It’s time for an emo(ish) post, seeing as I haven’t done one in a while.

Also because it’s lunch time so I cannot make calls; and in my bid to be Most Kiam Siap (stingy) Person Alive, I once again brought lunch from home. Today’s menu consists oven-baked nuggets (which by this time will be cold and chewy), a pear and a cup of green tea.

Biscuits for lunch gets really unappetizing, really quick.

Anyway.

I was just thinking. Marveling, really. How all things really do come at a price. If not at a price, at least at a slight inconvenience, or something or a similar nature.

Working with an NGO has to be one of the (dare I say?) nicest things I’ve done in a while. Nice for the cause, and for my sense of satisfaction that I am actively helping out where I am needed, but at the expense of my writing. Which is odd, I suppose, considering how one would assume that I’d be more verbose than ever. I guess it is not so much the work per se, but the nature of the work I am doing.

When one is confined to writing sponsorship request letters, receipts and such, brain-drain is somewhat inevitable. I go through such phases, when I am so mentally retarded (ha!) that words that once flowed so easily now come out sounding stunted and…veneered.

I’m also missing out on heaps of friend-time, because by the time I get home, it’s time to Skype with the boyfriend, have dinner, do chores…and by the time I’m done with that, all I want to do is zone out by mindlessly watching old cycles of America’s Next Top Model till I fall asleep.

While this isn’t as much of a good old whine as it could be, I guess I’m trying to say is that it sucks to have to give up some things to do others. But you already knew that, and I know I’m being Captain-Bloody-Obvious, but…yeaaa…

Gaah.

The weekend also brought about other mini-revelations.

Like how going back to uni for another year will yet again put off my moving back to be with the man I love .

Like how ending a relationship with one person, means possibly ending friendships with several others.

Like how the dilemma of duty over your own life choices, is really not only just about you.

Life brings about many choices, opportunities, red herrings. But while we often look forward to changes and challenges and move on, we sometimes forget what we left behind. Old friends that once meant so much to you, old ties that still bind, memories that lay dormant until something evokes them, making them sting like vinegar on broken flesh.

I embrace chances to move on. But now, I’m thinking…praying, even…please don’t ever let me forget what I left behind.

Not out of sentimentality, as such, but as a life lesson, to cherish what I have in the present, and a reminder that it’s never just all about me, because in changing the course of my life, I’ve inadvertently changed someone else’s too.