Endings, beginnings, and 4 months of freedom!

Well, I did it. I survived my second year of University! 

Granted, I was only a part-time student, but that just meant juggling more work hours with studying hours. I can’t say it’s the most fun I’ve ever had, and as excited as I was to try some new classes they didn’t turn out to be as fun as I had hoped. Nonetheless, if all goes well, in 4 months from now I’ll be starting my official Bachelor’s degree in a business program! 

It hasn’t been easy. Anyone who has followed this blog in the last 2 years has heard me moan and groan often enough about the number of pre-requisite courses I’ve had to take to get into my choice program. Honestly, it’s my own fault. I’m the one who thought to myself throughout high school “who needs math?”… I do, past self. I do. Sigh. 

In any case, I had my very last math exam last night. Truth be told it did not go nearly as well as I had hoped. I wanted to walk in there, ace it, walk out, and be on vacation for 4 months. But in my true worrying nature, I’m quite the nervous wreck about it. If I don’t get the grade I need, I either have to re-take the class for a third time (I’ve never failed it, but to get into business I need a high grade in math and I don’t DO high grades in math. It doesn’t come naturally to me!) or I decide on another path. And I mean, okay, that would suck. But luckily there are a million things I could see myself doing with my future. I just REALLY want this.

Now that I’ve slept on my worry, though, I can honestly say that I am ridiculously proud of myself. When I was 18 I was drifting aimlessly and irresponsibly through life, spending money like it was my job and not thinking about my future. 4 years later I am not only about to begin a degree in a prestigious business school (I like to say it’s prestigious, anyway) but… I KNOW MATH. I barely scraped by in high school, and now I’m able to get DECENT GRADES. Regardless of the two years it took me to get here, I needed to be here.

And now? 

I have 4 whole months off. It was the ending of my least favorite chapter of University. Drifting around, walking in circles, having no particular program or group to associate to. Now I can breathe easy knowing it should all be done, and I get to start fresh in September. I mean, hopefully. I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t get the grade I need.

I’m excited for this summer. I have fond memories of last year, what with going to Europe for the first time and falling in love with a new culture. Summer is my favorite time of the year- not only because it’s my birthday and the most beautiful weather, but because all the best concerts come into town & it opens up so many possibilities for traveling. And you just KNOW I’ll be traveling this summer, right? But more on that some other time.

So here’s to ending a tough two years in my life. But hard work pays off, and I”m going to enjoy my last summer of absolute freedom. I’ll be starting something so big and so new to me next school year and I am SO excited.

I can’t wait to see what summer brings, I just pray that whoever’s in charge gives me the grades I need to move ahead next year. Seriously, it’s time to get this Bachelor’s degree!

What is something you worked really hard for & were proud of  your results?

In 24 hours…

I’ll be in Florida!

Today is my last day at home before catching my flight BRIGHT and EARLY tomorrow morning! I’m so excited to get back on a plane, spend 6 days with two of my best friends, take a million pictures, cross off a number on my Life List, meet my first blogger, and just all around be in warmer & sunnier temperatures in a new city!

I have a LOT to do today, but it felt weird not stopping in to just write a goodbye post on my little internet space. I’m so rarely away from my blog for weeks at a time, I’m sure I’ll miss it around here! A little blog break never did anyone any harm though, so I’m going to embrace the time away to re-energize and just live in the moment. I’m sure I’ll pop in on Twitter, but other than that I don’t see myself doing anything too crazy on the internet while on vacation!

I know I’ll come home with LOTS to talk about, as I always do after vacations, and I have a sneaking suspicion I’ll find a way to do a giveaway with little things I pick up from Harry Potter World and Universal Studios. (I had so much fun doing that after Greece!)

I’ve been checking the Orlando weather regularly on my iPhone, and although there is a lot of possibility for rain, it’s going to be REALLY WARM and NOT SNOWING so I’m happy!

While I’m gone, I have a ton of people guest posting for me once again- there are a few days that have two people because I had such a good response to my call for guest bloggers! So please take some time to read their writing, for half of them it’s their first time writing for someone else, and I know they’d love your feedback 🙂 I’m *thinking* my giveaway when I come home will have something to do with their posts, so check them out, leave them comments & say hi on their blogs too!

Have a fabulous week, see you NEXT Monday! 🙂

My hotel in Orlando! 

Scheduling “me” time & my ideal day

I’ve always been the kind of person who needs a lot of time for ME. I love going out with friends and spending tons of time with family, but I’m not the type to schedule more than one thing in a day. If I work all day, I rarely feel good about doing something afterwards- I look forward to coming home and relaxing for the evening and basically doing my own thing.

Sometimes I feel like I spend TOO MUCH time by myself. I can usually spend two straight days at home before starting to feel like I need to get out for any reason, and when I make plans too many evenings in a row I tend to get really stressed about it and need to cancel somewhere.

I don’t know where I got this *need* to spend time by myself, but I just love it. I don’t function properly if I’m not home at a decent hour to get a good nights’ rest, and I don’t work well if I haven’t had the chance to do my own thing for a few hours before starting a new day.

Lately, I feel like every time I try and schedule time for myself, it never works out quite as I planned. Some nights (even Fridays and Saturdays!) I prefer the idea of cozy-ing up with a book and a mug of tea over going out to party. I don’t know if this makes me sound like an old lady, but that’s just the way it is! And it’s been many nights now that I haven’t been able to sit down and not feel like I should be doing something else.

I haven’t really written about it, but this semester I cut down my work load at school to only two classes; one online and one in school. So far it’s helped my anxiety and stress levels enormously, but I think I still have a lot of work to do. I KNOW that I’m a “me time” kind of person, and I really need to find a way to schedule my time accordingly. I’ve been feeling like everything I do is rushed and I somehow never have enough time to get anything done properly.

I know that I put the month of April as “procrastination” in my 12 Changes project to really focus on this situation, but I think the heart of the problem is more than just that. I need to organize my time better so that I don’t feel like I’m suffering from a schedule that I’ve made for myself. Even by cutting down on school, I’ve somehow found myself feeling more stressed than I’d like to be.

This week I’ve spent a lot of time trying to prepare meals to keep up with my vegetarian lifestyle after work, and the hour or so I get to myself I’m just too tired to even read. I’m going to finish up this hectic week, and starting fresh after the weekend I’d like to start finding a way to organize the hours of my day better. If that means cutting down on internet, then so be it. I just want to feel more productive without the added stress. 

I saw a blog post a little while back that outlined an “ideal day” and I loved it immediately. My schedule is so completely random from one week to the next (the perks of working retail) that I don’t think I could ever create an ideal day for myself, but any day for me would be ideal if it could include the following:

1) 7AM wake-up. 8am is *truly* ideal, but I think 7AM is a good time to get things done, especially on a work day

2) A work-out of some sort. Either 30 Day Shred style, or going to the gym/taking a fitness class

3) One hour of reading, at least! I love to read and never feel like I make enough time in my day for it. Not recently, anyway.

4) A decent bedtime, more often than not. I am not the kind of person who likes staying up late. 11pm lights off is truly ideal for me!

5) Some time to catch up on blogs & write my own. I have a habit of clearing out my Google Reader every day that I’m trying to quit because it’s so time consuming. Instead, I just want to read until I feel like moving onto something else, and spend more time just WRITING because I love doing it!

I’m recognizing that I am NOT the kind of person who can ignore myself and just live a crazy lifestyle without sleep or consideration for my own needs. I need “me” time and from here on out, I want to make sure that my schedule reflects that properly. I may not be able to have an ideal day every day of my life, but as of right now, I want to make sure that there are more of my days that feel good and PRODUCTIVE, rather than stressful and lacking the things I love.

I want to make more time for me and to do the things I love in my life, starting now. 

What does your ideal day look like? Are you a “me” time kind of person? Who’s up to the challenge to do more things you love in a day? 

Long Weekend Recap!

Before getting started, a few little things to share! 

*All the pictures in this post are credited to Jenia and her awesomely awesome camera.
**I don’t usually post more than once per day, but I’m a little bit behind on my ‘Post A Day’ challenge so I figured why not? It’s my blog and I’ll do it if I want, ha!
***Have you seen my once-again updated navigation bar up above? I’m working on making it more accessible, and most of the pages have drop down menus that you can visit as well. My ‘About’ and ‘About Me’ sections are completely updated as well if you want to go see, and I’m working on having a page of posts worth reading to get to know me better.
**** If you don’t read all the way through this post, that’s cool it’s kind of long, but at least check out the band I mentioned, Wakey Wakey. It’ll be worth your time!

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It’s been a while since I’ve written a post on what’s been going on in my life, so I thought I made take up some time to write about it. I love looking back in my archives at what I was doing every month of the year and I feel like I’m doing that less and less… So basically I want to get back to it.

Although technically this wasn’t much of a weekend for me considering I’ll have worked 3 out of the 4 days, it was still a long weekend in Canada for Thanksgiving.

On Thursday I proclaimed the weekend would start early and decided not to go to school. Instead I took a personal day. Well, it should have been a homework day but since I’m having a crappy semester, it just wasn’t. I spent some time reading, updating myself on blogs, watching TV and overall not doing a whole lot.

In the evening I got myself ready and headed over to my friend Lisa’s house for the very first hockey game of the season- Habs VS Toronto Maple Leafs! We had a delicious dinner (everyone cooked something but me… Oops. Thanks guys! I got it next time!) and we basically continued to eat throughout the night while we watched our poor team get beat out by the Leafs.

Part of our feast!

The cake that had me in a hysterical fit of laughter for like 15 minutes! Soooo yummy.

Trying to eat cake while laughing is hard work!

After the game was over, we skyped with our far away friend Jenn, who’s currently living in British Columbia until Christmas! Miss this girl.

On Friday it was back to work until 4, and afterwards I headed downtown with Jenia, her boyfriend Jason & our friend Caitlin to catch a concert! You may remember in May when I traveled to Burlington to see this band called Wakey Wakey? I discovered them on One Tree Hill two or three seasons ago and have loved their music ever since. Finally, this past May, they played a show close enough to home that I got to go see them play & meet the main singer, Grubbs.

FINALLY, after lots of promises and waiting, they booked their first ever show in Montreal and it was this Friday. It was honestly such an amazing night. It was just him and his backup singer (and long-time best friend) Tanya on stage, so it was like an acoustic intimate show… Except in this tiny sold out venue. There was like 200-300 people there and I think we completely took him by surprise. We couldn’t stop cheering and people sang along to every single song. He has a song called ‘Twenty Two’ where the chorus there’s some humming and the ENTIRE crowd joined in for it- it wasn’t part of his acoustic set at all. Grubbs told the crowd after that no one had ever done that before. Montrealers know how it’s done! He also played way past his set-time because he didn’t want to get off stage, and like at the last show he entertained the crowd with his various hilarious stories.

I think this guy is one of my favorite musicians not just because of his incredible talent, but because he’s SO genuine. There are some bands who get on stage and say the same thing at every single show on their tour, but you just know that Mike Grubbs isn’t like that. He constantly busts out into random stories and he stayed after the show to meet every single person who wanted to say hello. I got to witness one guy go up to him and tell Grubbs how inspiring his music is for this guy and it was just the nicest moment ever. I’ve always wanted to have a heart to heart with a favorite artist like that.

He was constantly laughing and in shock at how much Montreal was cheering!

Jenia & I with Grubbs! Already can’t wait for the next show.

Today was a relaxing day spent at home. Sundays are my one true day off in the week where I’m not supposed to be ANYWHERE. I somehow still managed to wake up at 7:30am, but I took advantage and did some reading before getting myself out of bed. After spending the day at home, attempting productivity but mostly failing, I accidentally ended up somewhat babysitting my neighbor’s 6 year old boy.

Can I just say that 6 year old boys have way too much energy? This kid LOVES to talk. He terrified my cat and dog because they’re both old and don’t like to play, so he proceeded to plop himself in my room and tell me all sorts of random stories, effectively ruining any kind of idea I had about studying. I laughed to myself a few times because in 6 years from now I’ll totally be doing this exact same thing with my little nephew. Hehe.

In a couple hours I’ll be heading to my brother’s house for a little family Thanksgiving dinner. I’ve still got loads of homework to do because I am the master procrastinator, but at this point I’m just excited to spend some time with everyone and eat some yummy food! I’m also hoping to get a few good pictures with my sister-in-law while she’s still pregnant.

So that’s my long post for a long weekend that isn’t quite over! Tomorrow is a day off for mostly everyone except me, I’ll be working all afternoon and evening, and maybe trying once again to have a productive morning. We’ll see how that goes.

Have a lovely Sunday evening! 

October: Goals. Seriously.

September was a month of adjustment. Adjustment to home life once again; to routine, school, work and multi-tasking all these things at the same time.

But now it’s October and it’s time to stop procrastinating things. It’s time to feel productive & get things done. Here’s what I have in mind for myself:

1- Get at least 8 hours of sleep every night. I picked up this weird habit where I go to bed really late and wake up really early. I’m getting anywhere between 5 and 7 hours a night, usually no more. I am not the kind of person who functions on such a little amount of sleep, especially every day. I know there will be exceptions to this rule if I go out and have to work the next day, but I don’t want to stay online until midnight procrastinating homework.

2- Shut the computer off by 9 or 10pm at the latest. Related to the one above, I’ve been spending way too much time online in the last few weeks for absolutely no reason. I’m wasting so much time it’s unreal. I want to get back into the habit of splitting up my time between the online world and my own world. I don’t want to have my computer on all day and have it take attention away from things that need to get done.

3- Prepare for NaNoWriMo. Okay that was a scary sentence, but NaNoWriMo is NEXT MONTH and from the little research I’ve done into it, I need to have an outline and an idea of what all my characters are going to be like. I haven’t written fiction in so long that I’m kind of terrified about this, but if I complete it, I cross off an item from each of my goals’ lists. I really want to make time to sit down and brainstorm on this one.

4- Read more than 5 books. This one should be easy considering I read two books in the last 2 days… That leaves me with another 4 books (at least) for the month. I just hit 40 books this year and I’ve got 3 months to read 20 more. I don’t know if that will happen, but I’m going to get as close to my goal of 60 as physically possible. On an unrelated note, I’ve *cheated* a little bit by reading some really small novels as well as some manga, but they are *technically* books so I’m still counting them. It’s still more books than I’ve ever made time to read in a year.

As a side-note on this one, my original goal that I created in January was to read 40 books this year but then I thought about it and went up to 60. I’m so glad I challenged myself a little further! Who knows, maybe next year I’ll try for 70 or 80… Ok ok, I need to hit 60 first. 

5- Meet my nephew! This is going to be an easy goal, assuming he’s on time. My sister-in-law’s due date is October 24th. Before I write my wrap-up post on October, there should be a new member to my family and I want to make sure I’m there to say hello (AHH!)

6- Complete at least two random goals on my 101 or my 23 Before 23, and blog about them. I’ve got a few in mind that I want to do, so we’ll see how that goes. I should probably be completing more than 2 a month at this point so I should probably keep that in mind as well… But I’ll just leave it at that for now.

7- Start eating better again, figure out a fitness routine. Okay well this was a goal last month I didn’t complete, so let’s see what I can do to get back on track in October. I feel like if I can start doing fitness-like things again, then eating well will come with it. I also think completing this goal will make me feel a million times better about myself for the upcoming winter.

8- Be passionate. I feel like my life has been a little bit lack-luster these last few weeks, and I want to re-discover the things I am passionate about and be happy about the things I do each and every single day. I think that if I can just keep this in mind I’ll complete goals and go through my days feeling so much better about myself.

I’m excited for October. It’s only the second day of the month, but I have really exciting things planned every week & I can’t wait to see how I do with all of these goals.

What do you have planned for this month? 

September: A Review

The picture above? Exactly what September looked like in Montreal. Rain, rain rain rain. I better start seeing some fall weather next month, or else! I want breezy, crisp autumn mornings- not hot and humid rainy ones! Anyway moving on…

This month was… interesting, to say the least. But not in the actual sense of the word. Like, if I could choose on month in the year as the least interesting of 2011, it would probably be September. Is that awful? Probably. Maybe coming off a trip to Europe isn’t the best way to set this month up, but on top of that I went back to work 3-4 days a week, school a couple days a week, a ton of homework & a heart that wasn’t in any of it. So I set up some goals for myself in the hopes of getting myself back on track.

I’m not sure if my goals necessarily got me where I need to be as October comes rolling in, but I’m definitely planning on getting back into the hang of things for REAL next month. September was a bit of a setback but luckily there’s always next month to make things better. More on that tomorrow when I set myself up with some new goals!

Here’s what this month’s goals looked like:

1. Get back into a fitness routine: Not completed. I really wanted this to happen, really and truly. I thought about it so often it hurt. The problem is that I just can’t afford a fitness routine right now (AKA a gym membership or any sort) and I’m really not sure how else to get into an actual routine. I’ve been thinking of starting the 30 Day Shred again, maybe that 20 minute work out every day will get my heart back in a good place. This month was a total fail.

2. Number 31 on my 101 list: spend a whole semester in school without procrastinating homework. Not completed. I thought about this goal every day too, but I just laughed at it. No way that was going to happen whatsoever. I procrastinated worst this month than I have at any other point in my life. Not sure what was up with that but I didn’t like it one bit.

3. Read 4 books throughout the month. Completed! Thank God I was able to do at least one thing, am I right? Here’s what I read…

– Just Kids by Patti Smith
– 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson
– Last Little Blue Envelope by Maureen Johnson
– Night by Elie Wiesel

I’m technically counting this goal as done even though that first book I read half of it in August. Whatever. I’m getting my reading groove back & that’s really what I wanted.

Also: I highly recommend ALL the books mentioned above. Highly. All of them. Yes. Go read now.

4. Complete a random goal on one of my lists and blog about it. Completed! I blogged about #1 on my 23 Before 23 list as well as #17 on my 23 Before 23 list. I want to incorporate my lists more into my blog as I move forward. I feel like they’re becoming so much more of who I am than I could have imagined and I love writing about the goals I complete. I’d love to do this more often for sure- it was a lot of fun & received so much great feedback, so thank you!

5. Start saving money again. Completed! I’m saving very little right now, mind you, but saving nonetheless. I’ve started making automatic transfers into my University account for now because I had the awful realization that I don’t have enough to get me to graduation. Scary. It’s not the kind of saving I wanted to be doing by the end of the month, but I’ve got lots of bills to pay & that saving is important so I figured it took priority. *Technically* still counts though!

This month I also… 

– Attended  my sister-in-law’s baby shower. So exciting! And now she’s less than ONE MONTH away from her due date. Just unbelievable.

Me and mama when she was just 4 or 5 months pregnant…Time flies!

– Blogged NINE times about my trip to Greece. Technically ten, but one of the posts was tips I learned about travelling and I suppose that doesn’t really count. But still, how on earth did I find 9 full posts to talk about?! That is just crazy. You can read all of them over here.

– Took a vow to be more honest & to blog for the right reasons. And honestly? I was so nervous at first about deciding that but now I am so happy. My first truly honest post ‘Confessons of a Single Girl‘ got more comments than any other post I’ve ever written & more views in a week as well. So thank you. Thank you for all your really sweet comments & for being understanding & not totally judging me.

– Got to see one of my favorite bands live again for the first time in over a year. I’ve seen The New Cities OVER FORTY TIMES NOW. I’ve blogged about them so much it’s unreal. They’ve been the one constant in the four years I’ve held this blog. You can basically find them in weekly posts in 2009 because that’s how often I saw them. Anyway, they released their 2nd full length album this month and I’m so proud to have seen them go this far.

– Found out another one of my all time favorite bands, Augustana, broke up. I’m coming to terms with it but I’m still so devastated. Ugh.

– I also just entered in a giveaway over on Steven‘s blog Hundred Goals to win 100$ cash. For real. This guy is offering up a hundred bucks to any blogger to fulfill a goal they have in life. How neat is that? Go check out his blog & enter his giveaway if you’d like. You bet I did. Also leave him a comment on a post. He loves comments.

September: Goals & Plans

I’m a little bit late on this post, but I was busy being jetlagged and nostalgic for my trip to Greece. I do have to get back into my goals though, so here’s what I’d like to do for the last 3 weeks of September.

1. Get back into a fitness routine

– I really had a good thing going before I left for Greece, but being away for so long meant that I didn’t really do MUCH. I’m still eating relatively well, but I’d like to potentially join a gym again or get back into some kind of routine to stay fit.

2. Number 31 on my 101 list: spend a whole semester in school without procrastinating homework.

-This is going to be TOUGH for me because I am the Queen of procrastination. But I’d like September to be the month where I start!

3. Read 4 books throughout the month

– Not sure how I’m going to do with this one because for some reason I’ve been having trouble getting through books recently, but I’ll at least try!

4. Complete a random goal on one of my lists and blog about it

– Because I just feel like it

5. Start saving money again

– It’s time to save up for next year’s big trip, whatever it may be! I just really don’t want to be home for the whole summer… Not after spending August in Greece this year.

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I think five goals is good enough for now. I’m not too sure what to expect out of September yet, but so far it’s been ALL KINDS of hectic. I barely have time to sit down for a few hours and catch up. Yesterday I couldn’t even blog because I wasn’t home from 8am until 2am (this morning)… Oh the University life!

I only have a few more plans for this month which include a big birthday bash this coming weekend up North. One of my best friends is turning 22 and she’s celebrating big, so a bunch of us are spending a couple days away to party and eat a lot of yummy food. Should be lots of fun!

This month I also have a lot of work to catch up on for CONFRONT magazine, all of my interviews from July are going to be up in coming weeks so expect lots of news about that. I’m also potentially planning a small trip for next month, but more on that later!

How’s your week been?