Though the stars had retired and the sun had officially staked possession of the day ahead, the apartment remained dim. Ash liked it that way. Fragments of light continued their efforts at conquering his living room, each racing its neighbour in vain endeavours at domination. He was used to this, and rest assured in his trusty fortress, protected on the outside with shields of haphazard, overgrown ivy, and shadows from its tall turrets. The building rose from the foundations like a haunted house, by night, a symphony of creaks and moans and things going bump in the night; by day, a voiceless misfit casting long shadows across the otherwise exuberant street outside.

- Description of my building (an excerpt from the story I’m currently working on)

And so I have made the move to my giant, sprawling, thoroughly creepy new home. It’s a building that’s captivated me for as long as I can remember after moving to this city, in the heart of the recently declared Greatest Neighbourhood in Canada.  It houses the oldest copper cage elevator in the country, an inner courtyard with light wells, glass-canopied walkways and bridges, and twisting staircases that mislead their visitors, taking them to nothingness. Voices from elsewhere in the building are carried perfectly through the strangely designed ventilation system and faint music from bygone eras can be heard through ceilings. Some of my belongings seem to have picked up strange powers over the course of my move and have transformed into mediums; voices in another language can be heard through electronic devices even with the power off. Footsteps can be heard in bordering hallways, and doors are seen to open and close with the force of an invisible hand. It’s the setting for the novel the Professor and I are working on, and it’s as deliciously sinister as I’d hoped.

The first two weeks were a little difficult – I’d moved in mid-month, and though some of the departing occupants had moved into their new homes personally, most of their belongings remained until this week. This meant I had to live out of boxes for a little while, but it kind of worked out because it forced me to get all the painting and renovating out of the way before settling my stuff in. First stop: my bedroom. One of what could theoretically be five bedrooms, it had enormous windows, hardwood floors, a huge walk-in closet, and solid cement walls through which you could hear absolutely nothing. It was painted a bit of a dismal brown, and I’d had my heart set on fashioning a rather more dreamy, modern, romantic space with deep turquoise walls, a canopy bed draped in sheer organza and fairy lights, empty white picture frames hung above my writing corner, and vines adorning doorways. I started painting the day I moved in – while the bedroom was still half-full of someone else’s furniture, and with no thought as to what my layout would be. It was kind of funny in its Jekyll and Hyde stage, but a week later, it had been transformed, and I’ve never had a room I love more. Coming home to an evening without plans used to terrify me, but now I’m excited to delve into my retreat, read under Christmas lights or write under vintage frames I like to imagine have seen all sorts of things over the years.  And best of all, the Professor is no longer on the other end of a telephone call a twenty-minute walk away.

Forgive the crappy quality of the pics – haven’t found the box the camera is packed away in yet His room is equally huge, housing a bed, writing corner, oversized antique trunk coffee table, sofas and flat screen television, and I love spending time in there just as much as I do in mine. It has a thoroughly vintage feel, with walls the colour of coffee-stained pages, old postcards atop the mantle, various antiques and skeleton keys on the walls, and it’s perfect. I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of having two bedrooms initially, but I’m over the moon we do now. I’m a light sleeper, sometimes he has to stay up late to write (or because of sickness), but there’s something lovely about being only separated by a single wall, and being able to crawl into one or the other at night. Each night we’ll read ghost stories either by candlelight or fairylight, and it’s wonderful.

There are two living rooms, both incredibly large, one bordered by a sun room overlooking the Village. I remember when we first started dating spending evenings in that room looking up at thunderstorms and then making a mad dash outside to run around in them. Over the next few weeks we’re going to convert it into a Space Room – yep, an entire room painted navy with constellations on the ceiling and lights strung from wall to wall, with a life-size TARDIS and fully operational telescope calling it home. I don’t think a room could be any more perfect. The living room has dark wooden panelling on the walls and huge bay windows; a fireplace over which hangs a mantlepiece and a large, antique clock. The second living room is just as enormous, and after spending hours on hands and knees scrubbing the floors to a sparkle, we painted the upper part of the wood-panelled walls a rich, deep claret. Attached to the kitchen is an entire room-sized pantry, and there’s even a “maid’s quarters” which we’re using for storing bikes and decorations and all the other stuff I haven’t organised yet.

Now all that’s left is to find a third flatmate, and we’ll be set! After some of the royal winners I’ve lived with in the past, we really want to find someone nice, conscientious, and above all, normal – we’re hoping to get someone in for June or July, but until then we’re just enjoying have such an opulent, character-filled, wonderfully creepy space all to ourselves. Fancy moving in with us or know someone who might be interested? Let me show you around!

I’ve been meaning to write since getting back into Winnipeg on Monday, but said arrival was at about 3:30 AM and the last few days have been a whirlwind of playing catch-up to all the paperwork I didn’t do while I was gone, and all the sleep I didn’t get on my big American adventure. I’m still working on the latter.  This past weekend’s trip was something I’d tossed out to the Professor and a few friends a few months ago, primarily as One of Those Things you’d really love to do, but logistically would likely never happen – you know, stuff like travelling through time, solving a murder, raising your own ninja turtle or having David Tennant’s baby. So when it actually happened, it was pretty much the equivalent of waking up one day and finding out you’re Batman. Actually, let’s go with SuperTed, because he had cool rocket boots and a best friend voiced by the third Doctor.

This weekend, my best friend, her man, the Professor and I headed to Minneapolis to see my favourite band in the whole world. We took two cars, since they wanted to stay a bit longer, but it marked the first time the boy and I have ever left the country together. We got to the US border and were met by a typically burly and angry looking guard who proceeded to stand in front of the car with his arms crossed, not saying anything. Not having travelled by land to America in the last ten years, and definitely not having driven there myself, I had no idea what his problem was. He apparently had a series of problems, namely my Britishness, the fact that we had “lots of antiques” in the boot from the photoshoot (if a Dollarama decorative trunk that cost all of $2 and the complete works of Shakespeare count as antiques), that we didn’t know his silent frown clearly meant he wanted our passports, and most impressively, that we’d gone to the wrong border and didn’t have a map. We’d borrowed a GPS, not having realised you could choose between routes (shortest distance, fastest time etc.), and had followed the directions on the setting we’d presumed was the default. (Why would anyone want anything other than fastest time?!) It then took us an additional two hours driving through an endless time loop of several kilometres on US59 followed by a right on US59, a continuation on US59 and another left on US59, then a few more turns down the road on US59 (seriously, I’m pretty sure the name of certain area in the middle of a southern Nevada desert was a typo), but after heading due west to the Interstate, we finally made it to Minneapolis – two hours before show time. And, I’m proud to say, I think I avoided most of the Professor’s tests of my own gullibility

The show itself was phenomenal. There’s nothing in the world like being in a room of people who share the same enormous passion for the same thing you do, enjoying the fact that people who make music that sets your soul on fire are ten feet away. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited in my life. We bundled our way near enough to the front, and I took hundreds of photos and a few videos (on my new iPhone – why did I not get one of these before?) and then ran off to the side of the stage where they were packing up after the show. This was the part where I became possessed by the spirit of a twelve-year-old fangirl, lost the ability to voice anything resembling coherence or sanity, told them all how amazing they were and reached out to stroke the lead singer’s shoulder. What a creep! But my creepiness paid off, and after my wonderful boyfriend interjected and showed that we actually were quite normal, we spent the rest of the show watching the other band, standing with my favourite band, talking about how they met, the fact we’d driven ten hours to see them (they felt awful!), and just music in general. I even had a photo taken with the whole lot – something I’m sure will rocket its way to the top of my list of Best Moments Ever and crash land there permanently. We wandered around afterwards in a giddy euphoria, ordered the most amazing burgers I’ve ever had (delivered straight to our hotel room!) and collapsed in a happy exhaustion.

The next day, we checked out at noon and headed for the Mall of America, and learned that in America, speed limits mean absolutely nothing. First of all, they were in miles, and secondly, people seemed to add twenty to whatever the sign said showing no regard in the slightest for the safety of fellow humans. When the Professor and I finally made it, we spent the day (yes, the entire day, and not the three hours that would’ve had us home before midnight) running around the indoor theme park, exploring shops made for writers (I want a dress made of stationery!) and sipping smoothies under the starry skies of the Rainforest Cafe. It was absolutely wonderful.

The ride home was faster,  but pit stops to toilets in the middle of nowhere (in the dark), the GPS guiding us off the road onto a grass hill surrounded by sleepy little houses that looked like the set of a horror movie (in the dark) – and then into a solid rock wall, added to high speed wakes of very large, very fast vehicles made it a little unnerving – but we made it back after hours of great music, plotting, copious amounts of sugar and a very bright Venus in the sky to guide us home.  We arrived at about 3:30 AM thoroughly exhausted, but it was the best first trip together I could’ve wished for

Now onto more adventures: it’s been almost a year since The Professor and I have been together, and in a couple of weeks, I shall be leaving Hobbit House and moving in with him into a giant, sprawling, thoroughly haunted and brilliantly post-Victorian building. The apartment is the biggest I’ve ever seen – with three bedrooms (potentially four), two living rooms, a sun room, and a hallway longer than a bowling lane. The building has a courtyard inside (!) and is full of staircases leading to nowhere, doors opening onto brick walls, and it houses the oldest and creepiest cage elevator in the country. It has gorgeous wooden panelling halfway up the walls, an actual fireplace, and the bedrooms are probably bigger than my whole suite. We’ve already begun dreaming up evenings spent with typewriters and Merlot, covering our walls with the words of Shakespeare, and watching thunderstorms over the village this summer. It’s beyond perfect, and within a fortnight, it will be our new home

Hope you’re having a wonderful long weekend – and learn from my mistake: using pink icing in butterfly cakes unintentionally pays tribute to the whole fertility side of the Easter holiday, and may render your festive treats slightly NSFW. Oops!

Naturally this first proved a lesson in patience. I wanted it to be in tune, I wanted to know the fingerings of all the chords, and I wanted to be able to read music and play every song I knew immediately. I’m learning these days that one of the things I need to work on most in pretty much everything is learning to be patient. (But “carpe diem” has such a good ring to it…)  But after a week or two of perfecting playing the basic chords in my best carpal tunnel-inducing claw and almost giving up, I figured out the proper way, and managed to bugger my way through a whole song! So here’s my first attempt at playing the ukulele for people. The cat doesn’t count. PLEASE bear in mind that a) I’m a total n00b and have a LOT of work to do, b) I look crap in glasses, c) I’m still terrified of singing in front of people, but d) I really, really want to keep taking these steps – even if they’re scary and even though I’ll probably look back in total mortification – because I love music. I love singing, even if I’m not the greatest singer. And I really, really want to stop being afraid of doing it.

Here goes. (God I wish they’d let you actually choose the thumbnail!)

If you Google “galaxy nails”, you’ll find all sorts of wonderful pictures of nebulae and cosmic dust all over people’s fingertips, and there’s not really a way to go wrong with these. All you need are…

• Immense space enthusiasm
• A dark coat (black or navy) for the base
• A few different colours for the nebulae – I used a shimmery royal blue, an aquamarine turquoise, a silver, a bright pink and two purples
• A clear glittery polish
• Makeup wedges
• A clear top coat to seal it all in

You don’t even need a steady hand! Basically, first you’ll want to paint your black/navy base as you would any normal coat of nail polish. Let it dry, and then take a lighter colour to start splodging the base of your star cluster. I used silver at this point. You can either dab some on a section of your black nail (at any random spot) and dab at it to blend with the makeup sponge, or paint some directly onto the sponge and start dabbing that way. I can never be arsed to wait for polish to dry at the best of times, so I started with the colours right away. A couple of minutes is good enough. Then you start doing the same thing with your other colours – I used a royal blue on some nails, and a pink-purple on others to maximise the nebula effect. Keep sponging away to blend the edges in. You can always add more once it dries if you bugger it up like I did. The good thing about this is that you don’t have to be neat at all. Once you’re happy with your colours, stick some glitter on top and seal it all in with a clear top coat, and voila! The doctor would be proud

That’s one of the things that’s been a big thing lately, as I think I may have mentioned before my giant hiatus from blogging. Writing. I can honestly say I’ve never felt so passionate or engaged about it in my entire life.  I used to blog often because I had things to say, and I enjoyed compiling an ongoing archive of the way my life and thoughts took shape over the years. But it was completely different from what I wanted to be writing.  It’s always been my biggest dream to write fiction, but though I think I can describe atmosphere and scenes and stuff pretty well, I’ve always sucked at plotting and dialogue – you know, the things that make any story an actual story. If it were up to me, I’d describe creepy old rooms and echoing hallways and buildings that cast looming great black shadows until the proverbial cows came home. (Likely from the library, where they’d gone in exasperation to find anything with some sort of action.) I also learned in writing classes that if you wanted to be a Real Writer, you had to also be a public speaker. Not only did you have to be able to include conversations and actual people in your stories, you had to be charming and charismatic and engaging, and able to read your stuff in public without breaking down in tears or throwing up afterward. So for years, it remained a dream. One of those things people put on bucket lists that they really like the idea of actually happening, but deep down know it’s probably about as likely as life-sized, strawberry-filled, Nicki Minaj-shaped chocolate zombie victims hitting the shelves next Halloween. (Just me?)

But then it happened. I got an idea! And I think it’s a really good one! And, in optimal awesomeness, it’s something The Professor and I are collaborating on. I’m pretty sure I fell in love with him before I even met him when I learned he was a writer too. Who was working on a novel. Who ended every e-mail for the next eight months with a literary quote, and spent hours meticulously handwriting on vintage paper and burning the edges and compiling them in a beautiful box shaped like a book this past Valentine’s Day. But I digress. Our writing is very different, but I think our styles and strengths really complement each other. His is incredibly witty, intelligent, and usually hilarious.  Mine is atmospheric. He creates characters where I create scenes. He writes dialogue where I write emotion. We’re both in love with the English language, with telling each other stories by candlelight, and with imagination. And to be working on something I’ve always wanted to do, with a real premise… to conjure up characters and and give them all their very own back stories… to have them consume my thoughts throughout every day, to book off days from work just to have time to devote to giving them life, to be able to share a secret notebook of stories and ideas and to be able to create something awesome with the person I love more than anything in the world? It’s quite possibly the best thing ever. It’s killing me not to be able to talk about the actual premise, or show you any of my fiction writing, which is very different from something I just throw together without reviewing and splurt out onto the internet, but I’m bursting with excitement to be taking this on. Every day, I find myself rushing home from work to pour the ideas from inside my head out onto the page, or to do further research on the topic, setting, and history. I’m sure it’ll be at least a year or two until it’s fully complete, but until then, I’m loving every minute of it.

But it hasn’t been without its struggles. I know every writer’s process is different, and, so I’m told, mine is very much like a certain Mr. Vonnegut – I write meticulously, taking an hour to form two sentences and refusing to continue the next page until the current one is perfect. This defies a lot of advice on writing – I’m told at every roadblock to just keep writing, even if it’s shit. That that’s what editing is for.  I suppose there’s an element of still wanting to impress when it comes to co-authoring with your partner: you don’t want to send them your first draft pieces of shit when you know they could be so much better. But in perfecting it, you set yourself up for future hardship when something you spent hours on has to be hacked up and reworked in order to blend with someone else’s style. I know perfectionism is a disease. Heck, a couple of years ago I wrote a thousand words in a blog post on the very subject, and genuinely believed myself to be convinced it was true. But here I am, still unable to shake the habit. Today’s meltdown at work was a result of perfectionism and unrealistic expectations of myself. Every time I hear the word “feedback” after I’ve shown somebody a rough draft of something, I find myself tensing up, bracing myself for criticism, ready for a crushing blow of imaginary proportions. If I slip into an old habit I’ve worked hard to eradicate, or make a mistake at work, the thought of being seen as weak, wrong, stupid or, I suppose, less than ideal, is absolutely crippling. I work myself into a frenzy, beating myself up for not being perfect when nobody in the world expects me to be. It’s something I’m tackling in the anxiety program, and I know awareness is the key to changing bad habits, but my god, it’s difficult.

I think one of the reasons I want to write so desperately because I see a heck of a lot of crap out there that somebody’s decided to immortalise in print, and I know I can do better. Kind of analogous to being a decent person in general (I see why this mental post was drafted whilst on Winnipeg’s public transit system) – you see a heck of a lot of shit being put into the world, and you feel almost an obligation to put something awesome out there instead. The tough part is getting out of your own way. If I’m going to be a proper writer, it’s great to have an idea, characters, and plot points – but I need to be open to what’s inevitable. Edits upon edits, well-intentioned criticisms, processes that may be outside my comfort zone… all things that will help the end product be the best it can be. I just need to learn to stop being such a perfectionist, admit that things may be utter crap the first time around, and apply that principle to life in general. Learn to be okay with just being okay sometimes.  And stop beating myself up for not being perfect first time.

I mentioned at the beginning of this post that there had been two big things in my life as of late, the first of which happened to be writing. The second is related, but kind of on the other end of the spectrum, and is something that’s been a part of me for as long as I can remember. Oversensitivity. Notably, crying. I cry all the time. Before shit hit the fan at the end of last year, I cried because I let myself worry about everything. I let my thoughts spiral into imagined scenarios in the future that seemed absolutely inevitable as a result of the past.  I worried about The Professor’s health condition on a daily – no, hourly basis, and I worried that if I didn’t hear from him for a few hours, that he must have died. I worried about spending an evening at home alone without plans because that must make me a socially inept loser that nobody wants to hang out with. I worried that I wasn’t witty or confident enough, that I wasn’t attractive enough, and that my giant emotions about everything would push people away – which they did, which led me back to worry #2. It was a self-perpetuating cycle I couldn’t escape, and I was the only one administering my own entrapment.  Then things reached their climax, and I started to get my act together. I tried not to be so reliant on others for reassurance. Learned to see evenings solo as a chance to do things I loved, and not sentences to be served in isolation while the world continued on without me. Learned to see periods of non-contact as simply being busy, or sleeping, or being in class or with people – nothing to worry about; and actually do the same myself. But I still cry. I cry not because I worry about the worst, but mostly because I can’t believe the best is actually happening. My biggest dream of being a writer is coming true. My longest desire to feel confident and funny and smart has materialised, and I’ve found myself with the self-confidence to do things I’ve always wanted to. I’ll be mid-conversation and just start breaking down in tears simply because I can’t believe how lucky I got. But ever so often, I cry for the wrong reasons. I catch my thoughts spiraling into worry again, and I start sobbing. What is this all disappears? What if my job gets cut, or my Dad moves away, or The Professor’s health takes a turn for the worse, or people still see me as the person I used to be? I know all of those things are beyond my control, but there’s something terrifying about finding the best thing that’s ever happened to you, and the very real possibility that something may happen to take it away. I know that the health issue is a very serious one, and that it’s natural to worry. But it’s not like I’m being kept out of the loop – we deal with it together, as a team, and I know where it stands at any given time. Things are being managed right now, and we’re hoping for the best. But I still find myself worrying, and crying, and I don’t know what to do to stop.

It’s not like it’s a new thing. Anyone who’s ever met me for more than a day will attest to the fact that I am probably the most sensitive and weepy person they’ve ever met. But the thing is, I don’t want to be seen as a wuss. I know I’m bloody strong, I just think I feel things with a hell of a lot more impact than perhaps is normal. I’ve written before about the emotional spectrum, about how keeping yourself from expressing how you really feel can suck away the full potential of joy. Yes, I firmly believe that it’s better to be incredibly happy for a short time than just to be okay for your whole life. But the danger in handing yourself over to the full range of human emotion is that you put yourself at risk of turning from master to puppet, to be taken hostage by them and rendered powerless to do anything about them once they take over.  This week I’ve found that happening, and it’s a scary place to be.

Before I started seeing a counsellor and going to the anxiety program, I didn’t have the tools to recognize my thought patterns and subsequent crying fits as unhealthy or detrimental. I believed them to be perfectly logical and rational behaviours. Now, I can see my tendencies, process them, and stop them before they take over the world around me – and I’ve been doing infinitely better. Life has been infinitely better. I don’t worry so much, I don’t react to every little thing like the world is imploding, and I’m happy 99% of the time. But twice this week, I found myself absolutely paralysed – able to see what I was doing as illogical and irrational, but physically unable to stop sobbing and being sad. Now, this may very well be an unusually extreme case of PMS induced by a day without eating, my back being worse than usual, and not having had any coffee that day, in which case I think we can forgive the slip up. But I found myself sitting in a toilet cubicle, giving myself a pep talk about how there was no reason to be sad, failing, and unable to stop sobbing.  An interesting thing I’m learning in the anxiety program is that other people have this problem too, and I’m not going to discount the idea of me simply being, as Psychology Today so wonderfully brought to my attention, a Highly Sensitive Person. Please read it. When I read psychiatrist Judith Orloff’s words – “It’s like feeling something with 50 fingers as opposed to 10,” I breathed a sigh of relief. I wasn’t alone, and it may actually have something to do with biology and science as to why I am this way. But that doesn’t mean I’m okay with it. I don’t like being in constant fear of criticism or rejection, and I don’t like bursting into tears if I haven’t heard from my boyfriend for a few hours and I’m worrying he’s lying somewhere unconscious. I don’t like overanalyzing and reading into things that aren’t there, and I don’t like catastrophising every little event in a day. I love that my sensitivity allows me to be incredibly in tune with others’ emotions, or that I read a piece of beautiful prose or hear a great song and want to jump up and down because somebody’s just been an awesome human being. I love being overly enthusiastic about things like simple existence and celebrating creativity and taking the time to see small beauties of nature and spend two hours in the cold photographing them because nature is just so stunning. I love that there may very well be a biological explanation for being extremely sensitive, and I love that just because I cry a lot doesn’t have to mean I’m a giant baby – it just means I feel things more extremely. But I don’t like being a slave to its tendency to send me crashing down faster than an IQ after an episode of the Kardashians.

So what do I do? How do I manage the lows healthily and still exude enthusiasm and passion and soak up excitement from the highs? I tried reading other people’s (hilarious) stories of being sad for no reason. I tried taking my very good and well-intentioned friend’s advice and “manning the fuck up.” I tried giving myself pep talks. The counseling and reading and stuff is definitely helping, but I want to just develop the capability to not be a sobbing mess every time something bad enters my head – or something beyond wonderful happens because I’m terrified of losing it.

Anyway. I realize I’ve just rambled on for a good six pages, and I don’t know if I have anyone left reading. If I do, hi! This is more just a state of where things are right now that’ll go into a scrapbook at the end of the year. Don’t get me wrong – things have been on the up and up for the last three months, and I’ve been doing much better than I used to be. I just know if I could get this under control, I could be even better – for myself and the poor souls around me. But things are brilliant. Writing is brilliant. I’m excited, and being creative, and learning and sharing, and doing something I’ve always wanted to. I even got myself a set of snazzy business cards to go along with the tattoo I got to inspire me to keep writing. And despite the crappy outset of today, I arrived home to it all turning around. A new issue of Psychology Today in my mail box. Finally, FINALLY, a copy of the Dry the River album – the record I haven’t been so excited about since I first heard Mumford and Sons two years before theirs finally hit the shelves. An evening of cancelled plans opening up a good four hours to spend fuelling and feeding my latest character. A snuggly kitten, an already clean apartment, a glass of port, and a desk covered in deliciously creepy warped candles.

I think that somewhere in all of this, there’s probably some sort of lesson in patience.

* Note: these wonderful photos were taken by our wonderful and uber-talented friend Courtney, who let us play around with all our old books and typewriter all afternoon, and who you should most definitely book if you need a photographer!

I started writing this post the week of New Year’s before apparently taking a sharp turn through the time vortex and ending up halfway through February. The subject of reflections and resolutions is subsequently a little stale, but bear with me: over the last two months, Big Things have happened, and both of the above have played rather large parts in my day-to-day life.  On January 1, I didn’t make any resolutions. This was likely in part due to the fact that I still had a handful of things to check off my 26 Before 26, and partly because I think waiting until the turning of a new year to start doing things better is a bit of a procrastinator’s cop-out. If you’re going to make a change, what better time than the very moment you decide to? So while I didn’t new year’s resolutions, I did try to hop aboard the Life Lesson Express to see if I could learn something from the year that was to pave the way for a happy, healthy 2012.

Now, the thing about learning experiences is that they usually end up having the biggest impact after you’ve made the biggest cock-ups. Maybe the reason we’re all stuck in the eternal Groundhog Day of making resolutions that evaporate faster than a Winnipeg cup of tea in February is the fact that it’s so bloody uncomfortable to admit we’ve made bad decisions in the first place. Nobody likes being wrong, and it’s easier to cover up the past with declarations about the future than it is to actually stop for a second and take accountability. But if you don’t genuinely acknowledge your own part in things not happening the way you wanted, nothing will ever change – we throw ourselves into our own time loops of history repeating itself simply to avoid the temporary discomfort of admitting we were wrong. When I began this post, I wanted it it to be my personal acknowledgement: there were things I did and decisions I made in 2011 that led to life being significantly less full of win.  There were definitely a few big mistakes, and a crap load of smaller bad habits I’d formed over the years – but as someone commented last time I was here, the good thing about bad habits is that with enough dedication, they can be broken, and room can be made for new ones. And that’s exactly what I decided to focus on.

Lesson One: Being too focused on “not wasting time” prevents you from giving time to situations when that’s exactly what’s needed.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had a difficult time with conflict. I think it results from the uncomfortable combination of being extremely opinionated, extremely sensitive, and extremely stubborn, all three of which are bad ingredients to begin with, but when combined result in one recipe for ultimate disaster. Keeping the idea of life being short and avoiding future regret in the back of your mind I think is a good thing, but as with many things, taking it to the extreme results in them being very bad indeed. My lesson here was to break the habit of closing the door on negative things too quickly – whether in short-term situations (a disagreement with a friend, for example, who wants time to cool down – I’m trying to learn to see that as a positive step to a healthy resolution, and not a waste of time that could be spent moving on) or long-term ones (getting the proper treatment for my anxiety and self esteem issues, and not trying to be a hero and do it on my own, or do it all now). As much as I like to think things could be as easy as flicking a switch, I’m learning that even though life is short, some things do take time – and patching over things for the sake of moving on quickly isn’t going to fix anything in the long term.

So this weekend, I begin a ten-week program with the Anxiety Disorders Association of Manitoba. And since December, I’ve been seeing a counsellor who’s given me all sorts of techniques and insights into the way I’ve grown used to seeing the world – and armed with this knowledge, a chunk of humility and blind determination, I’ve seen an enormous change. I don’t worry so much any more, I don’t assume the worst, and though I still break down in tears practically daily, it’s now usually a result of things finally being more awesome than I’d ever dreamed of. (I know, I kind of wanted to punch myself when I saw that in print too.)

Lesson Two: Just because terrible things happened in the past does not mean terrible things will always happen.

I’m not going to go into this one in depth, but something I allowed to spiral out of control last year was allowing past baggage skew (and ultimately sabotage) how I viewed the present. I got into the habit of absolutely ruining things that were going wonderfully because in the past, something always bad had happened – I started reacting compulsively to my own catastrophic imaginings of history repeating itself, and became a leech for constant reassurance. It wasn’t enough to have things going brilliantly; I had to be told repeatedly that they were, and that sort of uncontrollable worrying and assurance-seeking is enough to drive anybody away – causing a distancing that fuelled the worries that had been unfounded in the first place. I created my own self-perpetuating cycle. It had to stop, and breaking the habit of over-worrying and needing reassurance has been my biggest focus in 2012 so far. It started with forcing myself not to text people when I felt the urge to, which was enormously difficult for the first few days – but within a week or two, I’d learned that it was completely okay to go several hours without communicating, and actually valued the messages and phone calls more knowing that they were completely on somebody else’s initiation. It’s an interesting phenomenon to witness how drastically a cycle’s direction can change – to learn that constant neediness drives others away, resulting in more worry and more need for reassurance – and that with a change of habit, it can all turn the other way. I don’t catastrophise any more. I don’t worry that somebody’s died, or found more interesting and exciting friends if I don’t hear from them for a little while. I give myself a grace period when learning new things, and don’t beat myself up half as much if I’m not an expert after watching something once. (Half as much however is apparently still too much, and something I still need to work on…) I don’t ruin perfectly fun evenings any more by inventing some reason to worry and then be reassured. It’s been two months of continually tearing down these old habits and rebuilding new ones, and I can honestly say I’ve never been happier in my life. I feel terrible for the loved ones that had to put up with me last year, and I’m so grateful to those that stuck around.

Lesson Three: It’s perfectly okay to spend time in your own company.

I’ve always been thoroughly fascinated by the psychology of personality, and still remember being thrilled when I first discovered that there weren’t just 16 Myers-Briggs personality types, but 16 independently scaled variables, too: one INFJ may be on the extreme side of introversion and feeling, for example, and another may be extremely intuitive while only slightly introverted. These two people may score the same fundamental personality type, yet their wildly differing levels of each component would make them incredibly different people. When I learned that I was barely a cat’s whisker on the introverted side (I like using making reference to cat whiskers when I have the chance), it was like I’d unlocked the Library of Babel. Every answer I’d been searching for suddenly arrived – I’d forever wondered why, if I was such an introvert, I craved company so bloody much, had such difficulty spending time alone, yet was often terrified of social situations where I might find myself centre of attention. It was because I was stuck in the middle of introversion and extroversion - and realising this led to understanding, and finally being able to do something about my discomfort. I wanted social interaction, but my inner introvert wanted to do solitary things like reading, writing, or watching a movie. But the extravert would always say how terribly loserish I’d be if I spent time doing any of those things, and encouraged me to fill up every night of the week with plans involving other people. And then cancelling them because I’d invariably be too tired, and then feel bad I was stuck at home alone again. Egads! I decided to work on becoming comfortable with both – primarily the solitary activities, because I desperately wanted to be able to go home and not be intimidated at the thought of an evening by myself, wondering what I’d do with the time – but also the more outgoing things that go along with being an extrovert.

With the former, I started small. I’d opt to walk home from The Professor’s place instead of taking a bus, despite it being winter.  I’d wrap myself up in countless layers, tuck my hair into a big furry hood, plug my earphones into my phone and head off into the night. It’s about a twenty-minute walk, but it’s down one of the prettiest streets in the city, and at night in the snow with nobody around, it can be quite magical. I found myself getting caught up in the lyrics of wonderful songs by moonlight, getting goosebumps more from the words than the chilly air outside. I stopped to take in small displays of loveliness – tree trunks and bows silhouetted in fairy lights, or brightly shining stars above. The cold didn’t seem to matter – I’d stop at various points along the way, pulling out Google Sky Map and pointing it skyward, learning the positions of Jupiter and Orion. I’d make it home eventually, hair and eyelashes coated in frost, to a happy little cat, and realise for the first time, I actually enjoyed something I did alone. So I started doing more – spending time on things I really wanted to do, and learning how to feel perfectly at peace in doing them. I went on walks just to listen to music and take lots of photos. I carved myself a new workspace at home, with candles and greenery and sepia-toned photographs, and I find that now, it’s a place I love to go. This also led to an incredibly exciting project – I can’t share too many details yet, but The Professor and I have begun collaborating on a project we’re both beyond thrilled about. Research is being done, calls are being made, buildings are being explored and imaginations are in overdrive – there’s something really quite amazing being able to do and share things with someone who’s equally as passionate about them as you are. Like watching the the stars, vintage typewriters and skeleton keys, great literature and building blanket forts!

As for nurturing the extraverted side, I decided to take the plunge and cross the last two things off my 26 Before 26. I’m well aware of how long ago my June 2011 deadline was, but there were two really big and really scary things on there that I’d been terrified of for as long as I can remember. The first was learning to drive and getting my licence. It took a couple of months of The Professor’s instruction, one intense car crash (!), one instance of being pulled over by the police (for going too slowly), two test attempts, one lesson in learning how to operate windscreen wipers and one extended crying fit (I’d never failed anything before!), but I got there – at the end of December, on icy roads in lots of snow! Words couldn’t describe the feeling of finally achieving something I’d been afraid of for a whole decade, and now I’m just getting used to driving around on my own. And it’s brilliant!

The second thing was a little more nerve-wracking: being in the spotlight singing a song on stage in public to an audience full of strangers, friends and coworkers. I’ve always loved singing, but the love has always been outweighed by fear. For some reason I can sing proudly and confidently in my own little apartment, but I find it incredibly difficult to do so in front of a single person. Cat-shaped people notwithstanding. But over the last few months, I’ve been “jamming” with a couple of good friends, who’ve encouraged me to pursue it. We made plans before Christmas to perform together at an open mic, but I managed to lose my voice for a good month until the end of January. At the beginning of this month, I was practicing with one of said friends, who suggested I perform one song with him during his next set – the night before Valentine’s day – only two weeks to get my proverbial shit together. I’ve never been good at getting my shit together. Especially on a deadline. Remember last time I had to do something in public? I went up there, raced through the entire thing, and left the podium sobbing uncontrollably. Which wasn’t exactly awesome.

So Monday came after a night of definitely not sleeping, and I found my heart defiantly attempting to burst out of my chest every time I thought about what I’d be doing at 8:00. I made sure my coworkers knew I didn’t think I was a good singer and had expectations lower than a rapper’s trousers. I went home at the end of the day to find my lovely little cat and my lovely boy there to surprise me me, into whose arms I immediately fell and burst into tears (how many times is this now? We should make this a drinking game) crying about how I didn’t want to do it. After a cup of tea and numerous hugs, I decided I should probably practice. But I was too scared to sing in front of him, so I sent him outside on the balcony (in mid-February) to run through my song once. When I let him back in, after some gentle encouragement, I sang it in front of him. Well, facing away from him, because I didn’t want him looking at me while I was singing. (Because I am a crazy person.) After finally managing to squeak it out in his direction, it was time to go… and we arrived at the venue. Friends and coworkers started pouring in, and after a couple of songs, it was my time to join my friend on stage. I’d never been so scared in my life. The next five minutes flashed by – I remember getting to the final chorus and thinking ecstatically that I was almost done – and looking back, I know you can tell how incredibly scared I was. I know they probably turned the mic up because I was singing too quietly, and I know I sound awful because I was focused on just getting sound out without fainting, not on actually singing well, and after I was done, I felt very proud for about thirty seconds that I hadn’t cried – before running into the toilets and throwing up. But I did it! It may be terrible, but I finally crossed the last thing off my list. And for that, I’m happy.

Here’s a video of the whole thing. It starts with a giant case of feedback, keeps focusing on the back of some guy’s head, and I look like an uncomfortable moron, but apparently if I don’t post it, it didn’t happen. Next step? Learning to do it standing up (shut up), without shaking, without the words, and actually making eye contact with the audience.

And apparently to not be so hard on myself.

Here’s to the amazing people who helped me keep striving, who put up with my crap, who believed in me, and who helped me do things I’d only ever dreamed of being able to do. Here’s to friendship, to love, to life lessons, to creativity and to passion. 2012 is shaping up to be the best year ever, and right now, at this moment, I feel like the luckiest person in the world.

(2012 is also the year I promise to learn the lesson of conciseness. If you made it this far, you’re a brilliant human being.)

It’s seven o’clock on a Saturday morning, and after eight hours of tossing and turning, waking from strange, sporadic dreams every hour or two (one involving dating someone who wore salad for a beard, and getting upset with my parents for judging him on his choice of facial hair), I think I might be having a Writer’s Moment. A few minutes ago I was tucked away with a happy cat in my arms and an electric blanket warming my toes. Snug, but getting rather tired of focusing exercises designed to slow your thoughts and will you to sleep after every attempt resulted in nothing but more consciousness. So I found myself starting to form sentences in my head instead. I wonder sometimes if there’s something wrong with me. Is the inside of anyone else’s head so busy, so full of an endless rapid fire of thought after thought, feeling after feeling? I’m okay with being a deep thinker, but sometimes (usually around three o’clock in the morning), I yearn to be able to shut off the relentless stream of consciousness.  Especially when said stream is composed of a rather irritating mathematics problem I’d heard earlier that day, which barged its way into my head, grabbed hold of every scrap of drowsiness, and proceeded to promptly punch each one out before putting its feet up, lighting a cigarette, and cranking the stereo. (Sidenote: thank heavens I have someone I can call at 1:30 in the morning to solve it for me. Hopefully I still will at the time of broadcast.)  This morning was another restless one, and I found my thoughts wandering to where I was this time a year ago. I gave up on the idea of a lie-in and decided to write about them instead. This time a year ago, it was the night before my wedding, and I was sitting on my bed in tears with my husband-to-be, torn between calling the whole thing off and trying to convince ourselves we could make something so very wrong work.

A year ago, I was writing the following words. It’s hard not to see the signs from every direction pointing out the enormous mistake I’d be making:

It all started last Thursday night with the rehearsal dinner. The plan was to have everyone have a quick run through at the church,  head out to a restaurant that’s usually one of my favourites, then head home for our last night as Mr. and Miss. And words cannot begin to describe how polarly opposite the evening went. The rehearsal itself was fine until the very end, as everyone was departing, when something very dramatic, very unpleasant, very… conniving, and very unexpected happened. It wasn’t the best way to head off to a dinner that was supposed to be a celebration, but we got there, met our friends and family, and ordered what looked to be a fantastic meal. Until the table became a battleground. And we were told they had no beef. Or wine. And it arrived over an hour late. One meal missing. And they refused to give us a discount. And then it broke into a rave. It was kind of beyond ridiculous… but after talking with some married friends, I found myself slightly reassured when I was told “I don’t think there is such a thing as a smooth rehearsal dinner”.

I then arrived home and thought I’d do one last Facebook/Twitter check before logging off for the weekend… when I was met with one of the most horrible things you could imagine two nights before the day you get married. An anonymous comment on my blog, held for moderation, on the post immediately following the one about Internet Trolls and the exceptional cowardice it shows when someone takes the time to invest in attempts at sabotage, and doesn’t have the balls to attach their own name. But since this person’s contact information was limited to “pseudonym@dontpostthis.com”, I have no choice but to respond to it here.

“I wonder if you really should be getting married. You seem so ready to emerge as who you fully are. It seems to me that you could be traveling around the world, doing great and amzing things, playing the field, flirting with all sorts of things.  If your married, day-after-day you’ll wake up with nothing to take you beyond yourself and your husband can only challenge you so much. Really, as exciting as it sounds, how is a theater production going to make you a better person in the grand scheme?

Maybe its just that we’ve all watched you grow so much in the last little while that it seems foolish now to throw all the opportunities that life has to offer to settle with one person in a cold city that really has nothing to offer. When your husband comes home after a long day of work, won’t that bother you that hes content living in a city with his family and you’re so far away from the amazing things you could be doing elsewhere?

When you say, “I do” it may be like your a princess but the very next day it’s just routine and a drag. You can’t be happy with that. I think that married life is going to stop you from growing into the person you’re becomming and I think you know that. You’re going to be stuck and I think you’ll grow to resent the fact that your husband is keeping you down. Well, its not him but its married life. You could be hanging out with so many interesting people, going interesting places. Instead you work (I presume) only 9 to 5 and write about music and doing drama. Already your relationship has limited you.

Sorry Emily but I had to say it. I fear this marriage might just put you in a rut. Every day, the same person… the same place… the same routine. That’s not the emily I know.”

To this day, the author’s identity remains unknown, but it’s interesting to see that despite everything around me telling me to turn around and run, I still went ahead with it. Yes, hindsight may be 20/20, but there’s something unsettling about having gone ahead with something when logic had been flashing neon BAD IDEA signs at every turn. I know there are thousands of people who make the same decision I did – who defy logic and instinct and get swept away in the pressure of having spent a great deal of time and money investing in something, in the fear of judgment, and in the idea that maybe true, fairytale, soul mate love really does only exist in stories and films, that nobody’s perfect, and that maybe this is as good as it gets. It’s unsettling to look back and see how I prioritised what was comfortable, despite knowing that what I longed for was so much more. How many people, I wonder, unwittingly spell their own life sentence of settling for something just because what’s comfortable is an easier option than the risk of never finding what they truly desire?

I had a conversation with The Professor recently, about our past relationships and how we’d both been subject to criticism for some of the decisions we’d made. In my early twenties, likely tying in to a bit of self-esteem issues, I went from relationship to relationship, not spending much time alone because being alone was scary, all the while knowing deep down inside that every one was wrong – that somewhere, I was always wishing for something more. Not the healthiest of way to spend a few years, but then again, perhaps going through the so very wrong allowed me to truly recognize what was truly right in the end. Perhaps if things had been too comfortable, I wouldn’t have had any motivation to get out, and the opportunity to meet the one I’d always dreamed of would have sailed past into the sunset, and I never would’ve known otherwise. Contrarily, he’d spent the same years doing quite the opposite – avoiding relationships like the plague because they never met the hope of what true love should be, spending years in solitude and breaking off potential connections soon after they’d begun because that nudging feeling of knowing they weren’t it was ever-present. It’s funny, the way people spend those first few years of adulthood, and how attitudes to relationships are formed, shaped, altered and evolved, and I don’t really know what it means, but I don’t suppose it really matters, because each path led to the here and now, to everything I’ve forever hoped existed, and I feel like the luckiest person in the world.

I just realized this post isn’t going to end up being big on coherence, but since I’ve been a tad absent over the last few months, I felt a strong urge to write one last post before the year was out. A few noteworthy incidents have taken place recently – my job for one has turned out to be an absolute dream, and I can genuinely say I’d be happy to spend seven days a week there! I’m up on the fourteenth floor of the tallest building in the city (I think), and I arrive each morning to a view of downtown stretching as far as the eye can see, the sun illuminating an expanse of morning cloud cover in bright pinks and oranges, and spend my last hour of the day watching it retire as the lights of the city below slowly come out like stars. I work with a brilliant group of people who seem to accept, like, and even encourage me to be my nerdy self, and I’m somehow seen as the extrovert of the office. It’s become a safe environment for me to be exactly who I want to be, and I absolutely love it.

Six months past deadline, I finally checked off the hardest thing on my 26 Before 26 list – learning to drive. I’d written about it this summer after driving out of the city for the first time, spent looking at the biggest, most glittering night sky I’d ever seen, and the sense of accomplishment outweighed the fear I’d had for so very long. But then winter came, and dropped a whole pile of snow and entirely foreign driving conditions on top of me – three days before my road test. I panicked, but did kind of okay – took the test, parallel parked perfectly, and promptly failed – I got five points too many, for not knowing how to turn the windscreen wipers off. I was really disappointed and cried like an absolute child for a good half hour – I’d never failed anything in my life, and when you pride yourself on overachieving, it feels like the end of the world – but I made my second appointment, and will be trying again right before New Year’s Eve. Fingers crossed I don’t bugger it up this time – although getting into a giant car crash and totalling my boyfriend’s car last week isn’t exactly the smooth sailing I was hoping for. I was driving down a main street on the way to the last of the Christmas shopping when out of nowhere, somebody ran straight through a stop sign to our right and pulled out immediately in front of us. The road was icy, there was less than a second to impact, yet it felt like everything was in slow motion. I could see it coming, I could see there was nowhere to go, and we ploughed straight into the side of the other vehicle in front. The airbags immediately went off – and those are not the soft, cushiony things you’re led to believe will save you from rocketing headfirst out of the window – they’re a sudden, very solid punch in the face (that broke The Professor’s poor nose), and they emit some kind of smokey gas which absolutely suffocated me. I couldn’t breathe, and the door was jammed, so I couldn’t get out of the vehicle. I looked to my right and saw my love with blood all over his face from the smashed passenger window. I kept saying I couldn’t breathe and scrambling to get out of the car, the door not opening… when the other driver opened it for me from the outside. Apparently The Professor had been trying to help me get out of his side, which I don’t remember, and apparently I’d had the car in park and my foot pressing wildly hard on the accelerator while I struggled to get out… which I also don’t remember. I just remember panic, shards of glass flying into the car slowly as it filled with smoke, and ending up in tears in a fire truck next to my poor boyfriend, whose nose had bled all down his face and onto his coat and hoodie, unable to stop shaking. The funny thing was I knew the other driver – a rich older gentleman I’d done some design work for a few years ago – who gave me an enormous hug and apologized profusely. We exchanged details, and my dear in-laws came to pick us up and take us for something to eat. I felt terrible I’d completely wrecked somebody else’s car – a really great car, too – but was thankful it wasn’t so much worse.  It hasn’t done wonders for my road confidence, but I figure now’s as good a time as any to get back behind the wheel – and hopefully we’ll be mobile again within a couple of weeks.

Oh, another noteworthy event – my tattoo! I got a beautiful old quill pen on my inner forearm a few weeks ago – an eternal reminder of my love for the written word, and to draw me to the activity I love more than anything in the world. I also spent four hours getting black out of my hair for good and going a bold red I really love. I finally feel comfortable and confident enough to carry it off.

Outside of work and big scary accidents, I really should write about something that’s been quite a prominent feature of my life over the last month or so. I guess it could fall under the category of “general health and wellbeing” – very much so, for reasons a handful of you know, regarding The Professor, but also in terms of really dealing with my anxiety. I think a number of factors contributed to it getting to a breaking point. The thoroughly traumatic dissolution of my marriage, the subsequent moving home, the new job… the letting go of everything that had become comfortable, and immediately focusing on forward movement rather than allowing myself time to heal properly was definitely a factor – and I’m at a point where I’m reframing how I deal with the world; retraining myself and rewriting my attitude to life in general. I’d always felt so strongly that life was short and no moment should be wasted, and only recently am I learning that an attitude I felt so positive actually caused a lot of harm in the long term. By not allowing myself time to deal with what happened and diving straight into creating a new future, the damage was never given the opportunity to be resolved in a healthy way. It began to affect everything around me: I spent every day in a state of constant worry, and subconsciously allowed the fear of history repeating itself to manifest and weasel its way into everything I did. I started getting upset for no reason at all in the real world, seeing tiny, insignificant things as the catalyst for what happened happening all over again, and reacted accordingly. I became an insane person. I’d get into fits of tears and despair over trivial things; I’d take out my worries on those I loved as if they were actually doing the very thing I feared most; I’d worry about being fired for not learning quickly enough at work and was shocked to receive a glowing review from my coworkers and bosses about how I’d done the opposite. “Not wasting time” and focusing so strongly on shaping the future right now prevented me from dealing with things healthily. It came out in disagreements, too – I’d want to move on immediately, when what was needed was some time to cool down, and my insistence on “making the most of the time we have” was the very thing that exacerbated everything. So for the last few weeks, I’ve called that into question. I think my tendency toward impatience definitely plays a part too. I started seeing a counsellor who’s helped me recognise the destructive thought patterns that had begun to take over, and provided me with tools and techniques to catch myself in my tracks, break bad habits, and make healthier choices.  I’ve done a lot of work over the last few weeks, recognised my habits, and been able to react differently – and life has been so much easier. No longer am I consumed by worry, or desperate for reassurance. No longer do I fear being physically alone in my own company – something that had for a long time been a territory of fear and overthinking things, a place to allow my thoughts and worries to take over reality and lead to panic. I’m learning slowly to break the compulsions that almost destroyed everything, and for the first time, I feel genuine. All the endeavors at conquering my anxiety up until now definitely helped me in a way, but those unhealthy thought patterns were never properly addressed. I was building a house before laying the foundations – it’s no wonder everything came crashing down. So I’m starting again. I’m not just focusing on actions lining up with the person I want to be, but thoughts, too – that’s the hard part, but the important part. And at the end of the day, they’re just a habit. And habits can be broken, and new ones can very much be made.

So it’s a few days before Christmas, and after an eventful year, I have a feeling that things paved the way for what’s going to be the best one yet. I’m in a place where everything is clearer – the past, present and future are written in a language I finally understand perfectly, and 2012 is looking brighter than ever. I’m heading into it with more certainty, knowledge, and tools than I think I’ve ever had, and I think those are going to lead to more happiness, confidence, deeper connections, less worry, and a better person for people to be around. I’m not proud of how badly I slipped up, but what are mistakes if we can’t learn giant life lessons from them? The darkness does, after all, define where the light is. I’m looking forward to a holiday filled with real love and friendship, genuine happiness over obligation, seeing the looks on people’s faces when they open presents I have a sneaky feeling are rather awesome, the Doctor Who Christmas special – and course a good old EastEnders massacre. I’m looking forward to a year where every thought, feeling and event of every day shines a little brighter. I’m looking forward to more tattoos (thank you Frank Turner for the endless inspiration), more risks, more meteor showers, more writing, brilliant music, more laughter, more growth, and life truly, finally, being exactly what it was supposed to be.

Happiest of Christmases to you, and I apologise wholeheartedly for the lengthy ramble. I just felt I ought to note a bit of life as it is here and now before heading into the new year. I hope 2012 is everything you hope and dream for. I started this post quoting my favourite author, and I think he’s pretty good for wrapping it up, too:

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”

I think the time has come to acknowledge the fact that there’s been a shift in my attitude toward blogging: for the last couple of years, it had become a huge part of my life. I loved carving out my own little space and filling it with thoughts and ideas, immortalising them in a way upon which I can later look back, probably laugh at how young and terribly naïve I was, but remember fondly the hopes and dreams, slip-ups and victories, events and emotions that were my life here and now. Through blogging, I got to know all sorts of wonderful people who lived all over the world, and was lucky enough to meet some of them in person. Through blogging, I landed jobs, created a reason to be accountable to my biggest goals, got published in a magazine, and won a trip to Mexico. I got to express myself coherently and somewhat eloquently (the latter’s debatable) when I was too scared or shy to do it in person. Blogging has done wonderful things for my life, and for all of them I am more than thankful – but the time has come for something that’s sat prisoner at the back of my mind for too long, tapping on the jailbars and calling for release. I have become the jailer of my biggest passion, and the time has come to set it free.

I adore the written word. I love reading beautiful prose and lock away beautiful sentences like treasure. I love, when I have time, to sit at my rickety old desk with a glass of port or oversized cup of tea, turn on the fairy lights hanging overhead, light a few candles, and write away the next few hours. But as much as I’ve loved blogging, I’ve felt limited. Not in terms of expression – anyone who’s read for the last little while knows I don’t believe in keeping silent about things that matter – but in terms of style and creativity. Enormous fervor for the English language is tangled around every thought and feeling that floats across my imagination, and I can’t help but feel it’s my biggest calling in life to try to find the words with which to get it out. When I die, I’m quite sure that they’ll find the inside walls of my heart decorated with love letters, pages of Chaucer, and the inlays of hundreds of CD covers, all their lyrics borne of creative geniuses intertwining around the fibres of my soul. Words are my passion, and it seems that when you feel this strongly about something, it should be explored to the absolute limit. It shouldn’t be limited because it’s more comfortable to stay where you are, or because the ephemeral duties of the day-to-day are given priority.

In life, I’ve always been a fan of the saying “that which matters most should never be at the mercy of that which matters least”, and once again I find it situationally apt. I’ve buried the language I love beneath what’s easier, and made excuses about not having time. But I want to write fiction. I want to build characters and create worlds, to write handwritten letters and tell tales that will move people the way I’ve been moved by great literature. I want to work with The Professor, the most brilliant writer I’ve ever met, to pool our ideas and spend the upcoming snowy winter nights brainstorming by candlelight and pouring our imaginations out onto paper, building the foundations for novels and plays. This man has inspired me and made me not only want to, but truly feel capable of doing and being so much more, in so many ways. And the time has come where I can no longer keep this inside. I’m transitioning from blogging into creative writing, and I absolutely cannot wait.

Step one comes next weekend: after seeing a photo somewhere on the Internet, I’d designed a new tattoo (sadly my back shows no sign of becoming a cooperative team member, so that project’s on hold for the foreseeable future) which I’d fallen in love with – a circular alphabet in a script that looked like it could’ve been scrawled by Shakespeare himself, which I wanted on my inner forearm as an eternal reminder that I should be writing, and of the immense power that lies in words. Unfortunately, the script was so ornate that the size I wanted would render it illegible, and I really wanted it somewhere I could see. So I met with the artist – the same one who’d done my neck a few years ago, and coincidentally the same who’d done The Professor’s. She asked me all sorts of questions to make sure she understood why I was getting what I was… and by the end of it, we came up with something that captures the spirit just as effectively: a beautiful, old-fashioned quill. And I have every hope that it will not only reflect my love for the written word… but guide me for the rest of my life toward what I truly should be doing. I’ll still stop by every once in a while and update my blog, but today marks the turning point to the world wherein my true passion lies.

“There are only two worlds – your world, which is the real world, and other worlds, the fantasy. Worlds like this are worlds of the human imagination: their reality, or lack of reality, is not important. What is important is that they are there. these worlds provide an alternative. Provide an escape. Provide a threat. Provide a dream, and power; provide refuge, and pain. They give your world meaning. They do not exist; and thus they are all that matters.”

- Neil Gaiman

I hadn’t experienced it in a long time. I remember first going to the doctor’s for it just over two years ago, who set me up with a counsellor, some sleeping pills, and the idea of cognitive behavioural therapy groups to help me get over it, the latter of which I stubbornly decided to sod and do it my own way. Hence the list. For a while, I strongly believed that life could be exactly what you wanted it to be if you made the decision to actively take part in doing things that lined up with that vision. If you wanted to have confidence but got scared by things, make the choice to go ahead with them instead of running away. I was fuelled by the idea of the power of choice, and I do think it got me a long way from where I was. But then everything I knew changed, and I found myself slipping back into old thought patterns that spiralled out of control until I couldn’t stop. The feeling of being powerless to something that was becoming so opposite of what I wanted to be only exacerbated things, but I didn’t seem to be able to help it. I’d start by worrying about one thing and before I knew it, I was spending ninety per cent of my time in worst case scenario mode, imagining every part of my life ending up in despair or disaster. When I found myself unable to go a day without breaking down in tears in reaction to some imagined catastrophe, it was time to get help. An uncomfortable and embarrassing thing to admit – especially when you’ve worked harder at getting somewhere on your own than you ever have at anything else – but something had to change.

If you can’t fly, then run. If you can’t run, then walk. If you can’t walk,
then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

So I got myself some medication. I got some more sleep, and I had a few sessions with a counsellor I actually connected with. I talked to a really good friend who understands exactly how life can be taken over by anxiety. I read books given to me by people who’ve gone through similar things, and I was blessed with the support, love, belief and encouragement of the man I love. It was a rough patch indeed, but fast-forward a few weeks, and work has become something I really enjoy, I’ve eased off the contract work, I’ve started making time for friends and family again, and I feel happier, more confident, less worried, safer, and more secure than I ever have been in my whole life.

“Nothing happened. And everything did. Your whole life you can be told something is wrong and so you believe it. Why should you question it? But then slowly seeds are planted inside of you, one by one, by a touch or a look or a day skateboarding in a park, and they start to burst out of old hulls shells and they start to sprout. And pretty soon there are so many of them. They are named Love and Trust and Kindness and Joy and Desire and Wonder and Spirit and Soulmate. They grow into a garden so dense and thick that it starts to invade your brain where the old things you were once told are dying. ”
- Francesca Lia Block

This past month had its challenges. But it also included a lot of things that were completely full of win:

• Work. Being featured on the company website my second week in for a “get to know…” story including tales of my childhood raised by deer. Helping organise a trip to the corn maze and getting to name teams after Star Trek captains. Hitting it off with my coworkers instantly. A paid gym membership. Being told I’m funny. Also, getting to write a complaint letter which didn’t quite make it externally, but was thoroughly fun regardless.
• Joining the gym. I’ve made attempts at fitness in the past which have never really gone anywhere, but at the beginning of October, The Professor, a mutual friend and I got a family membership to a gym that’s a fifteen minute walk from my place, and a stone’s throw from theirs. We’ve been going every other day, and even had a personal training session which is going to help me get stronger, hopefully lose some back pain, tone up, and improve my endurance when it comes to things like hauling bags of groceries up my three flights of stairs Strength is definitely in numbers, and something I used to hate and find terribly boring solo has become fun, social, and something I actually look forward to.
• $20 glasses from ZenniOptical.com.
• Feeling something indescribable, life-changing, incredible and once-in-a-lifetime for the very first time. Laughing, growing, sharing passions, ideas and goals, and smiling every single day.
• Halloween season. Costume party this week, a dress-up day at work, scary movie nights, ghost tours, dangerous amounts of sugar, zombies on buses, and grown-up haunted houses… I really, really like October.
• Driving. Remember how terrified I was? For the last ten years? Wonderful things happen to your confidence when you have someone who gets you completely, and genuinely believes in you. I’ve driven every time The Professor and I have gone out for the last month or so, and something that I’d always felt I’d be infinitely too scared to do has now become a reality. My road test is in a month. I can always pretend I drove in England and got confused, right?
• Finally feeling okay with myself. I put on a large chunk of weight in a small amount of time when I started being happy again, and at first, I panicked. But the more time I spend with the right people, the less it bothers me. I’ve gone up a size, I’ve stopped tanning, and I’ve taken to painting my own nails. But I no longer feel like I have to do any of that. I’m happy, and healthier, and none of that stuff seems to matter any more.
• A season of great television and great music. Once in a while, nothing beats curling up in oversized pyjamas after discovering (shamefully late to the party) some wonderful songs with a cat in your arms, watching a week’s episodes of EastEnders, catching up on Spooks, and laughing your arse off with TV Burp.
• Fun photoshoots. 
• Rediscovering free time. When I found myself with two weeks without any freelance deadlines, I realised how valuable a work-life balance actually is. I had time to actually catch up on cleaning my apartment, to make proper meals, to read, to see people I hadn’t seen in a month, to write, to talk on the phone, to go to bed early, to exercise, or to watch an episode of X Factor without feeling terribly guilty. All work and no play don’t just make Jack a dull boy, they make him irritable and stabby and prone to giant fits of tears, and I’ve learned lately just how important it is to have time for the people and things you genuinely love.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to write as often as before, but I wanted to check in, see how you were all doing, and give a bit of an update on things at this end. I miss blogging terribly, but life is good. I’m exercising, spending time with amazing people, working at a place I really enjoy, and writing other things I’m really excited about. I’m making Halloween costumes, planning for Christmas, reading great books and engaging in epic conversations. I’m learning to drive, learning to sing, and living out what’s rapidly turning out to be the best new chapter anyone could’ve wished for. I genuinely hope all is well with you… please catch me up on what’s been happening in your lives! And perhaps more importantly, what you’re dressing up as for Halloween

I’ve been away for three whole weeks now, and I must say I’m missing the blogosphere immensely. Nothing to worry about – just terrifically busy with adjusting to the new world that is my new job, and a few looming deadlines in freelance world (someone once said that nothing travels faster than the speed of light, “with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws” – Mr. Adams, I’m pretty sure deadlines may be a contender!). I have so much to share with you, and so much to catch up on – and hopefully once I’ve caught up a little bit with life, I’ll be back to a regular schedule. I really can’t wait to hear about everything that’s been going on in your world, and I’ll be back hopefully sooner rather than later. In short: I miss you, I miss writing, life is insanely busy, but absolutely wonderful.

See you soon!

Today is a bittersweet day.

In the very recent past, I was fretting a little about my finances – since making the transition to living solo and being responsible for – well, everything – my wonderful job in the non-profit world wasn’t quite paying the bills. I landed some extra freelance work, and even went to an orientation for an evening job (at which point I realised what a frightful snob I was, couldn’t bring myself to phone Americans to ask them about their preferred brand of dog food, and left halfway through… this was following a test in which they asked us to explain the difference between an open-ended and a closed-ended question. Right?), but this course of action would have me waking up at 5:45 and working until 10:30 at night. I knew I’d probably burn out pretty quickly, and the extra money wasn’t substantial enough to make it worthwhile, and sometimes you have to give yourself a little bit of a break. So I crunched some numbers, made a tentative budget, and decided I would live off Kraft Dinner, shop at Value Village, and develop a passion for avoiding the world of music and theatre for the next five years, only at the end of which I would be close to paying off my debt. And then the universe intervened.

All of a sudden, I was being contacted by someone in the nation’s capital to ask if I was available for a job that I’d interviewed for a year ago (and been offered; I’d declined when funding came through that would allow me to remain where I was) – and that offered a 23% increase in pay. I’ve never been one to make a decision based on money – I firmly believe that we only have one life and we should do as much with it and leave as positive an impact in it as possible regardless of whether or not we have money – but reality was setting in hard, and I decided to take a leap of faith. I know it’s illogical, but I like to believe in signs sometimes, and the timing was just too coincidental. I had a giant problem, and the solution was being handed over with a nice big bow on top. So I said yes.

The next thing I knew, I was writing a resignation letter with shaking hands and a pounding heart, a mixture of excitement, relief and absolute heartbreak running through my veins. I met with my supervisor, her boss, and the Executive Director individually, shakily handed them each a copy of the letter, let out a squeaky “I — I’m going”, and burst into tears. By the time I got to the ED, I’d cried all my makeup off, and went into his office in absolute floods (which were only intensified when I saw he’d kept the giant ball of tin foil in pride of place, left over from my attempts at ”decorating” his office). They each assured me I’d be missed, that I was gifted, and that I’d grown so much since I first started. They told me heartfelt things about admiration and resilience and said I’d made a difference in lots of lives. They said how they’d passed my blog onto their children who were going through difficulty because somehow they saw me as “an inspiration.” They gave me heartfelt hugs and boxes of tissues and left me wondering if I’d made an enormous mistake. But the last few months have been full of giant changes, and each one has led to new things that have been infinitely more wonderful than I’ve ever known, and in my heart, I know that this is a necessary step forward. The final step toward a brand new life.

Working in non-profit has been an absolute joy. My coworkers became like a sort of family, there to celebrate with decorations, afternoon tea, a TARDIS and Photoshopped Star Trek cards during the good times, and with hugs, coffee, boxes and cars to help me move during the challenges. It was part of the mission statement to have fun. It was also part of the mission to make a significant contribution to people’s lives, and we did both brilliantly. Nothing will compare to the feeling of seeing people’s whole worlds completely turned around, the effects that will last the rest of their lives, or the feeling I got after in absolute terror, I’d facilitated my first workshop, and had a round of applause at the end. I dressed up in Christmas costumes with these people, ran around the city taking ridiculous pictures with strangers, and learned lessons at staff retreats that will stay with me forever. These people helped me believe in myself, take risks, see the world differently, and do things I never thought I’d be able to do. I poured my heart into this job and the people I shared each day of the last two and a half years with, and I feel incredibly sad to see this chapter ending.

But whether you call it a sign, karma, orchestration of the universe or inevitability as a result of genetic makeup, this new door is opening for a reason, and I have faith that this is going to lead to brilliant things. New people, new challenges, a significantly less stressful financial situation, and new opportunities as a result. My new job is at a Big Corporate Company in a downtown high-rise – I’ve worked in non-profit, freelance and businesses with less than five employees for the last half-decade; it’s going to be a bit of an adjustment. I’m scared, but I’m almost as excited. I leave with people who’ll forever have a place in my heart, who’ve helped me become who I am this very moment, as friends. And I’m growing. I’m doing the sensible thing and taking measures to get into a better situation. I’m paving the way for all the things I want to do in the next few years in life – I want to learn more skills, challenge myself more, save more and see more of the world. I want to travel with The Professor and get more tattoos and buy a car and take more classes. I want to be able to afford healthy food. I want to give more when World Vision phones me up or when friends have birthdays. I want to experience more and just be more. It seems the journey of Becoming A Grown-Up is continuing more rapidly as of late, with bigger steps and scarier hurdles and larger gaping chasms of uncertainty, but as with anything in life, you just have to accept it, go with it, and give it your all. Make a decision to just be brilliant.

Today is my first day. And despite all the nerves and anxiety that have made a thoroughly jarring and unwelcome return over the last few days, I have no intention of doing anything less. Wish me luck…

“If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years,
how man would marvel and stare. But every night come out these
envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you remember, one of the big themes around here last year was the 26 Before 26 – a list of goals, mostly things I’d always been scared to try, to get me stepping outside of my comfort zone in a defiant rebellion at allowing myself to have been imprisoned by fear for so long. Sadly, as my deadline approached, life took a rapid turn into crazyville and I found myself falling short, but just because I didn’t achieve a handful of things by June doesn’t mean I’m not still going to strive for them. One of the things on that list was learning to drive. Now, I was already considered late to the party at seventeen, when most of my classmates had already taken their tests and begun driving themselves to school over a year prior; at twenty-six, I should probably just retire from even thinking about it. I’ve been (as a favourite television programme so affectionately calls it) a bus wanker for as long as I can remember, and though it does the job, it also often takes me three times as long to get anywhere. I also have to grocery shop several times per week thanks to a pair of girly arms in place of a car boot, and — a personal highlight — I get to revel in the delightful company of the city’s public transportationists. Not to mention the cost of a monthly pass, and long winter afternoons spent with the next incarnation of Narnia forming on your eyelashes when the bus driver understandably decides to just sod it. Getting a licence is something I’ve really wanted to do for a long time, but almost a decade after sitting in Driver’s Ed wondering why 10 mph isn’t a perfectly acceptable speed limit, I’m still just as terrified at the thought of sitting behind the wheel.

But lately, I’ve experienced another batch of those Signs from the Universe. Job opportunities sailed past ungrasped, and I continually fall short of being able to help loved ones in times of need, which doesn’t sit well. If I have you on Facebook, lately you may have noticed I’ve developed a rather insatiable passion for the night sky. Recently, The Professor introduced me to the magic that is the stars above us; outside the perimeter, free of the city’s light pollution, ordinary darkness is transformed into a glittering array of diamonds that literally takes my breath away. I wonder how it possibly took me so long to really see the beauty that lies above us every night; now I know what’s up there, I’m thoroughly enchanted, and can’t quite grasp how people go about their lives in a prison of urban signs and streetlights, never witnessing the magic overhead. We’ve spent several nights over the last couple of months passing away early hours somewhere secluded, lying under the heavens spotting constellations, gaping at passing nebulae, wishing on the most fiery shooting stars and listening to a meteor mixtape, or running down moonlit streets getting caught in epic electrical storms that explode across the sky. After my first meteor shower, exhilaration ran through my veins and I felt as if I’d climbed a mountain – no words can describe the sight of a thousand brilliant stars scattered across an infinite veil of midnight, a sight made even more incredible when shared.

Crazy lightning storm a few weeks ago, taken from the top of
a giant metal structure we decided to climb

The feeling  of experiencing such epics in nature (I wish I could capture the stars… astrophotography course, anyone?) leaves me filled with awe, and a sense that if I can experience this, everything else seems rather inconsequential, and subsequently, just about anything is possible. This has catapulted me toward those things still left on my list, and over the last couple of weeks, I’ve crossed off a handful – but the scariest one had for a very long time been driving.  Last week, we’d gone out in hopes of catching the northern lights (sadly a sight which still remains unseen), and riding the wave of adrenaline following bundling under a sky which appeared to be stealing satellites into other dimensions, we decided to make the most of the midnight roads and give me a chance to practice being in the driver’s seat. The park was closed, it was a Tuesday night, and it was almost one in the morning, so there was barely any traffic. I hopped in and with a little gentle encouragement, started doing a few laps around the park’s perimeter. I noticed a few things right away: firstly, that twenty miles per hour feels ridiculously fast, secondly, that maintaining a steady speed is far easier in Crash Team Racing than it is in real life, and thirdly, that when in a state of ultimate nervousness, my first assumption when butterflies fly toward the windscreen is that they are deer, and that I am very much going to run them over. I did learn a few things quickly though. Once I hit 60 mph, things didn’t seem so fast at all. It was also easier to stay in my lane without swerving in and out if I focused on some point far off in the distance than on the immediate road ahead (also, if I kept up a conversation). And that after a few laps, contrary to the sheer terror displayed below, I wanted to keep going.

The Professor was the best teacher ever. One of the many reasons he got the name he did! He was encouraging, reassuring, and assured me it was okay if I wanted to stop. He calmed my nerves with Hawksley Workman in the background and stories that replaced anxiety with laughter. He taught me how to shoulder check, and what signs meant, and walked me through merging into traffic. I ended up on the perimeter going 100 mph, navigated my way through roadworks in the dark, and continued across the whole city where 45 minutes later, I parked us outside my house. I’ll probably have to replace the steering wheel now it surely has imprints of my clenched hands two inches deep, but I had spent my second time behind the wheel driving 35 kilometres in the dark.

I got out of the car positively shaking and threw myself straight into an embrace, part in sheer joy as he told me how proud he was, and part in attempt to keep my heart from bursting out of my chest. I was so full of adrenaline that despite it being one in the morning, sleep showed no signs of making an appearance any time soon, and spent the next hour with blankets, Slurpees and laptop Doctor Who as my pulse slowed to normal and I drifted off in complete disbelief that something I’d felt would never make its way into the real world had actually just materialised. I know it’s just driving. But it’s by far been the thing I’ve been most terrified of for an awfully long time. I feel very lucky right now – to be inspired by the beauty of the universe, to simply be alive to witness it, and to be able to share it with someone who genuinely makes me feel I can do anything (a few weeks ago, I also found myself singing in public!). I’ve driven a few times since, and though pushing the pedal is usually accompanied by lots of screaming and/or crying, I haven’t hit anything, haven’t driven on the “British side”, and haven’t given in to the initial notion of pylons equalling prizes. It’s funny how dauntless you can feel when you have someone genuinely believe in you, and how inspired when fuelled by the magnificence of the galaxy. The world can be an amazing place… how very lucky I am to be soaking it all up. One more item on the list: very much checked.

“One thousand brilliant stars punched holes in my consciousness, pricking me with longing. I could stare at the stars for hours, their infinite number and depth pulling me into a part of myself that I ignored during the day.”
- Maggie Stiefvater