I really must stop these monthly posts!

How am I ever going to get anywhere in the bloggosphere if I only tell people about my sad life once a month?
Well, to be honest, my life has been pretty routine lately so there really isn't much of interest to report. I stay up way too late, wake up in the afternoon, and usually waste most of my day on the couch. It's sort of like depression but more by choice. I've also been baking. A lot. (Not good for the waistline).

Now, on to more important issues. Which are definitely happier ones.

Today was probably my first productive day in a long time, probably also the reason why I'm updating the blog. As soon as I woke up I was doing important things. I reapplied to university, which I should hear from them very shortly since I'm doing the application for readmission. I also translated my resume from English to French in order to apply for a job that will be starting in a week's time. It's only 20hrs a week, but I'll be making enough money to save up a little bit more and pay down my credit card bill.
I've also had a bit of an epiphany tonight, which is a HUGE step forward in the realm of dealing with my depression. It's a very simple realization and I certainly hope that it stays with me for a very long time.

I have an awesome life.

Right now, at this point in my life, I have finally figured out that my life is awesome. I don't know if it's because I'm at home for a while or because of other reasons but I enjoy this current outlook and I intend to embrace it with open arms. I live in one of the most advanced times in the history of our known universe. I was lucky enough to be born in an awesome country. My parents are incredibly supportive in anything I want to do with myself. While I am not a perfect person, I'm damn-well better than I tend to give myself credit for. I am the result of millions of years of evolution, thousands of different people have gone into my creation and since I'm living and breathing, apparently there's something right about me.

This is the best feeling I've had in a long time.

On to real business then, as I had previously mentioned, in this post I'm going to talk about my expectations for this new year (even though a month is almost gone). A few of these expectations intercept with the reasons why I'm currently on my sabbatical. This might be very long, so I'm just warning you now.

• My first expectation is for a full back pain recovery. It's the main reason that I'm currently sitting in my room at home writing this rather than in a dorm. Pretty straight forward.

• I want to eat healthier this year. My eating habits are absolutely horrid, I don't eat enough, I eat too much, I eat the wrong stuff, I eat too late, etc. This has really got to change if my next expectation is going to work. I think I have started a bit of a plan on how to get this ball rolling though and I think my mom can even appreciate it.

• My third expectation is that I will get in shape. If you've been watching "The Biggest Loser" this new season is all about no excuses, now while the contestants on the show are still full of excuses I see that I have about the next 7 months of my life where I can have free reign over what I do and I need to dedicate little time to things like homework right now (for the time being anyway). So as long as my back is feeling alright, I should be doing all I can to reach that goal (it's not an excuse if I physically can't move without pain... yes, my back is that bad).

• My next one is to get some distance courses done. This would happen so much faster if I got re-accepted to my university so that way I didn't have to jump through hurdles. I would like to be able to return to school without needing a 30credit courseload. A 24 credit one would be ideal. Which means I would have to take 12 credits while I'm off, which can be two to four courses. I have to do at least 6 credits, I have no choice but to do 6 otherwise I'll be behind again.

• The fifth expectation for this year, is to save as much money as possible. I always need more money when I don't have it and that's why my visa balance is so damn high right now. I really need to get that job I applied for in order to ease some of my monetary worries for now. Hopefully when the summer comes, I can find a job that pays a little more or when my back starts feeling better I might be able to get a second job.
  

• I want to get in contact with people I've lost touch with. Maybe it's been a few months since I've last talked or a few years. I miss some people in my life and would greatly like them back in my life. I figure since I'm home, this will be the time to get back together with some of my high school friends. My only fear of this is that we've all too greatly grown apart and simply can't relate anymore. Either way, it would be nice to have friends again.
  

• To just have a good year! Maybe I'll discover new things about myself. Maybe I'll get to do a little light traveling, see my favourite band in concert again or just learn to love myself a bit more. I hope that this year is much better than my last one and that it's even better than the one before that. I hope I meet new people, make new friends and just be a better person.

So that's really it. There might be a few extras here and there, but that pretty much covers all the bases. Now only to make some of them reality, I'm not really asking for much, just basically my whole world to change.

Oh dear, it's been a while...

My original plan being to just flood this blog with posts and such fairly regularly has gotten off to a poor start. So flooding is out of the question, random updates are all the rage anyway. I will probably decided to try to make weekly updates on a certain day. I just don't know how well that's going to go over, but we'll see.

Anyway! Since I haven't been telling the world anything since the 6th, well I've got quite a bit of very uninteresting news for everyone to hear. This is going to be long...
Since my last update, I've settled back into my room (sort of). I rearranged my furniture, I felt that this new time in my life deserves some reorganization. While I don't really have much to do for that, a change in my room was a pretty good one since nothing has moved in my room for years. Completely flipped the room. Now, I'm just waiting for the new year so that I can put a fresh and colourful coat of paint up. The current pure white that is on my walls is fairly depressing and not really something that I'm a fan of.

I have had an appointment with an ophthalmologist to see if there was anything wrong with my eyes because I was having that whole blind spot in my left eye for a while. The good news is that my eyes are healthy and I don't have anything wrong with them that he could see. The bad news being that we don't know what caused that to happen. I'm fairly sure that it was stress induced, which kind of scares be a bit that I can be stressed enough to pretty much go blind in one eye. You would have to be pretty bad for something like that to happen, that's for sure. The worse part is that I used to be able to handle stress so well, I was the type of person that didn't even get affected by a stressful situation til the last minute. Like when I had a test or exam, I would only get nervous once the thing was on the desk in front of me. It was both an advantage and a weakness, since I wasn't stressed, I wouldn't study hard enough but it saved me a lot of worry. Just with my more current psychological issues, I haven't been able to handle stress at all. It's very uncharacteristic of me and I really don't know how to even handle me not being able to tolerate high stress levels like I used to. That's one reason why I believe that the blind spot is stress related, because it started during a very stressful time at school.

My next item is that I have start physiotherapy to help my back. So far, it's been a pleasant experience. When I go, I get put on the inter-differential machine, which is four probes giving out mild shocks to stimulate circulation in the tissue. Feels like a mini massage as long as it's not too strong. I've been given a number of exercises that are helping put a curve back into my spine and build back and ab strength. I like the exercises since I never knew that you could build ab strength with such simple movements. Like one of my exercises is to lay flat on my back, and slowly drag one foot at a time on the floor til it's flat so that my knee is bent. So simple but it's actually working. My only issue right now if that I think I might have pushed it a little bit too hard yesterday and pulled something kind of bad because I'm so very sore today. The good part is that the pain is very isolated and hasn't really traveled back into my sciatic nerve yet, and hopefully won't. My parents insurance covers physio til a certain amount for each calendar year and in the last week and a half I've used that full amount because I only had two weeks left to the year. So it was a really good time to start it because I was able to do that. Hopefully with all the advice about back pressure and realigning your spine I've gotten in the last while, I'll be on my way to being better fairly quickly. Which would be absolutely wonderful.

And I still have things to talk about!!

Oh course there's Christmas! Which was really nice this year. I spent a lot of time baking beforehand and that was wonderful since I love doing it. I did have a bit of trouble with standing for long periods of time because of my back but I persevered because of my love for it. Baking is definitely one of the things that still makes me happy right now. Actual Christmas was just a nice 3 days (24th, 25th and 26th) spent at home with my family. I ran through three of my dressiest dresses because I felt like wearing them and we got a few gifts, my favourite is definitely the heated blanket my parents gave me. We ate lots of food, we spent time with each other and went to church together. It was definitely pleasant.
Once the boxing week sales hit, I was out spending more money I don't have but I did pick up a dress I've been eyeing forever and it was 70% off. Darn good deal if you ask me.

Now, New Year's Eve was fairly uneventful. We got chinese and I drank a bit of sparkling wine. It didn't really agree with me though. I really don't foresee myself getting drunk anytime in the future because of that. Watched a movie with my mom, Auntie Mame, which is actually a great movie. Then we watched the countdown, yelled "Happy New Year" and that was about it...

This past week, I started in a cake decorating class. It's just the introductory level, so it's pretty basic stuff, like most of it I already know (how to make icing, hold a piping bag, pipe basic shapes) but it'll just be fun to have something to do on Thursday nights for the next couple of weeks. Which I also have to bake for (so that's fun too). My only problem with the class is that, it's mostly sitting for 2 hours straight on crappy chairs that make my back hurt. I'm not too sure how to fix that problem either.

So other than all that, I've been taking life pretty slowly. Still keeping up with my physio exercises, enjoying life's simple pleasures (that don't cost anything) and trying to watch what I eat. I have, on the down side, thoroughly messed up my sleeping schedule which isn't cool at all and I need to fix quickly before it gets worse.

That's about it for now. I'll be updating again in the next few days about what I expect to get out of 2012. This should be an exciting one! So until then,

Tootles!
Kathleen

Back Home

I'm now back home safely, today was my first whole day home since early November. It was a pretty good day, fairly lazy but that's what makes being home so good. I just have to make sure that I don't get too much into the habit of not getting anything productive done at all. But, to be honest, I can't really expect the moon from myself right now since I'm just starting a recovery path from some pretty major depression. I feel a lot more comfortable at home and since I always have people around it's a lot easier to not feel depressed, whereas at school, I could go almost a week without serious interaction with other people. That doesn't mean that my depression will go away though, because I had the same thing happen to me last April. I felt better for a while, then just went back into the same fits that I was having while at school.

Either way, until Christmas is over, I'm on a mental health break as well as the physical health break. I'm just going to take it easy, get into shape and hopefully when I get back to university in September, I'll not only feel better but I'll look better. I'm really hoping to do big things with this time off from school. I want to get at least 12 credit hours (so that I won't be needing to take a full course-load when I get back), I want to get my bad back fixed, my eyes fixed (because they've been doing terrible things for the last month) and get into shape, maybe lose some unwanted pounds. I just want to feel good and feel better about myself. No, this isn't going to turn into a diet blog, but I might give you guys some updates about how well I'm doing with that. I want to use the next 8 months to figure out what I want to do with myself, what I need to do to get there and find what makes me happy because I really don't know what does anymore.

Tomorrow afternoon, I have a fit-in appointment with my doctor. I intend to talk to him about seeing a specialist about my eyes, I want to get my back x-rayed and possibly get an MRI for my back. I also need to get the doctor's note that he made for the dean's office because student loan is going to be looking for a copy. I really want to know what's wrong with it so that way I can fix it. The last time I saw him, he said that we might not see anything on an x-ray or an MRI, so I wasn't really bothered with not looking for an appointment since I was going to be heading back to school and it's difficult to make it back and forth for appointments since school is two and a half hours away. Now that I'm home, I plan to be getting as many appointments as I need, because I'm going to be close and I can do that now. My back, if it doesn't get better might need surgery, which is not a wonderful idea, but if I need it, it's best that I have lots of time to get better from it. I'll survive somehow, I know I will.

So this month being my mental health break, I don't really plan on getting right into distance courses. I think what I really need the most right now is a nice break from brain usage. I'm going to enjoy the Christmas season, playing with the dog and cuddling my cats to death. I will be getting ready for the coursework that is yet to come, like picking out the courses I want to take and maybe putting in an application for the university I want to take them from (although that probably won't move very far till January). I'm just really not worried too much about that stuff right now because it's only the beginning.

For now really, I'm going to do some more unpacking, probably reorganize my room since nothing has moved for years, decorate by putting my posters up since they're not staying rolled up for the next 8 months, I would never get them back up properly... And definitely get ready for Christmas and New Year's. I'm hoping that I'll be able to get out a bit and see some friends this Christmas season. It'll be nice to see the people I love dearly but haven't seen in forever.

That's about all for now, we'll just have to see what adventures I have tomorrow.

X-Ring and Packing

Today is the Feast of St. Francis Xavier, I happen to be going to the school named after him, so we get our grad rings on this day rather than later this year. There's an elaborate ceremony and tons of parties to celebrate the seniors getting their rings. Most people have their families come from away to celebrate, it's pretty much like graduation but it's a bit bigger in a way because you don't carry your degree with you everywhere; most people wear these rings more than their wedding bands.

Guess who got hers today? Guess who also did nothing to celebrate today? That's right, me. Rather than having my family down here to celebrate receiving my ring and going to the ceremony to get my ring. I spent the day packing my dorm room up and walked down to the jewelery store at 5 to get my ring. Let me tell you, I seriously considered jumping off the bridge you have to cross to get to main st., I was that depressed. This is one of the more major days of your undergraduate here, and although I had been looking forward to this day since first year, I did none of it. When I had the ring in hand, I felt as if I didn't deserve it. I'm leaving, so why should I get one, right. I didn't want to put it on, I wanted to leave this precious thing safely in it's box. Feeling more that it currently represents my failures more than my successes.

When I got off the phone with my mom, I still felt pretty much the same about it. Regretful and low about the whole situation (I should be partying, not packing after all). When I tried it on, it felt too tight, which made the whole situation just terrible...

After a while, I put it back on and just left it. Now that I've had it on for a few hours, I feel much better about the situation. It took me 1184 days to earn this ring, it took passes and failures, learning about myself as a student and a person. I don't want to say that on the path to getting this ring has made me the person I am today, because as of today, I don't like myself very much. I'm thinking of this more as a reward for the past 3 years of suffering and hopefully it will give me the boost I so direly need to finish my degree. Until then, I'm a walking fraud, since the ring says 2012 but I will be graduating in 2013. I do hope that I will be able to resubmit my ring next year and participate in all the events that I was forced to miss. I deserve something from this.

Even had I been able to participate, it would have still been a lonely day because my parents were both feeling ill today, they wouldn't have been able to make the trip down and friends are something of a hot commodity for me lately... This situation was probably much for the best.

So instead, I spent the day slowly packing all my stuff. Got about 3 boxes done (I'm limited on the things I can pack since I don't have many boxes) and all my clothes packed up to go. Also, I took down 13 posters, which I only got up about a month and a half ago (that took forever). I watched 5 episodes of the first season of Rome while I did that. Now my walls are bare and my drawers are empty. This is pretty real and really sucky right now.
All I can do is hope it gets better. The best part of this whole thing, is that I don't have to write any exams. :)

I guess that's about it for now. Tomorrow is the move back home, that should make me happier for a while.

Tootles!

Welcome back to the program!

I have a confession:

This is the third time I've remodeled this blog.
I just can't bring myself to creating another rather than revamping this one. The domain name has changed before though, so initial readers are non-existent (as if they existed in the first place, HA!). I just hope that you enjoy this version of my blog more than previous ones. Now, on to new matters!!

I AM A DROPOUT!

Just thought I'd get that off my chest. If I had considered this three years ago, I would be the world's biggest failure. But this isn't 2008, and I'm not the person I used to be. This fall term has been extremely difficult for me physically and mentally. I had sprained my back in the summer time while working and that has progressed to pinched nerves and possibly a slipped disk. All has been absolutely wonderful in my life the past 6 or so months because of these problems.
Then there's the emotional trauma that I've been suffering since April; depression, anxiety and newly developed agoraphobia (only the first being diagnosed). I've been offered anti-depressants multiple times over the last few months (I'm wary of them and would rather deal with my problems then medicate them though) and have been seeing a counselor since late September.

So, since I'm packing up and heading home on Sunday, I figured that blogging my feelings away over the next eight months might help me manage my emotion problems, physical challenges and academic hurdles. I just hope that I'll be able to dedicate myself to the blog moreso than I have in the past. Here's hoping. ALSO! Pardon my language, since this is just streaming from my brain, I'm not censoring. If you're not a fan of mild profanity and the occasional rant, this blog is not for you. You've been warned.

My first step in this process is to move back home. Living in the dorms, I'm not allowed to stay if I drop out, so everything has to go home early. This is probably the suckier of the process since I've been keeping my departure under wraps, nothing says "I'm a failure" more than moving all your crap out of residence. Tomorrow, my mother and brother are driving down with boxes and Sunday my dad is bringing the truck to get me out of this shithole.
I'm having a lot of mixed feelings about the whole situation, I think that once I'm home I'll be much more content with my choice of leaving school. It was bound to happen this year though, just with how I've been feeling, it's been horribly difficult to get from class to class. Then with the emotional side, it's just made it incredibly difficult to focus on my work and I always felt lonely. I drifted from place to place on campus, never really having someone to do things with. So you can sort of see why the choice to leave was a good one.

I believe that's a fine enough introduction from tonight, I will be back, to talk about my future plans and what I hope to do over the next eight months at home with my family.

Until then, <3!

Frequent updates? Go figure...

I'm fully aware of my promise to my non-existent readers to give more frequent updates about my life and all the wonderful things I've been trying to do to improve it. Well, life always like to throw little speed bumps at you frequently and shortly after writing my last post my back decided that it could take no more torture from my work get-up that it basically had a sprain (and right after a post about posture, oh the irony). So for the last few weeks I've been bed-ridden and doing a minimum at work to ensure that my back takes a speedy recovery, and so far it hasn't been so bad.

Of course, I wouldn't be posting anything without a life lesson. I might be out of practice, but I am still working on posture and my next lesson goes hand-in-hand with it.

Life Lesson #2: Walking.

One of the recommendations to help my back heal faster was to walk. Nothing too extreme because then I would be causing more problems. Light walking was all I needed, but now that my back is feeling okay, I'm definitely up for keeping up the workouts because I haven't been keeping active enough lately. I've been having some trouble lately with losing and keeping weight off, I had lost about 20lbs and managed to keep it off until this past year at school. I'm pretty sure the reason that I've put it on is mostly because of my crappy diet that I was following (hint; it consisted mostly of white pasta).
To start with the walking process, I've been trying to walk out from work which is about a 15-20 minute walk. I'm just trying to ease into this because I do a fair amount of walking at work, including wearing crappy, crappy shoes, which helps nothing. So with the work walking and at work walking plus any little walks that I can do while at home definitely help. My cardio is just terrible because of my weight gain. I might end up scheduling walks for when I get back to school...

To be honest, I'm not sure what else to say. So this will be it for today.

Life Lesson #1

So, in trying to actually establish this blog, I'm planning to update it more frequently than any other. This will truly be a commitment to myself because I really need that outlet for some positive and negative energy as I'm trying to change my life. Maybe if my intentions are put out for others to read, I'll feel more obliged to actually follow through with them.

On to my life lesson;

Posture.
I've been recently trying to improve my posture. I really have terrible posture, I slouch so bad that it actually hurts, I figured that in order to change how I feel I should change a little bit about how I present myself which includes how I stand of course. In order to fix it, I'm just trying to adjust my posture whenever I think about it and I hope that someday it'll stick. I really don't want to change too much in my life too quickly because nothing will stick at all. How do I know this? I've tried to overhaul my life many times over, and it always turns into a lot of plans with little or no follow-through. The real life lesson here, is to focus on the smaller and immediate things that I can change in my life before I move onto larger things.
Another thing that I've been trying to do lately is watch what I put into my body, because over the last year I haven't been treating my body very well lately. I've been pretty much living off of simple carbs and that's just plain bad for me anyway since I don't have a wonderfully fast metabolism. So even if I am still eating junk food right now, I'm just trying to be more conscious about what I'm putting into my body and then hopefully in time, I'll stop and think before eating that cookie.
Yes, that might sound stupid right now, but frankly it's the best I can do right now, so that's what the plan is.

I hope everyone has been having a good life, and we'll discuss the results of this and my next lessons later.

Hello Bloggosphere!

I'm back, maybe ready for a little 2.0 even. So right now I'm on summer break from university and I'm back to working at the fortress. These past 2 years have been pretty uneventful but that's what happens when you're a boring person, right? You know what, I'm okay with boring. I'm young and there's plenty of time for living so I like to take it slow right now. On the other hand, life is probably slower than usual because work is absolutely sucking the energy right out of me. This year, I get to dress up like a colonial French soldier and pretend to be a guy. Fun, I know right? Anyway, I have plenty of beefs about my working situation, like how I didn't really want to go back there but kind of had to in the end; to not being allowed to fire a musket yet. I mean, what's the fun of dressing up like an 18th century soldier if you can't fire a musket?

Anyway, I've kind of wanted to revamp my blog to just be more concentrated on one thing that might help to motivate me to perhaps achieve something. My new theme is going to be change. I want to overhaul my life in the next year or so. I want to create a lifestyle change that can only be for the better and will add years to my life as well as make me feel as young as I am right now. The reason behind using the blog for this would be so that I can feel accountable to someone, even if you are anonymous, I don't want to fail when I'm being watched. I'm really going to concentrate my blog now on some of my bigger life goals and how I'm going to get to them and achieve them.

I will be setting up an update schedule so that I'm not bouncing in an out and I'll also try to reflect on different themes that I want to discuss with anyone that feels like they want to read this. Hopefully, in my finding myself, I can help someone find themselves. Which is bringing me into our first true theme;

Finding a direction.

Making a life commitment to overhaul what you're currently doing with your life is huge. It's not an easy thing to decide to do and it's not an easy thing to achieve. In life there's many temptations, whether your weakness is the sexy pair of heels at the trendy shop downtown or the bag of chips in the cupboard. There's usually a better choice to be made than the one you pick. Or at least that's the case for me. Sure, I don't really need another pair of shoes and I definitely don't need those chips, but for some reason that doesn't stop me. I know these things aren't good for me (since I have student loans that will be attacking me all too soon and about 50 extra pounds of me that don't need to be there), but I STILL DO IT! Why is it that I'm so hellbent on self-sabotage? Truth is, I don't really know. I know it usually is more instant-gratification to eat that chocolate bar then run for 20 minutes on the treadmill, but is that what's really driving all my vices? Sloth? Gluttony? Greed? Envy? Do all those combine to simply create what I am?

While I don't know the source of my current drive-state, I do know it's time for change and a real direction. Over the next year, I hope to discover myself, all I am and all I can be. I'm looking to find what I would like to achieve and what is possible to achieve in the near future and what needs to be put off until later. I need to learn to live life a little more fully each day and take pride in who I can be. With the help of my blogging, I hope to really just find the true me.