors can be flawed, then in truth, one can definitely never see oneself.

Can You Really Be Happy?

By the title, I mean, can you be happy for 100 days in a row?? 🙂 Yes, most of you already know what I’m going to talk about in this post and what has been going on in my life recently while I was away from the blogging world (my most sincere apologies for that!!!), which is the #100happydays challenge!

The challenge is to post a picture everyday for 100 consecutive days online on any social media platform of my choice (I chose Instagram!) showing the little things that makes me happy. The main goal is to make people realise that happiness is not a destination, but a lifestyle 🙂

Thus, I decide to share my first 14 days in the challenge here:

 

 

It’s Never Too Late… For A Selfie!

It’s never too late for a new blog post either!

For those of you who love to participate in the Weekly Photo Challenge as much as I do you may notice how the title relates to the fact that I haven’t been blogging for two weeks but I really want to remedy to that by still giving a shot at one of the challenges I missed which was ‘Selfie’.

1st take:

You can actually find this photo on my Instagram. Follow me @dkwaye !

Weekly Photo Challenge | Window

 

 

I wanted to emphasise on the window patterns so that’s why I underexposed myself 😉

Weekly Photo Challenge: Focus

Indeed, it’s been a while since I did a WPC!

Here’s my interpretation of this week’s theme, focus, where I focused my SII camera on this watch-necklace, although there’s my painting at the back, which I’m almost done with by the way 🙂

Time is ticking away.

And there is school.

And there is art.

But Time is more powerful. It is above them all.

While we can catch up on work, we cannot catch Time.

No, we cannot catch God.

So what’s your interpretation of ‘focus’? Feel free to share it in the comments below!

An Evil Nymph.

Related articles

• Weekly Photo Challenge: Focus (yobynos.wordpress.com)
• Weekly Photo Challenge: Focus (privatemixture.wordpress.com)
• Weekly Photo Challenge: Focus (thesimplesmiles.wordpress.com)
• The Weekly Photo Challenge: Focus (jewelog.wordpress.com)
• Weekly Photo Challenge: Focus (nackynice.wordpress.com)
• Weekly photo challenge: FOCUS (katjusablog.com)

Weekly Photo Challenge: From Above

This week, the Daily post decided to choose the theme ‘From Above‘ for the photo challenge. And here’s my interpretation of it: