Real, Not Ideal

I promise after this post that I will stop talking about how busy my summer has been. For a while there, I wasn’t reading before bed like I usually do. One day, my mom put The Circle by Dave Eggers on my bookshelf, and I brought it to a shift where I knew I had some time to read. I ended up reading it in four sittings. The Circle is a company that is all about connection and social media and engagement. You know how Google is supposed to be the best place in the world to work? Well, this company is like that. They even have nap rooms. Mae starts her work there and falls in love with the way the company is run. It seems like a positive atmosphere with unlimited resources (don’t even get me started about their amazing library). The Circle is forward thinking and constantly changing. New people are always brought in and all treated with the utmost respect and care. Everyone is a visionary and takes inspiration from each other. Mae becomes the centre of The Circle’s latest technology and

I’m entirely disappointed that I missed May but oh well. July has been a busy month. I started working this month, and I’ve been very busy with that. I’m working at a small pool this summer, and I was worried that I wasn’t going to get many hours. However, I’ve been picking up a decent amount of shifts at other pools. I missed mentioning this before the summer, but I was rather nervous about starting a new position this year, but I’ve settled in well, and I’d say I’m doing a pretty good job too. I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished so far. This post isn’t work related, but since that’s what’s been taking up most of my time, I have to mention it. 1.        Revlon Black Cherry Lipstick I’ve been out a few times since I’ve been back. Every time I’ve been out, I’ve worn this lipstick. It goes on really dark, but after blotting it with tissues, it looks so good. This picture was from my sister's 19th birthday, and it worked so well with my outfit. I’ve always been a fan of l

I remember forever ago when I used to watch America’s Next Top Model, and they did an exercise where they wrote the word that made them feel bad about themselves and rephrased it to make it their source of power. For years, that has stuck with me. Everyone has one word that brings them back into a sad place. It may be a nickname they were teased about when they were younger or something that reflects their insecurities. Whichever it is, I feel like everyone has one. It’s a word that comes up every so often and uncovers feelings from the past. It doesn’t matter if you’re an adult and 10+ years past the incident, but it still has the power to open up old wounds. My word is bookworm. I AM a bookworm. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s what makes me who I am, and I knew that even then. However, when someone takes your identity and uses it as an insult, it hurts. I remember when this person called me a bookworm. It was said with so much disgust and opposition. It wasn’t the word i

I've been trying to look back on things I've written about in previoussummer, and I am struggling. As I wrote on Tuesday , I'm not very "on the ball" in the summer. I think this is a good time to share my actual reflections about my time abroad. To be honest, I'm glad I didn't write it as soon as I got home. There are certain things I've realized only in being back for a while and settling in. It seems like I should be settled in at this point, but I'm really not. I keep saying I was thrown into life as soon as I got back. There are certain things that I've realized since I've been back, and there are certain things that are simply reestablished. There are also things about my adventures in here that have a significant importance. 1.        Coming home is a more difficult transition than one would think. This is surprisingly more difficult to write about than I would have thought. The thing is, I'm struggling to transition back t

So. It has been a while. I've surfaced online once in a while, but otherwise, I've been pretty MIA. I promise I'll get to reflections on my time abroad once things settle down a bit more. Since I've been back, I've been thrown into so much life. I had work training the day after I got back, and the week after, I started planning Marlee's bachelorette. Basically, this is the first week I've had time to look at everything and figure out what I need to be doing over the course of the summer. As a side note, I know there are some bloggers that have a full time job as well as doing daily posts and taking care of their family. To them, I pose this question: HOW? I've never been consistent in the summer, and I say it's due to work, but there are no grounds to that argument because I work only part time. Oh well. To make up for lost time, I thought I would share a couple of the trips I went on before I came home. I haven't picked the pictures yet,

I must say, Tuesday’s post was not the easiest thing in the world. It was a challenge for me to post. I was going back and forth about it for so long. I’m glad I decided to do it, and although it was quite a strong post to write after more than month of silence, I needed to do it. Other than that, my life has been absolutely insane in the past few weeks. To be honest, my life is a little bit in shambles. I need to get back into a routine. That also means that I need you catch you up on the adventures I’ve been on! I haven’t said anything about the Cliffs of Moher, London, or Paris. I have so much to share! For now, I’ll share what I’ve been doing from Pinterest. I decided to change the format of my Pinterest posts to fit in a few more things. So check out what I’ve been doing since I’ve returned to Canada! 1.        Flaming Drinks   All you need is 1 oz vodka, 1 oz blue curacao, 3 oz lemonade, Splash 151, Pinch of cinnamon. However, this was a fail. It didn’t look anything l

I’ve been on a few day trips recently, and I’ve been looking forward to sharing them. Day trips are so short, so it’s tough to get a full blog post on each trip, so I shmooshed (Daniella word) them all together. I loved it when I walked around Rother Valley , and I wanted to fit in a few more trips before I leave. It’s too easy to get around here with the train that’s able to go everywhere. Depending on where you go, it can be pretty cheap too. It’s so expensive to travel within Canada, and it’s so vast that day trips aren’t always ideal. It’s been so great to take advantage of the ease of travel here. Day trips are a great way to break up the week if you’re in school. When you go in the middle of the week, it’s not as busy either! I went to Hull, Ilkley Moor, and Scarborough, and they were all widely different trips. Hull The reason for going to Hull was for The Deep Aquarium there. It is a huge building, and it flows really well. I’ve been to so many museums where you don’t

Well, I feel like writing this blog post is coming to you on the perfect day. After months of a backed-up inbox, I have now brought my emails down to the magical number of zero. Not going to lie, it feels pretty good. I have a few weeks left overseas which includes a lot of travelling, but I’ve realized how much I’ve grown since I’ve been here. And, of course, I’m going to share with you what I’ve learned as an adult. I wrote a previous version where I was 83 days into my time away from home. I’m now over 200 days in, and I feel like I’ve learned and grown so much more in the months since my last post. I’m near the end of my time away from home, but I can feel myself shift into a more adult frame of mind. This is what brought me to that. 1.        Friendships will change. You get older, you finish school, and people move away and get married and have their own lives. The things you used to base friendships on no longer apply to friendships. You’re going to have to renegotiat

This is coming to you late, but it's coming to you nonetheless. It's the end of the school year for me, and I'm in a whirlwind of papers and fitting in last minute trips to get the most of my last month here. I'm going to be honest with you - I'm not 100% sure what I did in April. A couple things have stood out to me, but other than that, April was relatively uneventful. 1. York This trip happened at the end of March, but it was too late to make it onto my March favourites. However, it was absolutely amazing. I would go so far as to say this has been my favourite trip. I'm still very proud of myself for making the full trek up the York Minster. I wrote a full post about it in April, so check that out for more details. 2. Edinburgh I went on a trip to Edinburgh, Scotland a couple weeks ago. I'll be writing a full post about it coming soon! I really wish I had more time there, but it was gorgeous. It's similar to York with the history and

I suppose, in a sense, I was lucky. I was not bullied aggressively or physically. The kind of bullying I went through in elementary school was bullying by exclusion. From grade one to three, I had a good group of friends, but after that, they changed schools and that changed my life. At that point, no one liked me. No one from school asked me to hang out. I remember the last time in elementary school someone did ask me. The only reason they did was because they were new and didn’t know they weren't supposed to like me. When it came to the grade eight trip, the teacher had to call a meeting with all the girls to convince three of them to give up one night to room with me. I don’t have good memories from that time. However, I learned some important things. 1.        Good friends are a blessing. The thing about not having friends for the longest time is that when you do have good friends, they hold an extra special place in your heart. I’ve written about the importance of friend