Little Black Book

I woke up this morning with a vague nightmare that left me profoundly confused. Just when I think I remember a piece, it suddenly evaporates. But the feeling is so lucid. Gosh, I hate it when that happens. If you know the source of your anxiety, you can patch up the missing pieces. Now what can you do if you're clueless (ironically, you're likely to have MORE clues when you're so-called clueless) and you need a blank space to work on while your mind is trapping you with branches of concerns out of nowhere?

Well, my little black book does the trick.

It's not that kind of little black book. It's just a hardcover black notebook that's little with one of my favourite quotes on the front cover - never let the odds keep you from doing what you know in your heart you were meant to do by H. Jackson Brown Jr. It was a gift from hubby as an encouragement for my French class and university applications more than a year ago. Alhamdulillah it went better than I hoped for. You see, I have a penchant for notebooks. Sometimes I buy them just because I love the sight of them and I'd leaf through the empty lined papers thinking what I would do with them. So as I browsed through the scrawled pages of my worn little black book, I found myself smiling alone looking at the random French notes, various tips on topics like publication, business, engineering and erm, British accent, basic friendly phrases in six languages (they come in handy, trust me!), list of subjects for this semester and my erm, thoughts on them, list of movies I'm dying to download - I mean, to see in theatre like other responsible citizens - and plenty other silly things I tend to scribble sometimes in the middle of the night or in the bus. Apparently thinking out loud has become a habit of yours truly and it never fails to put things back into perspective.

g.a.r.d.e.n.f.o.u.n.t.a.i.n.s c.o.m

I remember a friend who would plunge himself into his iPod when he needed to think. It's like blocking the world outside and escaping to his own. And there was another friend who would simply sleep her worries away. One time, she consumed the whole bottle of Panadol pills and she fell into a very deep slumber with foams coming out of her mouth. She made it alive (after a painful stomach pumping of course and I hope for her own good, some counselling). Interesting in a scary way, that one.

I'm doing fine with my little black book though. I don't think I will have a nightmare again tonight (law of attraction) since I'm going back to my studies next week (has it really been 2 weeks of break???) so I have to trace back my notes & assignments (they're a little cloudy now but I hope I had finished them all before Italy!) and I have exams coming up (oh boy, where's my calendar???). My professors are such a fun lot that they love to have three hours of exam so gotta get ready for those creative hours!

s.t.u.d.e.n.t.h.a.c.k.s o.r.g