Okay I realize this is a little late and I’ve been residing in Kelowna for a month and a bit now.. but this post is warranted.

Ready to dive right into some personal stuff? Great, me too. Maybe that’s why I’ve been holding off.. because I don’t want what’s about to come next to sound so cheesy and irrelevant. HERE IT GOES!

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a little OCD and need to have a plan and an idea for anything and everything. As you can imagine, I’m slightly high strung. Sure, I have my bouts of spontaneity but they do not come very often and they usually contain a small freak out (maybe secretly a little bit of planning). If you’re wondering who I sound like, it’s Monica from Friends. I like to have fun ok!! Planned fun!! Anyways…. I’ve always had my lists and I’ve always had my ten year plan. I’m just now 20. Why as an adolescent I felt the need to have a whatever year plan is BEYOND me. Actually. I know exactly why.

Society told me to

Before you hate me for being an angsty millennial, give me a minute. Don’t go to college/ university after high school? You’re heavily questioned. Change what you want to do while in post secondary? You’re wasting your time. DON’T GO TO POST SECONDARY?! Well you’re never getting a job. What a cute handful of choices you have as a young person growing up in this chaotic, yet quite wonderful world. Sure, I’m my own person, and I heavily preach that everyone should have their own educated opinion… But how could I, or anyone else know there were other options when those I listed above are the only ones you ever hear about. I don’t think there’s one person I know who isn’t in post secondary right now, whether they took a year off or not, whether they like what they’re doing or not. They’re enrolled in a fantastically expensive education they may not even require or use. To the people living their dreams, whether that may in fact be going to school or maybe it’s traveling across the world or maybe it’s working for their family business, I commend you. I commend you for throwing up the middle finger to societal norms and following a path that gives you great happiness.

I thought I was doing what made me happy 

Because it was my plan all along to head out into the big wide world of college, I thought that’s what would make me happy. I thought leaving home and getting involved in every extra curricular would somehow advance me and magically give me the start to a perfect life. Don’t get me wrong, I had a great couple years in college. I met fantastic humans I can’t live without, I experienced things that have only made me grow and I still did a lot of the stuff I wanted to do.

But then I started getting to the end of my diploma… and I started questioning if it was really for me. Maybe I was just scared about stepping out into the real world, but I honestly thought nah this isn’t for me. Then I did my pracitcum and I thought hell ya this is for me! Clearly a roller coaster of emotions that I, still a teen, could not make sense of. My family could barely follow my hot n cold attitude about the whole situation.

Then I got my first job in the industry

It was brilliant, and great and exactly what the next step was supposed to be. Yet I felt entirely lost. Wake up, go to work, come home, sleep. Repeat. Woah. 19 years old and I’m already doing the full-time 9-5?! I started falling, (literally and figuratively as I did sustain quite the concussion in the summer) I was spiralling into the anxiety-ridden old me that reared its ugly head throughout my last year of school. My brain never stopped, all I did was over think. Is this what I want to do for the rest of my life? Do I love this enough to persevere until what.. maybe one day I end up on Global or CTV? Or what is my ten year plan now? Is this all just temporary? Should I just push through?

F*%& THAT 

Push through???? Push through what??? Was I having a child? Finishing a half marathon? No. I was contemplating perservering for the rest of my life through something I did not enjoy and caused me enormous anxiety. Preservere isn’t even the right word.. force myself to continue said lifestyle. And for what?! At the end of it all what did I think was going to happen? I’d finally have time to go travel? Nope. I’d finally be able to settle down and have a family? Not likely. But it was all going to be part of the plan! So you see, it was very hard for me to take ahold of my own reality and decide the plan was not my road to happiness. The plan was a way to get in and get out. To skip out on the journey. To cookie cutter my way through life. I abruptly, and thankfully quite quickly, decided to throw said plan out the window and be fucking happy.

Fast forward to Kelowna 

I have no real commitments, (kids, work etc.) I don’t need to stay in one place… In fact, I think my brain and body has been screaming at me for the past few years trying to tell me I DON’T belong in one place. It’s now all clicking together. I’m not the person I thought I always was. Quite frankly, I have no fricken clue who I am! But for once, in 20 years, I am so damn happy not knowing where I’m going to be in the next six months. Screw the ten year plan. I’m a traveling soldier! And as horribly cheeeeeeesy as it sounds, I’m going to keep marching to the beat of my own drum because so far it’s what’s made me the happiest. I can’t wait to continue this journey. Don’t worry, I’m still OCD about most things. But I don’t care that my weekends are sometimes Monday, Tuesday instead of Saturday, Sunday. And I love the fact that I interact with new people every day.

This is not, I repeat, NOT a knock at the 9-5ers. Like I said earlier, all I’m preaching is happiness. Life is too damn short to drag yourself out of bed every morning for something you have no desire to do. This is the start of what I hope will be weekly blogs, so follow along and let’s be grateful, spontaneous and optimistic from here on out- Deal?!

Ps. Here’s some pics from my new adventure so far… It features some of the dearest humans to my heart including the love of my life, my best friends, my soulmate sissies and my role model momma. Xoxo

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