Footbridge at the main library of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. I lived in Singapore for 16 years as a faculty wife. Two years ago, I went back for a visit. There were lots of changes. I caught a bus from the Boon Lay Interchange, and had to use the bridge to get to the main library.
I have joined this meme for a while now, and I am loving it. First I love flowers. Second, the badge for this meme is the North Borneo Orchid.
Join Macro Flowers Saturday, a photo meme for macro photos and close-ups of flowers, garden flowers, wildflowers, blossoms, flowers with insects and butterflies (no insects without flowers), flowers with raindrops and whatever beautiful plants, plant seeds or berries you have, in close-up.
First time visitors, please read the rules. They are simple but I do ask that you, please, use a MFS badge or link back to MFS in some way. Thank you.
You ever have those over-the-top-ridiculously-dramatic-emotional dreams?
I seem to get 'em whenever it's time to make change in my life but I'm not really noticing it.
For example, when I was in my early 20's I worked a job that was really exploitative, but I never really understood how I felt about it till I started having a bunch of prostitution themed dreams.
For some reason they were really old timey like this. When I finally quit that job, the dreams stopped.
Well, right around 2005 I started having a series of dreams where I would some how fuck things up so badly that I'd be booted from the LA Derby Dolls. They were always super dramatic and gut wrenching.
Derby meant everything to me, and if I were to somehow lose it, I wouldn't have known what to do with myself!
I didn't understand why my subconscious was being so evil to me! It's like, I finally find what makes me happy in life, and now my dreams are evil? What the cock??
At the time I took these to mean that I needed to be more careful about my words. Which was true, I was quite the little spitfire back then. In one of them I ended up sobbing and crying to Demo,
OK, well I guess I'll just leave and start my own league in San Diego....
This is not quite the triumphant and inspiring story of the start of SDDD that were probably expecting, right?
Well, that's because that's not how it got started. I ignored these evil dreams for a good 6 months! And when I finally forgot about them... I had this stroke of genius!
I emailed Demolicious and Thora (LADD Co Founders) and said...
Wouldn't it be awesome if we started a league in San Diego?? The there would be 2 Derby Dolls leagues!!
I didn't make the connection that my evil dreams could have had something positive in them until years later.
Not to worry, San Diego Derby Dolls was started from a place of raw enthusiasm, excitement, and inspiration!
But that's another story...
For now I'll just say... what's up with the dramatic dreams? Seriously, why can't the subconscious be a little kinder?? Does that happen to everyone??
I guess that's just the way it goes. Sometimes you get good dreams. Sometimes your dreams are evil.
That said, I hope you have a totally rad day today!
I'm gonna start this post with a quick disclaimer that I'm not Catholic. I was raised for a short time in the Catholic church, before I was asked to leave CCD.
True story: I was kicked out of the Catholic Church!
For Telling a priest to fuck off?
Pissing in the holy water?
No, young Bonnie's crime was laughing too much in class. Pure blasphemer that I was. So that's what this tattoo on my left arm is all about:
Sadly, 12 years later... it looks more like an alarming birthmark than this picture.
Now, all that said....
This woman's appearance may not look overly inspiring on the surface...
But she wrote some of the most moving words I've ever read. So this blog is about sharing that with you. I don't know if my interpretations are exactly as she meant them, but nonetheless:
"People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; ...Succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; Be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give the world the best you've got anyway. You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; It was never between you and them anyway."
-Mother Theresa
And if you're wondering what all this has to do with roller derby.... Well, read it again!
Truest words I ever read. So applicable to roller derby in so many ways!!!
Unlike this picture, which has nothing to do with roller derby. But it's cute!
A skater that I've always respected said something to me recently that made me feel sick inside. She said, "The best man doesn't always win." As a justification for the cut-throatiness of business.
I don't know if I'll ever see her the same way after that.
I would like to encourage people to choose, instead of accepting what is and allowing it to sour you... To take the high road and live from inspiration of what could be, and will be, if we keep working at it.
All religious zealousness aside, Mother Theresa's a pretty inspiring figure for these words. I've been affected by them since I first read 'em years ago.
That said... I'm still a blasphemer who likes to laugh a lot, so I'm gonna post these funny pix of Ma Theresa that I found while searching for the dignified one!
http://showyourworld.blogspot.com/ This is one Christmas dinner will we remember for a long time. They are from the Southland of New Zealand, we we bought them live from the Auckland Fish Market. The bigger beautiful purple crab is the male, and the female is brown. The legs of the male were more than a foot long.
We cooked them with four American crabs, and cooked them Singapore chilli crab style. I forgotten to take a photo of them after I cook them, but I can assure you that they were very delicious. We had a visitor from Singapore and she agreed with me.
Being great at roller derby has been my obsession since 2003. But for a little longer than that, being great at life has also been an obsession.
And by that, I don't mean all the material things we normally place under the "great at life" banner.
Some quotes I wrote back in the day, and still strive to live up to/remember.
I'm not against material things. I love things!
But having a lot of things shouldn't be a priority over treating people well.
Have you ever had a totally brilliant stroke of genius inspiration, shared it enthusiastically with someone close to you, and then watch in utter disbelief as they do a river dance on your dreams???
I know I've had that happen to me. Too many times to mention! It sounds innocent enough to the other person, I'm sure.
Most dream killers do it in the form of questions like How are you going to do that? Why would you want to? Or judgments like What's the point? Don't you think you should be worrying about X, Y or Z first?
Each time I think, I'm never gonna make another human being feel this way!
(And if I ever have, unwittingly, I'd be the first to apologize. Because it feels very shitty.)
See, what most people don't consider is that every new idea is kind of fragile at first.
And when someone decides to share their fragile thing with you, it means they're actually allowing themselves to be vulnerable.
Many don't seem to realize how far a little care and encouragement would go in those situations...
But great things can happen when you decide to be encouraging!
I remember when a friend of mine mentioned, almost in passing, that she and another LA Derby Doll (at the time) had the idea to start a magazine about roller derby.
You could hear the uncertainty and readiness for rejection in her voice.
Having been the victim of dream crushing so many times myself, I felt like this was really my time to shine!
No, not that kind of shine...
More like that.
So, I practically did cartwheels out of excitement for her! I told her that was the best idea she ever had and to go for it and it'll be great and successful and magical!
And a few years later when she had mentioned, almost in passing, considering hosting a training camp, like she went to for gymnastics as a kid, but with roller derby....
Again, I took my role as person she was mentioning this to as a serious responsibility and basically went bonkers over the idea, offering San Diego as the first place to host.
I'm not taking credit for anything here, Black Dahlia did all the work. And she continues to be an innovator, now organizing the first Roller Derby World Cup!
I like to call her "Blacky D"
I'm sure if she'd shared her ideas with someone less supportive, she still would have made them happen anyways. But, at the same time...
A little encouragement can go a long way in a sport that's being built off of enthusiasm as it's main resource!
Being encouraging of someone else's inspiration is what allowed SDDD to be the first hosting venue of a Blood and Thunder Training Camp.
And what got me some of my most exciting international coaching opportunities. (England and New Zealand!)
So what am I getting at with all of this? Well, I guess I could sum it up by saying:
Next time someone comes to you with one of their crazy ideas... consider this reaction:
Or be labeled a dream killer... you know.... either way.
For us here in Auckland, if there is a public holiday, the garbage collection skips to another day. With Boxing day being on Sunday, we thought the collection would be on Tuesday. But they came early on Monday, before people were awake, and my husband heard them but he was too late. I said that they shouldn't have come on Monday, and there were so much festive waste. It would be very unpleasant in our summer heat.
A lot of people must have complained, and they came again, I heard them and rushed out to the truck as they had past our house. I asked if they would wait for us. The husband came with the wheelie bin, and I happened to have my camera ready.
Here Ka Pai or good job to the men and women on this route.
I guess if you wanna get really good at anything, you've gotta pretty much obsess over it.
One way to get better at roller derby faster is to become more comfortable in your skates than you are in your shoes. And you do that by skating all the time. Or just wearing skates, even when there's no where to go.
In 2004 the LADD banked track got moved from the inside warehouse to the roof top of said building. This was a pretty cool place to practice, and I took advantage of that.
Not necessarily related, here's some quotes I wrote in a photo album from this time period...
I would go to the track, meeting up with someone like Evil E or Tara Armov or sometimes our coach, and skate ALL DAY. Bloody feet and all.
Turns out I do have a picture of my mangled feet from the old days...
I'd also skate all around town to do my errands, skate inside my house on days off, and go to skate parks and skate there too. Some people only skated at practice. Practice was kind of bonus skating in my week.
Some would call this a competitive nature, but I never really did it to better anyone else. I just wanted to be my best. The whole time I've been chasing my own potential.
A perfect image of derby, in my mind's eye.
And still feel like the best I have to offer is yet to come...
But there's another side to focus that people sometimes forget to tell you about. And that's the shutting out of other things that most people consider important.
And that's a subject for another post, but I'm sure you can guess that no gains come to life without a certain amount of sacrifice.
Pretty much every gain in life requires an equal loss, really.
You know, to make room for all the good things that are about to happen. If you have stories that relate to this, feel free to tell me all about them.
