IOTD: Giving myself an Intervention.

I love water. I love boat. and let me tell you, if there was a lamp. I would love lamp.

My name is Krista, and I am an addict. (pause for the group response…..)

As I sit here radiating heat I wish my addiction could have been to sunscreen. But alas, it is not. So for now I shall sit here lathered in aloe and regret and tell you about my real addiction.

Change…. I just love it.

No, not loose change.  I hate that shit, it’s noisy, loose and awkward… which is weird because normally those are the qualities I love in people. 🙂

What I’m talking about is a love of the ‘ever changing’… the ‘constantly shifting’, The thrill of something new on the horizon.

Don’t get me wrong, this addiction has its benefits. Like when it is applied to undergarment rotation, but it also has downfalls. Sometimes I get so caught up in what is next that I miss out on what is now. (soooo profound I know.) The worst of it is when I am approaching the ‘new opportunity’ I get consumed with thinking about it and I am finding it very hard to stay present.

The last few weeks I have been thinking a lot about different aspects of my life and how they are going to change in the next while. (no, I’m not pregnant…….. yet. She says with a conniving smile, a box of condoms and pin in her hand. Hah too far? Well I’m just kidding… seriously! ……..Ok now this is awkward. I maaaaay also be addicted to misguided humour, but lets just tackle one addiction at a time.)

As far as my ‘Thinking about my next move’ addiction, I’m trying to cut back so I can really enjoy each moment. As I was walking home tonight from an evening of drinking wine, eating good food and enjoying good company, Sia’s “She Wolf” repeating for the 4^th time in my ears and the lights of the city reflecting on the water…. I actually took the time to appreciate the moment and this chapter of my life. If I make an effort, I can do this. I can kick my addiction to change and appreciate the moments in between. If that means I have to enjoy my undergarments for an extra day, then so be it. Wish me luck! 🙂

IOTD: Watch out for holes.

I’ve been running around like a crazy person lately. Working extra, making time for friends and family and trying to fit working out into that schedule…. Ok, no I don’t really work out, or even try that hard but it seemed like the right thing to say.

Bottom line, I’m busy. I know we’re all busy, but I’m like, suuuuper busy. Yeeeaaa, I know other people are responsible for keeping small humans fed and clean and off the street (as in playing in the street, not homeless… but that too, actually), but we all make choices and I chose to try and keep myself fed and clean and off the street before I start worrying about another human. It’s hard.

So as I was saying, I’ve been busy, I don’t have a lot of alone time or personal reflection time. (Which is probably a good thing as my personal reflection is not exactly where I’d like it to be since I stopped working out don’t worked out on a count of not wanting to.) But I digress, this post isn’t about how out of breath I am after walking 4 blocks uphill to work everyday (It’s very steep and it never gets easier by the way), Its about finding ‘appreciation’ time and I get more of it than I thought I did.

If you’ve ever been married, someone probably told you to stop and take it all in. Enjoy it; because it’s a whirlwind and it’s over before you know it. (the wedding, not the marriage… well… maybe both…  but regardless, the advice still applies 😉 The same is true for the everyday mundane bits. I was getting caught up in rushing everywhere that I was missing out on the awesome shit in between.

I was walking to work the other day and the cherry blossoms had just come out so I was walking under a light pink canopy of heavenliness. (This is truly the prettiest time of year in Kits). As I was walking up to one of the many blocks with construction, the wind started to blow lightly and the cherry blossom snow started to fall. It felt like a scene from a movie when every thing slows down and the girl’s hair blows all sexy in the wind and everyone around stops and notices her and there is music and it’s also sexy and then I fell into a construction hole…. At least that is the kind of movie I would be in so I told myself to snap out of it because my hair was in a bun and every time I get cocky and ahead of myself, I do something clumsy. It’s like fate is trying to keep my ego in check. It never fails me. “I get it, fate! I’m not a graceful movie star!”

I didn’t feel it was an appropriate time or place to try and disprove that theory. But in that moment for just a second, I really appreciated the perfectness of it all. Even if it was mostly delusional.

The Moral…, appreciate the moments in between leaving your house and falling into a construction hole. Oh, and always wear your hair down on slightly windy days… It flows better with the music.

IOTD: Do something that scares you as often as possible.

Once a day seems like a lot. Sometimes you just don’t encounter scary things EVERY day. Apart from putting yourself in scary situations like singing the “I have a large amount of meth in my pocket” song along hastings street. (It’s a pretty catchy song).

This morning I was up again at around stupid o’clock so I decided to get out, snap some photos and put myself in some scary situations. Not on purpose… well, not really on purpose. I was walking around the seawall as the sun was coming up and along with marvelling at the sheer beauty of Vancouver I was also thinking of how the news anchor would report my brutal mugging, or something else unspeakable. It’s weird I know, I’m a little warped in my brain area. Nevertheless, that’s how I think sometimes. So naturally I decided to also walk in the totally dodgy underbelly of the Burrard Street bridge.

The cast of CSI will show up in approximately 2 hours

I was just imagining the hoodlums hiding around each pillar waiting and snickering as I approached. I kept thinking about what I would do if I got jumped, I thought about being totally badass and beating the shit out of them, and then I realized, at best, I could make them feel really bad about themselves as they ran away with my camera. Thankfully, this never came to fruition. I guess they all left for work already.

Inspiration of the day: Be a morning person.

I woke up this morning around stupid o’clock. It could be due to the fact that I went to bed super early last night from a meat and beer induced coma, or the fact that I have a human alarm clock who gets up between 5 and 6am every morning and it has programmed my body as well. Due to the fact that I woke up early and had an AMAZING morning I suppose I owe him a thank you, but I want to continue to complain about his ungodly hour of waking, so I think I’ll keep the thank you to myself. 

So about this amazing morning… first I was aggressively blinded by the sun pleasantly greeted by the sun the second I opened my eyes. The I realized it’s sunday so I don’t work until later, and then I thought about my photography idol Eugene Tan who gets up every morning right when dawn shows her crack (that’s even earlier than stupid o’clock) and walks to Bondi Beach to take stunning photos. I went to his studio when I was in Australia and I was seriously inspired. First I was inspired to surf like the people in his photos, then I realized I’m in my (at the time) mid 20’s and I have never been on a surfboard. So then I was inspired to buy one of his prints, then I realized some of them cost the same amount as my trip to australia. So then I was just inspired to live on the beach and take photos every day…. yup, that I can do!

http://www.Aquabumps.com check it. He’s amazing. Speaking of amazing … here are the subpar results of my amazing morning.  

If the giant body of water to your left isn’t obvious enough… here is a sign to tell you where it is.

“um, excuse me lady, can you please get out of my shot! I’m trying to take mediocre photos here”

It was a little weird being at the dog beach taking photos of other people’s dogs. I have a weakness for dogs… and cute babies… I feel this was the more socially acceptable alternative of the two.

 

Inspiration of the day: Take a deeeep breath.

I hear it all the time and I thought I was doing it right, but apparently every deep breath I have ever taken in my almost 28 years of life has been a total sham! My parents failed me.

Allow me to elaborate. I’ve started doing yoga. It was only a matter of time before this happened. I had some pretty serious long term plans to pay for a gym and never go, eat like crap and drink most of my meals. Those plans were thwarted (unbeknownst to me) the moment my address changed to ‘kitsilaaaaaahno’. Don’t let that over-enunciated pronunciation fool you, I freaking love it here! I dread the day I will be forced to leave. I am terrified that one day my landlords will tell me they hate me and kick me out of the neighbourhood. (I’m almost positive they have the power to do that). Anyways, I digress… rewind, back on track. I love kits, thats why I moved here. I love the beach, I love the trees, I love that everyone is so active, even the strollers are made for seriously active activities. I bet the babies inside are doing downward dog and sipping kale infused coconut juice from their sippy cups. Not for me. There were two ‘typical kits’ things I wasn’t going to do. Buy groceries at Whole Foods and Yoga. Let me tell you how that went, Fail and Fail. After a year of living here the fresh ocean air got all up in my brain and screwed shit up! Now I’m spending $11 at Whole foods deli for a lunch sized portion of their steamed greens more than twice/week. (highly recommend it by the way. Its so delicious it doesn’t even make sense) Aaaaand not only am I paying for a yoga membership, I’m actually going! What has HAPPENED to me?

We have finally arrived at the point. Breathing. It is a huge part of actually doing yoga, which sounds like a lot of hippy dippy bullshit if you don’t know how to actually do it! Which apparently I did not. My idea of a deep breath was breathing into my stomach. It would end up looking the same way a cute little toddlers belly does, except on a 27 year old, its less ‘cute’ and more ‘I just had a giant sandwich and a large plate of pasta for lunch’. Soooo I wouldn’t breath deeply very often. I would do the normal shallow breath that we do when we aren’t thinking about it. My yoga teacher described it as the ‘fight or flight breath’. There is rarely any fighting in my life and even less flighting, so why am I breathing like that? She introduced me to this little exercise where you put your hands on the sides of your ribs with your thumbs around your back. Keep them there, now when you breathe, breathe into your thumbs. BAM! You’re transformed!! 🙂 Ok, so its not that revolutionary. I still breathe like I always have, but when I am conscious of it, I try to take in a few deep breaths throughout the day. Now when I am at the end of my yoga practice, taking my deep breaths and looking inside through my minds eye I think to myself … “What else did those jerks forget to teach me?”