occasionally,

"i saw you with your new friends, you wear them so well, broken shoes and loose ends, gee you look swell. me, i'm drinkin too much coffee, i'm smoking cigarettes, i'm a deputy of habit, i just can't forget."


oh melissa etheridge, you always seem to know how to say it just right. i feel like lately i've been dying to bust out and become a traveling gypsy singer who's free as a bird and then some. only problem is i can't sing very nicely.. hmmm.. interestingly enough people usually ask me if i'm sick all the time because of the way my voice sounds, its kinda raspy or what i like to call a man-voice. i used to hate it, but i kinda like it. i get a lot of looks for it so hey it can't be all negative. anyways! this is totally not the point

i've been feeling this cloud of boredom and nothingness lately and i don't know what its all about. maybe its the sudden flash flood rains and coldy breezy days we've been having (c'mon canada, its still AUGUST) but i am so excited for fall. bright leaves and long walks where your fingers almost start to go numb but you have your favourite pair of jeans on and a good ol cozy sweater or jacket. leaf fights are my favourite. so this cloud has been affecting me lately and i've been trying to analyze why because of all the feelings i could have, i'd rather not be feeling this one. i've had a whole 8days off work, (still got a few days left) and i just have been so bored! i had a few friends over all weekend but now i'm back in the busy workweek.. only i've got no work! my friends and family are working 9-5 and i'm just at home, being bored, cleaned all the things and now i got nothing left. then i realized.. i don't really have a hobby anymore. i mean, i guess just general hanging out and having fun with friends could be a hobby but i mean something that i just do for me. i used to be really into baseball and hockey. i played rep baseball for almost ten years in my old town, practices a few days a week, tournaments traveling every weekend, even in the winter we'd practice inside. it made me feel as though i had something that no one could take away from me, and i was good at it. i loved it. i loved my team, we were like sisters. i loved the smell, the feel, the way the vibrations felt in your hands when you hit the sweet spot on the bat and you knew you got a home run. same with hockey. the sound of your skates cutting the ice as you first step on. the way you could cradle the puck on your stick and chase after anyone who took it away from you. i realized i just haven't sweat for myself in a long, long time. sure, i've sweated in the past while, when the weather's been 95 degrees while i'm at work 12 hours a day in the sun. i've sweated while dancing up a storm with my friends and my sister. i've sweated packing up my stuff to prepare to move back to school in a few weeks. but i haven't sweat for myself. i haven't tested my body to the point where i'm not sure how i'm even doing it, but i'm gonna get there just for my own competitive nature, even if i pay for it later in soreness. i keep telling myself "i'm gonna start running!" but then its too hot. or too cold. or raining. or windy. or i just showered. or i'm hungry, can't run hungry, can't run full. i wanna push myself and see how far i can go. compete with my self. i haven't worked on bettering myself at all in a long time. i want to be satisfied with my natural state. i have let myself go. i have let the idea of the next snack become more important than the idea of what my body is telling me and how i feel about my current state. i love myself, but i know i am not nearly as healthy as i could be. so my new hobby is a simple one. its just to love myself. and let myself take up all my free time. i want to spoil myself in simpleness. i want to feel the refreshing shower hit me after i've sweated what feels like an impossible amount. i want to feel glowing and bright radiance of natural foods shining through my skin and dancing through my bloodstream cleaning out all the bad choices i've made. i wanna make something that didn't come out a package, but out of the ground. i'm going to start with some goals. and here they are without further ado

1. drink at least 10 cups of water every day and choose water over juices or pop
2. run at least once a day, for any amount of time over 10 minutes. try and go farther and farther each day if only by a step
3. go to the library and pick a book that i have never read, about a topic that i don't know anything about
4. make my meals, trying to use as little salt and or packaged foods as possible (and nothing in a shiny foil wrapper for a few weeks)
5. really inhabit my body for a bit of the day each day. (dance around freely, be with myself and absorb music, run around the house naked, whatever works)
6. show my cat lots of love, as i'm leaving home again in a few weeks time and i know i'll miss her terribly

(me and socks, she didn't like the camera much)

the misty mountain hop,

hello there once again
i really am bad at posting fairly often but i hope once i get back at school and have more of a schedule and less of a work-slave relationship with myself i'll have more time for publishing a lot of thoughts i've been thinking about for quite some time.
today i had a revelation, hence this post.
i was in my bathroom, brushing my teeth with some fancy "make your teeth THE MOST WHITE EVER" toothpaste and i became aware. i became aware of a lot of things that had never really hit me so hard before,
i looked around the bathroom.
everything in there seemed to jumping out at me aggressively and i actually had to sit down on the floor and think about what was going in my head.
every product in there seemed to scream out at me USE MEEEEE MAKE YOURSELF BETTTTTTERRRR
it was upsetting to say the very least!
i have always been of the mindset "don't compare yourself to others, you have no idea what their journey is all about" it is my favourite quote a friend of mine once said to me and i have never really forgotten or let go of it. what does this have to do with me in the bathroom? let me explain a little better.
i realized i didn't have to have the whitest teeth in the world, and i didn't need sun bleaching shampoo to lighten my already light blonde hair, and i didn't need face makeup to hide my face tan and my freckles, i didn't need mascara to hide my blonde eyelashes (i'm a lifeguard just fyi so summertime = sunbleached hair and very very tanned skin.. and a sunglasses tan of course) i felt sick. i had become this monster consuming these things to look like those i had seen walking around or in pictures or magazines. it wasn't even that i don't like the way i look.. i just felt as though it wasn't what i SHOULD look like. i really hate the word should. all the guilt and implications and comparisons of opinions and judgements just really get me raging. besides the point. i generally like my looks, i love my natural curl hair state, my tan makes it clear how much i love nature and the glowing blonde eyebrows and eyelashes really tie in the whole unique look i have in the summer, but i had been so caught up in my comparisons of what i SHOULD look like and dress like, i had completely forgotten that i already liked my look. i then, on the bathroom floor started smiling, and crying. i felt a little crazy but i just went with it. i was happy that i had realized this before it had gone on any longer, but i was sad it even got so far. i began to examine the thoughts i had been having lately and they mostly seemed to be comparisons of me versus other people. i wasn't as tanned as that girl. i'm not as blonde as her. my hair isn't that curly. my legs aren't that muscley. my voice doesn't sound like hers. i'm not as smart as him and i'm not as fast at running as that other girl and this and that and all these things. a cloud of negative thoughts i'd been unconsciously having floated off me as i sat there laughing and crying on the bathroom mat. i didn't matter if i was or wasn't those things, if i could honestly say to myself "hey! you're pretty awesome and i'm pretty okay with being me! as far as people go, we're pretty great!" i have a few things i do personally wish to work on (physical endurance and general health within the body and calmness in my mind) but those things aren't related to another. they are simply just me noticing things about myself that i personally would like to invest time in to exploring. and so, i leave you with that my friends, as silly as it sounds, better yourself, and you won't find yourself worrying about who's better than you.


oh and if you're wondering about the title... give the song a listen.. if you're not already a Led Zeppelin fan, you will be. particularly.. "Why don't you take a good look at yourself and describe what you see,
and babyyyyy, baby, baby, do you like it?
There you sit, sitting spare like a book on a shelf rustin',
ahhhhhhhh, not trying to fight it.
You really don't care if they're comin'; oh, oh,
I know that it's all a state of mind."

:)