I think I need to continue my "Being Present in Life Writing Challenge" so that I feel, you know, more present in life. The issue is however, it was initially catered to my life living alone. It kinda feels irrelevant now that I live with my family again. I have to admit that it does feel a whole lot better to have my family around whenever I'm having my slump mode. So to commemorate my current way of not living alone, I feel like I need to highlight whatever different things since. By since I mean two months.
Wau, it has only been two months only lol.
To start with, I've been doing lots of renovation-ish or sort of mending around the house now that I'm actually living here. For the past two months, I've been in bouts projects mainly focusing on our upstairs space.
A few years back, my parents did a big renovation on our upstairs space which added three more rooms and a medium-sized common space. My siblings who were still living here hardly use the rooms save for my brothers whenever they are back. However, for the past few months, my siblings started to use these rooms and I am currently sharing one of the rooms with my sister too. We're a big family. As these spaces weren't used before, it wasn't really comfortably room-ish save for beds to sleep on. So I put myself in doing bits of renovation projects here and there to make the space of better use plus having the common area become more comfortable for us to leisure around or do work.
This includes putting up more storage space stuff and making my sisters follow my rules of putting things away, repurposing or recycling old stuff whenever possible, having some new fixtures and I even went into hand sewing stuff too because I can't be bothered to actually learn how the sewing machine work.
Don't worry, learning how to operate this sewing machine is on my to-do list.
I've been repurposing an old dressing table, upcycling this old wooden sofa set, reorganizing our study tables, reorganizing the clothing cabinet, putting up curtains, putting up a more organized way of keeping the tudung and shawls, mending old pillows, mending the old iron board and I even set up timetables to make sure the laundry is done and the space were all swept.
You can see mending and recycling stuff is quite a theme but I have been throwing out tonnes of old stuff too. Funnily, that also involves breaking up and packing things and having to throw them away in another dumpsite area as they won't be picked up by a garbage truck. I was actually amazed at the length I have achieved in mere two months because I am very much still working as usual. I do have my sisters who helped around though so that's a bonus.
Recently, as I am 90% done with having designated places for our stuff, I have also put in efforts to make my sisters adopt "clean as you go" behavior. These kids are lazy I told you. Nevertheless, it feels so satisfying seeing the space now all comfortable being used by them accordingly.
We also have a small balcony upstairs. I wanted to turn it into a cozy small space to chill but since it is small, I can hardly fix much stuff there. I did come up with an idea to put fake grass there and have already bought it. So now we're waiting for it. We can probably just chill on the grass lol.
I still need to do something about the common space and reorganize some more stuff. Also for some reason, the lamp in one of the rooms simply won't turn on and we don't know why. Probably needs to learn about that too. Just a few days ago, I put up some simple wall decorations in one of the rooms and I feel like I need just one more clothes hanging space and be done with it. The wall decorations need some more touch-ups to it but I don't have any idea at the moment. Probably a visit to the shop will help.
In the meantime, I spent some time hanging out with my family and friend too. My sister had her graduation the other day and almost the whole family got Covid-19 the week after. I finally watch the latest Dr. Strange movie and even Thor: Love and Thunder during my quarantine. I was lethargic for the whole week so I barely do anything but watch either Netflix or Disney Hotstar. We went to Air Force The Movie too and it was good. I got to try some new eating place around here and tries to cook more during my days off. I've been watching more Criminal Minds nowadays and simply loving it.
Work has been a bit dull since it's a new shop. I was feeling demotivated too since I can't do many sales due to multiple reasons and it kinda put a toll on me. The most cliché thing is since it makes me more demotivated, whenever there is a customer, I went quickly assess even the slightest bit of rejection body language of the customer which is simply a depressing first mindset approach in retail. I need to keep on reminding myself to believe in my capabilities and to stop overanalyzing everything. It's tiring really.
In the meantime, I'm also trying to use my free time to actually learn more about products. I think I need to be more conscious on setting daily goals to in order to make myself feels more accomplished. I also need to read more books in order to get the gears in my brain to move more too. I still didn't start any reading through though #lol.
I'm still settling in. These are all new norms but I guess since I'm single and my friends are all far away, it's good to be in a close-knit circle back, especially my own family. I still miss my life in Kuantan. If I were to live alone, that life is ideal.
