Tag: journal

The Currency of Weird 

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Recently I read Anupa Mistry’s piece in The Hairpin called All About Me. In the article she talks a lot about the privilege of beauty.

I never really considered myself beautiful. I have a flat nose, a gigantic head and always look like I am slouching, even when I think I am not.

Growing up, I watched as my adorable little sister got away with things I would never have dreamed of. Beautiful people I observed through life seemed to make more friends and had a powerful natural confidence that I always dreamed I could have.

But in the past few years or so, I noticed the value of something more than beauty. The value of weird. I thank the internet – especially twitter and blogs- for this. I discovered different types of quirky people and soon realized that people appreciated all the strange things about me. It enabled me to organically grow my social media following who occasionally converted over to real life friends. I acquired some out-there freelance gigs and a boyfriend who seems to love all the peculiarities about me.

The insecurities about my looks became a non-priority. I have been sharing more selfies and personal blog entries with the goal of highlighting everything that makes me who I am. The whole idea of selfies, blogging and social media can occasionally seem self-centered but that’s okay. Let it be.

Be confident. Be who you are. Be weird.

The Things You’ll Sleep Through

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Last night, two of the houses across from my parent’s engulfed in flames. This happened at around 5am in the morning. The cause of the fire is still unknown, though I think lightning (there was a storm last night) was ruled out.T he weirdest thing was none of us even had a clue until around 11am when my piano students told us they had trouble getting into our street. We had slept through a serious fire which burnt down two rooftops.

Maybe it was for the better that we weren’t awake. What would we have done? Maybe we would have needlessly packed up our stuff and fled to a safer area. Or idiotically stood around the fire scene taking photos while worrying if the fire would spread onto further houses.

We were thankfully safe from the fire and I’m kind of glad we all slept through it.

You Are The Star of Your Own Life

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Love you @richaucoin ❤️

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Lately, I’ve enjoyed reading a lot of autobiographical books/memoirs from female writers like Lena Dunham, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Jenny Lawson, Julie Klausner and my reaction to all of them are always “man, their lives seem so interesting and inspiring.”

But when I think more about it, I’m satisfied and happy with my own life and it gets interesting too. Though it’s fun to occasionally live through the eyes of others in books (and I guess social media), it’s important to carve your own paths, interests, adventures. I’m constantly obsessed with trying new things whether it be food, music or experiences.

This blog has been an awesome way to document some of these things and I thank all my readers for making me feel like a star of my own life.

❤︎

How Do I Do It?

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The past few weeks have been a little bit crazy. I’ve hardly had more than 20 minutes to sit down in my apartment before heading out to a another event or going to work or working at an event. As summer is approaching, this isn’t really going to change much for the next three months.

My friends like to ask me “How do you do it? How do you have the energy?” There’s one simple answer:

I just do it.

If I had to question my energy levels or give up on things because I was too tired, I would literally never do anything. Thinking too much about things like that is a literal waste of energy. I would become overwhelmed with the things I need to do instead of actually doing them. 

That’s not to say that I don’t value rest. Rest is important. It’s needed. I always take a coffee break during my lunch hours, forcing myself to get up from my desk and take a 10 minute walk to Timmies. It clears my head and also allows me to soak in some sun. I also enjoy the occasional Netflix binge or a good sleep in.

However, if I have blog posts to write, places to go, photos to edit, I don’t think much about how I am supposed to do them. I just do it.

 

I Need Sleep

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milhouse

My week has been insane! Going out while having a full-time job is super difficult. I’m alive though! But most of my sleep has been counting down until I wake up. Except it’s like half of what Milhouse is counting down from.

I think my body is half caffeine at the moment.

Weekend Relaxing

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As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been having this weird tension headache. I’m not sure that it is entirely a headache or just some sort of nerve thing to do with the jaw. If I open my mouth too wide, I hear this strange clicking and feel a lot of muscle tension on my left ears. Anyways, I’m taking this weekend to relax. Part of relaxing means splurging on really unnecessary things like this Pikachu T-shirt from Hot Topic…

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Pika pika #selfie

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I also revisited Karelia’s Kitchen for some delicious blueberry pancakes.

It’s 20 degrees in Toronto so I hope your weekend is as lovely as mine!

April: The Month of No Complaining

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In February, the Complaint Restraint project took place. For 28 days people signed up to simply stop complaining. Jessica Hullinger of Fast Company wrote about this experience and provided some great tips.

I missed the month of the originally challenge because I read about it after the fact but I really wanted to take this challenge for a month and learn from it. I’ve had a hard couple of days and this will be very difficult to start and keep going but it’s worth a try to change my current (and future) mindset.

I will start by defining what I consider a complaint to be.

  • Observations will not be considered a complaint. Ex “It is cold.” Exempt also will be reviews of restaurants and music etc that make it onto blogs. These are considered observations/constructive criticism.
  • A sentence that contains the following words will be consider a complaint: “hate”, “don’t, fuck, shit, jerk” etc.
  • A statement that ruminates beyond a simple observation.  (Telling 10 people it’s cold)
  • Gossip, (non-constructive) criticism, whining, grudges, hurtful jokes

This might seem like an impossible task as complaining is inherent in our nature and sometimes we do it subconsciously. It’ll also be difficult depending on the people I surround myself with. Other people love to complain as much as I do.  I will do my best to reconstruct negative “complaining” thoughts into more positive and productive ones or simply drop them if they are unimportant. I hope to be more mindful of each situation

Example of looking on the bright side:

Starting now… no complaining!

(This is not an April Fool’s joke)

 

What I Saw During Earth Hour 2015

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Last night the annual Earth Hour took place from 8:30-9:30 encouraging people around the world to turn off their lights and devices for an hour. I decided to turn off all the lights and go for a walk.

Originally, I planned to take photos of my journey with my new gear. I packed it with me and decided it would be exempt from the “no devices during earth hour” thing. However, I realized that it wasn’t a good idea to be flashing expensive equipment around on a particularly dark night (since i was walking alone). Instead, I took a mental note of the things I saw and when I got home immediately jotted them down in a notebook.

I had not taken many walks at night in my neighbourhood, but I discovered so many things:
– There’ s a coffee shop that also fixes guitars
– There are many places opened later than I thought, and are very lively
– a giant walnut in front of a nut store
– very creepy mannequins in some store windows
– a space-themed cafe
– many out of place phonebooths
– places that are beautiful to look at but I have no idea what they sell
– antique shops (tons of them)
– the fortune teller is very popular
– many popular places that don’t seem to have names
– people wondering where the ATMS are

It’s amazing how many things can go unnoticed. I definitely have to venture into some of the places sometime!

My Life is a TV Sitcom

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retrotv

Do you ever feel like you are the embarrassing character in a sitcom? There are times where I feel like I am such a clutz that everything bad or terrible always happens to me. Sometimes at the same time. I can never seem to catch a break.

I was having such a great weekend and then I dropped my external hard drive. Thankfully it still works. Then I lost my Metropass somehow. My Monday is off to a great start.

Sometimes these things would send me into a downward spiral . It’s hard not to want to cry, and sometimes that’s okay.  But really whenever bad things happen, I think about times where I have had it worse. When there was a fire on the subway and it is delayed followed by buses that couldn’t make it up the hill because of a storm. The time I was cleaning the house and then tripped over the broomstick and hit my head on the counter. A slip and fall on ice that scraped my knee, another in front of a packed bus.

Somehow thinking of myself like a weird character in my own life story makes me feel a little bit better. I can laugh it off and know that I’ll live to tell another episode.

The 10,000 Things I Do Regularly

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I wish I had time to lie around like these guys!
I wish I had time to lie around like these guys!

I am having a crazy weekend running around in Hamilton for the JUNOS. It’s a busy weekend but I’m hardly evernot busy. For example here are the 10,000 things I do on a regular basis:

– I work a 9-5 job
– I run Ride the Tempo (which itself involves 10,000 mini things)
– I blog here every day
– I go to a show
– I eat at a fancy restaurant
– I vlog
– I run many tumblr accounts
– I photograph things and then edit those photographs
– I draw/do art
– I try new recipes
– I clean the apartment
– I take care of my pet turtles
– I read a book
– I play video games
– I spend time with my boyfriend
– I teach kids how to play piano
– I see my dog
– I play with make up
– I shop online
– I watch Netflix
– I catch up on the internet
– I keep all my social media accounts updated

Some of those seem like rather regular things. But if you fit them all into one week, it would be one hell of a week. And that is basically my life.