Bucket List Journey

October 4, 2012

The day I declared on my blog that I was going to run a 10k

That was almost exactly year ago.

It didn’t take long for my good intentions to fall by the wayside again. Winter in Montreal makes running for free a challenge, and I was too cheap to pay for a gym membership thinking I’d never actually go. Which I was fairly confident would be true – I’d probably never have gone.

I had set a goal, I had developed a bit of a plan and I just didn’t follow-through, which is often the story of my life. The days went by and I was more and more filled with embarrassment and shame that I had made this public declaration of a totally achievable goal, this public declaration I made on purpose so that I would actually follow through or risk shame. I chose shame!

That’s ending with this blog. We don’t have the extra money for a gym membership this year. Which means that I’m doing things the free way. That’s half the problem for a lot of people, I think. Not having money to buy good shoes to start running can deter people from starting all together. Being embarrassed by what people think of their lazy-butt-turned-marathon-hopeful attempts at running (or maybe the books/magazines/blogs they read about running but no one ever hears about an actual run). These things prevent us from starting. Those things have prevented me in the past, but I want to work hard at not letting these things get in my way of getting what I want out of life.

When I first made the list, I think a lot of these goals were about being able to tell other people I’ve done them; they were about street-cred. Now, these goals are about me proving to me that I can apply myself, I can Tiger-mom myself into GTD (getting things done).

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:

October 1, 2012

The Bucket List

When I was in high school a motivational speaker came to talk to us at a school assembly. He talked about doing something with your life and becoming the person you wanted to be. I was cynical and he was cheesy. I was pretty much throwing up the whole time because he was just so sappy. I knew what he was saying was probably more or less right, I just hated his delivery. At the end of his talk he said something along the lines of, “I dare you to make a list of things you want to accomplish in life. Just by writing that list down you will become [convincing high percentage] more likely to actually accomplish it than the person sitting next to you who doesn’t write that list.”

Well if all I had to do was make a list and it would more or less happen, that wasn’t so hard. I could do that, even if the guy was a total sap-fest.

So I did. Those things on the list have never left my head. They’ve been swirling around haunting and taunting me. One had a time-limit on it in order to get me motivated. Sadly, that time limit has come and gone and I still haven’t achieved it. BUT, I did move much closer to the goal by making choices that moved me in that direction.

This is where I’m going to write about moving towards the things on my Bucket List, the things I want to do before I die. A lot of these things require small achievements before I even get to the final goal. A lot of these things require discipline, which I barely have, and stamina, which I’m working on. A lot of these things have nothing to do with anyone else other than my 16-year-old self dreamed of doing them one day and I don’t want to let her down because I didn’t even try.

Here’s my list. For those of you who know me know that a lot of these things are laugh-worthy. They’re outrageous. But some of the things that are crossed off were also outrageous at one point, too. Getting paid to go to Paris? In my dreams, exactly.

So in no particular order, including the approximate dates in which they were accomplished if they already have been, here’s my list. Read it and laugh, or read it and hope with me.

Run a marathon
Climb a small mountain
Get married (July 30, 2011)
Have kids
Go to Paris (February 2010)
Write a book (Nov 30, 2004)
Publish a book
Become fully bilingual (French/English) by the time I was 25 (oops! missed that one).

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.