Real, Not Ideal

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...

Last week, Matt and I got away for what we called a mid-week weekend. York has been on the “to see in England” list for a while now. We booked a hotel a couple months ago, and we could hardly sleep Tuesday night in excitement! York is an absolutely stunning city. It is old, but the newer parts are built right into the old parts. A wall runs through the city centre, and some buildings are actually built into the walls. We packed a ton of activities into two days, and I’ve been looking forward to sharing this post. Wednesday morning, we woke up early (ugh) to catch a train. Our first stop was the National Railway Museum. The museum has a great presentation of the evolution of trains over time. There’s an example of the first train ever made as well as the Japanese bullet train. We were lucky because we got to see The Flying Scotsman (pictured below) which is famous for breaking speed records. It has been on world tours and still runs every so often for additional touring. The...

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that having expectations can be dangerous. Expectations come in many forms and apply to many situations, but the one thing that is the same about all expectations – they limit your way of thinking. There’s a funny thing that happens when you go into an interaction or experience with an expectation: you look for ways to support that idea. You’ve heard that a certain person is rude and awful to have a conversation with, and when you meet them, you look for the ways they interrupt or force opinions on you. You heard that a presentation is boring, so you go in expecting it to be boring. Similarly, people have told you how amazing a place is, so you are amped for a cool adventure. What is really happening when you’re placing these expectations on situations is that you’re allowing your mind to believe there is only one outcome. [source] The thing is, having large expectations can lead to disappointments. You expect someone to react a certain...

Here begins my attempt at travel posts. I’m going to preface this by saying I’m not an expert traveller. To be honest, I don’t even like travelling; rather, I don’t like the process of travelling. I have a great time once I’m there, but transportation makes me sleepy and grumpy at the same time. However, I’m in England and the convenience of travelling is too easy to ignore. I’ll admit, I haven’t been taking advantage of the ease of travel. I went to Harrogate for a day in September, London last October, and then Bath, Stonehenge and Lacock as a weekend trip in November. I was in Sheffield over Christmas, but it wasn’t for tourist purposes. Over the Easter weekend, I was back in Sheffield, and I got to explore Rother Valley with Matt. The walk itself took about three hours. The walk around the lake took just over an hour. It’s deceivingly long – especially since you can see one end from another!   The lake was full of swans and ducks, and we wandered our way around and f...