Self-help

My goodness, what an evocative term. It is a word that is just full of potential. It's up there with "Home-made chocolate". "Naked Male Models" and world peace. I went to my happy place today (well one of them anyway) I went to the book store. Now, I love looking at the new and hot fiction, I love looking at the cook-books, I love looking at the snazzy stationary that I AM NOT ALLOWED TO BUY UNTIL I USE ALL MY OTHER NOTEBOOKS, NOT EVEN IF ITS SUPER PRETTY.

Whew.

I also, (I confess) have a weakness for the self-help section. Why? Who knows, I'm sure its connected with my deep-lying perfecionist tendancies which are my main barriers against success and happiness. I'm sure it also has something to do with my love of books and my general admiration for the Published. My admiration is child-like and naive considering how many truly shitty books there are out there, nonetheless I continue to assume that if someone is smart enough to write a book they absolutely must be smart enough to fix my life and all my stupid little anxieties and woes which, when added up are nearly crippling and are certainly suffocating (at times anyway).

So... I had an idea. There are quite a few famous blog projects out there (and quite a few obscure ones I'm sure) Living Oprah comes to mind, the premise being that the author spent an entire year following Oprah's advice on everyone of her shows. She did this I think mainly to hold Oprah accountable for her frequent contradictions and her encouragement of rampant counsumerism amongst her housewife devotees. Another one had to do with following magazine advice I believe, and the most famous of all has a movie based on it (Julie & Julia). So, here's my wild and weird and abstract thought. I am a rampant perfectionist who is absolutely immobilized by stupid little fears, if anyone could benifit from self-help it's me. The theory being that my problems are not so grave so as to require psychiatric help (though I do enjoy making use of the school's counselling centre occasionally) but nor are they so minimal that I can ignore them. In my own wildly biased and unprofessional assessment of myself, I think I am the perfect candidate. So what I'm thinking is 26 books over the course of a year (1 every 2 weeks) follow their advice to a T and hope for the best!

So, I need to decide a couple of things:

• How do I select the books? Alphabetically? At random? As around and see what other people have used?
• What constitutes as self-help? Is it purely psychological? What about "lifestyle" books that incorporate health and wellness as well?
• What about relationship and love advice? Or should it be purely me?

So what do you guys think? Fun project no? PLEASE let me know your thoughts (I've noticed a distinct lack of commenting going on these days, way too much lurking folks.)

Anyway, let me know loves!

De-junking

Ok.. I have a confession to make. Are you ready? (deep breath) I Laura Scrivener, am a hoarder. Ok. I feel better now. Let me explain a little. It's not as bad as it sounds. I will not be on a reality tv show any time soon. It's not like you can't move through my room because it is full of mountains of crap that have cockroaches, mice, the occasional squirrel and maybe the odd squatter living under them. No, my problem is not nearly that bad. In fact, I think my problem stems from idealism or romanticism if you will. Take a notebook for example. A brand new, notebook with a pretty picture on the cover, maybe it's a picture of Ganesh a Hindu god with an elephant for a head. Or perhaps its a picture with a fairy on the cover, with a misty ship sailing to the moon, and nymphs frolicking in a pond. Or perhaps it is a plain leather bound "serious" looking notebook. It doesn't matter what kind it is because I can pretty much guarantee that I will love it. I love page one. I love the newness of it. Here is a notebook ripe with potential. I could pen a best-selling novel, write an awe-inspiring speech, plan out a business idea, sketch out witty little thoughts, write a poem, take down my favourite quotes from a book, scribble down future Mr. Fearless's number, the possibilities are endless.

Bags are another favourite. A bag as far as I'm concerned is an excellent friend. A bag will never make you look fat. A bag, can hold your life. A bag will still love you no matter what you spill in it. A bag, in short is the perfect, nay, the ultimate accessory. However, there is no denying the fact that I have too many. The problem lies in the fact that I have three go-to bags that I use ALL the time, and the rest are lucky if they ever see the light of day, I mean, why mess with perfection?

Ok, so I've justified my bad behaviour for you guys, very unconvincingly I'm sure. But, I have decided to solve it. Everything that I have too much of and am not currently using will be gone by the new year. I have decided to have a get rid of all the crap in my life party. A radical notion I know. Actually I believe if it is commonly referred to as a garage sale. The catch is that I won't be charging. Nope it'll be a good old swapping party but without the swapping, more giving. I couldn't be more excited!

I thought I was finished..

I stopped writing because I though I had said everything I needed to say. I'm sort of at a stalemate. My job is wonderfully predicable and meaningless. I hate writing papers and reading reviews as I don't see anything earth shattering in writing about a preassigned topic. I snap at my parents and my sister. I desperately want to smack the lady in yoga who moans every time we do a particularly effective stretch. My eczema is driving me up the wall. I'm finding far too much solace in McDonalds. I dyed my hair brown just to escape the monotony of it all.

To make matters worse, everything I learn depresses me these days. Political science used to excite me. I loved the intricacies of power. I believed with absolute certainty in democracy, government regulated capitalism, a welfare state, and all those other good Canadian values, but now I'm not so sure. I get lots of questions, we discuss almost constantly the way the government's gone wrong the bad things Western states have done to the rest of the world. It's wildly depressing because, no matter how often we discuss what went wrong, we have yet o discuss what the answer is.

Maybe I'm not finished. Maybe I still have more questions to answer, I definitely have a rut to climb out of. Wish me luck!

I'll let you know.

shout out

I would like to take a moment to shout out to a fellow (totally awesome) Canadian. His name is Chuck Hughes and he is a chef (excuse me, cook) in Montreal. I have yet to eat at his restaurant but I LOVE his show. His cooking style seems to be the getting back to basics, unpretentious (with a few suprising twists) style that is just so in today. You don't have to dress up to eat there but you know you're going to be fed something pretty special. On top of that, the guy is totally smokin'. If you haven't heard of him I emplore you, check out his show, you won't be sorry.

Sometimes I don't even know what to do

I could really use some advice. Rarely do I have a problem with shit friends. I'm pretty selective with my friendships, if acquaintances don't become friends I drop them. As a result I'm close with my friends, value them and try to go the extra mile. It pisses me off when I don't get the same. I spent two months of summer hanging out with a girl I'll call Y every week. (More frequently then I see some older friends) I brought her to my club on Toronto Island, taught her how to cook stuff and we hung out with her friends and generally had fun. After she visited her bf in Cali for a week I haven't heard from her since aside for a quick phone call and a couple of fbook messages, just saying she was busy. So yeah its kind of the cranky bit of my general excitement about school, hot TAs, clubs, newspaper articles to write etc. I would let it go I think... but she has my favourite bronzer and its like the insult to injury. How would you solve this?

I'm sorry...

I fail... It's kind of hard to maintain this right now because of the way I feel when I come home from class. I feel tired, drained, frustrated, anxious and nervous. There's a lot riding on this year. It's my opportunity to make up for my screw-ups of first year and second year. On top of that I have the added stresses of paying off a ridiculous credit card debt, eating healthy and just making sure that I take good care of myself. I try to see my friends as regularly as possible and my family provides eternal comfort to me, but that doesn't take away from the fact that this is my make it or break it year.

My course-load is obscene but I'm excited to be in the process of wrapping it all up and getting out into the real world. I'm lifeguarding, working for my professor, trying to do pilates, yoga or swim every day and trying desperately hard not to get too bummed out about the weather. Most of September has been beautiful, which is certainly what we deserve after such a crummy summer but not today. Today is a hot chocolate and a good novel kind of day, not a 9:30 tutorial and a 2:30 lecture followed by a 7pm pilates class kind of day.

Just to add to my irritability, my dear friend (so I thought) who I spent most of June and July hanging out with is now too busy to even see me for coffee. I haven't seen her for two months and I now suspect that the reason for this is that she doesn't want to give me back the bronzer I lent her... People! It's enough to make you a miser.

Things will get better though. The sun will come out, the leaves will turn. I'll get to wear my chunky sweaters and knee high leather boots. It will be the season of soups and pies and stews. Thanksgiving is coming up in another couple of weeks. Followed by Halloween (inicidentally one of my least favourite holidays) a dreary month and a half, then the first snowfall, the hustle-bustle of Christmas shopping. A friendly family baking rivalry, Christmas decoration overkill and 4 or 5 Christmas cds on rotation. I can hardly wait.

the bird

Two days ago, a house finch smashed into our window. I yelled downstairs to my dad that this one was still alive so he came up and picked it up off our deck as it fluttered weakly. He cupped it in his hands then gave it to me since he had work to do but he didn't want it to die. "If you keep it in a warm dark place" (he meant my hands) "until it's ready to fly away, it'll probably live." I didn't really have anything pressing to do so I cupped my hands under his and he carefully slid his big hands out from underneath those teeny claws. I put one hand over it and I sat down on a deck chair holding this warm little scrap of life carefully in my hands, sheltering it from the world. I could feel it shivering and shaking, still in shock. I could feel its tiny beak against the tip of one of my fingers as it panted. I could feel its unbelievably soft little body producing an amazing amount of heat as I sat outside on that perfectly still morning while the sun shone and other birds sang and flitted through our garden. Finally, after a good ten minutes of this strange situation, the bird began to flutter and beat its wings wildly. Bemusedly, I opened my hands and watched it fly away, grateful that I got to hold that one little bird.

Incidentally, birds play a special role in my family. It is a love and a fascination that my father has always tried to share with us. He loves his little song birds, his thrushes, his downy woodpeckers and his hawks and ospreys and such. This is not the first time that I've saved a bird for him, nor will it be the last. I suspect that in imparting this love and admiration for his (excuse me) feathery friends, he has also imparted his deep respect for nature and his sense of stewardship towards the environment.