Banking...and crying

Image courtesy of Ashley Herrin's Flickr

I fell into banking after some very convincing phone calls, sound words of advice, and the best possible contacts in the finest possible places.  My Aunt Erika once told me I was born with a horseshoe up my ass.  I have to agree with her on this point: it seems that every place I turned, if I put a modicum of effort into a project, it worked out.  I can’t remember not getting my way until 2009, when my life fell apart.  Then again, I suppose it was always me getting my way: I created my own destiny every single step of the way and blaming anyone else for that is just an exercise in futility.

My boss at the bank thought I was some sort of protégé, so she excelled my education and allowed me to take tests I must admit I wasn’t entirely ready for.  I was studying all the time while in the throws of a very intense, entirely wrong-for-me relationship; I was a first-time homeowner, and I was working full time.  I was in over my head.  I failed the test that would make me a financial advisor in a very short time and I spiralled into a pit of self-pity and seemingly eternal doubt.  What was I doing?  My job wasn’t satisfying me and I was miserable.  My windshield was hit by a brick-throwing punk (I need to sell this house and move, thought I on the daily), rendering me completely dependent on someone else to get me where I needed to be…it sucked.  Though I can’t completely remember in what order these things happened, I can add that I was kicked by a horse (yes, a horse) in the lower abdominal region and suddenly it dawned on me: I had to get out of this life.

Another branch of the same bank was desperate for a financial advisor and would let me take the two-week crash course in London, Ontario, where my alma mater was located.  I took the job in a heartbeat, much to the chagrin of the woman who thought she would “make me a financial star”, and took the first opportunity to get on that course.  It was the best two weeks of my life that I could recall.  I learned all day with this entirely geeky financial guru, ate great food all the time, worked out with people who became (and remain) friends, and studied well into the night.  I was hooked: I needed to be back in the classroom.  It came as no surprise to me that I passed the test with flying colours and was officially an FA.  It was a great feeling to be responsible for people’s personal fortunes, but I felt ever-thwarted at the bank.  Every trade I made had to be checked and cross checked for compliance (I would thank the bank later when Canada wasn’t hit by the sub-prime mortgage crisis that helped the US crash into a depression, but that’s another story), and I felt like my work didn’t matter.  This theme will recur over and over again as this tale gets woven.   I needed desperately for my work to matter.

Since I’d always been a (very successful, entrepreneurial) math tutor, I continued doing this well into my years of finance.  One night, I was tutoring a kid whose name slips my mind.  He was a brooding teen I’d known for about a year who much preferred the company of his video games to that of girls, and he rarely cracked a grin.  This evening though, he was all-smiles for some reason. I looked at him as if for the first time and said, “So-and-so, you got your braces off!” 

“Yeah,” he replied bleakly.  “Like two years ago.”

Sh*t.  Note I’d known this kid a YEAR and had never known him NOT to have braces.  What a tool.

That night, I confessed to his mother what had happened and laughing about it (because she certainly didn’t miss a chance to have a giggle at this prize’s expense!) turned into talking, which turned into sharing a pot of tea.  She was a professor or accountant or physician or something equally impressive, so I quite liked her company (poor kid wondered why I still hadn’t gone home) and drank in this quality time.  The conversation turned to the age-old question about finding meaning in life (told you it’d come back) and she asked whether or not I’d found it. 

Nope. 

This quickly turned to tears as she coached me through many a scenario where I may have actually found the meaning I so eagerly sought.  None was to be found. 

“Why aren’t you a teacher?” she asked me.  “You’re so good at it.” 

We cried (cried!  Together! Can you imagine?) about all the lost opportunity and lost time, shared some stories, and I left thinking hard about how things had shaped up.  After the failures and the kick by the horse, it seemed the only thing I excelled at was making math fun for kids.  Ha! 

That night, I talked to Laura about going back to school.  I’d be a teacher, wouldn’t I?  And suddenly it was decided: I was going into education.

Perfect Outdoor Spaces

As of late, the weather has been devastatingly delightful and we've been spending every single moment outside.  This means classes are outside, break times are spent in the sunshine (and kids are not being appropriately punished: so what?), lunch hours (35 minutes, let's be frank) are basked in daylight.  Phew.  It's been a long time coming.

Though I have a pretty substantial backyard ("garden" as the English say, though I can't really get over the expression, "we had dinner in the garden last night".  IN the garden?  In the dirt?  It's hard to accept), it's not all that comfortable.  These look far more inviting...

(oh, and in great new news, this blog is back in business.  Great news for those who like to see pretty things!)

 Image courtesy of kvelv.tumblr.com

 Image courtesy of kvelv.tumblr.com

Image courtesy of kvelv.tumblr.com

Tough Mudder 2012

Workouts

So bearing this in mind....

 Image courtesy of Team Sexy Cause I Workout

and the fact that I just completed Week 4 (of 13) of P90X in mind, I present to you what I just got suckered into signing up for on the last weekend of my year here in England.

Tough Mudder, Scotland Edition.   

Note: I couldn't watch the whole video.  It scared me.  Let the training commence.   

Sunday Dining...here

Image courtesy of wit + delight

Yes please.  I'll take dinner here. 

Congratulations, Carmen and Zach!

Picture courtesy of Sandra (thanks so much!)

My little cousin got married tonight.  Sigh.  I remember when she was on my grandparent's balcony, singing a song about cucumbers.  I also recall the cutest little picture ever of her in a car seat, while her doting sister, posed in a charming, like only the red-headed gals can, ear-to-ear smile, protectively stood above her.  I hate those "seems like only yesterday" comments, so I'll stop now.  She looks happy (and beautiful!) and so does her new husband.  That's what it's all about, isn't it?  

Congratulations to the newlyweds xxxxx

The Weepies- Simple Life

My Future Home

Image courtesy of bibbity boppity boo

My best friend, Laura, hates it when I quote the Weepies.  Perhaps she doesn't know I'm quoting them when I say, "I want to live a simple life."  Laura says that lives are for making an impact and being the change you want to see in the world, not for simplicity.  But it's something more than that for me.  After this long, involved story, you'll see that it's not an easy life I seek, but a clear, focused, and self-manifested one.  It's different than easy...it's a life I've made for myself. 

You see, I always had this image, this vision, of my Future Home.  It was a condo, but not a loft.  It was spacious in that the large living room dominated the main space, but it wasn’t huge.  I have a rather white-ish coloured couch with many a throw on top of it.  There are doors that lead outside behind the couch.  On the hardwood, there is an impressive Persian rug.  It is red with flecks of gold.  There is a soft yellow reading lamp that is illuminating what I can see my Future Self reading: a magazine.  There is jazz music playing in the background and the atmosphere is warm-hearted, inviting, and quiet.  It is a quiet life upon which I am looking.  It’s the life I’ve always dreamed of living.  I look very happy: I look like I belong there.  I always thought that in order to get this home, I would need to depend on someone else to provide it for me.  I thought that a dual life, a paired life, would allow these luxuries: warm light, magazines, and red area rugs.  Maybe I have to start thinking about living the life I’ve always wanted to live…and just work at making it happen.

Kopapa

Image courtesy of Trip Advisor

I had an amazing weekend five days ago.  After a long workout, I talked with Laura on Friday night, then got a much-needed long night's sleep.  I visited the Dartford farmer's market, an actual delight, being that the produce stall folks are always so friendly to me, and tutored for a bit.  I hung around, did some laundry, and did yet another heart-pounder before Frank came over with Season 4 of Parks and Recreation.  It's the little things, folks.  Sunday in London was awesome.  The weather was great, the company I kept was great, and we squeezed in a late lunch at Kopapa at Seven Dials in Covent Garden.  Bring on the spring summer, folks!  I've also been writing a memoir of how I got here on the blog.  I do hope you're enjoying it.

Let's do it all again this weekend, shall we?

Even Special Little Bears Fail

Image courtesy of wit + delight

Gosh, now where do I start this story?  When I was in my second year at university, I found it so incredibly challenging, so difficult, that it was more often than not demoralizing.  I couldn’t stand the structure of the year: way too many students in a vast class with little TA support.  I was drowning in a sea of hopeful doctors, each of us dropping our dreams one by one as the microphages and pipetting mocked us more and more from textbooks and labs.  It was all too much.  So my dreams of being a doctor, those dreams I dreamed while hooked up to machines, were very rapidly whisked out from under me. 

Of course, there is a rebuttal to this story: everyone went through what I did.  Some of us persevered (even I got 88% on an Organic Chemistry midterm!), while the rest of us just fell by the wayside.  Some people rose to the occasion and simply studied harder, but I, having found that failure was a very real possibility for me, was catapulted into a state of depressed, can’t-even-bear-to-study shock.  Since when was I just another brick in the wall?  Wasn’t I the special little bear my mother had promised I was?  Wasn’t I the smartest, wittiest, most deserving second-year university student?  Turns out getting a reality check is painful, necessary, and demobilizing.  As a matter of fact, I’m only just getting over it now.

I got into the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine after a gruelling application and interview process (and by some small miracle, as we’ll see later might just be a giant horseshoe).  It meant a lot to me at the time that I was going to be a part of Canada’s health revolution.  Turns out, I wasn’t.  Though my father put himself on the line both emotionally and financially to support me, I decided at the last minute to bow out.  I couldn’t bear the thought of people coming to me as a last-ditch effort to somehow rid them of their systemic ailments, caused by years of neglect and abuse.  How could I possibly be expected to help anyone who was first going to try every single solution before coming to the one true healer?  There I go again…the special little bear, rearing her ugly head.  I decided that being over $200,000 in debt with very little to call my own save the potential debt from buying an existing naturopathic practice was a little more than my tender 22-year old self could handle, and I bowed out.  Again.

There I was, a very scared young woman, renting an apartment in the city I’d grown up in (but it was in a totally great neighbourhood [insert eye roll], which made me feel, at least temporarily, as though it was the best place ever), working at a totally dead-end job that was handed to me from university days, and thinking I had it all figured out (cue second eye roll).  Oh, and I was dating my ex.  How rich.