Positive Start

On the final day of 2012, I posed a question on facebook and twitter: 

What was your proudest achievement/biggest moment of 2012?

In hindsight, I think it would have been better wording had I gone for 'proudest moment' and 'biggest achievement' instead. Moving on, the responses were beautiful and wonderfully positive and I'm always happy to hear of good things happening in people's lives. 

At the end of the year, there tends to be an air of cynicism as people begin to look forward to the year to come. This cynicism tends to be aimed towards, but not limited to, two types of people:

1) 'this is my year' people

2) 'new year, new start' people

Broken Glass at Christmas

Come with me as I take you on a journey through the eyes of fictional character Abs Williams, of Nigerian descent (Abs being short for Abiola and the surname a result of colonisation) as he prepares for his 25th Christmas. 

An Unhealthy Obsession

All my life, I've noted in others, and at some stage most likely myself, a desire to retire early. If it wasn't retiring early, it was wanting to retire my mother early. In the more recent years of my life, I've steered well away from that notion, truly wanting to spent the rest of my breathing days writing.

Why do we as humans have such an obsession with retiring early? And why do so few of these obsessions materialise? I think I can answer the first question. It's sad to say but one of the key reasons why most do the jobs they do is because it pays. That could be paying: - the bills
- holidays
- nights out
- addictions
- children
- debts