DISPERSED

Two years ago, H and I were driving back from Toronto after doing the big boyfriend introduction to my fathers side of the family over thanksgiving weekend. Two years ago I was living pretty care-fre,e studying at university, partying with my girlfriends, caring for my cat. If you had asked me two years ago where I thought my life would be, I definitely would not have guessed here.

Fast forward to now, Toronto is a few countries and the Atlantic ocean away, university is but a distance memory while my books collect dust in storage, my girlfriends all live in different cities (seriously, I think the most I have is two in any city) and my cat is enjoying his new family with my old roommate and the rest of the clan (one human, three feline) who took up residence in my old place. I guess as you grow up you leave pieces of yourself everywhere you go, within everyone you meet and it is incredible to see how far you can reach as everything keeps changing around you.

Last week a friend from university came to visit, it had been a year and half since we had seen each other (not counting skype) but our relationship felt the same. We went sightseeing, discussed art, drank wine, gossiped and of course, talked about boys but we also talked about life, passions, careers and starting a family (I got a headstart in that department). All the things that seemed so far away while we in school are now suddenly upon us, almost as if adulthood snuck up on us while we weren't paying attention but while we both have had our struggles we both seem to realize that the secret to adulthood is not to actually feel like a grown-up but rather to keep figuring it out each day. My friends all have different lives now, different cities, different jobs and maybe we will lose touch but we will all carry a piece of each other wherever we go and (thanks largely to social media) we can watch ourselves be dispersed far and wide.

AN OFF WEEK

(source: pinterest)

It has been an off week. They happen every so often, however lately they have been occurring more and more and I think it is because I have been trying to change too much, too quickly. I have three things that I have been working on trying to do every single day, the first being exercise which was going quite well until this week. The second was writing, I decided to go back to an old unfinished journal (something I had never done before, I tend to just start fresh) and continue on in it's pages and while it hasn't been everyday it has been several times a week...until this week. The last thing, and the most recent one that I added was drawing, and it think this is what tipped the scale. 

My hope was that here in Germany I would be able to pull out my inner creative, who has been largely kept under wraps since my gloomy adolescence, since I was going to be a stay-at-home mom with a lot of spare time on her hands. I figured that since I don't have any friends here and that I don't drive, I would eventually be able to make my time spent at home into productive creative time and hopefully write that book I've always wanted to write, or do those paintings that I've dreamt of painting. What I didn't realize is that while these were all great ideas, and wonderful habits that I wanted to get into, it meant that I would have to learn to break all the bad habits I had accumulated over the last few years. Habits including streaming tv all day as background noise, opening my laptop first thing in the morning instead of reaching for a pen, giving up when an exercise routine gets too hard, reaching for whatever is easy to eat instead of making myself something good... I have this image of myself that I want to make into a reality, I want to be someone who wakes up in the morning and does yoga, someone who eats her breakfast while jotting down ideas for short stories, someone who makes a huge veggie filled rice bowl for lunch and eats it while swirling colours on a paint pallet. These are all things that I enjoy but I've been letting my laziness get the better of me, and allowing my impatience to make me fail, I know I am not perfect, but I also know that I can do better.

So with that affirmation in mind I've decided to start again at the beginning, to choose one habit and work on that single one...then once I feel like I have a gotten settled with that one I will introduce another. This obviously sets back my progress but I think that it is necessary if these are things that I wish to continue in the long run. 

Wish me luck!

D.

DECISIONS

I have been thinking about my life a lot lately, my choices and how they have affected my past, present and future. I am a firm believer that even though there a millions of external factors in play, you alone have control of how you live your life. Every day is just a compilation of decisions that you make, one after another and sure some decisions are more swayed by external factors than other but each time it boils down to a choice that you make. In my past I have tried to blame others for my unhappiness, and refused to take responsibility for my life and the direction it was going, I hurt myself, and others with that mind set. Life has thrown many hurdles in my path, and it will continue to do so until the day I die, that's how it works, you reach a hurdle and try to jump, if you fail, you try again, and again and so on until the end. 

Today I want to make the choice to stop getting so discouraged each time I reach a new hurdle, to not allow the prospect of the jump (or failed jump) weigh me down but rather look at it as an opportunity. Some of the best things in my life and grown from what I thought were the darkest. Happiness is a choice, it's not only not allowing the negative things weigh on you, it is seeking help when you feel like you are drowning, it is finding the best in a bad situation but most of all it is persevering because you never know what is on the other side of that hurdle, it may be the best thing that will ever happen to you, all you have to do is to choose to keep going. And from now on, I choose to be happy.