Day 21 – Your zodiac / horoscope and whether you think it fits you

 

I am born on 29^th of October, so my zodiac sign is Scorpio. Actually, I was born prematurely, being seven months baby who was too excited to see the world than staying in the womb. If I had been born as a nine months baby, my birthday would have been in December, maybe on the New Year Eve, but who knows for sure.

When it comes down to reading my horoscope, which I haven’t done for months, I don’t put much thought on it. How can I say this? I don’t consider that the positions of the planets or the stars to have some (if any ) impact upon my behaviour’s predispositions and characteristic traits in general. I am not that kind of person who is going to be excited by the fact that Mars is in cancer sign tomorrow and that might make me impatient and too emotional. For me, this is just hilarious and I can just laugh it off at the very moment. My aunt always tells me how stubborn I am in some of my bias ideas concerning the world and how that inflict my point of view. Well, maybe she is right, but despite her unquenchable desire to talk me into accepting the importance of the zodiac predictions, I prefer to take a stand and not to give up on my obstinacy.

So, let’s begin with this experiment. For this, I simply typed on google search ‘’ Scorpio sign characteristics” and opened up the first website that appeared in front of the screen, then I picked three of the characteristics in the list.

Negative traits :

Jealous – it said that I am extremely passionate and jealous. Yes, I can be, but it depends on the situation, sometimes I can be jealous of the fact that the girl next to me can order a whole bunch of muffins and I am like ‘You should be strong!”. Now, seriously, I can be jealous only if am given tangible reason to act in that way.

Secretive- according to this I would rather trust cats than people, after all they are as secretive and mysterious as me, so it’s  a perfect match. I would just swap this for reserved instead as I am quite reserved towards different people. Sometimes, I don’t need a good reason not to be friendly and open towards someone when my guts tell me that is not the best idea.

Manipulative – oh, God, I wish that was true! I have such a plans for this world , alas I am not born for this. Yes, we all can manipulate the others when we know their weak spots, but I feel like I am doing something downright wrong even when I only think about manipulation. When a discover some evidence of manipulation I start to question the person in mind and what possibly could prompt him into acting in such deceitful way.

Positive traits :

Focused – this is so not me, I am easily distracted almost all the time. There are cases when I just catch myself thinking about something completely out of the topic when I talk with someone and I listen only to snitches of what the person says. It does not happen all the time, but when it does I feel myself embarrassed by it. Maybe that explains why I would prefer to read several different books at once, instead of focusing my attention on only one.

Ambitious – yes, I still have plans for conquering the world! To be honest, I am quite ambitious, indeed, but my perspective is more level –grounded and down to Earth. There is a difference between overambitious and realistic ambition. I would say that I am from the latter rather than the former. It is fantastic when someone has goal and dreams, since this is one of the driven wheels in life, but we need to be critical enough towards ourselves when it comes to fulfilling these desires and dreams.

Faithful – I would like to add up to this one , loyal, too. This is profoundly true, I can be your friend forever, if you show me reasons to trust you and you will be given my trust in return. You can tell me your darkest secrets and I will not tell a soul. I can support you if you respond to that in kind. Nothing less, nothing more. For me, every relationship has to be mutual, if it is not, there is no point in sustaining it. But once you abuse my trust, there is no turning back! Remember, I have a sting and I can use it!

Day 20 – Put your music player on shuffle and write the first three songs that play and what your initial thoughts are

Before I start writing something about today’s challenge, I want to say that I use my phone as a music player and due to the limit capacity of the memory in it, it has little space for music files there.  Actually, it involves the two albums of Imagine dragons and several songs by other artists, but not more than 50 songs. For this reason, the possibility of the songs to belong to ID is quite high. In my defense, I would like to state the fact that yesterday I did listen to the Adele’s new album, so my obsession with Imagine dragons is not complete. Sorry, but not sorry.

#1 Trouble by Imagine dragons

 

This song a bit of country for me, there is something quite so American style in it in the very beginning. I simply enjoy listening to it as there is something playfully joyful in the rhythm. It sounds to me as if I am going to make some kind of promise, but not quite sure whether I will keep it. There is something so unrestricted and casual way in which that promise is made that I and the other person know that it won’t be kept and there is nothing quite bad at that. The other thing I imagine while listening to it is a road, like a road trip to somewhere, long –waited one and highly expected. Yes, I would definitely listen to this song while travelling to somewhere, there is some sensation of exploring, excitement and yet lodging to what is left behind in this song.

#2 Gold  by Imagine dragons

This one is more like an explosion to me, like a bomb ready to burst out and destroy everything around. My first association is everything that might be corrupted by the greedy human nature. In which specter of blindness you would stand if you have all the power and money you ever hoped to have? There is nothing soothing in this song, nothing like a hope to give you solace when you need it the most. I associate it with an opulence and deceit, with the price you need to pay for all that gold in your hands, because sooner or later everyone pays for it.

#3 Summertime by Imagine dragons

All I can think when I give ear to this one last song in the long list is summer whirlwind love. It is not something more, nor something less. It reminds of that feeling when someone captures your attention and you are willing to left everything behind for a while, to forget about the world, to be a little irresponsible even. It evokes memories of a sea with the burning fire in the beach, of closeness to someone who you don’t know quite well, of whispers in the nights and words without meaning, but spoken out instead. Everyone has that kind of romantic moments in their hearts, a temporary bliss of the summer and everyone cherish them enough to keep the memory alive.

Day 15 – three pet peeves

Day fifteen, I can’t believe it I have made it so far and I am feeling quite good. This is a good motivation trigger , I think. Well, as my partner in crime (or in this challenge) Polly, we will celebrate the end of this challenge with a good quantity of hot chocolate in COSTA.

So, pet peeves, huh?

1. When someone is looking at their phone instead of giving an attention to someone

I get it, we are all obsessed with social media, facebook, twitter and everything around it, but we are not walking robots after all or at least not yet. For me personally, to look at your facebook or to scroll down your page while having a  friend with you over a coffee or something is rude. It shows great deal of disrespect towards that person and it shouldn’t be encouraged in any way. I use my phone when I am with someone when the person goes to the toilet (if he/she goes at  all) and only as a way of distraction, nothing else. I may appear calm outwards and say that is “okay” when someone does that in my presence, but the truth is that I struggle to grab the phone from its owner hands and throw it away. I have some friends who have a tendency to do that and they tell me that it’s out of habit, but still…

 

2. Mr /Miss Know it all

I don’t think that there is a person who knows literary everything in the world, because why… well, it’s not possible. We are all humans and as a people we don’t hold such a vast volume of capacity of doing that. However, it appears to me that there are people out there who think that they know everything, that they are familiar with any type of situation or that they are like walking Wikipedia, what possible answer to the universe and everything that revolves around it. Don’t get me wrong, I love people who are well- informed, who are smart and clever, but that doesn’t have anything to do with it. it is closer to arrogance than something else.

 

3. I am always right –attitude

Are you working as a judge , sir? No, well, you can’t be always right, sorry. I think that this has to do with the inability of admitting that the other person has a different perspective than you. Not being able to accept that you are wrong in a certain situation is more ignominiously humiliating than anything else, because it shows only weakness. I would admire and expect anyone who accept his failures and try to learn from them than someone stubborn who is afraid to step aside and to say that he is wrong. For some people is more important to win an argument than to draw a line omewhere. But do the results always justify the means?

Day 8 – Book you love and book you don’t

 

Here we are, with one of my favorite subjects in the world, today I am going to talk about literature or the magical world of the book. One of my dreams is to have a big library but with gothic architecture and filled with books from all over the world with a big staircase from the top to the bottom, something pretty much like the Admont Library in Admont, Austria.  Look it, you can hear a million voices of the books which beckon you to read them!

So, before I start I want to make something clear, I don’t want to criticize someone else’work, in fact ,I am not comfortable of expressing criticism about any form of art. For me art itself should not be evaluated or put into some category, quite the contrary it should be praised, admired and understood. But above all, art should aspire and inspire alike.  I don’t like to be an armchair critic who estimate the worth of someone else’s work , so forgive me if we are not on the same wavelengths regarding the book I chose to talk about.

I will start first with a book I don’t like, because like we say in difficult situations ‘I have bad and good news, let’s start with the bad ones ‘.

Book I don’t like/ love : Every Day by David Levithan

A brief plot summery: it is about a human who doesn’t have its own body, he/she is born with that, every day he/she is a different person. I am saying she/he because the protagonist doesn’t have a gender on its own since he occupies both boys and girls, but the author gives him the name ‘A’. At appears that she/he gives up on its fate, until one day something changes and he/she falls in love with a girl (at that moment she/he is in a body of a boy, so from that moment I will simply use masculine gender in order to avoid further confusion).

So, you know that feeling when you thought something as a good idea, but eventually it happened to be far from being brilliant. Well, I think that this exactly what it DID happen to that idea of a book,  it goes well, until a certain point. One of the things that make me avoiding re-reading this book is the fact that the writer tried so hard to express himself in the most poetic way possible that it ‘s just too much. It doesn’t need every sentence to be like a precious stone of wisdom and poetic beauty, I can feel the struggle of his writing to sounds as beautiful as it can be and I just get bored of it.

Secondly, so many unanswered questions here. First of all, the story doesn’t offer an explanation of A’s situation, how that happened, what sources provoke it, is it kind of magic or an evolutionary result of something? Questions after questions are being brought up in the readers’ mind wondering whether they would be answered or not. I am complete disappointed. In my opinion, this book is just an expression of a lost potential, that’s it, a brilliant idea wasted. Mr Levithan just took the easy road by emphasizing too much on some teenage love instead of trying to develop its character “A “ in a  deeper level and engage the readers beyond the potential romance.

My appologise, but I won’t pick up that book again.

Book I love/like: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Summery: Kathy is brought up in a boarding school, secluded far from the real world, in a countryside. She and the other children like her are being taken care of while making them thinking how special they are. As they grow up, they realize the secret behind their ‘special ‘ purpose in life. They are simply brought up to serve as donors to the people in the real world, I said that because in the world they live it resembles the real one, but it is like a lid around them, they are left without choice what to do with their lives.

To be honest, this book shocked me, inspired me, made me think and made me care for every character within the story. It’s brilliantly simple written piece of work which rises so many questions in terms of humanity, choice and morality. This a book about how despite left with no choice whatsoever in life, to fulfill their dreams, to become something, to love, to have a family, every character tries to preserve themselves, tries to accept that destiny, but to dream and live until the moment of succumbing to it come.

It is about dreaming with open eyes while the reality itself strips you out of every dream you can vouch to have. For me, this book is about a perseverance of the human nature itself and the will for living as much as you can. However, the most shocking and provoking element of the story is the full acceptance of that fate, of resigning any hope of change in the end as if you give your content to it. There is so much between these pages, heart breaks, betrayals, friendship, loyalty and along with all that the eminent arrival of the destiny which is portrayed as an unavoidable.

A brilliant piece of work!