Tag Archives: advice

A Promise To Myself

Posted by on November 19, 2011 3 comments

For a long time I thought I had my shit together. But it turns out I’m still carrying all sorts of baggage around, and I hadn’t yet taken the time to sort my shit out, if you’ll pardon my French. Instead, I was avoiding. I was keeping myself busy. I was pretending. It’s time for change. That change starts today.

That’s not to say I’m unhappy. Far from it! But I’ve taken a step back from a lot of things in order for me to be able to concentrate on making myself whole again. I’ve got a lot of work to do. I’ve narrowed down my goals into three tangible, attainable targets. I intend to improve:

  • My career prospects
  • My relationship with my daughter
  • My health
To that end, I’m working to eliminate distractions and stressful, unhappy situations from my life so that I can concentrate on the three targets above. And I’m making lists. Have I ever mentioned how much I love making lists?
So, here are my lists. By sharing them with you, I hold myself more accountable. I’ll touch base and update on progress, and you can ask how I’m doing, too!

Career Prospects/Work and Community Involvement
  • March with my brothers and sisters in the Evict Rob Ford rally tomorrow. 
  • Attend NDP Leader’s Levee Saturday night in a pretty black dress. Hand out business cards. Make contacts. Look for opportunities. Enjoy spending time with like-minded folk who have like-minded goals. 
  • Run for the position of Secretary on the executive of my union’s area council.
  • Find someone to nominate me as a delegate to our regional Labour Council.
  • Bug my manager to (finally!) implement the career development portion of my most recent performance evaluation.
  • Join some committees and working groups. It’ll look good on my resume.
  • Volunteer at a soup kitchen. It’ll feel good in my heart.
Relationship with Gwen Junior
  • Start a Saturday afternoon hot yoga routine at Moksha Yoga Uptown (only seven dollars!).
  • Hire a math tutor – sit with them and help.
  • Write a weekly letter to her, and encourage her to do the same.
  • Try to weasel my way back onto her Facebook hahaha
  • Teach her to cook.
My Health
  • Aforementioned weekly hot yoga.
  • Buy a pair of ice skates – skate for free Friday nights.
  • Check out the lane swimming up the street once a week.
  • Stop eating such bullshit! Like, seriously!
  • My friend Mitchell (you like what I did there, M?) just sent me this brown rice detox thing – maybe I’ll try that.
  • Get a solid eight hours sleep.
  • Drink more water!

Another Sad Jack Layton Blog

Posted by on August 24, 2011 3 comments
via FTP

A couple people have expressed surprise that it’s taken this long for me to write about the death of the man who, as far as I’m concerned, really WAS the greatest Canadian who was never prime minister (no offense, Tommy Douglas).

Forgive me. It’s just that… well, I’ll be honest: I kinda feel like I’ve lost an actual family member, and I wanted to keep my grief private for a day or two. Besides, what could I have possibly written that hasn’t been covered already, by hundreds of bloggers, thousands of chalk-wielding Torontonians, through tens of thousands of tweets? Read more »

Bicycle Rage

Posted by on August 24, 2011 12 comments
Aaaaaand the bikes go crunch.

Well, that’s it. I’ve succumbed to cyclist’s rage. But not as a result of actually, you know, riding my bicycle. No, my friends, my ire is roused today by some loutish miscreant who lives in my building and who’s been messing with my new blue bike.

(It occurs to me that I haven’t yet written about my newly acquired wheels – maybe tomorrow, when the anger has settled into a plan of action.)

About two weeks ago, someone snuck behind my house, hopped on my daughter’s bike (which, it should be noted, has two flat tires and hasn’t been ridden in over a year) and took it for a joyride in the middle of the night. I never would have noticed, except they didn’t put it back where they got it – they left it leaning against my front porch. What a stupid thing to do, I thought, but it’s really my fault for leaving it unlocked.

From that moment on, I was (a bit) more vigilant in locking up our bikes. I live in a quiet residential neighbourhood and all spring and summer, the bikes were unlocked without a problem. Still though, I didn’t want to tempt fate.

However, Sunday night I forgot to lock my bike, and guess what happened? Read more »

Jumping In Head First

Posted by on March 25, 2011 1 comment

I’m a girl who likes a good adventure.

I think I’ve always been this way, but in the last few years various circumstances, obligations and commitments, along with a healthy dose of career building, have prevented me from doing as many bold, daring things as I’d have liked.

Actually, that’s not quite true. At any point I could very well have said, “Okay here we go!” but you know how it is:  when you get busy, you get complacent about your life, until you wake up one day and realize that life is passing you by. Sometimes going through the motions of the day is just so draining that there’s no room left for adventure, or exploration, or even happiness.

Isn’t that sad?

Well, I’ve awoken from my reverie, and I’m ready to go. I’ve decided that this year is a year of change for me, and it’s a year of self-discovery. I plan to get excited, take a risk, take a stand, love my life, love other people, love myself, and mostly, to drop all of my preconceived notions.

And last night, that’s exactly what I did.

Sometimes you think you’re not ready for something, and when you just close your eyes and jump right in, you realize that the only thing holding you back was yourself. Let me tell you what I did last night. I tried something new. Several somethings, in fact.

I started with barbequed duck. So what, you’re thinking, lots of people eat duck. And that’s true. But I didn’t. I thought I didn’t like it. As it turns out, I like it very much. It wasn’t my first time eating duck – I also had it last Saturday, and that WAS my first time. And both times it was delicious.

Next up was Burdock root. When I saw that on the menu, my curiosity was instantly piqued. I love vegetables, but being a small-town Canadian, my range is somewhat limited. Burdock isn’t native to Canada so you can’t really buy it at the local supermarket. Unless you live in Toronto and take the streetcar to Chinatown. But I digress. So the kinpira gobo was ordered and thoroughly enjoyed. It really was fantastic – gobo is a root vegetable, which I happen to love, and it was lightly sauteed in sesame oil with carrots and black sesame seeds. It had a spicy aftertaste thanks to some red pepper flakes. Amazing.

The last thing I took a chance on surprised me very much. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I love Japanese food and sushi, but I’ve never had raw fish. I tell people I don’t like it but in reality, I’m just afraid. Again, it’s the preconceived notion that meat and fish should be cooked. So I’ve always stayed away from sushi that had fish in it, and if you can believe it (most people can’t) California rolls were also on the banned list. Why? I don’t know. The crab (usually imitation) isn’t raw. Maybe it was idea of eating roe that grossed me out (I’m not a caviar kind of girl*). Anyway, I was in such an adventurous mood last night that I thought, what the hell. And guess what.

You guessed it. I loved it.

I thought a lot about this on my way home. I thought I didn’t like this stuff. I thought my life was full enough without it. I thought what I liked, what I ate, and what I had was good enough. But when you fall into the good enough trap, sometimes you don’t see the really, truly fantastic things that are right in front of you.

And then, when you open your eyes and see that you’ve jumped head first into something amazing, you wonder why you waited so long to take a risk.

* Actually… maybe I am!!!