i have been in pain a lot lately and feeling concerned that maybe this is just how life is going to be from now on - painful, wobbly, uncertain.  clint is very positive and hopeful that things will be better but im just not sure.  this week i am trying out a few different styles of yoga with one of my good friends, which i am hoping will make my body feel relief and relaxation. 

ive been unhappy with the lack of growth ive made lately and i think i need to hop to it... i want to get some counselling at the edmonton berievment center, or just at the community mental health building here in town.  either way, i feel like im not doing near the enough personal work that i should be; i dont really know what i should be working on specifically, but i know i have a hard time staying motivated and inspired - maybe someone could help me capture that energy again.

i, too, need to start things; i also need to finish things.

i dont feel i have accomplished enough, and i dont even know what my goals are anymore.  sometimes i have a breif blip of my dreams and what i want to be, but it seems reality has a way of stomping on what i dream; there was a time i did not let reality stomp on anything.  i need to make a goal list, and use all the skills i have to break down the goals into miniature achievable steps.

oh, to move forward

“We never want it to happen, but yet sometimes it does. Sometimes we lose the people we love, the people we believe we have to have to become the people we’re supposed to be. But here’s the thing; sometimes those people have already instilled in us everything we need to move forward, and we have done the rest. Because, after all, while we are products of our parents, we are also individuals…and you, my sweet Kailene, are a singular individual whose light shines brightly every single day…”

The Marriage Plot

“As he lay on the couch, he thought of his parents, those two planet-size beings who orbited his entire existence. And then he was off, back into the eternally recurring past. If you grew up in a house where you weren’t loved, you didn’t know there was an alternative. If you grew up with emotionally stunted parents, who were unhappy in their marriage and prone to visit that unhappiness on their children, you didn’t know they were doing this. It was just your life. If you had an accident, at the age of four, when you were supposed to be a big boy, and were later served a plate of feces at the dinner table— if you were told to eat it because you liked it, didn’t you, you must like it or you wouldn’t have so many accidents— you didn’t know that this wasn’t happening in other houses in your neighbourhood. If your father left your family, and disappeared, never to return, and your mother seemed to resent you, as you grew older, for being the same sex as your father, you had no one to turn to. In all these cases, the damage was done before you knew you were damaged. The worst part was that, as the years passed, these memories became, in the way you kept them a secret box in your head, taking them out every so often to turn them over and over, something like dear possessions. They were the key to your unhappiness. They were the evidence that life wasn’t fair. If you weren’t a lucky child, you didn’t know you weren’t lucky until you got older. And then it was all you ever thought about.”

Jeffrey Eugenides

oh, today.

my laptop is so close to dying but i have to write.  today was such an inspiring day, and i do not know entirely why.  i had a day off which is obviously a thing of beauty; i slept in like a champ; i drank a nice cold coffee beverage; i bought mustard-yellow shoes (which i encourage everyone to do); and im about to cook chicken and potatoes for dinner.  i had some good conversations about the prevalence of human slavery and prostitution in Canada and the US, and my friend and i discussed our love for mental health, pharmacology, and neurology as a whole.  my love for school will never go away - i have officially decided.  there is so much to learn, and so much to explore.  i really dont know what im going to be when i grow up, but i know i will always keep learning and probably always keep changing my mind with what i want to specialize in - ive got some ideas rolling around in my head, mostly relating to neurophysiology and the processes of the brain in regard to medications and chemical imbalances.  where i will end up with those interests is hard to say... but atleast ive got my textbooks close by until i decide.

need: 

• "Soft pink lipstick and peach petal gloss. By Revlon. Almost similar to MAC myth lipstick"
• three different coloured decorative bed pillows
• scrap book paper for the bookself
• wallflowers
• an abstract painting with outlandish colours... or natural colours
• floating shelves
• a hanging-coffee-mug-thing

strive, always

"Most importantly, if you can at all avoid it, don’t be normal. Strive, burn and do everything you can to avoid being the industry standard. Even the highest industry standard. Be greater than anything anyone else has ever dreamed of you. Don’t settle for pats on the back, salary increases, a nod-and-a-smile. Instead, rage against the tepidness of the mundane with every fiber of whatever makes you, you. Change this place.

Please, do that for me."