Reflections

Another year has come and gone and soon we will be bidding adieu to the year 2008.

It has been an eventful year for me and it is timely to reflect on how the year has developed in terms of my key interests in toastmasters, kidsREAD and personal goals.

Toastmasters
It has been a good year for toastmastering. I have accelerated my growth and personal development in this area by completing my Competent Leader as well as Advanced Communicator Bronze awards this year. I have visited many clubs and made some new friends along the way. It has been tiring at times when one has to go to a club after a day at work and to take up appointments as project evaluator or language evaluator. I continue to learn about event management, planning, scheduling, getting people to say "Yes" to my request for them to come to my club and act as project evaluators and appointment holders. Winning friends and influencing people are a hallmark of Toastmasters skills that one develops (in addition to a thick skin) to get people to help you with meetings. *haha*

kidsREAD
My first full-year of kidsREAD saw me taking care of my 9 cute but at times active class of mosly 7 year-olds. I am blessed to teach this class as the children are mostly well behaved (especially the girls) while the boys were manageable. I believe my vocal variety and ability to be more animated in reading stories has improved as my audience lets me know it whenever the novelty or excitement of the story wears off. Children are very frank in letting you know if you are boring with a capital "B". :-)

Blogging
As the year nears to the end, the creative juices are flowing with sometimes multiple blog entries in one day. It is getting more therapeutic and carthartic to pour out some (not all) of my thoughts electronically for the world to see. Of course, in reality if more than 3 persons read my blog, that is already a good audience. *smile*... It used to be difficult in the beginning to think of what to blog and I felt self-conscious in thinking that my articles would not be worth the bandwidth it took to upload and download. I have managed to overcome this inhibition and now am able to blog relatively freely about recurrent themes and thoughts that permeate (a word I practiced during the previous December club meeting) my mind.

It is amazing sometimes when we document our thoughts we realise there is actually quite a lot going on in the little grey cells up there. Blogging helps us to structure some of the meandering streams of consciousness into a coherent flow which can be navigated by you dear reader. :-) It allows me to explore more of both hemispheres of my brain as I use both words and also pictures or graphics in my blogs to help maximise the creative energies within my mind.

Others
It has not been smooth sailing this entire year. There were periods of depressive tendencies and times when I felt lost as well despite my busy schedule. The busyness at times masks the thin line that separates us from being "OK" to not being "OK" in transactional analysis terms. While most of the time I am "OK", I am also susceptible to bouts of hopelessness and despair as well when the darker side of my mind takes over with the poisoness pessimism that can strike any of us when we least expect it. That is why I have tried to, in my connections with people, be a positive element rather than a toxic, negative element which neutralises good vibes and makes eveyone feel sucky.

Conclusion
It has been an interesting year as there were hits and misses. Overall, I felt that the hits outweighed the misses and begin to realise that when we grow older, we really do trade our youthful idealism and enthusiasm for a more mellowed outlook that is realistically positive. The realistic positive way of looking at things accepts situations more "AS IS" but with a hopeful view. It knows that all that separates us from living and dying is at times just the most minute of circumstances and occurrences. We live in God's hands. He may decide that one day, that is our day to go be with Him.

I wish all my reader(s) a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

May your dreams drive your reality in 2009!