Life – Page 8 – Bucket List Journey

October 24, 2012

Fresh pages every day

Last week I finished another journal. I pulled down my box of journals from my bedroom closet and was surprised at how heavy it was. As I looked through it I was struck by how many words I had written, how many thoughts and ideas I had captured on paper over the years. Each time period is identified by the style of journal. Spiral notebooks for my teenage years, covered in bright colours or patterns and Moleskines for the adult years. 27 in total.

27journals — You can see I like the colour pink.

Journaling has been a way for me to write out my thoughts and to privately capture what spills out of my insides. As an extrovert, it has become a way for me to process ideas, thoughts and emotions before they’re ready for public exposure. I was first inspired to keep a journal after my mom gave me one of hers as a young girl. I loved the idea that I was reading my mom’s thoughts from when she was a teenager, learning from lessons she had forgotten she had recorded. I wanted to do the same.

Sometimes I go back and read what I wrote and am surprised. I learned that already, cause I feel like I’m still learning that! I wrote that? Because it’s not half bad! It’s also encouraging to see how far I’ve come.

This summer I started one morning reflecting on how great it is that every day is new, waiting for me to write a new story. Every day is a fresh page. I don’t have to continue from the previous day, I can start all over again if I want to whether it’s in act or attitude.

Writing helps me have perspective, it helps me process and it helps me progress.

October 3, 2012

One of those days….

Today I had one of those days. The kind where it starts with a $52 parking ticket that doesn’t really fit in your budget, continues with low energy, a bad french day, grows into one of those days where you drop your iPhone 4 and it shatters the screen etc. One of those days. It was one of those days where I was glad I didn’t have a doctor’s appointment because I was sure whatever she would tell me would involve the words like “cancer” or “infertile” or something terrible like that.

As I was thinking (and crying) about my day it occurred to me why it bothered me so much.

This blog and what I want my life in general to be about is living intentionally, about living on purpose. I don’t want to fail for lack of trying, I don’t want to let things pass me by because I was too afraid to take a stab at it. From another perspective, in a sense it’s about control. I want to be in control of my life.

When days like this happen it becomes very apparent that I can’t be in control of everything. I can hope, try, pray, work hard for things but sometimes things just don’t go according to plan. Sometimes things spin out of control, fall through the cracks and no matter how hard you try to stop it the sand keeps falling through the cracks between your fingers.

This week my coworker and I were asking a bunch of first year students at UQAM what they feared most about coming into University. A lot of them said failure, a lot of them said they feared not liking their program, some of them said being alone or that they feared the bigness of the city for those who were from out-of-town.

I find it revealing how much our fears tell us about ourselves.

What if tomorrow is like today? And the next day? What about the next several weeks? Years? What then?

How does a person cope when life doesn’t go according to plan? Move on and try not to be bitter? Probably a good option. I’m not sure I’m that good at getting over disappointment. If you ask my husband, he’ll tell you I’m not very good at just turning off my bad attitude. I can’t just stop being grumpy. So how do we cope with this fact that no matter how hard we try, plan, and even succeed there is this looming reality that we don’t have the power to make our lives turn out just the way we want?

The way I deal is through my faith in God which, to be perfectly honest, I feel reticent to post about because I don’t want you to think that’s all I’ll write about. But on a day like this there’s nothing else I can write about. I find a comfort and a hope in the fact that though it’s possible that things in my life may get out of my hands, out of my control, they will never be out of His hands and His control.

Tomorrow, I will publish what I originally wanted to post today: The day I declared on my blog I would run a 10K.

Also, these:

September 29, 2012

A little introduction

My name is Jess Versteeg. Well, sort of. I live in Quebec and the government here won’t let me take my husbands’ name legally. So I’m still technically Jess Wynja because Quebec doesn’t think my marriage will last long enough for them to go through the administrative work for me to fully become Jess Versteeg. You know, it kind of makes sense that Quebec would prefer cohabitation over marriage, since the province is really just cohabiting with the country. Quebec still hasn’t signed the Constitution because it likes the idea of the relationship (sort of) but not enough to fully commit.

Anyways.

My name is Jess Versteeg, legally Jessica Wynja. You can imagine the existential crisis I have every time I sign my name. Who am I right now? Am I the real me, or the old me that my government is forcing me to stay attached to against my will? I’m only being slightly dramatic. But actually.

I live in Montreal though I did not grow up in Montreal. I’ve been married for just over a year. I am not yet bilingual, but that’s coming quickly as I’m working in French. I married a fellow Ontarian just over a year ago and we plan to live in Quebec for a very long time/forever.

I really enjoy cooking and baking, writing. I have some pretty distinct ideas of how I want my life to turn out. Also, I’m pretty lazy, which is why the whole premise of this blog is necessary. I need a combination of determination and public shame/embarrassment to make these happen.

And so this blog is born. Saying goodbye to former blogs where I whined about my laziness, saying hello to the future.