Pronoia: I choose chocolate

What got you here is not what will get you there. It's a phrase I hear over and over again at work and have heard at school, in past roles and in other aspects of my life. While this is critically true in most cases there are others where what got me there did not get me here and maybe I need to pick up behaviours, ways of thinking that used to permeate who I was.

Over the past few days I've put a lot of time into what was different then, when risk taking and unbridled potential filled my life. What was so different then that is no longer part of who I am? Through deep scientific process I have pinpointed at least one piece of the puzzle. I used to have a deep belief in pronoia. Pronoia is the belief that the world is conspiring in your favour. It was a phrase that I picked up when I sold stretchy pants and practiced yoga daily. Pronoia was how I lived my life in my early twenties and I am not exactly sure when I stopped believing.

I am the luckiest person I know and I understood this to my core at one time. Though I have never won the lottery I grew up with a solid understanding that things work out for me, that the universe is letting things unfold because that is what is meant to be, there will be no failure, no one will let me fall too far. I lived with an unseen safety net that let me grow bold. I lived in many cities between the age of 16 and 28. I've taken and quit jobs on a gut feeling and have yet to be betrayed by my decisions. I've done things that on paper seem foolish but that my intuition was certain about. Somewhere in the last few years I've lost this belief. I have become wrapped up in worry, about not being able to afford a house or a wedding when I am happily renting and not at all engaged. I have lost sleep over if one job will work out or not because I need to start building tenure on my resume. While these things are important they are all about the end and not at all about the journey. Worrying about them is not practicing the trust that brings freedom, that kind of worry causes stress and sadness and pain.

Life is never going to be just as you planned or just what we see on TV. Life is messy and scary and we wake up to have the choice every second of the day whether to trust that it will all work out or to live in fear that it might not.  I choose chocolate.

The 20 Project

Twenty is an age of blue sky possibility. Rarely is twenty old enough to have screwed up your life and often it is a time that any choice you make can be a formative one. It is exciting and tough all at once.

I remember thinking I had it all figured out at twenty. I was getting educated, I was young enough to  not be worried about what career I would have, I just knew I would have a good one, what ever I ended up doing. I wasn't worried about buying a house or how I would pay my mortgage, when I would get married or to who, though I was really interested in having a boyfriend and not getting anywhere quickly with that. I made job choices for the love of the work, not for where it would might take me, and never for the money, they took me amazing places.

My youth, wanderlust and encouraging parents made the world a place full of curiosity and possibility. I stood in nothing and everything was was available to me.

The 20 Project was founded by someone who has been a huge part of my journey. She was my first camp counsellor, a time in my life that had a huge affect on who I would become. She was also there for me when I decided to leave the first career I loved, but no longer served me, to go back to school. Of her many projects I feel so lucky to be a part of this one. The main page of the website reads "Advice from the other side of 20... a collection of memoirs, journeys and wisdom from around the world".  Collaborators from all over the globe of varying ages providing their thoughts on what it meant to be 20 and what they would tell those embarking on their third decade of life.

This might get you thinking about a simpler time, or a time when it was hard to make ends meet, or a when the challenges of life included getting up for 8:30am archeology class on a friday. It might make you remember what drove you before life became strangely more complicated and that may start to trickle back into how you make decisions. Whatever it does, I hope you will check out The 20 Project. Hilary is still looking for contributors for 11 more short days and we are all looking for a little sold wisdom and a few tales of adventure.

Scars and Milestones

Years later and I'm still moved to inaction by this time of year, still unable to shake it from my bones. My heart senses the shift in time and reminds my soul that once again, it's here.

The deaths of those amongst us are marks upon our lives. We still wear the imprint of young death, heavy in our eyes and in our voices, even for a few moments a year. It taught all of us who bore witness that life is fragile and our legacies are much more of a present, rather than future, matter.

It is often this time of year, a few weeks into January that I am reminded. I am listless, fatigued without reason. I am quick to cry and fall ill, if only in my heart. It creeps up before my mind even puts the pieces together. My body, scarred with the memory, reverts before I catch on. Eleven years later I am still haunted by the images of those weeks, tear stains on green blazers, the grey carpet of my classmates floor, how cold the ground was through my leather shoes in February.

It's taken work to get from there to here. Where trust was hard to muster and keeping a stoic exterior my suit of armour,  I have slowly learned to let the light in through the chinks, along with the people. I'm not close to being good at it but I've found someone who's strong enough to trust that I can only get better. What I'm looking for is not pity, I am no victim. What this time of year reminds me is that everyone is marked by some tragedy, it is what makes us human. It can't be covered up or fixed. Scars heal with time but never leave the body in their entirety. Be gentle with yourself and others, you never know what's lurking in the shadows of another's eyes and know that the events that mark our lives as milestones along a road they always do so for some good, never just bad. 

Back to the Mat

It may sound selfish or immature but I've really felt like I needed to see some positive change for the minimal work I've been putting into getting back to me, back in shape, and generally working off some of that brie and turkey I ate while at home in the bosom of my family.

Luckily I've been reminded of why I loved practicing yoga in the first place. Over the past few weeks I've taken to practicing to my yoga DVDs, in my sweat pants, in my "living room" (yes, the only room in our place is the "living room") while my boyfriend/roommate is at the gym. The magic of yoga is, while each practice is different, the difference are perceivable. It's instant gratification. I have noticed I am stronger through my vinyasas, my heels almost touch the floor in down dog, I'm sleeping better and it's not so hard to roll out my mat and get down to business. I've practiced maybe 5 times. Now, I know from experience not everyday is going to feel better and those days are the ones I am going to learn lessons on the mat, but in the meantime it's inspiring to remember what a yoga high feels like and that getting a bit of exercise, me time, and peace is not the hardest part of my day.

Old Julia

It's been a long time. Since a lot of things.

As cliche as it sounds change has been one of the only constants in my life over the past few years. The handful of organizations I've worked for, the three different cities in three years, different homes, different friends, countless different roles I've played. Trying to cope with this change along the way has left me sick a lot, I am not as svelte as back in my stretchy pant days by any means, a lot has had to slide to keep from floundering and I've been trying to stay ahead of the curve without taking care of myself.

The tide is starting to shift, I can feel it. Being home, out west, by the lake and in the mountains, recharged my batteries and now I am here, ready to take on what I hadn't felt strong enough to do while I was trying to manage everything else.

So this is not a list of goals, intentions or resolutions. I simply want words on paper stating that I will get back to being who I am, hitting the reset button makes the process sound far easier than I know it will be. Getting back to my yoga practice, on my mat (the one that feels like home), to my books, to writing and photography, that is what lights me up and brings me back to who I am.

So 2014 is not the year of anything new, it is the year of "old Julia".