By Sarah, on November 26th, 2010 So, I’m coming back to this space. (Or trying to at least.) The urge to blog has been nibbling on my brain for about a month now. But the old space felt stale, like it was missing something. I’ve been convincing myself not to start from scratch but instead to build on what I have here. I’ve been tweaking things here and there, trying to settle back in and feel comfortable. It still doesn’t look quite right to me. I think I’m going to try a few more things out.
 I haven’t reaaaally gotten around to posting yet, though. I’m trying to re-find my voice. MY voice. The voice that has been long submerged under my own fear of failure and need to please. Under my guilt at not being perfect, but having to try and try again. The phrase “try-hard” comes to mind, because I do too often find myself trying to be someone I’m not. Trying to project what I want others to see, which is usually just themselves reflected back. Most of the time, it’s easier than voicing an opinion and then standing up for it. Easier than trying to convince people that just because I look 12 doesn’t mean that I’m incompetent. If I hear one more person tell me that it’s a gift to look so youthful at my age I’m going to scream. All of this has rolled itself into one cohesive problem: Instead of doing what I love, I procrastinate. I make excuses. I hope no one will notice that I am slipping away slowly. Other times I start things but never end up following them through for the same reason. It can be somewhat crippling.
But my life has change a lot in the past couple months, more so than at any time that came before. I feel completely different. Life has given me a fresh start, and in a way I do want to start from scratch. I want different things, I look at the world differently. My needs and desires are different. Priorities shift. As one door closes, another opens. I know I am passionate about blogging, about interior decor, about streamlining life so that it is organized and allows the happiness of a home to flow. I’m passionate about my connection to the universe and about my husband and family. I love to share all of that with others. I am an emotional person, perhaps too easily affected by the emotions of others. But I find nothing more fulfilling than helping others on that one-on-one level, I like the tangible results.
And I like my life to be small. I know there are others out there like me, too. “Think Big! Go! Money! More! Easy! Cheap! Fast!” seems to me the siren call of this city. I prefer a different version of life, and I accept that now. I prefer quiet over loud. I am not good at asking “how high” when someone tells me to jump. I need to accept that. So I want to write about what is real to me, to share that with others, to put it into the universe. I haven’t always done that here.
I’ve been reading Meg Mateo Ilasco’s book Craft Inc. and this quote really struck me:
“It can be daunting and ambitious to set out to create new trends, but when you remove the pressure to produce something “great” and proceed at your own pace, you’ll see that it can be done. Allow yourself to be a beginner. Everyone has creative potential; it just takes time and practice to develop your personal style. Once your creative confidence kicks in, ideas will flow and you’ll shake your head wondering why you doubted yourself in the first place.”
When I read this, it made me think two things. One, I realized that, yes, it’s not a lack of time that’s holding me back from life, but a lack of courage to be true to myself and make the tough decisions. And two, that I’m not the only one who’s ever felt this way. It is comforting to know I am not alone.
By Sarah, on November 21st, 2010 
“Our life depends on the kind of thoughts we nurture. If our thoughts are peaceful, calm, meek, and kind, then that is what our life is like. If our attention is turned to the circumstances in which we live, we are drawn into a whirlpool of thoughts and can have neither peace nor tranquility.”
~Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica
By Sarah, on August 10th, 2010 Oh, you know. When I wasn’t successfully changing my career’s direction I was drowning in wedding plans. Just the usual. But I will be back…very soon. Promise.
By Sarah, on February 5th, 2010 
“The people who seem to be the most content don’t focus on a time years ahead when they hope to have whatever they imagine it takes to be happy — money or time or a wonderful relationship. They live in the present and take their pleasure seriously. And they create their own pleasures.”
~ from the book Simple Pleasures
By Sarah, on February 1st, 2010 
All frothy on top.
I don’t think I could get by very long in a world where I wasn’t allowed to have my morning cup of coffee. I like mine strong but milky. Is that a contradiction? Whatever it is, it’s just so yummy, so comforting. Since I’ve been working from home, it’s become something of a routine that eases me, with caffeine love, into my day. My close companion through email checks, day-planner updates, feed-reading, and finally, settling into the workday.
Coffee and I are BFFs for life.
By Sarah, on January 29th, 2010 
“Have nothing in your houses that is not useful or you do not believe to be beautiful.”
~ William Morris
By Sarah, on January 23rd, 2010 …and instead, put my life on a successful and fulfilling career path. That is Resolution #2 for 2010.
I’ve mentioned many a time how hateful I find my current job. Over the past year I must have applied for 50 jobs. But despite my education and work experience, nobody is hiring in this economy, not even entry level positions with salaries that would leave me barely able to pay the rent. It’s depressing. I should know, because I let this apparent failure on my part depress me for a good chuck of last year. I felt like I had no options available to me, like I wasn’t even hireable for the crappiest crappy job that was really no better than the crappy dead-end job I currently have. Worst was that few of the jobs I was being rejected for were even things that I really wanted to do.
So I started thinking real hard and doing some soul searching. After a while the answer became so clear that I wondered how I couldn’t have known what I wanted to do with my career the whole time. I’m going to be a Professional Organizer and Interior Decorator.
I’ve always been madly obsessed with organizing and making things more useful and functional. I’ve also always had an eye for aesthetics and seem to know when things go together and when they don’t. Looking at catalogues or magazines, I put together possibilities in my mind’s eye. In every room I enter, I look at what works and what doesn’t and how it could be made better. It’s what comes naturally, and what I should be doing as a career.
So that’s my second resolution for 2010: to stop being afraid, to take the plunge into doing what I love and to work at it every day until I have successfully established myself in the field. It’s gonna take a lot of hard work, maybe some night school, and a lot of believing in myself even when I have nothing to show for it. But if I’m ever gonna have a career it has to be started now. I just gotta remember to take baby steps until I get there.
By Sarah, on January 14th, 2010 
“When we lack proper time for the simple pleasures of life, for the enjoyment of eating, drinking, playing, creating, visiting friends, and watching children at play, then we have missed the purpose of life. Not by bread alone do we live but on all these human and heart-hungry luxuries.”
~ Ed Hayes
By Sarah, on January 11th, 2010 
My mind moves much faster than my life does and I’ve been noticing lately how much of an issue this is for me. How incapable I seem to be at just thinking about right now instead of 20 minutes, 20 hours, 20 days or 20 years from now. I focus too much on what’s to come, on what’s next, instead of what I have to embrace and enjoy right now. The more I think of it, the more I realize what kind of debilitating long-term problem this has been. I am a collector of possibilities that I never seem to get around to fulfilling. And waiting for later takes all the joy and excitement out of something that was once shiny and new. It becomes old news before it has even begun.
I’m sure a lot of this has to do with how much I hated (and how trapped I felt by) being in school. Living in the moment was always the last place I wanted to be. I don’t think I was always like this though. As a child I lived in the moment, I’m sure. But once my horrible school experiences started taking over, I think that’s when my collector behaviour began.
This problem has been niggling the back of my mind for a while and it’s not something that I’m just going to get over tomorrow. But I think that if I keep it as a goal in my mind, to not just live in the moment but to appreciate it and find joy in it as well, then things will slowly start to change. It is the Year of Change, after all.
I need to allow myself to have some time to just be, because for too long I’ve been putting off for tomorrow what I could’ve and should’ve been doing today. Reminds you of the name of this blog, doesn’t it. Coincidence? I think not.
By Sarah, on January 10th, 2010 
Why do people hate winter? Or any season for that matter? I know that up here in Canada it can get very cold and the realities of moving through snow can prove to be difficult on a Monday morning, but why the hate? Don’t they know that each in turn is part of the whole? There can be no summer harvest without first having winter’s snow melt into the ground to replenish the water table.
I’ve never been a great fan of extremes, be they in winter or summer. I’m much more of a spring/fall girl myself. More wardrobe options that way. But I am getting better at learning to take things as they come. Each season has something enjoyable about it that I think we’d miss if there was suddenly no more of that one time of year. Like, for instance, lighting candles in the early evening when you’ve barely turned your mind to dinner and yet the night already envelops you.
Note to self: remember this feeling and this sentiment come Groundhog Day when the brunt of winter is upon us and there are no more twinkling Christmas lights to make me feel good about it.
Also: remember to stock up on candles.
By Sarah, on December 13th, 2009 * Eating 10 pounds of sugar in the form of smarties, jub-jubs, cookies, etc. makes for quite the sugar-crash headache the next morning.
* Living in the moment seems a lot more fulfilling than freaking out, spending so much time planning for the future. Kyrie seems to do it pretty well. I think I should read her blog more often.
* It might be nice to try knitting a hat, but that might require me teaching myself how to knit in the round. Do I have time for that before Christmas?
* It is miserable outside. I do not like going outside when it is miserable. I have to go outside today.
* My camera is broken! Well, my good camera is broken. All I have now is my point-and-shoot. Sniff. No hand-shake minimization. I wish I could replace it with this but there’s no way on earth I could afford it. Double sniff.
* There must be an inverse relation between how much fun you have spending an evening baking cookies with friends and how much suckage there is cleaning up the kitchen the next morning. Sigh.
* Have I mentioned my good camera is broken? Whimper. Maybe I can look into buying a used DSLR….
By Sarah, on December 10th, 2009 Well, I’ve definitely decided that telecommuting is worth giving another try. Though it is gonna take some getting used to, finding a new routine. I’ve been telecommuting for a few days now, but inevitably I’ve been spending the whole day in my PJs and feeling out of whack because of it.
Today I’m trying something different. Attempting to ignore the pressure to begin work immediately upon waking up and instead starting when I’m good and ready. (Read “showered.”) I think part of the reason why the transition has been so hard and why it didn’t work before was because I’ve been trying to keep my hours up. But for me, working from home can’t be about putting in 40-hour weeks all the time any more, or I might as well be working in the office.
Changing one’s mindset is hard. And it’s harder than it sounds, acting as though you already are the person you want to be. Maybe I’m half way to pretending. Somewhere near that mid-lifechange point. There’s still a lot of prep work to be done and routines to be hammered out and some definite cleaning of my apparently neglected apartment to wade through, but perhaps once those things are in place it will be easier to wake up believing that I already am who I want to be. I just need to give myself more time. Time to settle in, time to clean up and time to focus on making plans for actually starting my career. Time to enjoy Christmas would be a nice bonus, too. And keeping crazy hours at my current job is not gonna help me with that.
So really, what this is is time to let go. I don’t have to be the best at that job anymore because now, I’m learning to be the best at something else.
By Sarah, on December 7th, 2009 Okay, so, it’s no secret: I HATE MY JOB. I hate it up one side and down the other. I can’t even remember when I stopped liking it and started hating it. Was it one year ago? Two? More? And yet, I’ve been fighting with myself about it despite wanting to quit. I guess the big problem is that I don’t wanna let a certain love of my life down. I feel like if I quit or even just cut back on hours before having a new job perfectly lined up to pay all the bills he’d be disappointed or worse. Don’t get me wrong, I know money is “important.” But with my current crappy job we are JUST paying the bills. No savings. No buffer. No spending money, even. And the problem is, with this job sucking away all my time (and me working way too hard for almost nothing) it leaves no time to look for a new job, start a business, or develop my passions. All I do is work and eat and sleep, work and eat and sleep. No balance. No hope. No future. And I know most people think that should be okay and be enough. I mean, I should feel lucky and privileged just to have a job at all in this economy, right? Because it seems like the general consensus is that money is more important than everything, even saving yourself from sinking into depression because you’ve ended up living a completely unfulfilling life.
Well, I guess money isn’t my only reason for sticking around at this crummy job. I really do like the people I work with, although most of them are gone already or headed out the door, at least. That shouldn’t really be a reason though. I shouldn’t stay in a job I hate for other people. But any way I turn, there doesn’t seem to be a way out of this situation. No matter where I look it’s the same: I need money. I guess there may be one way to ease my troubles. If I telecommute to the office there would be fewer wasted hours in my day. More time for the things that really matter. And the more I make those things matter, the possibly less I will have to work that hellish job. My only problem is that I tried that once before and the stress and deadlines of the job had me working in my PJs all day, unable to even take the time to walk my dog when she sat crying by the door with a full bladder. I guess it was the pressure not to disappoint or perhaps my inability to say “NO, THIS IS TOO MUCH WORK.” Or, you know, just to have the self-worth to put myself first over any crummy job making demands on my time. I was always super-distracted too because EVERYTHING in my life is way more important (in my eyes) than this horrible job, so it always felt like such a waste of time, working, when I could have been doing more important things, money notwithstanding.
But I can’t keep hemming and hawing forever. I need to pull the trigger, make a choice, set a direction and follow it. I need to stop feeling bad or thinking “what if” or hoping that a change will find me all on it’s own. Yes, money is important, but is it important at the expense of my future? I always thought that everything would be so much easier once I finished university, but it just seems to have gotten that much more complicated. Building a career is a lifetime commitment and there are no mid-semester breaks. There is no half-assing it if you want to be successful. You have to believe it and just do it. Don’t let money make you scared or you will spend your entire life living in fear (like I have.) I can’t do that anymore. I can’t be okay with that being my life. I can’t spend all my time worrying about what other people will think.
The Year of Freedom is almost over, gone before it every really began. By this time next year I’ll be 30 and I’ll be married. So maybe it’s time to stop dreaming of who I’ll be when I grow up and start living my life being that person. I read a blog post the other day from a very talented artist. Her words were simple: Fake it till you make it. Pretend that you’re already the person that you want to be and one day you’ll wake up and you won’t be pretending anymore. That’s just who you’ll be.
I didn’t really sleep that well last night. I woke up around 3 AM and never really got back to sleep. Just too much on my mind, I guess. But it was good in a way, I had time to think. And so I’ve decided that though I may have been up for hours already by that point, when dawn finally broke this morning I stopped being Sarah: wussy-faced whiner and chronic daydreamer. Instead, I became Sarah: professional organizer and interior decorator. If 2009 was the Year of Freedom, 2010 will be the Year of Change. You can bet your bottom dollar on that. I know I will be.
By Sarah, on July 20th, 2009 
I found myself feeling overwhelmingly philosophical this morning. More than usual, it would seem. Most of the time I keep my philosophical thoughts to myself. In our “modern” world, it has become something of a faux pas to start up a philosophical discussion. And with the frantic pace of 21st century lives, who really has time to waste on philosophy anyway? So really, I guess I don’t talk about this much, but I am actually an acutely seasonally-minded person. More than any organized religion ever has, the spiritual side of me is awakened by a reverence for nature as it continually renews itself through the turning of the seasons. I see creation in all things from stardust to my pinky toe and I have respect for them all, equally. Call it what you will, this is just how I feel in my heart.
And as you know, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my day-to-day life, what it’s been like for these past few years and how much of it has been lived on autopilot. And part of what bothers me so much is that I don’t live what I feel, partly because I worry about being judged as a weirdo, but more because of this autopilot fallback postioin my life often takes. I guess it’s just another offshoot of the general thoughts I’ve been having about mapping a direction for the rest of my life. Now that I am happily engaged, it seems as though philosophical and practical questions are colliding. I’m questioning what kind of future I want it to be: Where do we want to live and “settle down”? How soon after the wedding do we want to start having kids? How are we even gonna afford this wedding and what kind of lifestyle changes will we have to make to save that kind of money? How do I start living a more seasonally-minded life so that I don’t feel quite so spiritually hollow all the time and can start creating the home and family that our future children will eventually be welcomed into? And where does a career and the need to make money fit into all this? Because I am still struggling with knowing what to do in that aspect of my life, and generally trying to fight back the overwhelming fear that in this recession-ridden world, me and my Celtic Studies degree are completely unhireable.
As usual, I don’t seem to have any of the answers to my questions. Part of it is that I don’t really know where to begin and part of it is that no matter how hard I try, it is increasingly difficult or me to feel at home in our cramped upper floor apartment, living in someone else’s house in the dirty urban core of a major metropolitan city. No money + no car + no job with a future = staying put right here without even being able to change my surroundings even a little bit to spruce it up and make it feel more homey.
There I go, sounding all down and sorry for myself again. I’m not really, I swear. I guess I’m still just floundering, looking for square one of where to being. It’s just hard to feel connected to nature when all you see outside your window is concrete and brick. But take that first step I must, whatever it may be, because I refuse to stay living in this limbo. I need to start being mindful and fully present in my own life, not just coasting through it. I need to create the life and the future and the family I want, not just lie back and wait for it to find me.
By Sarah, on July 19th, 2009 Well, well! I have some big news! The biggest news ever, actually. But first, let me start at the beginning.
So, this weekend was the (Dave’s and my) 3-and-a-half-year anniversary of our first date. I remembered that it was coming up a little while ago and so the two of us made plans to take a nice romantic walk on Sunday. As for Saturday, I made plans to get together with a friend of mine, leaving Dave to his own devices. However, my Saturday plans fell through and since neither of use really had anything better to do, Dave suggested that we play some rounds of our favourite card game: Fluxx.
Well, Dave’s a sore loser and I’m sorry to say it, but I’m a sore winner. Not an excellent combination when I kept winning and Dave kept losing. He got grumpier and I just laughed. One hand, two. A third round, then a fourth. I just kept winning.
After I won that fourth hand, Dave was practically fuming. “You don’t wanna do that,” he said. “Take it back.” “Ha, ha!” I laughed. “Too late, too late! I win again!” Dave grumbled as I gathered up the cards for him to shuffle and he dealt out the fifth hand.
Now Dave meant business. He immediately got rid of any cards I might use for a quick win. Then he made me discard all the cards in my hand so I had nothing left in my hand to win with anyway. Finally, he went on a “take another turn” rampage, playing card after card until finally, he played the “Love” keeper. And on its heels, he played a custom card he’d made that I had never seen before: the “Marriage” goal.
“What the heck is this?” I asked, picking the card up off the table. I read it: “If both Love and the Ring are on the table, we both win.”
Confused, I asked, “Does this mean I win too?” Then I looked down at the table in front of him. There, beside the Love keeper sat the most beautiful ring in the whole wide world. I looked up at Dave, saw him smiling and immediately started laughing hysterically with joy. He walked around the table and got down on one knee, slipping the ring on my finger. I hugged him tight, half jumping up and down in my seat, still laughing hysterically. He just smiled and smiled. And finally, I came to my senses long enough to shout, “Yes! Yes! We BOTH win!”
So there we are, happily engaged and brimming with joy! We’re thinking Fall 2010 for the wedding, which will give us some time to plan. I’m so excited already, I can’t wait! Which means you can probably expect many more wedding-related posts in the months to come!
Yippee!!
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