Bumblebees

I've been busy lately, and more or less happy with being busy. When I'm not at work, I feel creative and I want to have fun and enjoy every second with people and with writing and everything.

Let's start off with exterior blogs & writing:

Behind the Green Apron: Part II

Fashion Friday: Your Style

Shameless self promotion! OH. And I got my hands on a copy of the Comeback Issue, the first paper issue of Travis this year. I saw my piece. I saw my picture. UN.REAL.


I never thought when I was younger I'd be in a magazine... and now.... I feel small town famous.

I got down to a little baking too!

Double glazed pumpkin scones. (Simpsons fans: Mmmm....double glazed.....) I got the recipe, and believe me. THESE WERE SO GOOD. I ate THREE the day I baked them. I brought one to work for breakfast the next morning (5AM shifts or bust?), and when I got home from work , I realized they were so good my dog Jack had eaten ALL OF THEM. That was a little sad. I'll just have to try and crank those out tomorrow before all of our guests arrive for thanksgiving dinner!


UHHHHHH. I have to go to bed now. I open 5:30AM tomorrow. Thanks, Starbucks, you douche.

Orangetober

Shut up, I hate making titles. Welcome, welcome to my half assed attempt at outfit pictures, to flaunt this new jacket. This new, AMAZING, awesome jacket.

Every time Rebekah and I wandered into H&M, I would gaze at it on the way out. Lovingly. Longingly. And when it went on mid-season sale, Rebekah earned the BFF of the year award by surprising me with it as a gift before we went to see 50/50 on Sunday. If I am 49 years old and we are still both single, in a perfect world I will marry her for this, down on one knee with a Tiffany ring in one hand and a bag of sour watermelons in the other.

It's SO COMFORTABLE and very fall-y with gold buttons. Of course, being me, I couldn't just leave it at orange. So I added a red dress and my maroon scarf. Then I had light grey tights and black boots on. When I had dinner with my friend Justin tonight, (goat curry and naan bread for me, NOM NOM NOM!) he told me that he normally doesn't like orange on people, but said I was doing a good job. Rock on, orange jacket. Rock on.

Sooo, the one on the right is a little...
Jacket: H&M
Dress: Topshop (Thrifted!)
Scarf:I have no idea, it's a scarf. I've had it forever!

Blip on the Radar

Hey I wrote a thing!

Behind The Green Apron: Part I

Other things on the way: Pumpkin scones, 10K run woes, an outfit post I owe Rebekah, university Qs, coffee concoctions (the search for my signature beverage), volunteer options and.... I have no idea.

My coffee is cold now and I think I need to shower. Enjoy this in the meantime:


Bek and I saw it on Sunday. It's a beautiful movie which takes life on in monotone colours and spatters it with gut wrenching, heart crushing emotion and serious laughter that give it a life all it's own. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is PERFECT, and Seth Rogen plays Seth Rogen, AGAIN, but you can't really see him in any other role. He's in his element, between hilarious and heartwarming. Rather than being all comedy, it manages the perfect 50/50 balance between comedy and heartbreak. Sincerity and sorrow and joy. LOVED IT. THAT IS ALL.

Espresso Powered

Hey kids!

The good news is that contrary to what the lack of postings might suggest, I am NOT DEAD! (WOO!) The bad news is that I have been working a LOT (6 days this week!) and have not had the time or the energy to post anything. So, I decided to write a blog on my laptop while on my 30 minute lunch break at work. This breakneck speed is unforgiving so please let any typos, grammar, flying monkeys or espresso stains slide by unnoticed.

Everything in life has been going swimmingly since I lost my mind on that fine Sunday and ended up with my therapist. She made me realize that I need to make some big changes in my life. I've looked at everything from looking for internships at magazines to volunteering overseas to studying abroad somewhere cool, but I haven't quite decided which I want more. Any and all of these choices would obviously have a huge impact on my life, and I have dreams and hopes that are attached to all of them.

Thursday I'll be popping into my school to get some career counselling and hopefully find one answer or another to my dilemma. Also, meeting with my friend Justin for lunch, who invited me to the poetry slam a week? Two weeks ago?

Either way...poetry slam was CRAZY AWESOME, you have no idea. (Unless you've been to a slam before. Oh. My. Lawd.) It opened up my mind to how words could be used as weapons, as fists, as affection and hate and social expression. Don't ask me WHY I didn't think of poetry that way before, I just...never had experienced it that way. Bek and I got lost on the way there as her blackberry (which had the map and directions on it) died and so we ended up on another crazy adventure that ended in something totally new and beautiful and exciting. It was honestly one of the best nights in recent memory and I can't wait to go to another one! Which I most definitely will.

In other news, I am 90% sure that I am going to be FREDDIE MERCURY for Halloween this year. (As a follow up to my last minute decision to go as David Bowie last year.) The complete obsession with Freddie, and Queen and the general amazingness of them together continues on. I saw Lion King in 3D and while I don't give a damn about 3D, I have to confirm, yes, Lion King is STILL as good as you thought it was when you were younger. Actually, maybe even better. That's rare, isn't it?

Growth

My Sunday meltdown resulted in a trip to my psychologist on Tuesday afternoon. I'm not ashamed to say I've seen a counselor professionally. While I know therapy isn't for everyone, I've found it always helps me. I starting going when I first had panic attacks in my teens, and any time I'm out of sorts, I end up back on that same couch, pouring my hear out.

Naturally, it was one of the first things I concluded I needed, when I forgot my black shoes for work on Monday morning and collapsed again into crying with frustration while driving home to get them. (More than hormones. More than work stress....Seriously. The second you find yourself crying over sneakers is when you admit you're going CRAYCRAY and book an appointment ASAP.)
My psych is a lovely woman understands and sympathizes me in a way no one else could. She is not just there to pay attention to me because I'm another cheque. (Well TECHNICALLY she is... but...The look on her face an in her eyes whenever I'm spilling my guts out to her is always sympathy.) I've told her things I don't think I could bring myself to admit to my closest friends.

The point of this all is that I'm feeling sorted out. I'm not RESOLVED, but I understand more. I understand why I had the first real panic attack I've had in years. The weird feelings I've been having. The depth of the break up I went through. (Read: It was more than just... petty. Which made me feel less stupid for being sad about it.)

ANYWAY, the point is, there is going to be some change in my life, and soon, I hope. Or soonish. What it might be, I don't know. All I know is that feeling understood is amazing. Feeling not CRAZY...is also amazing. I feel more level.

I'm going to try and get out a regular post but I've been busy with work/going insane/and back again. I worked a 13 hour day on Monday between my two jobs. UGH.

Gloomy Sunday

EDIT: I was in a psychotically dark place this morning when I wrote this. The past couple of days have been eventful to say the least. I'll explain more later, but I have to go sleep now. I work 13 hours tomorrow, and I'm not looking forward to it one tiny bit. I've been having problems with my mentality-- lately when I've been agitated or upset it's like a whole different personality comes through. When that happens, writing it out happens to calm me down in a big way. I'm not deleting this post because it's slice of life, but I am trying to explain where I was coming from when it came into life.

Dear Self,

Today you're choosing responsibility to a job you have you to admit you are starting to hate, over something your heart wants, but also needs. You're choosing practical and logical over emotional. Who the fuck are you?

You'll get over it. You'll get over him. You'll quit eventually, but not tonight. And years from now you won't remember tonight, the tonight where you DIDN'T quit your job, put on that grey uniform and those pants you hate. But you might have remembered the tonight you went to the cold room filled with warm people to listen to music that would have been good for every bit of your soul. That might have put you back on solid ground, soothed that panicked attack of hysterics you went into this morning.

The one where you almost cried until you puked.
The one where you couldn't breath for a full minute and while you were suffocating, you knew it WASN'T about a band, it wasn't even about the boy and how he hurt you, you knew it was about more. Self, today you are the logical voice of reason, saying that money is more important. More important than freedom and love and art and spontaneity. That air conditioning is better than the cool breeze. That digital is better than film, Facebook is better than real human contact and dubstep is better than Bob Dylan.

That room where you would have sat with your best friend and the boy who saved your sanity a few nights ago and listened to real life art, and poetry, en Francais? It's going to be waiting for you. And your empty seat will be there and your empty hands will fill with useless items at work and you'll have the same question twenty times. A hundred times. Other people will ask you if they know you from somewhere and you realize that it's been happening more and more lately. It's not YOU they know, it's the fear and the ocean behind your eyes. They've all been there. Everyone goes there, and everyone comes back... but not tonight. Tonight you're going deeper down the rabbit hole.

Two weeks from now when you decide you've had it, you're going to wish you quit that goddamn job tonight, since you're quitting anyway, eventually. You even have another job don't care about to cover your ass. The rent you don't pay and the words you don't say are on the opposite ends of the spectrum. You have it dollar easy and yet you feel that life is taxing, hard.

Tonight is going to turn into tomorrow, then the next day, then the next. By then you'll be so far gone you might not know who you are anymore. You might not be your job, but your job is putting up a fight to keep you from being anyone else.
I'm saying it again, who the fuck are you?

Sincerely,

Me

Psycho Boy Jack

In my dreams last night, I graphically cut left hand off, from just above the wrist. I remember sawing bone and sinew and how much it hurt. I woke up wild and scared and as it turns out, unmaimed. While I really have to blame Aron Ralston's book for some of this, I always look up my more vivid dreams, out of curiosity. I know that dream interpretation is kind of like horoscopes. You project your own reality and meanings onto them, but I still find them interesting.

AMPUTATION:
To dream that your limbs are amputated signifies abandoned talents and serious, permanent losses. It indicates your feelings of frustration, powerlessness and helplessness. Sometimes amputation may also represent a situation that you have been ignoring and has finally reached a crisis point. In particular, to dream that your arms are amputated suggests that you lack motivation.

WRIST:
To see an injured or bandaged wrist in your dream indicates a loss in productivity. You are in an imbalanced or one-sided relationship. In particular, if your wrists that are injured, then it implies that you are not reaching out to others enough. -- Dreammoods.com

These seem to relate to my general feelings of quarter-life crisis-ism. Laura and I have had small conversations about how no one is defined merely by what they do as a profession. Lately all I can think about as I'm topping mochas with whipped cream, or ringing in someone's toilet paper, cough drops and condoms is about how many thousands of dollars I paid to have a diploma I'm not using. How I am capable of more than what I'm committing myself to. How I'm too young to have hit such a disenchanted wall with reality. (After my psychotic dream episode, I laid in bed and thought..."Moving back into your hometown after college is probably why people start doing stupid things like recreational drugs.") So maybe my brain knows a thing or two that I don't and it's trying to jumpstart me into realizing and acting on what I already know in the back of my mind.

Hopefully I'll have some good news to report sooner or later in this respect, and less crazy self-surgical dreams.

In other news, hopefully I'll have some not vague lame rambly posts about my confusion with life at this point coming up very soon. Saturday, I may be going to my first ever poetry open mic/slam with my friend Justin, and on Monday Jill is coming home from working in another city for five weeks. We're starting a two week 'clean eating' challenge to help us refocus our goals and eat better just in time for the 10K . Did I mention I'm all signed up for that officially now? (Holy shit.) It's like being strapped into a roller coaster. I KNOW I can do it, but I need to know if I can do it well. ALSO, the issue of Travis that I wrote my 10K article in will be published soon. Did I forget to mention I had to go to a real photoshoot for it? I think I did forget to mention that. Oh well. EXCITING TIMES!

It'll be good blog fodder, that's fo' shizzle.

And now for your viewing pleasure, a video I took of Costello's cat shenanigans over the summer.