Painting a picture

Oprah has dream boards on www.Oprah.com and on January 1^st I made up a new one for 2011. When a woman as successful and inspiring as Oprah speaks, as a person who is committed to changing her life, I listen! The advice that I see all over her magazine and website is about living your best life and it all starts with visualizing it. So, back in July when I started my whole self transformation kick, I had the picture painted. I am so committed and passionate about what I want my version of that best life to be. I know that I want to travel more and visit everywhere from New York City to Bali. I know I want to have a chance to really put all my ambition and passion in building a career in television in Toronto by the end of this year. I know I want to be financially confident and stable on my own. I know I want to be a foxy size 10 and totally confident in my body. I know I want to be loved for everything that I am by someone who excites, encourages, and motivates me and who I can love with a whole and healed heart. I see this future and I even know who I want to be in it. I want to be generous and open with the people in my life but I want to be wise enough to know when the wrong people are in my life and how to handle them, if they are forced to stick around. I know I want to be confident enough in my comedic writing to be able to share it and let it thrive. I want healthy choices to be a natural habit for me. I want to be vibrant, smart, funny, and happy. This is the life I am putting every ounce of my effort towards. This is the dream that would make every challenging step worth it for me in the end.

We are what we think about all day long.

All those people who say things say that laughter is the best medicine. And I for one agree with the masses. Laughter has sort of been my saving grace in the midst of some really dark recent and past dark days. Sometimes I wonder if I didn’t have the amazing comedy of my favourite sitcoms (The Office, 30 Rock, How I Met Your Mother and Community), Saturday Night Live, Will Ferrell movies and www.Funnyordie.com , if the darkness would have just swallowed me up. Sometimes when it is hard not to focus on the negative and the positive is nowhere to be found, it just seems easier to appreciate the absurdities of everyday existence. I come from a large and fairly ridiculous family who are a constant gold mine of comedic material. And from retail to radio to government there has always been material to collect in the ludicrousness of earning a living. I find it lightens my load when I let annoying people become an amusing protagonist in my sitcom or sketch idea, rather than letting them settle in as a real life pain in my ass. It is my messed up version of the secret but it really has changed my perspective, I guess. I am visualizing my life like as a sitcom and I am the lead actress, writer and producer and Charlie Sheen is banned from this set. I have always sort of been the kind of girl who takes things too seriously and personally. And now, I am really enjoying laughing things off. I love the view from looking at things this way. “We are what we think about all day long.” – Ralph Emerson Waldo.

Toby Mac - Get Back Up

I am a big fan of words! They hold so much power for good and evil. To tear you down and build you up. To spread hate and love. After some rejection in my past I grew scared to share my words publicly. But when I began this blog and started sharing my words again, I started to get back words of encouragement from strangers, old friends and others. These words have become sacred to me. They are the words that ring through my head when I am gasping for breath on the elliptical or struggling to get to the next step in my life plan. These are the words that save me from giving up.
Today, a dear old friend of mine said the lyrics of this song made him think of my journey. So, thank you to him and to all of you who read this blog and offer me words of encouragement. It has meant so very much to me as I craft out this new amazing life for myself. Thank you.

Adele - Rolling In The Deep

This song is intense! The lyrics are powerful and beautiful and as always Adele's voice is a force to be reckoned with. Truly amazing! Can't stop listening to it!

Fighting the Good Fight

I have to admit that I am not always a silver lining, positive kind of person, especially in my recent history. But last July I decided to start working towards a better future and it is sort of hard to have hope for the future when you are walking around with a negative outlook. So, I made a conscious decision to change my outlook on life and have hope again. I could literally feel some of the doom and gloom lift away from me when I was in traveling in California and Europe. I really and truly appreciated every part of that experience. And when I got back home for the first time since I came home from Saskatoon, I was excited to see the mountains and be back in Calgary. The gym helped me keep positive while the job search went on and even kept me positive enough to plan out how I was going go to Toronto to pursue my TV dream. And then, I found this amazing job opportunity in Calgary that would get me there in 6 months. I was so excited and happy! And I decided I wanted to clean up some things in my past and resolve some old mistakes with my old friends before I went anywhere and I sent some of them apologies. And I got back one very predictable, nasty message from someone so predictable in her negativity, that she could never imagine someone could actually wanted to work at being better version of herself. Anyways, at first that negative response fueled me forward but some of her words struck and for letting it have that power, I am disappointed in myself. She pointed things about me that I will truly admit used to be very true but I honestly believe that a lot of that has changed. I also know that I am human and that I am going to mess up. And I can't control what other people think they know about me. However, I can control my reaction to other people's negative energy and this week I have done a pretty shitty job of doing that. I have been feeling restless here in Calgary and even in this amazing job, that I should truly only being seeing as an opportunity. I have been snapping at everyone in this house because I am feeling trapped here and worried that I will never leave Calgary. And then this morning I realize that I am freaking out because I am worried that the worst everyone thinks of me might be true. Here's the worst, I think everyone thinks of me: "That I am fat, lazy, often over-dramatic, sometimes shut off to the world, all talk, no action, bitch who is not going anywhere in this life." ... Well some of that maybe even the worst I think of myself.

The thing is I am acknowledging that some of that stuff could have been true in my past and some of it even lingers in me today but I am trying really hard to be better than that. And that doesn't leave much time for self-doubt or opinions from people who have no idea who I am and who I am trying to be.

Every time I am at the gym I feel this strong sense of FIGHT in me. I am fighting against the shitty parts of myself and the people who think they know me and doubt me. I am fighting for this life I want where I am the best, most healthy version of myself doing something I am passionate about and surrounded by people I can have fun with and trust. I am not letting anyone stand in my way of that anymore, including myself.

A risk worth taking....

The last couple of days, self doubt has been riding on my shoulders like a pirate’s parrot. I have a big opportunity to change my life in a way that I have been waiting to do for 15 years now. But I have been obsessing about everything that could wrong and driving myself crazy (not Charlie Sheen crazy, I don’t do coke).

I came to Calgary kicking and screaming, then, I grew sort of like it, to hating it again, and I even grew to absolutely loving it here. Winnipeg was where I was born but Calgary is where I grew up in all the good and bad ways and I think that makes this place my home. But now, I genuinely feel like I have outgrown it here. The only thing about Calgary that makes me want to stay is the one of the most important things in my life, my family. I think that is where all the doubt really stems from. I have deep concerns over my own abilities to cope without them. I mean I know I have done a stint here and there away from my parents but now I am planning a permanent move across the country, alone.

Because of some choices I made, my social life has pretty much been non-existent this past three years and my family has really been there for me. So, even when friends were pushed away or strayed I was never alone. In Toronto I will be alone, completely by myself in a city where I barely know anyone, certainly not as well as I know my family... and that really freaks me out! I mean even though I have sort of tried to embrace the idea by checking out a movie by myself here and there, and even traveling alone. But knowing I had Calgary and my family to keep coming back to, reassured me that if anything happened where I needed help that I would be covered.

But I have lived a rather safe life so far. I mean, I have taken a few risks with my heart in regards to other people, that didn’t really work out. But Europe was the first big risk I took for me, my happiness and to make a dream of mine come true. And it turned out to be the most content I have been in a long time. So, I am lead to believe that if I go after my biggest dream of all, creating a career in television writing, that I could be the happiest I ever been. I have come to realize that maybe love, marriage and babies might not be in the cards for me and I am so much more okay with letting that dream go rather than sacrificing my dream of becoming a television writer.

I have lived in the city I was born in, obviously. I have lived in Calgary because my Dad's work brought my family here. And for a short stint I moved to Saskatoon out of career desperation. But I have never really lived in a city that I actually chose and wanted to live in. I really want to move to Toronto and pursue my dream. And I really I don’t want to psyche myself and not go. I don’t want my doubts to block my dreams anymore. This dream and my happiness deserve my fearlessness. I want this and I am going to make this happen. Its decided then! I am going to STOP worrying and START planning because God has presented me with the perfect opportunity to go after this dream this fall and I am not going to screw it up. So, this is me getting over my three day funk! Be gone funk!

Ben Harper - Better Way

Hell yeah! How's that for a message?