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.