Let's talk.

I don’t need you to tell me that I can do anything that I want or that I’ll achieve great things or that I’ll succeed at whatever I do. It’s really nice to hear, but you don’t need to say it. I’m not being conceited or cocky, I just know those things. I know I’m smart and I can work hard when I’m inspired to. I will be successful and I will help people and I will make changes. Definitely.

I just don’t know if I’ve waited too long to start. I haven’t figured out what I can do at this exact moment that’s going to help people. And I know I’ll go to school and educate myself and become the kind of person that can make changes, but waiting is hard.

I watched Big Fish on the weekend, and until now I’ve been a big fish in a small pond, and that’s okay. That’s a good way to start. (But I promise I have way more to give.) It was easy to be involved in a school of 1500 students, but pretty soon I’m going to be involved in a world of 7 billion. I swear to god, I’m going to.

I don’t know what I want yet; I just know I need to “make it.” I need to be somebody that someone else can look at and say, “Wow, she did it.” And I am so sure I can do that. Again, it’s not because I’m full of myself and think I’m so great, it’s just because I know how badly I want it. I know its not going to be easy, and I don’t even know what “it” is, but I’ll probably figure out what it is and how to do it as I go along.

And I’m avoiding making a plan, because I’ve always had the plans, and then this year I didn’t follow the plan, and something really cool happened and I learned some things about myself that I wouldn’t have otherwise, and in the end I’m really going to hurt because of it, and I’ve already cried about it, but it was worth that bit of being upset. And I don’t necessarily think the plans are overrated, because I they helped me so much along the way, but now I know it’s also important to leave time for detours and scenic routes and pee breaks (literally and figuratively. If you like road trips.)

I feel like every blog I write is about this same stuff. But I don’t really think about very much else.

This is brief. This is temporary. This is fleeting. And I know that. I know that more than I know anything. Do you know it? I'm going to tell you, in case you don't, but it's vain of me to assume you might not. Surely you must know. If you know, why don't you know that it makes me scared? Why don't you know it makes me want to leave? Why don't you know I can't commit? Oh wait. I did commit. Right? Right. (I think?)

Now that there's some semblance of a real plan, now that my next year is taking shape, now that I have a destination, the leaving is that much more real, and that's what makes this even more certainly brief.

I love this place. Everyone around me is talking about how they can't wait to leave Alberta, how they're never coming back. But this is home. My dad told me a couple days, or a couple weeks, or maybe even a couple months ago, (I don't know, time doesn't play much of a part in my mind these days, which is problematic when it comes to deadlines,) that I am a product of wide open spaces. And I like that thought, and I know that he is right. I love my prairie and my mountains and my wide open sky. I love having my own space and my own room to breath and people who love having the same things.

I suppose this home became important to me when I had to give it up for a year. I loved being overseas, even as a six year old I loved the trips and the hot hot heat and the funny people with their funny accents and funny clothes and funny herds of goats and their funny cars and how all the cars were white. And for a year Sudan was home, first at the Hilton, where I developed passions for rabbit stew on French night, and for after school swims, and for PB&J Otter. And then at the apartment, where my bedroom was three times the size of the one in Calgary and I felt like a princess because I got a mosquito net, and where the kitchen window looked out to the airport, and the rumble of planes taking off and landing and taxi-ing became background noises you barely even noticed. That was a home. That was my home. And I was so content there, until I came back a year later, in the middle of January, and adjusted from plus 40 to minus 40, and realized that there's one thing, which is really called base camp, and it's really nice and you can become very comfortable there and love a lot of things about it, but then there is this other thing, and it's called home, only it's said with a lot of emphasis, cause it's this huge deal. And Calgary is real home. And it took a good year of calling somewhere else home before I knew what it meant. And this is supposed to tell you how much I love this place we live, not because I'm leaving it behind for a while next year and because that makes me sad or scared, because it doesn't really. At least not sad or scared enough for it to overpower the exciting bits of moving away. It's supposed to tell you how much I love this place because I just think that it doesn't get enough recognition and I wish people would stop thinking of it as this evil den of ultra right-wing conservative thinkers who disapprove of gay marriage and abortion and equal rights, because Alberta is not that. It's just home.

Home.

Home.

Home.

Huh.

This doesn't mean I don't crave the ocean.

"The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea."

If you'll be my star, I'll be your sky.

This weekend, I made a mistake. And now I'm suffering some consequences and it feels a lot like growing up. And I didn't know it would feel this good.

Everything will be okay, and I'm not scared, just impatient.

Dear winter weight,

I don't really mind when you come to visit, as I understand that you are just trying your best to keep me warm. However, you are beginning to wear out your welcome, so we are going to take up jogging.

Yours most sincerely,

Erin

p.s. I will assume that next time I see you, you will be bringing along your good friend freshman fifteen. I can't wait to meet him..

I'm not unfaithful but I'll stray, when I get a little scared.

I know people say that if high school is the best part of your life, then you probably have a pretty shitty life, but I can't really see how things could get much better.

Mr. Ferguson, you know how to give a stellar pep-talk, and I thank you for it (and for keeping an eye on me for the past six years.)

"If you remember nothing else remember this: inspiration for outside one's self is like the heat in an oven. It makes passable Bath buns. But inspiration from within is like a volcano: it changes the face of the world."

Aunt Felicity, you give good pep-talks as well.

When the sun is shining, I'll be gone.

I know you don't think about me all the time and I don't think about you all the time because this year things are different and we don't have the same things happening to us, but I think about you when it's important to think about you, and I hope you do the same. I will never say that everything happens for a reason or any of that bologna, but I really do think that it makes sense that we aren't figuring out all this stuff together. I think it makes sense that you went your way and I went mine (and yours was a whole lot more of a new way than mine. Really, you went your way and I stayed where I was. Sort of. Depends on how much you like metaphors and such, maybe. I don't like metaphors, or anything else that reminds me of my english project right now. If you start a new thought inside a parentheses do you have to start an inner parentheses? (Does anyone know how to spell parentheses without google? If you do I'll be impressed.) I wonder if that was what I was supposed to do or not. Maybe it's like math, where you use [ ] for the outer parentheses and then ( ) for the inner? I don't know. Somebody give me a grammar lesson.) Anyways, I think it's good that you're not where I am and I'm not where you are because you're figuring things out and I think I am figuring things out as well and I

think that it will just be all around better for you to come home in the summer and then we can talk about what we both figured out. And it will be like old times with new people. Which is to say that it will be the same two bodies, but not the exact same two people, doing the same old things we used to do. I still don't know if you read this. I'll probably copy it into the next message I send you. I should be typing it in a message in the first place. But I have two blog posty things on my wall page thing that are from February, and that feels like ancient history already so I'd like to bump them down a few spots.

I am tired. Every time I get busy, I thrive on it for a week or so, and then I just can't handle it anymore, every single time it feels like there is no way I have ever been this tired before and I am positive I will never be this tired again, but it keeps on happening. And I can't stop eating. I'm hungry all the time. I can't keep myself full. And I'm trying so hard to eat healthy because I'm so sick of being sick, and I don't want to do anymore fainting at inconvenient times, and because I want to be good at field hockey.

I wish I had figured out a bit more about the world before I took Poli Sci. I don't like this class because it's too much work and I was a big procrastinator and it takes time away from classes that are more important, such as Math. And apparently, English. Who decided to let English be so important? I know how to read and I know how to write and I can stand up in front of a class full of people and talk without pissing myself and as far as I can figure, that should be all you can be required to learn from english class before they let you graduate high school. I do not want to write profound and illuminating topic sentences. I just want to write little tid bits in my bloggy blog and that is all I need to know how to do. That's not what this paragraph is about though. So I probably would have just failed my diploma right there, because I didn't connect those other sentences to my topic sentence. Guess what? I don't even have a topic sentence. Or a thesis. Or any clue what I am talking about. I'm starting over.

I wish I had figured a bit more about the world before I took Poli Sci. I don't like reading chapters out of the text book because much of it is dull and plat. (I dont know how to say that in english, but in French I used it to mean boring and and unimaginative and potentially even coma inducing. I think it might mean flat. I don't know if you're allowed to use that to desribe writing in english but you are in french so tant pis pour toi.) I just don't want to ever stop being uninspired by the world I feel like that might be what is happening because of this class and I just wish I had figured more stuff out on my own terms before this started.

I don't know.

I really don't know.

It wasn't goodbye, remember?

We said "see you later."

And I will see you later.

"Everyone who's born has come from the sea. Your mother's womb is just the sea in small. And birds come out of the sea in eggs. Horses lie in the sea before they're born. The placenta is the sea. And your blood is the sea continued in your veins. We are the ocean - walking on the land."

Our dreams, and they are made out of real things

Today I am grumpy and cranky and groggy and cross and crabby and testy and peevish. And worn out.

Today I need milky tea and british soldiers and The Magic Faraway Tree.

Jack Johnson, you always know the right thing to say.

Crying cockles and mussels, alive, alive-o!

Things just wont stop going my way. Mostly.

I like Saint Patrick's day. It's my cousin's favourite non-holiday. I think I agree with her. Other than Halloween. But it definitely beats out Valentine's. Maybe it's just my favourite Saint's day.

I love Irish food and Irish beer and Irish music and my Irish family.

I haven't thought about the master plan in a bit. I think that's good. I think that things are better than they would have been with the master plan. I think I might be done with plans for a while. Actually, I think I have been done with plans for a while already. It just took a while to realize.

I have a lot to say. But suddenly I have things going on in my life, like English vocab and catching up on math notes and sleep. So my thoughts will wait. Good thing they are not anxious. They are happy to sit on the couches and wait. The couches in my brain are really good couches. They're super soft leather, but they sit in the sun, so they don't get that icky cold leather feeling. They don't get too hot, either though. So you can wear shorts and still sit on them and not burn your tush. I'll let them come out to blog-land later. (My thoughts, not my brain couches.)

"I wanna stop - to thank you baby,

I just wanna stop and thank you baby.

How sweet it is to be loved by you."

Easy come, easy go.

These things make me happy:

• the shell mug

• 3 degrees above zero

• Vietnamese food overload

• that our initials put together make one of our favourite sound effects (AIEE)

• knowing the difference between effects and affects

• and between license and licence

• but not how my spell check is obviously american, because it underlined favourite and licence

• spending five hours a day playing board games

• when boys who you don't expect to know country, know country

• and when they get angry at you for skipping past Sugarland

• Timmy's on spare

• post-hospital Timmy's

• pre-air port Timmy's

• Timmy's in Cochrane

• gratitude

(Rachel, I miss you.)

p.s. I dare you.

Satellite Skin.

I like knowing when things that happen are for the best, not in an “everything happens for a reason” kind of way, but in a “this is how things unfolded and I’m going to be better off because of it” kind of way.

I like how excited my Poli Sci class gets about this website: http://www.laterooms.com/en/RenderComponent.aspx?control=geochallenged

I don’t like when people say, “life’s a bitch.”

I like my new music and the boy it came from.

I want to know what is going to make me most happy.

I want my spell check to stop nagging me to change “most happy” to “happiest.”

I want to make really beautiful things like this:

Huh.

www.colorquiz.com

Your Existing Situation

"Outgoing but unpredictable and unstable. Likes things to go her way, otherwise she becomes agitated, indecisive, and fake in her activities."

Your Stress Sources

"Wishes for freedom and independence, free from limitations and restrictions except for the ones she choices to give himself."

Your Restrained Characteristics

"Feels she is getting less than she deserves for all her hard work; however, she makes no effort to change things and tries to make the best of the situation."

Emotionally distant even from those closest to her.

His confidence is low but she is unable to admit that is the reason for her avoidance of conflict. Feels it is a situation out of her control and she is making the best of it.

"Seeking to broaden her horizons and believes her hopes and dreams are realistic. Worries she may not be able to do the things she wants and needs to escape to a peaceful, quiet environment in order to restore her confidence."

Your Desired Objective

Seeks to be known for something she has accomplished and uses her social abilities to win people over. Emotional and sensitive and romantic.

Your Actual Problem

Longs the freedom to make her own decisions and plans without the criticism and restrictions of others. Uses her charm to deal with others and get what she wants.

I like these personality things, and how they are often at least 50% right. It's cool that coloured blocks can do that.

However, I would have preferred colour being spelled with a 'u' where there should be a 'u'.

In other news, Muammar Gadhafi (Gaddafi/Qaddafi), you will never be a real martyr without a real cause.

Mohamed Bouazizi,

I wish you knew what you have inspired.

Libya,

Our thoughts are with you now more than ever.

The word is on the street that the fire in your heart is out.

I still think Valentine's day is dumb. And I was really curious to see whether having a boyfriend this year would change that for me, and it didn't. I had something really nice done for me and I appreciate it so much, but it would be equally as nice on any other day of the year. Maybe even more so because it would be so unexpected. We shouldn't need a special day dedicated to loving people. That's so silly. Every day is for loving people.

'Here's to be free man, my heart's my home.

"According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with 4 arms, 4 legs and a head with 2 faces. Fearing their power, Zeus separated them into two parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves."

- Plato

I don't believe in Valentines. If you love someone, tell them every day.'

That little bit there that I put quotes around, the title and the quote and the two sentences, that's what I wrote on Valentine's last year. I think I had the right idea.

Queen's, I hope you like cheese.

Throughout high school, I believe that the opportunities I have had to develop as a student, a leader, and a global citizen have greatly contributed to help me become the person I am today. I spent time volunteering with school-based initiatives such as a nation-wide blood drive, a benefit talent show with proceeds going to a scholarship fund for orphaned children in India, and a campaign to promote awareness of the Darfur genocide. These projects allowed me to discover how easy it can be to adopt a cause and truly contribute to benefiting those members of our international community who do not have the opportunity to help themselves.

I believe that my chances to immerse myself in a global environment would increase exponentially if I were to attend Queen’s University. Not only does the university boast students with intensely diverse backgrounds; there are also numerous chances to study abroad, and many clubs within the university that provide aide to and/or raise awareness on issues affecting people all over the world.

Ambitious as I may be for myself, I believe that, having personally benefited from an upbringing in a fiscally well-off family living in a stable, peaceful, and democratic society, it is my responsibility to help those who may not have had the same opportunities I did. Looking towards the future, I want for myself a good education and a job where I am happy and able to provide for myself as well as family of my own. However, I do not believe that I will merit these rewards if I do not dedicate ample time to my local community, my country, and the global network, which stretches well beyond any borders.

I believe that the notion of being an engaged citizen is becoming increasingly rare, and I hope that is something my generation will be able to turn around. My goal for my time at Queen’s is to become an active and engaged citizen on a global level, so that I may begin to make whatever small changes I can in this world.

I need to tell you some things and I will say them to you tomorrow but I need to practice here first, because I think that will make it less scary.

I'm not avoiding you and I'm not mad at you, but right now I don't want to be around you, and there are reasons for this. For now, I need to be around not only the people that know her best, but around the people that know me best as well. I have no walls up anymore, not even any barbed wire or chain link fences, and I hate that but I know it's part of this whole situation and that throwing up the caution tape is only going to keep away the people that I want and need to be around. Which doesn't include you. Which I am sorry about. A few months has not been long enough for me to feel like I want you to see me this vulnerable. And I will try and make this sound nicer tomorrow but I don't know how to tell you that I can't be around you, because I know it sounds awfully mean, and I don't want to hurt you. I don't know. I don't think I am going to say any of this to you tomorrow. What's the right thing to do?

Paraplegic.

This is the ugliest word I have ever heard. Even worse that moist.

I know that the last thing she would ever want is for the rest of us to shut down, but I don't have any idea what to do with myself.

There is comfort in the fact that when this happened, she was doing what she loved.

It's tragic, but it's not a car accident or a plane crash or a slip on the ice on her front steps.

It's commitment and it's passion and it's love.

I don't know how to explain.

Words, words, words.

Nothing makes this make sense.

10

I'm mad again and I've been mad a lot lately and it's all for really petty reasons only today it feels a bit different and I'm mad at you and I don't like being mad at you and I wonder if I should say something or not, and I can't tell if it's the kind of mad that will pass through my system in a couple days or if it's the type that will fester, so that soon everything you say will annoy me and I wont want to be in the same room as you anymore because you made a little itty bitty mistake and I didn't say that I was mad even though I was mad. Most likely it's the second one, so most likely tomorrow you will know that I am mad and then I will tell you why and you will say "Erin, that's dumb and not a reason to be mad and you are just overreacting because you are stressed and have taken too much upon yourself and are developing LL tendencies that make you want to be good at everything you do and that is unrealistic." Only you never use sentences that long so probably you will stop at "Erin, that's dumb."

I wish I knew how to shut of my mind. Can you imagine those kinds of whinny whines running constantly through your brain? It's exhausting.

The experiment is developing attitude and I don't like that and it's not related at all to anything else in this post but I wanted to say it anyways.

Maybe that's what happens though, when you make things that shouldn't be experiments into experiments. Maybe I should have read Frankenstein.

Karma owes her a break.

She's going to be okay.

She's going to be okay.

She's going to be okay.

She's going to be okay.

She's going to be okay.

She's going to be okay.

She's going to be okay.

She's going to be okay.

Never have I ever seen this side of these people.

It makes me feel for certain they're still on the right track.

This sucks.

So much love Timmy, can't stop thinking about you.

I'm not lost, I just didn't want to be on that path.

My name is Erin and I have a lot of thoughts and I am going to write some of them down.

I cry A LOT. I used to cry once a year. Now I seem to cry three times a day. Not even at sad things. At everything. I teared up listening to an Obama speech today. But I made sure nobody saw. That may have been borderline acceptable in Poli Sci with all my nerdy nerds, but in english it would have just been embarrassing.

I have a friend who is really cool and pretty and smart and successful, and I am not jealous. And that makes me so happy. I like being happy for other people who have lots of reasons to be happy. I like the word happy. In a similar fashion to the word blunt, I feel that happy also suits its definition.

Sometimes I wear black and navy together and I still think I look nice.

I'm not really sure who I am. I don't know myself. And that used to worry me a bit, not in a sharp and painful and obvious way, but in a persistent and brooding on the back burner kind of way. And tonight I thought about it for a little bit and I realized that just because I am fast at most things does not necessarily mean I need to be fast at ALL things, and if it takes me a long time to know who I am and what I like and what I think and all that, then that's okay. And then I wondered whether anyone knows who I am, or who they themselves are and stuff. I just wondered a lot. I am a wonderer. And a wanderer. And those are both words that I love. But those two words alone are not really enough to sum me up. But it's okay that I don't know the rest. For now. I apparently like talking in circles.

Sometimes I am really grumpy and I like to be alone and watch lame television like Vampire Diaries.

I like C.S. Lewis and I like drugs, and I like what happens when you mix the two together.

I like stegosaurus a lot. I can't help it. They're just really cool.

I like extreme feminism and groups full people that haven't learned a thing about social studies in english since the sixth grade, and even though they are actually really smart, it seems like they haven't got a clue what's going on.

"Plus qu'on prête attention aux conïncidences, plus elles se produisent."

Mind games.

I am tired of being pasty white.

I am tired of my skin being icky dry.

I am tired of my hair feeling so dull.

I am tired of not seeing my good friend the sun.

He goes to bed too early in the evening and wakes up too late in the morning.

Too much darkness plays tricks on my mind. It makes me sleepy.

A lot of things make me sleepy.

I don't know if it's a teenager thing, or if it's a lingering concussion symptoms thing, but my sleeping patterns are so weird now. I don't like that.

I don't like whining and I don't like things that make me want to whine.

Fuck.

I'm not afraid.

I have this thing stuck in my head. It's only been there a short while because I only just read a certain blog quite recently, but it's the type of thing that I can already tell is going to be there for a good long while.

If collectively, my social circle was to be considered pangaea, and we broke apart into all our separate bits, which bit would I be? And more importantly (maybe), which bit would I want to be?

Also, could any bizarre, warp-speed shifting of the tectonic plates have caused the separation of pangaea (yep I did it twice so now you know that extra "a" isn't a typo) to happen in say, 18 months, rather than over 75 million years?

That's what this feels like. It feels like someone slipped a catalyst into pangaea's breakfast orange juice and suddenly the plates are shifting faster than one would think was scientifically possible and in no time at all we are going to be our own little Fijis and Africas and Floridian peninsulas and someone will also have to be the North Atlantic, because said ocean was newly formed when pangaea was torn apart.

Those are my thoughts on our most recent supercontinent, and its spliting, and how it relates to the current situation, and I thank you, Rachel, for bringing it up, and for reading my blurb like I know you will, even though you never asked what I thought.

I like knowing the difference between its and it's and i like knowing which one is appropriate in which context.

I worry that my head is stronger than my heart.

I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

This year I resolve to take better care of the people that I love (and to eat more leafy greens).

I want to write a long and pensive blog looking back on 2010. But I don't have any words in my head. That has seemed to be the case A LOT as of late. I just have no words. I have nothing to say. I don't like that. I like being the kind of person that has things to say. You know? I bet you bloggy bloggers do know, or even if you don't quite know, you will sympathize anyways. Just so the four of you that actually have a shot at reading this know, you are all gems. And I mean that. I love that there are people that read this but not the kind of people that I have to worry about what I say cause it might be embarrassing or you might make fun of me, you know? We have already established that you do (more or less) know, so I wont go on about that anymore.