Dera's Diary

Hello everyone, Happy New Years Eve! I cannot believe that tomorrow, a new year begins (and that I convinced myself to write tonight!). It's kind of really weird, feels like it would've made more sense for the new year to begin in a new week. But what do I know? :) I hope that today you've been able to do some reflecting over this last year. It was tough at times, wild and vastly different from what we've known. But I think that if you look deep enough, you'll find pockets and maybe entire seasons of growth and joy that were born in this year. I know I can definitely find a couple. As I look towards the new year, there are a lot of things I want to do and learn and so many of those ideas and needs were revealed to me in this year. I am so grateful to have been alive in such a revolutionary time in history and such an inspiring time in my life. I don't take for granted the lives lost and the reputations destroyed in battles that we've fought this year....

Merry Christmas everyone! I intentionally pulled myself out of the intentional Christmas laziness to post today in the hopes that I could share some love and hope of the season. I know not everyone might connect with Christmas so deeply and a lot of times I question whether I would have such a deep attachment if it was not for the presents. But this year, it feels different. A couple of things were different this year anyway. We had a guest over for our Christmas Eeve dinner. I was super apprehensive about this cause I didn't know if a guest would fit easily into our banter, but it was such a great night. Lots of food and lots of laughter. I've been baking a lot and we gave our guest a LOT of food to go home with. We also gave some of the staff in our apartmenet some cinammon rolls. Apart from the fact that we really needed to get rid of some food, it felt good to give people stuff like that. Made me feel all warm inside. In addition to all that, I really feel at peace thi...

Hello world, Christmas is getting closer and closer. Something major I have learnt recently is not to get so caught up in the idea of being busy especially at this time of year. In secondary school, I enjoyed being busy. I mean, I got tired and stressed and all that, but being busy made me feel important. I was reading something and it reminded me that you shouldn't be so busy that you can't sit still and just enjoy the moment and hear God. Ultimately, it's also understanding that your worth does not come from how much work you do or how many activities you're involved in. Productivity and busyness are not the same. I'd much rather be productive than busy. Moving forward, I follow this guy on Instagram and he writes and signs off his name as Solo. He is probably one of the most anointed people I know... he just speaks truth you know, and somehow it always hits home. This week he was saying he doesn't want a life that looks beautiful on social media but is he...

Hello everyone, I know this post is pretty late... this week has been hectic. The term was coming to an end and I had set this crazy target of finishing all my assignments before the very end. It did drive me crazy at moments, there were some breakdowns, some mandatory rest periods, lots of confusion, lots of stress. But I'm so proud of myself and so happy that I did make the effort to finish all assignments. I mean, I still have some work to do.. but I'm giving myself like a week before I think about the little pieces of research I still need to do here and there. I just started thinking about myself and this year in general and how there are some things I love to do and said I'd do this year, that I left behind at some point. I intended to master my guitar this year.... definitely didn't happen. I kind of did some major damage to it earlier this year and I just haven't fixed it. Another thing I think I let fall to the wayside was my writing. I mean, I started ...

Hello world! I was watching and reading some things earlier this week that really got my attention. I'll summarise the movie I watched that provoked these thoughts. So this woman had to go to work so she left her son at home and told someone to check in on him at some point. She came home, couldn't find him and it eventually became a missing person case. Now the police was getting lots of criticism from the public at this time just to give you context. So eventually, the police said they'd found her son. But when she saw the boy, she knew it wasn't him. She told the cop in charge and the guy told her to 'try the boy out'. She took the boy home because the cop took special care in letting her know the boy had nowhere esle to go. She took him, but continued to demand for her son. The cops sent a doctor of psychology or something like that to evaluate the physical changes she'd noticed in the boy, if he was her son. The guy came and gave 'reasonable, me...