Giddy Up

Call me simple, but I really enjoy clichés about...keeping it simple. “It is what it is - as luck would have it - it’s all good - easy as pie - simple stupid - kick your feet up - life’s a beach”...you get the point.  So, when I realized that snowshoeing was not going to happen last winter, I scanned my repertoire and settled on “whatever will be will be” knowing that  something as equally thrilling would eventually turn up to First. And oh boy it did. It came with horns, a control panel operated by a nasty, angsty 20-something bleach blonde and a saddle made for slipping.  

While in Orillia coordinating the MS Walk, one of the committee members invited me to a bachelorette party in Barrie at The Ranch, claimed the largest country bar in ON. To myself I thought, Option #1: get a good, responsible rest for the 6am event start the following day, or Option #2, drink ridonculous amounts of girly cocktails and dosey doe with a bunch of cowfolk strangers til 3am. When I discovered the venue had a mechanical bull, the choice was obvious. 
  

Not many of my friends are married and in fact I don’t think I’ve even been to a hen party for someone I actually know (so perhaps another first?). When the wedding bells do start ringing for my crew though, I’m convinced I will never experience what I did on this night in Barrie. Bull Riding is likely a once in a lifetime thing for me, especially with the bum knee I now have as a result.  

A photo tells a thousand words - another great cliché. See below, and let the good times roll.

Walking Full Circle

At the end of April, for the first time, I volunteered as the weekend coordinator for the MS Walk. While this may appear as a good deed (and of course it was that too!), this First was more about reclaiming something that I’d been unsettled by for a long while. Let me explain. I’ve mentioned that I was very unhappy at my former office job. I quit and took a parallel role for more money which subsequently didn’t last more than 3 months. A hard lesson in learning to pay attention to yourself, but it was necessary and ultimately led to this blog. That said, I’m totally comfortable with how everything rolled out, but I’ve always had this nagging feeling that I missed out on the best parts of running a charity event because I was too distracted trying to be perfect at a job that I wasn’t  meant for. So, returning as a volunteer was my way of appreciating the event like I’d always wanted to.  

The Orillia MS Walk where I was stationed is led by a fabulous committee of real, lovely people. I felt so welcome (see next post) and because I wasn’t wigging out about logistics and silly details, I was able to just absorb the day and visit with walkers and supporters.  

As I was reading through the coordinator manual after the event (cause who reads it before right?), I noticed a line in the “Steps to Running a Successful Walk” which funny enough, because I’m always so put off by regulating literature, speaks very clearly to how I think about a lot of things. “It’s not about getting it perfect, it’s about getting it done”.  

Workin 9 - 5

YIPPEEEE!! While my goal was to be hired by an Ontario school board, I’ve landed a teaching contract, for the first time, that I consider to be even better! The school is a private learning centre for students with multiple exceptionalities, most with Autism. Starting in September, I will teach a class of 6 (high school aged) students among a population of 55 incredibly unique, sensitive little people who fill my days with the most hilarious personalities I’ve ever encountered.

Autism is a developmental disability affecting 1 in 88 Canadian kids, most often boys. Children with Autism typically have difficulty in verbal and non-verbal communication, social interaction and leisure or play activities. Challenged in their ability to understand and make connections with others, living socially can be extremely stressful and isolating for people with Autism. I’m humbled each day I work with these kids. I do what I can to help students feel confident and comforted by the basic relationships they struggle to navigate as they jouney to discover their own awesomeness.

We take so much for granted.     

Hypno Hype

I’ve always had this uncomfortable memory of my high school boyfriend clucking like a chicken (or something stupid, I can’t actually recall the specific details) on stage in front of the whole school at one of those corny group hypnotist sessions. A complete sceptic at the time, I was pretty embarrassed with how far the “act” went. How could he be so phoney!?   

Over time however, I’ve become very open to exploring....well anything really....even the possibility of hypnosis. Where many people become more defined and narrowly pronounced in their routines and ideas, I seem to drift with each new experience. Not to say that I`m ambiguous, but for interests sake and to ensure I keep growing, I function best with a little randomness and a lot of grey. So, a while ago I went to a hypnotist for the first time to challenge my lingering teenage doubt.   

Not wanting to spend $200 for a private session, I joined a group workshop focused on enhancing personal prosperity through hypnosis. The objective was to unravel doubt (fitting, given my motive for being there in the first place) in order to dissolve sub/unconscious barriers to believing that anything and everything is achievable.

The fundamentals of hypnotherapy suggest quite simply that episodes in our life impact our subconscious (emotional), reside in our unconscious (immune system/auto response) and manifest in our conscious mind (logic/belief) as “reality”. Presenting a whole bunch of cool questions about how closely health is linked to thought, I started thinking about my own anxieties and times in my life when I felt healthy or unhealthy and what level of “prosperity” I was experiencing at the time. No surprise, there’s been a pretty direct line between the two.  Without going into the gory details though, I’ll jump to the juice...the session ended with a group hypnotism meant to lead us to acknowledge the core of our doubt (self, financial, success - whatever).  No one made farm animal sounds or fell off their chair, especially me, but it was certainly affecting. I cried.  Weird, I know.

As with all of my Firsts I try to suspend expectations and just live the moments, so while I won’t try to fake that I had some hypno-revelation, I will say that every time I visit a new experience, I feel less and less a tourist. I obviously accept that hypnotherapy is legitimate and finally take comfort in knowing that my high school hunk wasn’t a total dweeb ;)