Being the Best I can Be?

I'm not quite sure where to start. Sometimes I think too much, and sometimes I think too little. It seems I do the latter more than anything!

I don't want this entry to be anything more than a contemplative one; I'm fed up with the dark, soul-piercing stuff that comes with the likes of Confucius ("a journey of a thousand miles begins with one single step"), etc, etc.

I just want to get on with life -- and be better, yes BETTER, than I am.

Sure I have a job--and I am thankful for it. Yet I know that sometimes, I think I was working harder when I was still looking for a job...

How effing ironic is that?!!

SO, I'm dissatisfied with life? Not quite, but thing is: I could DO better.

For the past few weeks, for example, work has been an island I have longed to get off, yet I make my quotidian appearance like a dutiful pupil interested in going to school. Not that my heart is not in it -- far from it--but I was feeling not so motivated.

Which is--again--effing ironic!

COs here is a guy who is one of the most-acknowledged self-confessed geeks on positive thinking there is. Right this morning, I made an entry about Dale Carnegie's brillian book " How To Win Friends and Influence People on amazon.com that I am pretty proud of.

It made me realise that I do actually remember a lot of those precepts that I had internalised about being a better person than I can be.

My Mum has always told me I'm very bright, but she doesn't understand why I can be so LAZY. I always fumed about that. Other people don't understand when I say I'm lazy. It's not a endearing quality to have, but I am far too accepting of it and it has to stop.

Other people see me other than a lazy bastard, as the Brits would say, and many others have admired me for some effing mysterious reason. Truth is I'm effing lazy! If I weren't, why would it take me ages to finish writing a report I was supposed to have completed almost a month ago? It was the same at ICDA Secretariat in Brussels. There were times when I would do nothing than just surf the 'Net endlessly, and just waste time doing nothing till I felt it was time to get into action.

Which actually reminds me of an article I came across yesterday on expatica.com about Internet addiction in Belgium. You can read it here: Internet addiction a growing problem.

It refers to children failing/doing badly at school because they have become so hooked to the 'Net. The scary thing is that it isn't only just them. Check this: "The patients are becoming addicted to virtual communication in chat rooms, drawn by "the friendliness, the speed, discretion, where they can finally talk about themselves".

Which is perhaps why blogging is so cathartic, because you get to talk about yourself and engage (I can feel it coming!) in hedonistic solipsism. That's two big words to describe indulging in talking about yourself...

Then again, it shatters into smitherenes my post of last month when I talked about "Human Nature" and I attracted comments from the very personable and cute JeN-JeN, and the equally personable and cute Laura from YellowCurious.

But to digress...to digress...

From Internet addiction to laziness, anad back to me.

Nothing new here. Except that on March 19, I SO wanted to write a kind of eulogy for my late brother Sam. He passed away in May 1991. 8 May to be precise. Just almost two weeks after I turned 14. I was still in school. It was raining that day. I was on crutches. I don't even remember what I was wearing, but I can see myself hopping on my crutches down two flights of stairs as I saw my Dad's brown 520 series BMW comein through the gates of the British School of Brussels--wipers going left to right quite powerfully.

March 19 is not so curious for me, cos that's when he fell into a coma. Here is a picture of him when he was attending the European School of Brussels. Actually, it's his bus card:


Sam's Bus card at the European School Brussels (Woluwe)--1986-87 

Doesn't he look cute?:-). I know he would have whacked me for saying something as puerile as this. But we were inevitably the best of friends.

Actually, he was my best friend. And the only one I will ever have.

So, Jen, of Puff-puff categorary, if your ever get to read this, forget that I have a major/minor crush on you (;-). Just remember that as angry as you may be at the apparent favoritism your brother has, he WILL always be your brother. SO try and cultivate an iota of a friendship with him...

Enough of that!

It's a characteristically hot day in Accra, and though any reference to Accra would automatically go to my Trials and Tribulations of a Freshly-Arrived blog, I'm gonna write that here.
Sue ME.

Just to backtrack very quickly, whilst I wanted to write a eulogy for Sam, I also wanted to do it whilst listening to Hooverphonic (excellent Belgian group that went seriously international!) and their very haunting "Eden" song. The lyrics, you can find here. I thought it best reflected my mood.

ANyway, before I end up writing a discursive essay, I'll end on what is staring right in front of my monitor here at work (it's luch time, hence my freedom to ramble!):

"Become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see the possibilities--always see them, for they are always there."

from none other than Norman Vincent Peale, whose book my Dad bought in 1977--the year of my birth--whilst he was coming from what was then an Organisation of African Unity (OAU), but now the African Union conference in Addis Ababa as a English translator working with the Foreign Service here in Ghana.

Peale saved my life in 1991.