Fragments

I'm still reeling from yesterdays migraine.

My mom told me not to worry. Was I worrying? she asked. The answer was yes even though I said no. I am not sure I am ready to talk about it yet.

Not sure that January is ending on a high note but overall the month has gone much better than anticipated. December was so ... I am not sure there is one word to describe it. I spent much of December in Edmonton and that was good and bad and neither all at once. I came to some pretty big realizations (not ready to talk about those either) and took what amounted to very large steps in some direction that I can only hope was the right one and was emotionally up and down and all over the map, beginning 2008 as a pool of tears on several peoples shoulders. When people asked what was wrong all I could do was sob that I didn't want to go home. Home being Calgary. Not home being Edmonton. (I find I very confusingly refer to both cities as home and not home and I apologize here and now for all the times I am sure I won't spell myself out. ) Everyone was super great about telling me I could come visit whenever I wanted and that I could stay at their place if I didn't want to stay at my parents and it was only 4 weeks until I saw the Scrapbooking Girls and only 3 weeks after that until Family Day and then there would be Beth's shower and ... But that wasn't the point exactly. While there are definitely days when I would like to go home (Edmonton) there is also at this point an overwhelming sense that I am supposed to be in Calgary. I don't know what that means or why I feel that way and often wonder if it is just my inability to give up and admit that I can't do this (this being living 3 hours away from my entire family/family of friends) except that I can do this and have been doing it and ... The point was that my whole world had fallen apart about oh, umpteen million times over the course of 31 days and I had kept it together because I was all cocooned in my safety net and every time I fell someone I loved was right there to catch me, whether they knew that's what they were doing or not. And I just knew that the aftermath of my falling apart was going to start hitting the fan and I was going to be in Calgary, alone, trying to catch myself and I didn't see how that was even remotely possible. But the aftermath ... well maybe it is still coming. Or maybe those phone calls to B and Dev coming for breakfast and lunch with Simone and Niki having me over for supper & an evening of Dallas and making tentative plans with Shannon to start a book club and dinner with Amanda and finding out from Chels that I could stay here indefinitely and writing again ... maybe those small and unrelated things were enough to hold me together or at least hold me still so that some of the fragmented pieces could settle.

4 years and growing ...

1. Finish Europe Scrapbook

It took me the better part of 4 years but I put the finishing touches on my Europe scrapbook over the weekend. I started scrapbooking the spring of 2004 after Kristy & Chantal came back from Mexico, almost a year after I took my trip with Beth & Mel. We still lived in the Party House and a group of us (Kristy, Chantal, Karen & Sabrina) would get together every couple of weeks to work on our individual projects together. Sabrina is our "dealer", she works for a scrapbooking company so she is our direct line to papers, stickers and all the cool tools that make scrapbooking an absolute addiction. As our lives got busier we found less and less time to make scrapbooking a group activity, but still get together periodically to share ideas, trade tools and tips and provide positive feedback about eachothers work.

We spent this last weekend at a bed & breakfast near Ferintosh - scrapbooking, socializing and getting pampered by our hosts. They provide 3 square meals a day, a huge room to spread out our projects, a hot tub, lots of beds and as many cinnamon buns as your heart desires (not to mention tarts, pudding, pancakes and an amazing dessert that tasted exactly like a drumstick). I enjoy scrapbooking - it combines my love of taking pictures with my penchant for hanging on to assorted oddments that I pick up along my travels AND I get to hang out with 4 girls I don't spend nearly enough time with now that I am in Calgary (and who am I kidding, in the last year before I left for Calgary). I also find scrapbooking challenging which is why I prefer to do it in a group setting so that I can get opinions and positive reinforcement that my efforts don't look like crap.

I'm not quite sure how to explain why I find scrapbooking so challenging. It's not exactly that I don't think I am a creative person - but it's not a part of my brain I use very often so my creative skills are a little rusty. And I have always been told that I am no artist - which is true in the sense that I couldn't draw a stick person to save my life - but I am starting to realize that you can be artistic in ways that don't involve drawing or painting and I like that scrapbooking is an outlet that allows me to find my inner artist and to express myself in ways I might not otherwise be able to. I have ideas for other projects now that the Europe book is complete, a little smaller than scale but by no means less important to telling a story about who I am and where I have come from. I'm looking for other ways to tell that story - blogging here more often is going to be another outlet, buying a new camera and taking more photos is a top priority. It's all about opening myself up to new ways of expressing myself, new ways of thinking about communication, new ways of figuring out exactly who I was and who I am becoming.

More than a list

I've been thinking a lot about goals lately, as I review my old 101 list and try to create my new 101 list (I'm at 98). About how setting goals is a good way to really think about where you are and where you want to be and what you want to do along the way. About how accomplishing your goals is fulfilling and provides a sense of moving forward. About how some goals are easily quantifiable and have an obvious end and how other goals are just kind of ethereal and hard to pin down as totally done because they never are, not really.

I've been thinking about how great it is that I accomplished 73 things that I set out to do almost 3 years ago now. And how while that is fantastic and amazing ... well what about those 28 that I didn't finish? Why didn't I finish them? Did I fail by not finishing them? And there is no real definitive answer. To any of the questions. I guess who I am now is different and the same as who I was 3 years ago. I guess I have different goals and different dreams and at the same time I have some of the same goals and dreams and it is very confusing at times. To figure out who I was and who I am and who I want to be. Who I want to be to myself and who I want to be to others. I have tendrils of thoughts that almost come close to being answers but they are difficult to grasp and almost always when I am half asleep.

I've been thinking about all of the really cool stuff I did in 3 years, all the not so cool stuff, all the happy and sad and extraordinarily painful moments, all the things I would never have thought to put on my 101 list but that happened anyways and have helped to shape the way my life is heading today. Not only did I go to Greece, but I flew overseas and saw most of Athens by myself and then spent the rest of my 10 days having a very fabulous time with my parents and meeting a lot of people from Holland. I went up two Acropolises (Acropoli?) and one of them involved a donkey. I went to game 6 of the Stanley Cup playoffs. I got a new job (on the list) and it involved moving (not on the list) all by myself to a city where I really knew no one and without my BFF to hold my hand. I saw one of my best friends get married - was her maid of honor, hand made invitations, learned enough about powerpoint to make a slideshow, wrote and said a speech, got seranaded, and had actual conversations with boys from highschool who used to terrify me. I hit Las Vegas twice, kissed a real live baseball player, took a road trip to Palm Springs, went to LA and saw Wicked (!!) at the Pantages Theatre. I met Simone, her fabulous family, and got to be part of her entire pregnancy. I have a better relationship with my mom than ever before. I did readings at my grandmothers funeral. I bought a new car.

I guess what I am trying to tell myself is that while it is well and good to have a list of things I would like to do, it is also more than acceptable to not do all of those things, to have my priorities shift or change all together and to have experiences that I never would have had the foresight to plan out on paper.

Wrap up

I realized a while back that the deadline for my 101 things in 1001 days has long since come and gone. So the other day I did my final tally and was pleasantly surprised to find that I had completed 73 items on my list and had started work on several of the last 28. (Yay!) This was much better than anticipated, especially considering some of the stuff I thought was a long shot (Greece) actually managed to get knocked off. It even inspired me to make up a new list, which at this point I am not going to post publicly but may use as fodder for future entries if the results are interesting enough. I will mention one goal that does affect this site though, which is to write a minimum of 36 new entries ... I figure that means writing at least once a month and although I am hoping to write more than that, once a month will be a good start if nothing else.

The last few days have been mostly good, even though I feel terribly burnt out at work what with the short staffing and all. I still love my job but half staff with no end in sight is not very fun even when you are doing something you love. The one bleak spot was finding out that Simone is 99% for sure moving back to Edmonton, which means a)if our head office can't accomodate her living in Edmonton when she is done her mat leave we are down another person and b)one of my best girls will no longer live in the same city as me. Who will I have TV nights and dinners with? When will I get to see 2 of my favorite boys? But this is not about me, and I know how much Simone has wanted to go back to Edmonton and how unhappy she has been alone in Chestermere while her husband works out of town so much of the time. So I am honestly happy for her and think this will be a good step for her.

I think part of our bond, aside from automatically being kindred spirits, is that we are both displaced Edmontonians. We understand what it is like to love our job but not really feel at home in Calgary, to worry about being so far away if something were to happen to someone that we love. In some ways it is different because as much as there are hard days and moments when I wish I could just go home I also feel like Calgary is where I am supposed to be. I feel like given enough time I can make Calgary work for me. It is hard to find the balance though - between going home often enough that I don't get homesick and super lonely for my family & friends, and staying in Calgary for long enough periods to feel like I am starting to have a life and make friends here. Trial and error and baby steps I guess.

Step 1

A lot has changed in the last year.
Actually a lot has changed in the last month.

Good changes I think, even though I am still reeling from certain self-revelations and not entirely sure what it all means yet. Kind of like I burst through a shell that I didn't even know existed, never mind that it was holding me back. But the last few weeks have been tentative steps forward and even if I can't quite quantify all or any of it, something is different. The same but different.

I still don't quite know where I fit in or belong. I still feel torn between Edmonton and Calgary - both of them being home but not home at the same time. I still have the urge to write but the fear of actually opening up to others and to myself, as well as feeling like my life is too routine to actually be an interesting read and that while I probably possess the skills to make it an interesting read ... what if I fail? Clearly I have not made much progress in my attempts to get over my fear of failure.

I am kind of sad at the moment. For a lot of reasons but mainly because moving forward (even if it is at a snail's pace) definitely means leaving certain things behind and/or having a different relationship with some people/things. But in some ways I have been holding on to an ideal that never really was, or hasn't been for a long time, and I have to let that go. For example: my friendship circle is not the same as it was 4ish years ago when I lived in the Party House and the majority of my friends also lived in the University area and it was so easy to find time to hang out and get a group together. People have moved away, time is more of a luxury these days ... the list can go on. And while there are times, like Christmas, when most people come back and it feels like the old days again ... those old days are gone and the friendships are different. Not necessarily a bad thing. But an important thing for me to realize when I compare my life now to my life then.

The other thing I have realized is that no matter the distance, even if they can't swing by at the drop of a hat anymore, there are people in that circle who love me unconditionally. At the moment I am not entirely sure I deserve that. But they are there whenever I need my pieces put back together. They have always been there: when I didn't want my pieces put back together, when they didn't know why I needed to be put back together, when I didn't realize I needed to be put back together. They are the glue that has held me together and I am not sure if I have ever said thank-you. I am not sure if saying thank-you is even remotely enough.