I went to see my doctor the other day– he asked me if I needed a refill on the depression medication I never actually filled. The facts being that I didn't want to take a pill every day just to function. It's not that I think it's bad for the people who live that way– but I'm not bad every day. I needed something for situational anxiety and they tried to prescribe me something to take...for forever. I didn't see a road out that way.

I drove all the way to the pharmacy with that script, between being numb and being in tears. In the end I never filled it. But besides the melodrama...I told my doctor that I never filled the prescription because it wouldn't help me in the way I thought I might need to be helped. That I didn't want to be overmedicated. I still wanted to be me. Was vaguely disappointed when he didn't press the issue any further... But then I guess if I was desperate, I would have told him so. It's not as though I'm afraid to talk about it. 

Despite all the things I have to look forward to ahead of me, baking a wedding cake, Scotland, camping, Fan Expo, some days it's hard to keep my chin up.

Every once in awhile I'll be standing in the middle of a room by myself and my spine will wrack up on itself and my fists will clench and I'll just breath like I've walked right into the wall of a panic attack. Lungs seizing up. No more than 5 or 6 breaths. Then it goes away. I have to shake it off and continue on. Just now and again, like there's some part of me that's on red alert, buried way down below the surface while the rest pretends everything is just fine. 

Generally by the time I'm tired enough to go to sleep, I *need* to go to sleep because all I can think about at that point is how long life is, and how every decision I'll ever have to make is frightening. How the ones I've made now could be the wrong ones.

In spite of all this, I'm trying to stay positive and look after myself. Go for walks if I get to low, read to stay occupied, see friends or talk to family that might make me a little more calm. It's incident to incident at this point. 

So Saturday was my birthday. I'm now 24 years old. I have no idea what that means, what it's supposed to mean or if it means anything at all, even.

I've been having a tough time with anxiety lately. Like...really tough. Considering options of medication. Jill and I went for drinks at midnight of the 21st, and I brought up the idea of pills to her. She was understanding, but she also didn't completely get it. It's something that's difficult to translate from one person suffering from a mental health issue to someone who isn't. You can never quite articulate exactly how it is you're feeling, and the blunt force trauma language you might use to get your point across sounds...well...

Crazy.

There is a strange kind of experience that comes with sitting across a table from your elder sibling, on your birthday, drink in hand, music blaring in the background, and trying to explain that...things have been getting worse lately. Trying to explain that it's not something therapy is going to fix this time. That you've fought anxiety in the past without medication but this feels different. And it feels different because in the times before you never woke up feeling like you were just tired of being alive. It's not that I want to die on bad days, it's just that I've been tired of existing. 

My birthday was low key, with love and thoughtfulness. Jill woke me up with my first breakfast in bed-- birthday cake flavoured pancakes. Messages of birthday goodness came in across all platforms. My mom who never bakes made me a torte. The sun was shining. There were decorations up in the house, just for me. I went out and bought some comics. I went to a poetry slam with Steph, and Dan gave me a hug hug and was so happy to see me. I had all this love at my fingertips and everything felt right. And then I woke up this morning to go to work and I was anxious and I wanted out of my own head.

Birthday was a good reminder of what the good times are like. Which is great because lately, the good times have felt a little few and far between. So yep. Thinking lots about life and living.

Sing Out

If you ever watched the cartoon of Disney's Recess as a kid, you might remember the episode when Mikey, the gentle giant, was found to have an amazing singing voice-- but he was so shy he could only sing in the bathroom at school. 

I don't have that level of stage fright, but I hilariously think the acoustics in the bathroom do wonders for the voice, and working for the newspaper, I end up in the school and the bathroom at weird times, when both are pretty much abandoned by all except me and my journalist colleagues. It's not uncommon for me to be in the bathroom at midnight on a Monday, and end up singing while I'm washing and drying my hands, just because it's kind of fun. 

Since there's no one else around, I tend to get loud too (possibly broadway style belting), to my heart's content. 

Well, today, I was finishing off Little Mermaid's "Part of Your World" (with ZEAL) when I heard clapping outside of the bathroom door. Oh god.  I froze. My secret was finally out. I pulled it open to see some guy who I don't know, who I've never seen, by his open locker-- right next to the bathroom. He grinned at me and said in a voice very reminiscent of Anton Yelchin's Pavel Chekhov, "That was beeyouteefull!" Which was adorable, and slightly made it less embarrassing.

I had to have known this moment was coming. This is what comes of belting it out in bathrooms, in public places. And yet I was not prepared for it in the slightest. I turned the colour of a bashful tomato, muttered a kind, "thank you!" and shuffled down the hall, humming the song, while wanting to burst out laughing.

There's no real punchline here. It's just that when you sing in bathrooms, eventually, it catches up with you. And then it's hilarious. 

2014 Resolutions

Read more.

Write more, or create more in general. Art is not a hobby but a way of life, so prove it.

Work out twice a week, at least. And PUSH to make that happen. As with art, so is fitness.
Sweating could be the art of the body.

Recognize negative thoughts come far easier than change, and have the panache to tussle with the former and the grace to be patient with the latter.

2013, what we are now is one day more and one young woman certain of only one thing, and that's January 1st.

There were monumental shifts in the speed of time in 2013. Winter dragged with unfathomably heavy feet as it always does. Blink, a bachelorette and a wedding. Blink, it's three weeks in Australia over, and then the plane ride home felt 30 hours long instead of 16, with the flight from LAX to YYZ being the blink of an eye.

The long, slow drag of my depressive episode in the summer, coupled with the crack-of-a-whip speed of first semester and Christmas break, gone. I can't believe 2013 is over, but what's more, I can't believe how much it never seemed to make up its mind. It was everywhere.

I did a lot this year. Physical accomplishments, things like getting my editing position, my trip to Oz... I also had a lot of emotional struggle, including my first real, REAL heartbreak, a battle with anxiety, a step up in bravery.

I'm too tired to be writing this now, but I won't have the time to write it tomorrow.
I guess I'll say this year was hard, but the hard parts made the easy parts that much sweeter, and they made something out of me I wouldn't have achieved without them. I'm still pondering my resolutions, but I'll probably post them.

Probably something about fitness and art, as usual.

Self Renewing Compulsion

"I am an animal and a child, an artist and a saint. So, too, are you. Find your own play, your own self-renewing compulsion, and you will become the person you are meant to be."-George Sheehan

I'm always scared to begin again. That never changes.

After days or weeks or months, with limbs locked up like diaries I lost the key to, the starting line always looks like the "you're finished" line. Like a kid all over again, my fingers hesitate when it comes to the shoe laces. My throat's in double knots and I'm scared my lungs and heart are the little engine that couldn't. I thought I could, but, this time, you have to admit you weren't born to make it up that hill. 

I'm scared like the soles of my shoes will get in touch again with the pavement, only to find the romance is dead. Like whatever carried me 10 kilometres over hard ground in cold October air will have given up the ghost and left me, breathless. Are you there yet? Are you dead yet? 

Because running might be human, but no one ever promised that being human was easy. Loving is human too. So when you mash the two together and you're aching for something that's going to make you ache, that's going to put your back to the wall, your feet to concrete, the grit in your teeth, the anger in your heart, the freedom in your spine, the tuck of Vimy Ridge soldiers in your chin– what else can you do but oblige it?

I'd rather give in to the madness and the hunger in the fibers of my muscles than give up.

....

Going to go for my first run today in a few months. Going for my first winter run ever, really. Scared. Might report back later.

Stalemate.

I'm supposed to be novel-ing right now, it's NaNo season once again, but I can't get out of my own damn head long enough to put something on paper. Everything I write down is too close to home. My narrator is too much like me, or is exactly me, or will have done the things that I have done, that I've been doing. Have I finally hit the point in life where I've become my own protagonist? Become my own force of nature?

I don't know. I don't know what to write this year. I've been spending my days penning news pieces and articles and poems and fan fictions, and I don't know that I have any words left in my head to talk about things I can't see in front of my face any longer. And it's actually very frustrating.

Anyway, sorry (Jill) for not posting for her for forever, but everything you need to know, I'll pass on by word of mouth, or else, by writing it in your Moleskine journal. SIGH. 

Dream

So I decided I have to withdraw my application from George Brown for January 2014 after a lot of angst, some tears, a heart to heart with my older sister and a realization.

The realization that just because I'm not going to pastry school straight away doesn't mean I can't learn things about pastry and baking on my own time. So I went to the library yesterday and checked out "The Pastry Chef's Apprentice" and a book on basic pastry and baking techniques by the French Culinary Institute. I want to take in as much as I can. If this stuff is a real passion of mine, I can keep the dream alive, practice and learn as much as I can before I go to school.

Then, when I get to baking school, I'll just be a total ACE, right?...Er...RIGHT? Because I don't believe in giving up, but I believe in givin' 'er. So I'll keep baking and learning, and writing essays and trying to "learn to love the skies I'm under." (Thanks, Mumford & Sons)

Take a deep breath. If things aren't alright, I've got time to make it better.

I've decided to do everything. Ever. Seriously. If reincarnation is a crock and "YOLO" is the gospel as told by Generations Y & Z, then I have too many things to get done. Write. Sing. Bake wedding cakes. Climb a mountain. Travel to Paris. Chase down every dream with fervour until I've got it under my fingertips.

Because I can, and maybe because I have to, and definitely because I want to. 

A year ago yesterday I moved to Montreal. That's crazy.

The Road Back

. Visit a new city! -- Melbourne, Australia.

2. Make proper macarons.

3. Get another tattoo. 

4. Run 10K. (Again!)

5. Accept a compliment gracefully.

6. Read 12 books. -- You Suck & A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore, Half Asleep In Frog Pajamas by Tom Robbins, Hannibal, The Hunger Games trilogy, 7/12

7. Make more time for dancing. 

8. Send letters to people I love.

9. Maintain a fitness routine for 3 months. -- In progress!

10. Find my signature beer/cocktail.

11. Learn how to use dad's SLR camera.

12. GO HIKING!

13. Learn "hello" and "I love you" in 3 more languages. (Bonus: Learn simple Russian phrases to talk to Babcia.)

14. Shoot a blog video for Bite Club.

15. Finish a third slam poem, for a full set, just in case...

16. Surprise someone! -KACY'S VEGAN BIRTHDAY SURPRISE

17. Ask someone out. (Bonus points: in person. Forget texting and Facebook.)

18. Drag out on Halloween. 
19. Actually print off and frame some of the photos I've taken.  

20. Learn things about latte art. (Like, oh, I dunno, how to do it.)

21. Stay out all night, until the sun comes up, who knows how long it will be before you can't do it anymore?

22. Get rid of some old stuff.

23. Make a 24 before 25. (Never quit striving!)

Going back to school and feeling less like everything is stupid and pointless now. I'm singing in the shower and recipe hunting. I even want to write and edit a little. I no longer want to fall off the face of the earth in a bid to stop existing. So I'd say everything is going relatively well. I feel like myself. 

Q&A

Dear internet, I know I've been getting pretty dark and heavy with shit here the past couple of posts, so I feel it is my duty both to myself, as well as to the people I love and care about who read this blog, to record something positive, when there is indeed something to write about. To record for my own mind, a note that when things get tough, that doesn't mean they get impossible. Push.

I'm not feeling 100% better, to be honest, my anxiety is wobbly and my self esteem is not great, but these are things that can be worked on, and that's the point. That's fantastic. When we're weakened, we can rebuild. Today, I painted my toenails, just because I wanted to. For fun. Something completely unnecessary to my survival, something that plugged me into myself, my life, and I had the drive to do it. I slept because I was tired and not because I was sick of being awake and being alive and being aware of both.

I've turned a corner of some kind. I'm even back to worrying (lightly) about the choice I have to make between what career path I want to chase down right now, instead of shrugging it off because "whocareswhatyouchoosebecausenothingmatters."

I may not have the answers right now, but at least I'm asking questions. God, I can't wait to make up my mind, get even better, and get on with blogging about something else for once.

Push.

I'm writing this because trying to verbalize any and all feelings I'm having right at this moment seems almost impossible. Sometimes, I zone out from the world, staring off into nothing, and I realize my brain is trying to scrape together words that might summarize it.

It's not sadness. It's not nothingness. It's not worthlessness. It's not a lack of something, so much as a presence of something else. When you swallow a thick food, like a wad of hot mashed potato and it burns and sticks in the back of your throat and there's a strain of a choking to get it all down? If that was an emotion, this would be it. When you look in the mirror in the middle of the night, half asleep and you don't recognize yourself, and you don't like what you see. When you know you need something but you won't get it for yourself, whether it's because of empty batteries or because whogivesafuck. When life seems impossibly, agonizingly long from the point where you're standing, and you're not looking forward to it.

Knowledge about mental health is REALLY important to me. It's an issue close to my heart in so many places, through so many people, and I try to educate myself on it as much as I can. And I can say with some conviction that I think I'm suffering an episode of at least mild depression. I didn't want to use that term because it's serious but... I've never felt like this before. I'd been sad, but this is something else. I've never actually been depressed before... Not until now. I just woke up one day and it was...different.

The blog Hyperbole and a Half has a pretty apt explanation of what I'm feeling like right now:

"At first, I'd try to explain that it's not really negativity or sadness anymore, it's more just this detached, meaningless fog where you can't feel anything about anything — even the things you love, even fun things — and you're horribly bored and lonely, but since you've lost your ability to connect with any of the things that would normally make you feel less bored and lonely, you're stuck in the boring, lonely, meaningless void without anything to distract you from how boring, lonely, and meaningless it is. "

And while what I'm experiencing is not as extreme, shreds of it resonate with me. (Read the whole post here, the insights are amazing, heart breaking and sincere.) The feelings go away if I push.

My new motto. "Push." Push to go for a run. Push to do something you like, even a little something, like baking an easy batch of cookies. Push to wear something other than sweatpants. Push yourself to see the people you love, even if you're afraid, afraid of crying at them, or staring at them without being able to relate to their overall goodness, or afraid of being misunderstood. Push to get out of the house. Push to try and sing like I used to.

I'm trying a little bit every day to get better, because as much as whatever it is I'm dealing with wants me to be nothing, and do nothing about fixing it, I am pushing to help myself. To engage. It's not easy, but I can't let it beat me, because I don't want to live this way. I want to love life again, or I should want that, so I do want it, somewhere deep down. I'm reading a book about cognitive behavioural therapy to try and fix whatever's gone awry.

Let's waste time chasing cars.

Today, I felt okay. Maybe okay for the first time I have in awhile. I kind of felt like... maybe everything wasn't pointless. It sounds borderline-omg-put-that-girl-on-24-hour--death-watch, but today I went out biking and I was nervous around the cars, because I have things to live for. Something clicked and today, I mattered, and maybe even though I'm not sure where I'm going and I'm not sure where I'm supposed to be, there IS a place for me somewhere.

Some part of me acknowledged that a big part of my problems are just wild insecurities, confidence issues not yet resolved.
Maybe I do matter to the people I love, the people who love me, and it's only the ugly voice of poor self confidence that's telling me I'm being replaced and it doesn't matter, that I'm not good enough for them, that I've changed for the worse, and that every choice I make from here on out will be a mistake.

Strangely, it helped to go to the thrift store and try on clothes that both fit and looked good. The weight gain over the trip and the summer so far have only made me furious with myself, and today I think I realized that it's going to be okay. Finding the perfect fit just felt like, no matter what size I am, I can still choose something that's me. I can still be myself. That I'm going to fight back somehow and go on without drowning. I went for an intense bike ride and took on as many hills as I wanted, never stopping to walk on any of them. Regardless of a number on the scale, I feel like my body is getting stronger every day. (I'm almost 15 days into my "23 before 24" goal of maintaining a fitness regime for three months!)

It also helped that I looked in the mirror and it was the first time in awhile that I didn't feel plain or ugly. There was a glimmer of something in the mirror. Something beyond pretty or beautiful, beneath the surface. Maybe it was the unique thing that makes me... me and today was the first day in a long time that I really felt like myself again.

I don't know what to make about any of this, I just know that it's good, I hope it lasts, and even more than that, I hope it keeps getting better. 

Progress.

Progress on the 23 before 24 list, thus far.

3/23 completed. 

 My 23 before 24 list.

1. Visit a new city! -- Melbourne, Australia.

2. Make proper macarons.

3. Get another tattoo.

4. Run 10K. (Again!)

5. Accept a compliment gracefully.

6. Read 12 books. -- You Suck & A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore, Half Asleep In Frog Pajamas by Tom Robbins. 3/12

7. Make more time for dancing. 

8. Send letters to people I love.

9. Maintain a fitness routine for 3 months. -- In progress!

10. Find my signature beer/cocktail.

11. Learn how to use dad's SLR camera.

12. GO HIKING!

13. Learn "hello" and "I love you" in 3 more languages. (Bonus: Learn simple Russian phrases to talk to Babcia.)

14. Shoot a blog video for Bite Club.

15. Finish a third slam poem, for a full set, just in case...

16. Surprise someone!

17. Ask someone out. (Bonus points: in person. Forget texting and Facebook.)

18. Drag out on Halloween.
19. Actually print off and frame some of the photos I've taken. 

20. Learn things about latte art. (Like, oh, I dunno, how to do it.)

21. Stay out all night, until the sun comes up, because it sounds like a movie or a book or a song, and who knows how long it will be before you can't do it anymore?

22. Get rid of some old stuff.

23. Make a 24 before 25. (Never quit striving!)

Not mine, must be yours.

I'm not even back from Australia a week, but already I'm longing for the sweet pause that is disappearing from your own life. The funny thing, is while I was in the Outback, seeing more stars than I could ever dream of, kicking up red dirt, I really missed home. Now, I arrive home only to realize things have shifted in my absence, I'm less sure of everything in my future than I thought I was, and I no longer feel like I have a place anywhere. 
I think the need to belong, whether it's in a family, a group of friends, at work, or within society as a whole, is pretty strong in all of us. Sometimes I feel like with me, it's both a fuelling and destroying force. When I'm something to somebody, when I feel needed, a lot of my insecurities melt away and I'm happy.. But when I feel like I'm on the outside, anything good turns bad, and everything bad turns worse. My future. My body. My relationships, or lack thereof.

I had a weird moment today, when I was helping move some things into my kid sister's apartment. She's moving to the big city for school, and living with our cousin. If I go through the motions and get into baking school, then get the cajones to drop out of university, there's a chance I could be living there too in the third, unoccupied bedroom. The place was nice. Gleaming hardwood floors, granite countertops, stainless steel appliances. Glass coffee tables and enough light. I felt sick to my stomach. The place was nice, but it wasn't me.

I missed my apartment in Montreal. With the excessive stairs, the uneven, creaking floors, the little back balcony. The art on the walls and the vintage trunk for a coffee table. The neighbors downstairs who play their music really loud at 3AM on random weekends. My apartment. Where I knew I had a place for myself, because I had made it. The girls already had some of their furniture moved in, none of it really suiting my own tastes,  and I could imagine months and months from now, that it wouldn't be so much that I moved in with them, but that I would move in AROUND them. I know this is ridiculous. I know that if I had to suck it up and put in the work and the sacrifice to get what I want, I would. I would move into that apartment.

But until that moment when I saw my potential future, the small empty spare room in someone else's apartment, shit, someone else's life, it finally hit me how much I was going to be giving up if I had to make the move. Montreal will always be better than Toronto in my heart, today just clarified that.

My insecurities and uncertainty only ran yet more wild when I realized later in the day that I don't even feel secure in my place in Montreal anymore.  My friends there have been building their beautiful lives in my absence. OBVIOUSLY, I mean, I'm not an egomaniac, the world wasn't going to stop when I was gone and I knew that. But still.... The fear that I'll return there, only to stand on the sidelines, only to be nothing is...rampant and strong. That I don't have a place at all... I was so anxious and irritable and heartsore over all of it, I passed out for 3-4 hours, hoping the feeling would disappear. It didn't.

Strong ideas that I don't have a place in the now, and I don't know anything about my place in the future.

23 before 24.

This is in progress of being written and re-written, but I couldn't resist. It's still being edited, I even changed some between the typed version and the photo below, but hey, it's my list and it ain't my birthday yet, so I can do WHATEVER I WANT.

 

 My 23 before 24 list. (Thus far.)

1. Visit a new city!

2. Make proper macarons.

3. Get another tattoo.

4. Run 10K. (Again!)

5. Accept a compliment gracefully.

6. Read 12 books.

7. Make more time for dancing. 

8. Send letters to people I love.

9. Maintain a fitness routine for 3 months.

10. Find my signature beer/cocktail.

11. Learn how to use dad's SLR camera.

12. GO HIKING!

13. Learn "hello" and "I love you" in 3 more languages. (Bonus: Learn simple Russian phrases to talk to Babcia.)

14. Shoot a blog video for Bite Club.

15. Finish a third slam poem, for a full set, just in case...

16. Surprise someone!

17. Ask someone out. (Bonus points: in person. Forget texting and Facebook.)

18. Drag out on Halloween.
19. Actually print off and frame some of the photos I've taken. 

20. Learn things about latte art. (Like, oh, I dunno, how to do it.)

21. Stay out all night, until the sun comes up, because it sounds like a movie or a book or a song, and who knows how long it will be before you can't do it anymore?

22. Get rid of some old stuff.

23. Make a 24 before 25. (Never quit striving!)

Fails.

Bek took me to an amazing delicious dinner out tonight in honour of my upcoming 23rd birthday. On the bus back to the apartment, she asked me if I was ready to be twenty-three and I think at first I snorted and then sat back and thought about it. "I feel failurely." Which is not BEING a failure, I'd just like to clarify, it's being fail-ish. Which is like being in transition. Now I realize you don't get to have your life de-rubixed by the age of twenty-three, hell, people never really SOLVE life, they just deal with it as it goes. I can't help but feel...lacking.

Bek said you can't fail until you give an answer, and if you're looking for answers, then technically, failure is impossible because you're still searching. I said, "I just feel failish. Not just this whole school career dilemma. Just. Everything."

"Like what?"

At the time I couldn't think of any like whats, but now it's 5AM and I'm typing this and it's all coming into place. Like whats: The weird stumbling drunken two steps forward, one step back that is my love life. My weird relationship with food, which, although much better than previously, is still pretty manic in terms of "yo-yo" weight gain. This links into my weird relationship with my body. My place in the world. My sense of style-- if I have one. The fact I haven't been to a dentist in a long time. The fact that I've had a credit card for more than 3 years and only RECENTLY figured out just how they work. I don't know. Maybe we need to account for the small victories but I'm not feeling positive enough to pull that off right now, so I'll leave that for another day. BUT.

I realize compared to some people, I more or less have my shit together, at least emotionally. (Hellooo volunteer coordinating) but I feel like it's all this shallow surface stuff. I can cook a decent (hell, maybe even an amazing) meal, I know job interview protocol, some rules of social etiquette. But...it's not enough.

So I'm going to do some soul and goal searching and come up with a "23 before 24" list. Maybe I'll post it. Who knows. 

Crying in public is as weird as it sounds.

I cried today while making "Pros and Cons" lists, one for staying in university, and one for jumping ship and heading to pastry school. I was sitting in the park near my flat, under a tree, writing them, listening to "Make the Money" by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis and I just. started. crying.

In the fucking park.

I realized that no matter what choice I make, it's not going to be an easy one. That staying in Montreal could now just be as difficult as leaving it. This fork in the road of my life is so distinct that it feels like ONE or the OTHER right now. And I know no matter what I do, I'll walk down the path and look back over my shoulder every step of the way, wondering about my choices.What's worse? If I stay here, I'll wonder if I stayed because it was the easier option. If I go, I'll wonder if I bailed out of fear.

I've been talking to everyone. And I mean everyone. I'm one 'elderly-wise-black-lady-on-a-bench-at-a-bus-stop' short from collecting the opinions of the entire world on the matter. Not usually something I do, because I'm easily swayed by people and I want to have a clear head. But this is different, everyone has starkly different beliefs on the matter.

When I finally told my parents I was thinking about culinary school, I was expecting some sort of reasonable response from the two of them. "A degree is important in today's world" or "Think about the money." My dad has always said he could see me as a professor, so I thought at least he would disapprove of the notion of it. And my mom-- always supportive, but usually supplying caution-- you know what my mom said? She picked this moment in life to turn into a sparkly fairy mom mother and whipped out the Disney classic: "follow your heart. Do what makes you happy."

Writing and baking both make me happy. I am never going to lose my taste for literature or fresh baked anything, let's be honest. On Skype with Jill the other day, she said I've been writing longer than I've been baking, but  thinking back, I've been doing BOTH to express myself since I was pretty damn young.

I remember when I was a kid-- god knows how old-- I had a major crush on my neighbor, Rob. He was older and super cute and really nice to me, when the other kids picked on me for being roly poly. But I would have rather smothered to death in a vat of buttercream than admit it out loud. Hell, I didn't even admit it to myself at the time, because that's how stupid I felt it was. What did I do? I baked that boy a fucking cake from scratch on his birthday. To my memory, my first EVER cake from scratch. A two layer vanilla cake in heart shaped pans with vanilla frosting and green lettering on top because that shit was Rob's favourite colour. 

The only reason I never thought of baking as a career option before was because I thought I wasn't good enough at it. I thought writing was the only skill I had in my toolbox worthy of being turned into a job. The only way I could ever succeed was by forming words into sentences into paragraphs into thoughts.

And I was okay with that, because I loved writing. I still love writing. Writing is my everyday. I love poetry and blogs and articles, and I love taking a confused mess and editing it to be clean and concise, while keeping someone's voice fully intact. What my clumsy mouth fails to say, my words express with pitch perfect clarity on paper. I love reading. I love learning hidden meanings and history. Suddenly though, I have another road. I have another choice that I never saw before and I have no clear way to turn. All I want is to make the right choice. But there are no wrong answers here, so how do you pick?

Follow your heart. Do what makes you happy?

I am not happy right now. Indecision sucks.

As I'm typing this, I've got the back door open to the screen, the light is streaming into the kitchen, the breeze is wandering on in of it's own warm(ish) volition, and baby oh baby, I hate to jinx it but does it ever feel like spring here!

Spring, that comes after the LONG Montreal winter. Spring that puts love back into my heart for life itself. No kidding here, winter was rough-- there were a few times where I was sure I had made the wrong choice to move here and I was going to have to move back to Ontario in order to prevent myself from going insane. Too cold. Too French. Too dark, too lonely. Too heartless. Spring is making me fall in love with the city all over again. The patios are out, people are strutting their fashion, and me?

I finished my LAST final two days ago! First year is officially over. I forgot how absolutely awesome it is to get that feeling of "SUMMER VACATION". Usually when you graduate, you never see that feeling again. It was nice to get in touch with the excitement, the liberation, especially when it was so hard earned.
My last exam was a French exam-- I was not even stressed about a bit, replacing hard studying with blog baking until my face fell off and casually reviewing my notes. Ho hum, the subjunctive tense, whatever you say, Madame.

That was, until the 10 page monstrosity was dropped in front of me. It took me two and a half out of three possible hours to polish that sucker off, and I'm sure I'm one of the stronger students in that class. I think I broke a sweat. I think I wrote notes in the margins like a manic linguist, hoping to put down things before they disappeared in my panic. I think my eyes maybe rolled back in my head and I can only hope I wrote in tongues. Who can say? The results will be up soon.

All the while, there are things to be planning. To be doing. Steph and Philip's wedding is next month, Australia is less than 60 days away (AHH!) and in between all of these things there is Mother's Day, and MAYBE the Waterloo Classic 10K to look forward to. That's right, my second 10K race ever. Days like these, I look forward to living.