2007 vs. 2008 - Part two

This morning I went to have breakfast and tea at one of the coffee places here and was reading a book about Buddhism and was also thinking about what I have written yesterday. And realised that somewhat for me the last year was also a year of becoming empty, of off-loading a lot of things from myself.

I wrote about the cycles of life yesterday, that I feel that my life is going through cycles. And realized that during the part of the upward cycle we accumulate things and shape ourselves. It is like flying with a hot air balloon and gathering objects and experiences in our gondola. However at a certain point our gondola is full and we do not fly upwards with our hot air balloon. At one point our experiences and learning and life tops on a journey and we just float and instead of flying high, we seem to land in a place, being dragged down by all the things in our gondola. This landing is the downward cycle and we might choose to land, or we might choose to continue our journey.

But in order to continue our journey and go and fly again, we need to get rid of some parts of our past, of some parts of our souls. We need to off-load some of the stuff from our gondola. And that is very hard. We are afraid of loosing what we have gathered. But if we want to fly high, over the rainbows, then we need to offload. Somehow 2007 was a year for me where I was offloading a lot of things, maybe that's why I felt that it was fairly hard. I was getting rid of the extra weight from my soul, my gondola, and becoming lean again to be able to fly high.

And now I am already flying, I am empty, I am light, I am looking forward to fly to another level and gather new things in my soul/gondola. It is a good feeling and I feel the winds of change blowing in my face while I am flying with my hot air balloon.

P.s: It's not the DHL balloon! That is not a hot air balloon, but a sealed helium balloon, tied down with a rope, with limitation to fly up to 150 meters only. No rainbows there, just a nice view.

2007 vs. 2008

I have not been writing for a very long time. I just felt no need for it, however lots of things happened. I guess it was that period for me when I just set back and meditated about how the last year was, what happened, what experiences did I go through, what are the learnings. And the beginning of this year started with planning on how this year should be and figuring out what I want and how I want things to happen.

Last year was an interesting years, I achieved most of my objectives and most of the things I have proposed to myself, however did not make much progress on two big ones that I wanted to change. On those areas it was an "almost year". I almost made it there. So overall i feel that 2007 was a good year, but just not good enough. Not extraordinary. Maybe subconciously I choose stability over change and comfort over bold measures. So here are the headlines of last year:

- Doubled my pre-tax income
- Travelled in 6 new countries and in couple of countries where I have already been.
- I met very cool people :)
- Read more then 15 books
- Managed to go home to Europe twice
- Run a half marathon
- Helped my parents to buy a new car
- Improved significantly my golf and did some very funky dives
- Helped my AIESEC Local Commette in Oradea
- Got a First Aid license
- Almost found love and had some very nice almost relationships

Yeah, these are couple of things for the year. Of course these are just some results, but what it matters most is the journey itself. That was sometimes rocky, sometimes good for last year so I have mixed feelings about 2007.

On the other hand this year will be a year of change. I feel that this will be an exceptional year and so far I really enjoy it. Changes started right at the beginning as I have moved into a new appartment. I have also changed my spectacles, hehehe. Even my golf is just much better this year. :) Somehow it feels that while last year I had to struggle for every achievement, this year everything is much easier and the road is smoother. I am much more relaxed, much more confident and happier. It seems that the whole universe is helping me this year and this will be my year. Hope that at the end of the year I will be looking back at this post and agreeing with what i write now, hehehehe.

Do you have this feelings, instincts about how your year will be? Do you feel that you are in cycles in your life and then you feel when you enter a good cycle and when you are in a bad cycle? I feel the engines roaring and I am Taking Off!!! What about you?