Time to find inner joy, with intention

There’s something special about random encounters. If nothing else, they typically make for a great story. But sometimes, they leave a lasting mark, capture my heart and stir up my inner joy – and really, isn’t that joy what life is all about?

There’s the lady I met on the skytrain who wrote down “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end” on a piece of scrap paper and gave it to me because she could see I was having a hard day. There was the guy who gave me his umbrella because it started to rain while we waited for the bus and I didn’t have one. There's the many randoms who come up just to say i have a great laugh, reminding me of the joy something small and intangible can bring others. 

And then there are romantic encounters. There’s the guy I met while my friend was making out with his who showed me deep family bonds and is still a big part of my life today. There’s the guy who yelled out “I love you” across a hockey arena, and made my frozen heart melt again for the first time in ages when I thought I’d never feel that way again. There was the guy who chased me through a stadium during a home and garden show just to say hi, and showed me what it meant to have laughter part of every day.  And then there are the guys who showed me a look across a crowded pub in Ireland or at a hockey tournament, could make my heart skip a beat and time stand still.

I’m experiencing one of those encounters right now.

For months, I’ve been catching eyes and smiling at a stranger in Starbucks, which I stop at nearly every day during my morning commute. He’s always with a group of about six guys and they all say good morning, but he just usually smiles. They’re not there every morning, but I can typically count on that sweet smile at least once a week.

Last week, I was a tad later than usual getting to the Starbucks – like 30 min. it was the week leading up to Christmas and I was in charge, so given the low attendance in the office, I decided I’d take my time and come into work on time, versus early as per usual. As I rounded the corner to the entrance, I noticed the group of boys, cute Starbucks guy included, exiting. I got my smile and I continued in to pickup my mobile order, and when I came back to the door they were still outside.

Mr. Cute Starbucks guy himself, walks right up to me and I thought, “here it is, it’s my moment!” and says hello and unlike the last time I tried to say hello and nothing came out of my mouth (I know –shocking considering it’s me), real words with sound came out! He handed me a note with “BCG” written on the front, saying that he thinks this is mine. Now completely thrown off my game, I said thank you and carried on with my morning.

Well it turns out BCG stands for “Beautiful Coffee Girl” and the note had so much more than a phone number scrawled on a piece of paper. Cute Starbucks Guy wrote me a letter, and judging by the creased and roughed up edges, along with the detective skills of and me and my ladies, it appeared as though he’d been carrying it for some time.

My favorite comment in the letter?

I want you to know that the brief moment when you walk past and smile when you get your coffee is one of the best parts of my morning J

It’s something special to hear that you’re one of the best parts of someone’s day, especially with something as simple as a smile – which is what I had on my face the rest of the day….and every time I look at the letter. It’s also refreshing to hear that those moments weren’t all in your head, that someone else felt the same inner joy you did for at least that brief few seconds.

I’ve decided 2017 needs to be about finding more opportunities for joy and about creating my own joy. It needs to be about finding new things that make me smile, make me feel fulfilled and help define me in a way that I’m lacking right now. I need to take a hard look at where I’m at and where I want to be, and then make the necessary changes to get there. 2016 has had wonderful moments, but I’ve sat back and let things happen versus taking charge and finding my bliss.

I want more BCG moments that are small but make my heart sing. Sing with me? 

Love arrives exactly when it should...

I found this amazing video called When Love Arrives; it's spoken poetry by Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye.



it's become a bit of a mantra for  me - i think i've listened to it enough times now that i could recite the whole thing.

i love how it established that love changes as you grow and that there's not one true love, one "soul mate" but instead many loves depending on the stage of life you're in. In particular, i enjoy these lines "Love arrives exactly when love is supposed to, And love leaves exactly when love must. When love arrives, say, “Welcome. Make yourself comfortable.”If love leaves, ask her to leave the door open behind her.."

i think we have a tendency to shut down when love leaves. we don't think about the beauty it brought, or what we learned, we only think about the end and what went wrong. while i think that's completely natural - when you're hurting it's hard to focus on the positive, but we see it eventually - hopefully. how do we encourage ourselves to see that perspective sooner? how do we feel that sorrow and yet, feel that bright spot of hope that love will return, different, but better and ready to meet a new, more solid version of yourself if we only leave the door open?

Love is not who you were expecting, love is not who you can predict. 
Maybe love is in New York City, already asleep;
You are in California, Australia, wide awake. 
Maybe love is always in the wrong time zone.
Maybe love is not ready for you. 
Maybe you are not ready for love. 
Maybe love just isn’t the marrying type. 
Maybe the next time you see love is twenty years after the divorce, love is older now, but just as beautiful as you remembered. 
Maybe love is only there for a month. 
Maybe love is there for every firework, every birthday party, every hospital visit. 
Maybe love stays- maybe love can’t. 
Maybe love shouldn’t.

maybe we merely need to remind ourselves that timing is everything and one day you and love will be on the same time....and preferably the same time zone.

regardless the poem gives me hope and When Love Arrives i'll welcome it, until then i'll think fondly of the moment when i find a love that will tell me i'm beautiful and mean it over and over again especially when no one else will tell me.

here's hoping love arrives on a plane from Ireland soon...

What do you think you deserve?

I was chatting with B last week and we stumbled onto the topic of past relationships - mostly because i made him confirm that he is in fact single. i know, sounds weird. S was surprised i had asked that considering how things are going and the actions leading up to where we are now - him looking at options for moving to Canada. but i've been on at least four dates that have resulted in me finding out the other person has a girlfriend or a wife and they just assumed that wasn't a problem. so i threw it out there and it got him talking about being burned in his last relationship.

i'm not one to pry about past relationships since i always find it awkward to say that i haven't had someone call me their girlfriend in seven years and having to explain that it doesn't mean i'm not serious about wanting a relationship. there's also always the concern that they'll think there's something wrong with me, as opposed to my just not having found the right person.

but during this conversation B said something: "I do think we accept what we think we deserve or are willing to tolerate."

Then watching The Perks of Being a Wallflower the other night, one of the characters said the Stephen Chosky quote that i posted above: "We accept the love we think we deserve."

That was twice in a matter of days that the same sentiment came across my ears, and it really got me thinking.  i'd heard something similar before in that kinda cute rom-com The Wedding Date, where the handsome Dermot Mulroney characters says that every woman has the exact relationship that she wants. Now that, i wholeheartedly disagreed with. But when you rephrase it about what we think we deserve, it makes perfect sense.

With M, i was so insecure and i spent so much of our relationship just feeling so lucky that someone like him who was so self-assured, successful and from a good family, was paying attention to me. i was early in my university education and i worked at a 7-eleven and he was this rock that kept me standing and gave me direction. So when it came down to being treated as though i was a priority in his life, i always made excuses and convinced myself to be okay with what i was given. he was always upfront with what he was willing to give and i just accepted all of it.

fast forward to many, many, many dates post-M and with each new person, i learned more about what i wanted and that it was okay to want and need things and to not accept anything less. i learned what i was willing to compromise on and where i really needed to hold my ground for me. most of all, in the last seven years, i've discovered who i am on my own, without someone else's validation.

so when B said that "we accept what we think we deserve or are willing to tolerate" it really hit home for me.

how often do we stop to think about what we truly deserve? i think it's really important to be self-aware and truly understand who you are in order to understand what you deserve. We also need to look at our own habits, where we're stubborn and when we need to stop, reflect and maybe adjust our own unrealistic expectations. And instead of looking at it as what you will tolerate, as i think that has a negative connotation to it, it'd be more about looking at the areas where you will compromise, those so-called shortcomings or flaws in the other person that you can accept because no one is perfect but where the things you love about them outweigh anything else.

as hard as it is, i think i am finally in a place to appreciate the heartache and the frustration, because you really can't see the light until you've been through the darkness.

i'm really enjoying this increasingly glowing path i'm wandering down with B. we still have no idea where it's going or how we're getting there, but our recent conversations, which are always so honest and especially as of late have really shed light on our mutual feelings,  have shown me that we're meandering side-by-side on the same path...and boy does that feel good.
 

Once Smitten Twice as Shy

so i'm smitten. smitten with an Irishman who lives halfway around the world.

part of me is angry with myself - how can i be so silly as to indulge myself in this fantasy of trans-atlantic love coming to fruition.

part of me is terrified, just waiting for the cards to fall and the castle to crumble.

and the other part is just smitten: giddy at the prospect of possibility, heart all a flutter at sweet words, smile pasted to my face smitten.

i've tried long distance too many times to count. it seems i'm better at keeping things going if the other person isn't actually present. i think the distance forces me to imagine and when you imagine you tend to lean towards the ideal, as opposed to the real. it isn't until they appear and you realize the ideal doesn't exist that it becomes hard to overcome that obstacle and inevitably it's always fallen apart.

is it possible for that to change? is it possible that with age and "wisdom" and through lessons learned, that it's possible for something long distance and ephemeral, to become something real and constant? is there a chance that my Irishman could end up here, or i back there, and something real could blossom out of this inexplicable magnetism that pulled us together in a pub in Dingle?

i don't know.

i read this blog post today about a girl who risked it all and moved across the country to be with someone she loved, only to have it fall apart and now she's moving back home again. her question was should she have risked it all and leaped. i found myself thinking as i read, "of course you should have! you never know what could happen and if you don't try, you'll always wonder. a part of you will always wonder."

why is it that it's so easy to offer someone else advice, but hard to give yourself the same?

always wondering - now that's a nasty trap. it's caught me many a time and held me hostage more times than i can count. Conversely, the times where i've given it my all and understood the game, when it hasn't worked out i've come out the other side much stronger and with better peace of mind.

and if i didn't try.....it wouldn't be much of a story eh? "The Life of Rilla - she existed, she avoided and she settled" not much of a book.

i think i'll stay smitten and try not to shy away from experiencing life, love and everything in between.

Power of Possibility

I feel the need to write down a special moment from my recent trip to Ireland. It's a silly thing, but there's always a possibility that something amazing could come from it. There have been so many moments that i wished i had written down, so i'm going to indulge myself and write about this one while it's not only fresh in my mind, but not yet tainted by any misfortune. 

Right after Christmas i jetted off to Ireland with S to go and visit C who recently relocated for work. During the trip we took off on a road trip around the Republic of Ireland and at one point turned up in Dingle - a darling seaside gaeltacht (irish speaking region). 

We were enjoying dinner in John Benny's (the best warm venison salad ever - still craving it) and this group was singing behind me in the pub (Lumiere) this beautifully, haunting music. I kept twisting around in my seat to watch the ladies sing and at one point i noticed this handsome man leaning against a beam near the bar, also watching the performers. 

He looked like he had walked right out of Yaletown - collared shirt with a v-neck sweater over top and a blazer. So out of place for Ireland, where it must be said, the men don't exactly dress that well. i couldn't tear my eyes away and throughout the evening we kept catching one another's eyes; smiles were exchanged; thumbs up were given (by him). 

At one point in the evening, i got up to buy a round of Guinness for myself and the ladies and while waiting up at the bar, who should happen to stroll up but this fine specimen of a man. He asked the waitress if his friend had ordered drinks and she said yes and then he turned to me and said hello. Much to my surprise, he was Irish! Of course when i opened my mouth the first thing he said was "oh you're american."  Of course i corrected him! But there was something in his eyes and he held my attention fast. 

He invited us ladies out to another pub but S and C were ready to head back to the B&B, but my Irishman and i exchanged contact details as he lives in Dublin and we'd both be back there in a couple days. i figured that'd be the end of that, until the next day i found an email waiting for me from my Irishman. 

After lovely worded emails back and forth, we finally met up in Dublin on my last night there. Again that same magnetic pull was present and throughout the evening i couldn't help but be pulled in by his presence as we all chit chatted (S and C were there as well). When we finally had to leave, so that we could catch at least a couple hours of sleep before our very early flight, my Irishman walked us to a cab where he pulled me in for this unexpected, but definitely not unwelcome, kiss. You couldn't scrape the smile off my face if you'd used a knife. I woke a few hours later to head to the airport, with a text saying "could easily have kidnapped you and eloped on my bicycle together! best. kiss. ever." 

Since then we've kept in touch nearly every day, even now that i'm back in Vancouver, and my Irishman has even talked about coming out to Canada this summer. While rational, often disappointed me knows that it's probably best left as a beautiful moment capping off a lovely vacation, the young girl who desperately wants to be a hopeless romantic and believe that fairy tales and romantic comedy moments happen in real life, can't help but be open to possibility. 

What if my Irishman is the be all end all for me? What if he's the one who marked the end of life as i knew it and the beginning of an entirely new chapter in my personal life? 

My Irishman said the other day that if something ever does come from this we'll have a good story. I thought i better write it down because whether it becomes a love story for the ages or merely a moment in time, it's a reminder that anything is possible at any time, no matter where you happen to be. 

Holiday Magic

Like so many others, i love Christmastime. There's something about December:

• The air feels different on my skin; it almost seems to buzz and sparkle. 
• People are nicer and that inherent goodness, that i believe all people have seems to shine through more often.
• There are Starbucks red cups to be bought, baked goods to eat, parties to revel at  and decorations to admire.
• Although we generally don't get snow over here on the West Coast, sometimes we get lucky and have a day of that wonderful magic stuff swirling to the ground. Snow always makes me feel like anything is possible; and,
• The movies are filled with feel-good spirit and even though you might know the outcome because they all seem to follow a similar formula, you still can't wait for it to happen and it still makes you rejoice and brings you to tears.

All of those above points are part (only a small sample) of that special holiday magic that make this season so wonderful. 

last night, in the spirit of holiday magic, i did something rather silly. i had watched a holiday movie and throughout the movie the main character was learning about different holiday traditions/superstitions from various cultures. One of them related to the Feast of St Thomas, where "if a spinster did all of these things, she would dream of the man she is destined to marry." Now these things involved using a stool to step onto the bed, taking off your shoes while standing on the bed, spinning around three times and then throwing your shoes at the door before settling down to sleep with your feet on the pillow at the head of the bed. Lo' and behold, in the movie this character dreamed of the man she was destined to marry and by the end of the movie they were at the beginning of what looked to be a wonderful romance. 

So i followed suit. after all, what did i have to lose?  

it's so easy to get caught up in the negativity of being single and the trials and tribulations that go along with finding "the one" that we forget to take pleasure in little moments. For me, believing in magic and fairy tales and what-could-bes are important parts of who i am. i have a soft spot for books that take classic fairy tales and reinvent them somehow. it's a reminder that what's old can be made new again, and that the magic contained within the words of those tales is sustained over time - it doesn't weaken, it is reborn with each retelling, each new person who reads it or hears it.  they're your best anecdotes which always solicit a welcome response, wrapped up in a neat package.

So when i found out (thanks Google) that the Feast of St Thomas was last night, December 21, this spinster set out to dream about her destiny. 

Well i can't say i dreamed about "the one," what i did dream was that my condo was on fire and the alarm didn't go off so i almost burned alive. not sure what that one is supposed to tell me....SL thought it could be a hot fireman in my future, S suggested a pyromaniac - a charming pyromaniac, i threw in that maybe it's a brave bystander and J suggested maybe it means i'll die alone in my condo.

If nothing else, it was a good laugh and rather than being a depressing reminder that i'm still not sure where mr. right is, it carried forward that holiday magic as i let myself be a kid again and believe that anything is possible. Let's face it, when we don't know what's around the corner: anything. is. possible.  

Empty Fantasies

Have you ever had those dreams where you're watching yourself carry out a scene, so it's almost as though you're in two places at once: you take on both an active and passive role at the same time.

More often than not these days, i feel as though i'm living through that dreamlike state of watching myself live while another me just goes through the motions. It's almost an out of body experience. It doesn't seem to matter where i am or what i'm doing, i constantly feel like i'm not really a part of what's happening, like i've checked out of real life.

i'm out for drinks with the ladies on Friday, something i normally enjoy, but i felt like i was watching them socialize and while i can hear myself participating, it didn't really feel as if i was taking part. it's been like this for months. i thought i would have snapped out of it by now but pinching myself doesn't seem to be waking me up.

I was watching Les Mis with S last month and it got to the part where Eponine is singing about her love for Maurius. It starts off sounding like a beautiful memory of the time they spend together and then she reveals that the love story she's been recanting is something she imagines in her mind. I found myself crying through the song as i realized that's my love life wrapped up in a song. my love life is full of me imagining possibilities but never actually living any of them.

so i've been focusing my energy elsewhere, trying to give myself new meaning, happiness and direction that's just for and from myself.

i made a step forward in the house-hunt this month. after seeing around 30 properties, i finally found one that i could see myself living in. i had always thought finding the place i wanted to live in would be like when those brides on tv find *the* wedding dress: everything would feel instantly right, a sense of calm would come over me and then excitement and i'd be ready to dive head first. instead in classic me-fashion, i completely freaked out and it took multiple walks in the neighborhood at all times of the day, plus a map (the map really did it for me) defining how long it would take me to walk to different areas of the city to convince me to put in an offer.

everyone kept saying to me, "you must be so excited" and i just kept reaffirming that subjects weren't removed yet and i wasn't getting excited until it was for sure. despite myself, i got a little excited and started decorating "my new condo" in my mind. in my head i could see my daily routines playing out, where i would place things, where i would entertain. Then the day we were supposed to remove subjects some items came up and after the seller refused to extend subjects by a week to allow me to get the results from their AGM, the deal folded and my hopes and fantasies of life in my new condo lay shattered on the ground amidst protests from me telling everyone "i'm fine and don't care."

i'm isolating myself from my friends because i don't want to have to talk about any of it with them and have them feel sorry for me or have to hear the pity in their voices as they say "aww honey."  Not to mention i feel like i have nothing in common with my close friends any more  who are busy with their husbands and kids.

the truth is i'm so frustrated with everything. i feel like nothing is happening in my life right now. i thought starting the new role at work would make me feel better, like i was doing something new or could focus on something other than obsessing over made up scenarios i keep playing over and over in my head.

i feel lost and lonely and like a failure - and that last one is something i haven't had to feel like often (being a perfectionist) and it's the worst part of it all. i'm failing at interpersonal relationships - romantic or otherwise - and i have no control over the situation. i want to stop feeling like i have to imagine things in order to find happiness and instead just live and be happy.