laziness

I did my talk last night. I was quite nervous until I practiced on my housemate Tanya and her reaction was positive. I wasn't nervous at all last night which was good. I was quite surprised at the outcome though. I had a couple girls tell me that they could really relate, and a couple of others who told me I was a good writer and that I should speak more often. I was quite pleased with that. I had to leave the evening early to hang out with Hannah, a friend from project! It was lots of fun to see her again. Her dorky friend was pretty hilarious too.

I've been feeling pretty lazy and umotivated lately. Today was supposed to be a work day, but since it's almost 4:00pm and I still haven't accomplished anything but watching Honey on MuchMusic, I decided that I wouldn't even bother TRYING to get work done today but rather try and do it tomorrow. I'm generally more productive on Sundays anyways. A friend is having a halloween costume party tonight that I'm planning on going to, but don't quite have the entire costume i need.... I have the cowboy boots and jeans haha. Doesn't quite make an entire outfit, sadly.

I may be here now but I've never left Montreal

I've been thinking about Montreal a lot lately. I really miss the city. I miss the metro, I miss my work. I miss project, I miss MTL staff. I'm wondering what Montreal is like in the fall. I'm sure McGill is beautiful as is Queen's. I'm still mourning the end of project. Sometimes life just moves too fast. You prepare for something for so long, and it might seem like forever when you're finally working through that thing you've prepared for so long for... and part of you may want it to be over while you're in it, but looking back.... you kind of wished it had never ended. That's how I feel about project. It went too fast, but at the time it went at a good pace.

It's times like this when it makes me want to join staff. Part of me thinks it'll be like a permanent-Montreal-Reunion, because in a sense it will: I'll be in Montreal with Lydia, the Smits, and doing ministry and yeah... haha somehow that makes me feel like its Montreal project reunion, even if ALL of the projectiles aren't there. It's not like I don't miss them because I totally do. There's just something about that city.

Being there without the whole group was hard and surreal. It just didn't feel the same, so maybe I'm kidding myself into believing that Montreal is where I belong. But part of me really does believe I belong there - as long as I get frequent trips into the country. Sigh.

all you women independent, throw your hands up at me

Hmm, that line of the song sounds way less cool when written down. It makes me feel so lame and white. I was really excited this morning to find the women's ministry leader asked me to do the talk @ Girls Night Out this Friday. We're going to be doing spa-type girlie activities, and then I've been asked to give a talk/my testimony on Beauty and God etc. I'm so stoked for it. I actually started working on it tonight, even though I have a midterm on thursday that I'm really unprepared for. Just what I need - a REALLY good reason to procrastinate. This time it isn't even YouTube or other people's blogs.

Ok I should go to bed... class @ 9:30!

in one ear, out the other

I think it might be true that a person's brain can only hold so much information. The past few days I've felt really smart. Mostly because I'm totally busting out all these theses on the US and hegemony and taking over the world. It's pretty much fantastic because it's not even just ME who looks crazy and paranoid - I'm totally citing other sources. But here's the thing: I have no short term memory in other things. The other day I opened up a Compose window in gmail and it fully took me 30 minutes to remember who I was planning on emailing and what I was planning on saying.

It just happened again. I opened up Blogger in with the intent of writing something life alteringly insightful, the kind of stuff that either brings you to tears with beauty or makes you want to go conquer the world -- SO incredible that you actually believe someone might give a crap about what you have to say. Something just that great. And then I got sidetracked by Zach (yes, i talk about him like we're friends. like Dave. Dave's pretty much my cool uncle. No... uncle doesn't work because Dave is cute. Dave can be a close friend of the family. that works). Anyways, it has taken until now for me to remember what I was going to say. And it really wasn't all that important.

I'm just having a lazy skinny day. Lazy because I have a headache, its raining, and i don't want to do work and so I will nap instead. And skinny because my friend Julie gave me some pants AND THEY FIT. the size 4 pants. Shut up, i know... I'm not a 4, i'm an 8. Too bad they're too tight and short. oh well. i own size 4 pants, even if I don't wear them.

How is it that I've discussed hegemony AND feeling skinny justifyiably in one blog? Random, and kind of embarassing. Which reminds me, I have to post about my most embarassing moment that happened the other day. Too funny.

woo! devs

I seriously love my program. SERIOUSLY SERIOUSLY. Sometimes I get really depressed, it's true. Sometimes it makes me cry because I'm being educated on the secular evidence of a broken broken world. The depths of the darkness, the ignorance, the sinisterness of the hearts of individuals is really evident in the world of development. It gets hard to learn about it and feels so alone when you know you're one individual and can't possibly break down the structures and attitudes of violence that is such a a part of our world.

But today, walking out of my midterm for Financial Architecture of Development, I felt so passionate about what I do. Sure, it's been a lot of review up until this point, and sure, sometimes its hard. But it's worth it. It's worth understanding the world in a way not many do. I just take so much joy in it. I think that's partly because I'm realizing that I'm not stupid at it. That I'm realizing that I'm starting to understand how to deconstruct the arguments, that I'm acquiring enough knoweldge about these situations that I can see problems with the issues before I'm taught them.

I seriously wanted to start writing papers for fun. FOR FUN. I want to write books about development and how these things should matter to the general populace. Because they do matter. Man, I wish I knew what my future held for me.

high on life (and gravol)

So I'm guessing that taking gravol while not having eaten all day is probably not the best idea. I'm seriously high. Like my vision is all weird, my sense are screwed up. I'm struggling to type this coherently. Everything is soo laggy. I totally get why there's a warning to not operate heavy machinery when under the influence of ... what was i saying? Seriously, I forgot.

Oh right. It reminds me of the whole "Do not get drunk on wine but be filled with the Holy Spirit" thing. I remember this summer Lydia discipling me and being all "how does being filled with the HS compare to being drunk?" I thought that was a funny analogy. I'm glad that its not analogus to being high. Because frankly, this is doing funny tickly things to my head. Did I mention my head kind of tickles? I don't think the brain is supposed to 'tickle'. Did I also mention I have a midterm to study for?

OH also, I'm taking gravol because my stomach was really screwedup and woozy feeling and my other housemate totally barfed a busload of chunkies the other day which was nasty. I don't want to bafr. So... i took gravol, and i haven't eaten anything today so I think that's making the gravol be more gravolly. Shoot, I'm high.

late sidenote: i googleed up "sideffects of gravol" and found this...

Short-Term Effects

• At recommended doses, Gravol can cause drowsiness, dizziness and blurred vision. It can impair your concentration and motor coordination. For these reasons, you should use Gravol with caution if driving or doing other things that require you to be fully alert. It can be especially dangerous to combine it with alcohol and other depressant drugs. (found here)
  

Does God Exist on Tuesday or just every other day?

God is pretty darn cool. This whole Does God Exist? debate that we’re re-doing has been kind of ridiculous in terms of how it’s been put together and thrown at everyone. It’s been planned pretty well, but kind of all over the place at the same time. We’re definitely not professionals that’s for sure. Last night @ our Weekly Meeting (aka Friday Night on the Rock [FnotR]) things just really came together. I think people are actually catching on to the vision for DGE and getting excited. It’s really neat to see.

Honestly, I’m going to be extremely excited when DGE is over. That means that most of my stress-related work is finished and I can semi-relax. Or at least finally focus on other things that matter. I’m seriously going to be so excited that I’m considering going out for celebratory drinks. It’s going to be awesome. The debate AND the celebratory drinks. I’m just ready for it to be over. God’s done a fantastic job of protecting me from going crazy with stress over it, but I’m still going to be happy its over.

So this year I'm the publicity coordinator for the club that I'm quite heavily involved in. So I guess I'm also responsible for that UGLY UGLY website. But the template was free and it was easily put together by a friend who knows a bit about this stuff. It really drives me crazy that we have an ugly website, but we have no one to take care of it now - which is the story of this club's life!

I sort of expected to be murdered by publicity this year, but things have been going well so far. We're in the middle of a campaign to publicize a debate this upcoming tuesday and I think things are running smoothly. I'm sure something will screw up eventually. Classes have been going well for the most part. I have a midterm next week and a short essay proposal due on monday, but I think things will work out ok. While balance isn't exactly my forté, it's all working out. I think it's because I've gotten used to being ok with not having things perfect. The website is a great example: it's ugly. But the people who have never seen a functional website for CFC are thrilled with it. It's functional so I guess it does its job. I personally would like to see something not so hideous and retina mutilating, but I don't have the resources for that right now. So I settle. Sometimes settling is so, so convenient!

twenty is a scary place to be

Sometimes I’m so emo. I get all quiet and like to reflect a lot. I enjoy deep conversation, but the right people are rarely around to facilitate that. Instead I blog. Therefore, I apologize in advance for the train-wreck that will follow this sentence.

I feel like I’m growing up. I don’t really know how I feel about feeling that, though. I’m getting closer to graduating and that’s scary. It’s scary to think I have no plan for my life either. That I just sort of assume there will be a way to make money, to pay rent, to pay my OSAP loans back. I just have faith. Call me crazy, but thinking that far in advance is just not going to help me now.

The older I get, the more comfortable I become with where I am geographically. When we moved here I hated it. I had lived in Saskatoon for most of my life up until that point, so living in the country wasn’t so amazing. Sure, at first there were some fun things about it - like playing outside, building forts in the bush ‘next-door’, catching frogs. Then as I got older I started noticing things about the area that I hated. A lot of the locals were pretty pigheaded and ignorant about the world, and mostly racist. Not exactly my cup of tea. Neither was country music, or talking about cows. I thought I was a city-girl and to an extent I was.

But now I’m noticing more and more just how much I value growing up in the country and just how much its become a part of who I am. Being in Montreal all summer, I think I would have gone crazy if I didn’t have four weekends away from the city and back either here in the Ottawa Valley, or in the country surrounding Montreal. For so long I’ve been totally snobby about this place, but it’s starting to grow on me a bit. I’d never want to live here or raise a family here, but it’s not a bad place to bring your kids to visit Grandpa and Grandma.

And as much as I absolutely hate to admit it. I guess there is some sort of feeling of “home” here. After moving so much in my first few years of life, my roots have finally been established here. I’ll be happy to move away because the people in the area irritate me just that much, but I’m making progress little by little. I’m growing up.

relationships

All my life I've been giving relationship advice. Ok, not ALL my life, but ever since I was.... 12. Yup, at 12 I apparently gave some solid relationship advice to my other 12 year old friends. We're still close, so I guess my advice wasn't terribly wrong. I dunno how I know anything about it, since I've never actually been in a dating relationship. Maybe it's seeing so many people's hearts get broken over the years.

In any case, in the last year the %age of conversations I've had about relationships and the frequency to which these conversations are happening is starting to make me feel that God's preparing me for one. Of course He is, He's always preparing us for things. I've just really noticed an increase in this kind of stuff. It's a good thing that I'm comfortable where I am in my singleness. Quite comfortable acutally. But not too comfortable that I want to be this way forever, that's forsure.

la langue française

So I'm realizing more and more how much I love french. Being in Montreal all summer got me accustomed to the crazy Québecois accent. I used to hate it and think it was this awful vulgar abbomination of the language, but now I like it. A lot. It feels like home. I'm finding the Perisian accent pretentious. But I still would like to spend some time in France just to say I have. France still sounds so classic and chic.

The thing is, I don't want to do the work to be good at the language. It takes so much effort, so much time. But I really enjoy reading literature in French because it sounds so much more profound, even if la profondeur is lost on me because I don't understand the nuances.

But I guess if I want to be bilingual by the time I'm 25 (and I do, it's a life goal of mine), I guess I should actually try. Sigh. Priorities, Jess, Priorities!

It's been awhile

I haven't had a personal blog in two and a half years. It's kind of strange to be back at it again. I finally succummbed to it because of blogger's new moderation features. I realized I didn't want everyone to see some of the things I was thinking/writing. I'd like to have more control over who's getting to know me through this venue.

I thought I would explain where I got the name of this blog. It's from a Dave Mathews Band song called Butterfly. The lyrics are as follows:

You are like a butterfly
A Catipillars dream to fly
So bust out of this old cocoon
And dry your wings off
Butterfly
Go ahead, and fly

Its always such a lonely loom
Its sudden like a broken bone
And your luck wont always come along
So dry your tears away
Butterfly
Go ahead and fly

Dry your tears away
Butterfly
Dont you, Cry