My Ridiculous Encounter at the Pool

Last Thursday…

So today, a lovely Thursday morning, I went to the pool to sit in the hot tub before my massage. First thing I notice, man, I’m the only young, white person here. Next thing I notice, good grief, my bikini shows a lot of skin… So while I sit in the hot tub, thoroughly ashamed of my lack of coverage, watching the parade of wrinkles shuffle by and feeling completely out of place, I spot the lifeguard. First thought, Whoa he’s young… close followed second thought, wait a second, HE’S GOOD-LOOKING TOO! And then comes the realization that my hair is an absolute mess and I have zero makeup on my face. Crap. So I try to avoid looking at him as much as possible all the while being shamed into wanting a one-piece swimsuit so I don’t give some poor old man a heart attack due to my “lack of propriety”. But because I’m the only person there under the age of ninety, I stick out like a neon sign and it was only a matter of minutes before Lifeguard boy figured out “that one of these is not like the others”. And he couldn’t allow me to (literally) melt away into a puddle of embarrassment, oh no, he had to walk by and say “sweet hair.” Thankfully, I was coherent enough to smile back and reply in a reasonable fashion that most likely hid how dumbfounded I was that he was talking to me. Then the time sunk into my stupefied and chlorine addled brain and it was time to get out. I tried to wobble out as gracefully as possible, trying not to pass out from the chlorine fumes, the sight of sagging skin, and the heat of the water. After I gathered all my things, I swing around and HELLO, Lifeguard boy is right there and is talking to me. Clearly I didn’t escape his notice because he commented on how long I’d been there (which was like 15mins tops), to which I replied that I needed it for my massage and he just smiled some more and mentioned that they have a sauna I can use for next time. Right, next time. I somehow managed to stay upright and sputter out some response that I hoped sounded enchanting and then staggered back to the change room in one piece, smiling like a fool all the way. Now I could chalk up my distraction and my general loopiness afterwards to the hot tub, or I could quit lying to myself and admit that the good-looking lifeguard was rather charming and that yes, I would like to talk to him again. Even if the only reason he approached me was because I was a fresh faced looks-like-a-twenty-something in a sea of appropriately covered up elderly…

Serial Procrastination

I’M A SERIAL PROCRASTINATOR.

It’s gotten so bad that I will do other homework to avoid certain homework. *cough* illustrator… And it’s not like I have a shortage of homework, trust me when I say IT NEVER ENDS. There is always something that I could be working on, something that could be improved, a new project to start. So why on earth do I waste my time refreshing my Facebook page when in fact I really don’t care? Or why do I allow myself to get sucked into surfing YouTube, following a trail of videos that is infinite? Looking at my calendar physically pains me. It looks like a battlefield with the due dates glistening in red and notes scattered bleakly in the perfect little numbered squares mocking me with my lack of life. I painstakingly plan out my weekends and write down everything that needs to be completed but the moment I sit down in front of my computer all my good intentions fly out the window. It doesn’t matter that I have a huge project due the next day because I just found a video of Bigbang speaking English. Who cares if I fail, the new episode of the Mentalist just came out. And before you know it, it’s Sunday night and I’m in a panic trying to finish everything for the upcoming week. It’s such a pointless and vicious cycle that causes me nothing but grief and lack of sleep. And the funny thing is, I can function perfectly well without knowing what everyone is doing in the world. In fact, I frequently take hiatuses from Facebook and my accursed cellphone, yet I never seem take them when I should. There’s just something so alluring about avoiding homework until the last conceivable minute. Maybe it’s because I fool myself into thinking I work better under pressure. But come on now, let’s be serious here, when I have a billion projects due in one week and I’m only functioning on 2 hours of sleep the whole shebang is a tight-lipped monstrosity. What I mean is that in light of the past homework leaden weeks, I think I’ve sorta learnt my lesson when it comes to proper time management. I can only hope it will stick… 

Deep Thought and a Comic that Doesn't Quite Fit

I’ve been thinking about my blog very seriously in the past two weeks. I’m not here to offend anyone and the only bridges that should end burning are the ones already smoking. I don’t want to push people away with this or to become condescending. The truth is, I want to start taking the advice I dish out, a “practice what you preach” if you will. Because let’s be honest here, I’m not exactly scot-free. I need to start making changes. And yes, it’s hard living a life in which you are different, no matter how small. And sometimes, we hide from ourselves and blame ourselves for being different. Being ashamed of being different or yourself is a terrible feeling. It’s not always easy to accept who we are and sometimes we get lost and blame the wrong people. Sometimes, we push away the people who are important to us because we don’t know what to say to them. But it’s reached the point that keeping my thoughts, feelings, and ideas to myself is no longer acceptable and it’s stifling the person I am striving to be. Lately, I have been asked a lot of personal questions about my life and for the first time in a long time I’ve been answering them honestly and thinking about how the different episodes have affected me, whether it is negative or a learning experience. It’s hard speaking the truth about a way of life you have lived, especially if that’s all you’ve known until recently. I’m just trying to take a satirical approach to my life, my problems and I how I deal with everything. There are always two sides to every story; this just happens to be my side. 

Introduction to My Plight

I have grown up in this little slice of heaven in south east Saskatchewan (that will remain nameless for its own safety) my whole life until recently when I was shipped off to Vancouver to pursue my dream of becoming a fashion designer. I have since completed my first year and have been stuck in my little town for the summer, impatiently waiting until I can return to sanity. It's been a bizarre experience being back and I found myself having a harder and harder time swallowing what people accept as "normal" and what isn't.  It's time to move on, grow up, and to let the high school drama go because the world is a much bigger place than most of us realize. Oh what an eye opener Vancouver was! I was awestruck to realize that people don't actually make a habit of being rude and consistently negative. And how wonderfully indifferent everyone was! Nobody cared who I was or that I was wearing 3 scarves and 5 patterns at once. For once in my life I didn't have a past following me around like a beastly stench. I was anonymous, a brightly coloured blur passing through the crowd, free to be myself and not questioned about it, it was just accepted. I was invisible, but a different type of invisible that I had experienced my whole life. Only in my little city can I be in a crowded room and feel so completely alone. It doesn't matter how bright my lipstick is, or how short my hair is. They don’t see ME because they remember the way I used to be, not the person I am. Not that this blog will change how they think of me, in all likelihood they'll still think I’m crazy, in fact it’ll probably just reinforce the idea. I do so look forward to it.