N I M A V E N L

 I used to have an active blog. Started it in 2008, deleted a number of posts, posted more in 2009 and kept going. Posted photos and book reviews, wrote about the stories I was writing at the time, gave my opinion on what was going on in the world... Earlier this year I took the blog offline. Somehow I felt like I needed a change. Needed something different. Needed all parts of my life to be different.

A lot has changed in my life in the past two-ish years. I was forced to grow up, if I can use those words even though I've been an adult for quite a few years already. I was forced to change, despite not being ready for change at all. When you don't choose change but are forced to deal with it because that's just the way life works, it can be really hard to accept the changes and the 'new normal'.

Sometimes though, when life gives you an opportunity for change, you don't realise how important that opportunity is, how vital it was that you change, until you've been through enough change to be ready to appreciate the opportunity and the changes that came with it.

While a lot has changed about me, there's also a lot that hasn't changed at all. I'm still an optimist at heart (even though I'm excellent at being grumpy too!) I still love being a part of this world, reveling in the beauty of nature and of creation. I still choose to believe in happy endings and fairytales, in the unseen, the crazy and the downright impossible. I still love science fiction and fantasy, still love reading and writing and taking photos, still love learning new things and challenging myself to do something new and different each and every day. I still believe in God and despite everything, I believe that there truly is a plan and a purpose to existence - Not just my own but that of all life.

In the past few months, I realised something important. No matter what happens in my life, how I look at life determines how I experience it. See life as a struggle and that's what it becomes. See life as a wondrous, wonderful, exciting, challenging and uplifting experience, and again, that is what it becomes and how you experience it. This new perspective helped me grow as a person, helped me see that change is good and a necessary part of life. Without change we stagnate, we stop growing, we stop learning, we stop developing as people. Without change, we stop challenging ourselves to be better today than we were yesterday and to be even better the next day and the next.

While this new blog post isn't meant to be challenging or life-changing or all about the purpose of existence, it does represent the new and changed me. Me, changed, but rooted in the same experiences. Similar to the old me, but hopefully different too! Now that you've come to the end of this blog post, you'll no doubt have realised that there's something else that hasn't changed about me... I love writing long blog posts!