Hey Kids,
This week I’ve been feeling a little burnt out. Seriously, I’m starting to feel like the kid in Jumanji as he’s being sucked into the board game.
Stretched too thin and unsure of what the heck is going to happen next.
Also, if I wake up tomorrow morning looking like Robin Williams, there is going to be hell to pay.
It’ll be a drive by fruiting!
Ahem.
Even though I thoroughly enjoy my work, and all my volunteer commitments, my training sessions (I take the good with the bad, and even the ugly), and my creative pursuits (nay, passions), I kind of feel like I have too many fingers, in too many pies, and they are all being burned to a crisp by a blisteringly hot blueberry filling.
And I bloody well LOVE blueberry filling!
Can someone pass me some vanilla ice cream, stat?
For the past five days, each time my alarm has gone off, the first thought to immediately to pop into my head has been: “NO. I REFUSE.”
The second has been: “What the frick am I going to wear to work today?”
Followed by the third and last: “I better not have a zit to contend with, or I’m going to lose it!”
Yeesh. Forget Robin Williams, I’m slowly morphing into George Costanza.
(Number three on that list is a throw back from high school. I used to have pretty awful skin, and even though I’ve had a clear complexion for quite a while now, I can’t shake this compulsion. Especially since every once in a while I’ll get a major doozy of a zit. Case in point, yesterday as I left an after-work function completely destroyed from exhaustion, I could practically feel my heart beating in what can only be described as the monster pimple from hell. Amazingly, in the span of only two hours, this thing had sprouted from nothing, to wrecking havoc with the earth’s gravitational pull.)
I’ll live, I’m sure, but trauma was endured.
So this morning as I rode the metro to work I was feeling a little down.
I was late leaving my house, so I didn’t have the option of waiting for a train that had available seats, so I hopped on the first car that stopped at the station. Leaning back on the glass partition that separates a five-seat bench from the train doors, I nonchalantly skimmed through the free newspaper I had been handed at the station’s entrance, and watched the scenery zip by.
As I marveled at the beautiful cherry blossom trees that line the skytrain route, I also drank in the different coloured blues, pinks, and greens that made up the early morning sky.
Just the simple act of meditating on nature’s beauty made my heart feel a little lighter.
And then BAM!
I saw it.
Written right in front of me.
A little piece of graffiti, scribbled in pencil on the carriage’s door. An adolescent’s script:
Amor Vincit Omnia.
Love conquers all.
Just out there, for the world to see.
And as the train bopped along, and the cherry blossoms cherried, and the blue sky blued itself (there’s an arrested development joke somewhere in there), I thought to myself:
HELL YES LOVE CONQUERS ALL! LET’S GET THIS DAY STARTED!
Just reading those three words was like getting kicked in the butt by a big boot filled with awesome sauce.
In a split second I was ready to rock.
And rant.
AND ROLL.
Because folks, at the base of it all, I am a love warrior. I will fight tooth and nail for the individuals in my life who live inside my heart.
I just need to remember once in a while that that I should be included in that list of people.
That I should fight for, and love, and revel in myself, Godzilla pimple and all.
And so I too encourage all of you to do the same for yourselves.
(I can even provide the boot, complete with sauce, if needed.)
Though I may be sleeping soundly when you place your order.
Because hot damn, warrioring can be hard work.
And I’m still pretty tired.
Rant and Roll 
That was so beautifully written, and very inspiring for me at the moment. I had a few days this week where I felt like I was kicking butt and taking names, and that has gone far, far away. How can that be in a span of just a few short days?! Anyway, thank you for the encouragement.
Thank you! It does seem strange how things can swing so wildly, does it not? I hope that things are heading back up again and that you have a fabulous weekend :)
Take some cat naps this weekend or find a sunbeam to relax in – Have a Great Weekend:)
I will have many naps that is for sure! Thanks, I hope you do too!
Love is a battlefield, man. :) I hope you have a better time with it.
Sing it sister! I’ll be just fine. :)
1. Okay, we can agree that chocolate milk is the nectar of the gods, but you’re drinking Foremost. Bleaaaaaaaah. That stuff tastes like the slightly-off nectar of the gods that forgot about the nectar at the back of the fridge before buying a new jug of nectar.
2. Latin graffiti! That is fab! I wish we had such high class vandals around my neck of the woods. Of course since I can’t read Latin I’d have a lot of “???” moments, but anything that makes you go home and google is, in my opinion, a good learning opportunity.
3. I’m impressed that you’re managing to keep going! I don’t even volunteer and I’ve been feeling that sensation myself lately just between work and … well… everything under “not work.” I have so much overtime I’m putting in that I’m really only getting myself one weekend day a week and THAT IS NOT ENOUGH TO ENJOY SPRING ON THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I’m really hoping that’ll let up soon. I love my job and I love my boss and I’m totally willing to work hard for him, but it’s sad to start out thinking “ooh I need to go grocery shopping. And do my laundry. And I need to do some cooking. And I’d really really like to climb a mountain this weekend. And drive over to the next town to that bookstore again. And what about a movie? Oh and I really want to finish that book, in fact I should finish 3 or 4 so I can trade them in for more, and…” and then slide right into “oh wait. I’ve only got tomorrow to get things done in.” :( Thank heavens for long weekends is all I can say. I insist on taking full weekends for those, so at least I always have something to look forward to!
Aw man, I actually like foremost choco milk. But my absolute favourite is island farms. I’m really not a fan of dairyland and lucerne is okay. We’ll have to respectively agree to disagree. I loved the graffiti too! It was such a cool pick me up. As soon as I saw it, I started to feel better.
Urg, I totally know what you mean. I get so overwhelmed trying to get everything done, and then want to do nothing on the weekends, but always end up having really excited, jam pack days (which is good too) but I just never, ever get the down time I need. I just really need to work on saying no sometimes. Not all the time, just sometimes.
Take it easy and enjoy your day! And really enjoy those long weekend! :)
Huzzah! We can draw up a peace treaty based around the fact that Island Farms is definitely my first pick as well. I buy Dairyland if I’m desperate and Lucerne – well, yeah. I think I made my feelings clear already. :D
Island Farms 4life!
My favourite latin phrase is probably cave canem, which is a real issue in my world since I’m a cat person and never bothered to teach my dog how to behave like a gentleman. I sign most of my emails Rex Rexarum; because I’m incredibly arrogant.
“I’m a cat person and never bothered to teach my dog how to behave like a gentleman.” Hilarious!
And I don’t think your sign off is arrogant. In fact, I really like your style.
Why thank you! On both counts.
See, now this is exactly the sort of thing I meant when I said it’s a great learning opportunity. “Cave Canem.” I’m going to work that into a conversation if it kills me.
The closest I ever got to Latin was loving “sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc” enough that for awhile I seriously considered it as a tattoo. Half creepy, half (pseudo-)classy, part pop culture, part (psuedo-)culture… it’s like someone was actually thinking of me when they thought it up.
Hm. I’m kind of talking myself back into it again. And the point wherein I start talking myself back into things corresponds surprisingly frequently with the point at which I should try sleeping instead. Or at least first.
You should go with “Sic Semper Tyrannis”. Then you could be the Marcus Junius Brutus to my Gaius Julius Caesar…
Coming from someone okay with a hint of cannibalism permanently scribed on her this may seem somewhat capricious… but I don’t know that I want a phrase embedded in my flesh that is so strongly linked with “batshit crazy”.
this post was awesome. I love when life has those little moments like what you saw written on the train. Great stuff as always
Thanks! Yes, it’s those little things that really bring the magic!
I am catching up on my reading when….ahhhhh…i read this post. Thanks it was lovely and much needed. Funny how that works eh?