The Subconscious Speaks

In my dream I'm back in school. It looks like my junior high in New York City. Dark, dingy, and dreary. Like a jail.

It starts off well. I have my books, and I go to class. But quickly, little by little I start skipping and slacking. Then before I know it finals are next week. I haven't attended any lectures, and have completed none of the readings. The knowledge of impending failure is certain, and in my dream I start to panic.

The first time I dreamed this dream, I was cramming at the end. The second time, I completely gave up, and was trying to drop the courses before the course drop deadline.

I think my subconscious is trying to say something, like the fact that maybe just maybe I might be stressed about my IBS readings?

The irony is when I was in university there were definitely some courses where I skipped completely and didn't do any readings until the few days before finals. Yet I never had such dreams.

Growing Up

Recently I've had frequent moments where I've actually felt "grown-up". Moments like when I was on the road to vacation with Lydders, or when I spontaneously decided to go to Quebec for the Canadian Swing Dancing Championships, or when I was showing my car to potential buyers, or when my credit card number was stolen. For the most part I usually just feel like a kid with a LOT of freedom, playing at "real" life. But now I'm feeling more like an adult,......................... 0.001% of the time.

If I Won Lotto 649...

and I had no social/moral obligations, I would:

1) Remove the monstrosity from my foot.
2) Sell my car and buy a baby blue mini cooper.
3) Buy a loft with a lake-shore view, and furnish it with a wanton shopping spree.
4) Pay off my loans.
5) Buy Canon's whole line of lenses, and their top o' line camera.
6) Take my family on a luxury vacation to Greece.
7) Take my best friend on a luxury vacation to Hawaii.
8) Buy my best friend a purple vespa.
[Although according to her, this would be a social and moral obligation.]
9) Put aside a chunk o' money for a possible wedding to goodness knows who.
10) Tour Europe for a year...or two.
11) Take private swing dance lessons EVERY day.

One can always dream.

BBC Book List

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (x")
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien(*)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (x")
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (x")
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (x)
6 The Bible (x")
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (x)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (x)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (*)
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (*)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (*)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (x")
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (*)
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (x")
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (*)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (*)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (*)
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (*)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (x")
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen (*)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (x)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (x)
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (x)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (x)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (x")
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood (x)
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (x)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (x)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel (x)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (*)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (*)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (*)
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (*)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (*)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (x)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (*)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (*)
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (x")
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry (x)
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White (x)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (x)
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (x")
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (x)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (x")
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (*)

27/100

If this was a test I'd failed miserably.

It's Happened

Remember how when you were a kid and you hated those "aunties" and even some "uncles" who would attack you the minute they saw you? How they would gush about how adorable you were, and how they wanted to eat your cheeks, and pester you incessantly for hugs and kisses? How you vowed never to become one of them because you know from first hand experience how annoying that was? And how you don't want to be constantly kissing the rough surfaces of some random adult's cheek? Yeah, me too.

Artistic Aspirations

I aspire to...

1. Get a Photography Certificate
2. Swing Dance Competitively
3. Rock Out on a real Electric a la Rock Band

Let's All Say It Together Now

Sometimes we Christians and by "we", I mean, "I" tend to over-spiritualize things especially when it comes to the not so gentle knocks of life. I tend to skip over the "grieving" process and try to move straight on to the better outlook on life. I don't know why. Probably a subconscious attempt to act/behave/think more "spiritual".
[Oh, the performance trap. Will it never end?]

But it's like, "Really? Is it honestly that healthy to not acknowledge the suckiness of the situation?" Not to say that I should wallow in self-wity like a pig in mud holes, but what I'm saying is to actually recognize that said sucky situation is not cool."

So let's say it together now: "This sucks. PERIOD."

Unleash the [Punk] Artist Within

It's so short in the back that I can't even make a ponytail.

But I LURVE it. It's like I'm going through the punk phase that never happened back in high school. I didn't have enough security back then to pull this off.

Now to work up the courage to get that tongue ring, and to make a final design decision regarding the tattoo, oh and...AND to learn how to play the guitar so I can rock out on the electric. YEOOOW.

Five Good Things

I am looking forward to:

1. Hanging out with my dear friends in Waterloo.
2. Grace Toronto's Good Friday and Easter Sunday services.
3. Sushi on Saturday with York peeps.
4. Holding Elijah C. after service on Sunday.
5. Lunch with church friends on Sunday. (I have non- C4C church friends! YAY!!!)

The Cherry On Top

I am officially doing a "Trash the Dress" shoot for a couple that I know this May. This is pretty much the proverbial cherry on top of the proverbial sundae, that is my summer.

"I didn't know if it was ok to ask staff who they liked."
~ One of my girls explaining how she was so relieved that someone else in my DG 'popped the question' so to speak.

Dum Move of the Day

Wearing wide leg jeans when it's raining outside.

The Fives

Five Good Things From This Past 7 Days
1) Hearing Dr. James Orbinski speak. (It was sobering.)
2) Becoming the PR rep for Grace Centre at Grace Toronto.
3) Russ and Mere's wedding
4) Editing pics from Russ and Mere's wedding
5) Swing dancing.

Five Good Things to Come
1) Grace Toronto's Artist Symposium
2) SLEEP, and lots of it
3) Reading the Cross of Christ by John Stott
4) Getting my IBS (Institute for Biblical Studies not irritable bowel syndrome) textbooks
5) That SWEET tax return check

Millionaire Dollar Team

Would you rather always be fully supported financially above and beyond what you need but only work by yourself or would your rather always be under supported financially but work with a team?

That was one of the "Would You Rather" questions that I asked part of my staff team coming back from a weekly meeting. EVERYONE chose to be under supported financially if that meant working with a team. And despite how much I like money, I would too.

This year has really taught me the importance of working in a team. I've always appreciated teams before, but never as like this. My team has been an integral part of my healing process from burnout. What grace there was when I failed, and I had failed many a times. What truth there was when I was blinded to reality, and I'm borderline delusional [sic]. My staff team is a millionaire dollar team. I adore them all. Yes, every single one of them. I can't imagine working without them, but now I'm going to have to.

Come April, most of them are going to be across the sea while I'm still here on campus. To be honest it makes me a bit anxious when I think about being "alone". I'll have friends in Toronto of course, but the camaraderie of my team won't be fully there. There's nothing worse than going to battle alone.

I know in my weakness God will be glorified, and that His grace is sufficient in my head, but at this point it hasn't filtered down to my heart yet.

I miss them already.

Love Me Anyways

Sometimes it's like, "I'm so messed up. I need to go see a therapist. Wait, I am seeing a therapist."

Today and yesterday were those kind of days. I shouldn't be surprised by the crap that gets squeezed out of me anymore.

I've been extremely hesitant to put anything on this blog regarding my journey through burnout the past year because of a fear of misunderstanding. I was afraid that people would misunderstand God, and lose faith in Him because of what I was, and am going through.

I was afraid that people would misunderstand me, because let's face it blogs are one dimensional no matter how good of a wordsmith you are, and no matter what, people always judge.

Plus burnout is something that cannot be encapsulated through a one dimensional medium. I don't know even if multiple mediums would convey what it's like. It's something that you wouldn't fully understand unless you've walked through the darkness of the valley. And since I was never that good with words to begin with, I was hesitant.

As for people judging, if I was a blog stalker who came to this site from my Facebook profile because I am a "friend", or from another blog, the first sentence would make me think that the blogger is psychotic. Let's not lie to ourselves. We judge period.

So that's why I was silent, but I will be no more. I'm breaking the silence because leaving this kind of stuff in the dark is worse. It makes it scarier than it seems. I'll risk the misunderstanding.

Life is hard and crap like burnout and depression happen. We live in a craptacular world. But the good thing is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel though you might not see it for a loooooooooong time. And that's the honest truth.

So love me anyways.

Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.

~Bill Vaughan

Oh good ol' gmail quote of the day.

I have recently realized that I have a distaste for and an aversion to suburbia. Even where I live now is not downtown enough. If you're going to live in the city why live in the burbs? I dream of a loft. Mhmm...one day..God willing, if I'm still in this town, and not overseas.

Anticipation

I am so ridiculously excited for my summer plans that it's like having caffeine in my system all the time. I didn't think that I would be excited this year since I'm not even stepping off the continent, but I am!

April- Gospel Coalition (Chicago)
May- Martha's Vineyard (Vacation, time share courtesy of a very awesome friend.)
June- Arizona (Ministry Partner Development Trip)
June and July- Colorado (Institute for Biblical Studies); Whistler (Staff Conference)
August- California (Fresno, San Francisco, L.A., Yosemite, King's Canyon, and maybe just maybe San Diego)

I can feel the sun on my skin already. I can't wait to shoot all of these locations.

25 Random Facts a la Facebook

I'd rather write it here than on FB. I'm irrationally paranoid like that.

1. I like to do random things on the fly like getting my hair cut or my belly button pierced.

2. As of yesterday I have a belly button ring.

3. The violin, the piano, the electric guitar, and the drums are the sexiest instruments EVER. I love them.

4. I am now a clean freak comparatively to what I was before.

5. One dream of mine is to have enough money to randomly jump on the next flight out of Pearson to a major city in the world.

6. I have an irrational, shallow, and superficial fear that I will marry someone ugly. By God's grace it's lessening as the years go by. :P And no, it's not that I'm learning to settle. I absolutely refuse to.

7. I have small scars of a dog bite on my right cheek.

8. Foods that I use to hate, but now love: ketchup, sour cream, pasta, and filet o' fish from McDonald's.

9. I want to have the skills of a National Geographic photographer.

10. Textbook economics literally gets my heart beating faster especially microeconomics.

11. Harvard was my childhood dream.

12. I have THE BIGGEST CRUSH on James Franco of Spiderman fame, but mostly on his character in the movie Tristan and Isolde.

13. Going through burn out was the hardest thing that I had to ever go through even considering my childhood.

14. Despite my dry and rough demeanor I am actually quite the sappy die hard romantic at heart.

15. I tried out for the Miss Chinese Toronto beauty pageant back in grade 11.

16. I thoroughly enjoy and savour every moment of being single. Taste the freedom.

17. I use to be the hugest tomboy back in junior high.

18. My Achilles heel is my insidious pride.

19. I'm becoming a homebody. I just like piddling around my apartment.

20. I am NOT an extrovert. I am an outgoing introvert. I hate big crowds, and being around people too much actually depletes my energy.

21. I have a (bad?) habit of looking at engagement rings whenever I pass by a jewellry store.

22. One day I hope to have an art show.

23. I compare myself to others way too much.

24. I am the biggest idol in my life. See 18.

25. Quality time and taking initiative are my love languages.

Eggsplosion

IcamehomefromCostco.Put18eggsintoapottoboilthem.Leftthemonthestove,andwentforanap.

In case you didn't get that.

I came home from Costco.

Put 18 eggs into a pot to boil them.
[ I was going to eat them for breakfast throughout the week]

And then proceeded to leave them on stove whilst I went for a nap.
[Unintentionally of course. I was so tired I forgot the stove was on.]

Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke doesn't it? Well it wasn't.

An hour later I awoke to explosions coming from the kitchen. Sounds made by eggs committing suicide. Sounds loud enough to wake me not only from deep sleep, but deep sleep with ipod blaring. Yes, I sleep with my ipod on.

And not only did I awake to sounds, but I awoke to a haze as well. A haze that could've been described as a fog.

You can start laughing....now.

The stench of rotten eggs is, I think still in my hair, or I just might be paranoid. Our apartment stunk until I cooked enough pasta to feed an army. Now it stinks like pasta.

This reminded me of university when I managed to set eggs I was frying on fire with the flames going a foot above the pan.

Too close of a call. TWO close calls.

I can see it now...death by eggs.

Monotonous Droning

“Shelly forgot how utterly boring lectures were. How did she ever survive four years of monotonous droning?”

For the three hours that I sat in my Basic Photography class I was thinking about various Facebook statuses bemoaning the tedium that I sat through in my head. That’ll tell you how much fun it was and how much I learned.

Honestly, I don’t think the man planned for a lecture. I would’ve have learned more if I surfed the net for three hours than the three hours that I sat in that fluorescent room.

Funnily enough I didn’t feel as much guilt dinking around my mac as I would have if I was in undergrad. If you’re so boring as to not capture my attention then you don’t deserve my attention. It’s not MY fault that you like to listen to yourself talk.

Oh yeah, and this blog post? Written IN class.

Do I sound annoyed and slightly angry? That’s because I am. Because I spent good money and time for this class. I’m already anticipating the course evaluation......