A weekend of w@ndering
For the first time in several years on a non-holiday weekend during the school year, I am not working. My job in Media Relations for UBC Okanagan Varsity Athletics, which has been a large part of my weekends during university, has finished after 3 years. I feel strange not proofreading a weekend preview for the varsity soccer, basketball or volleyball teams. It seems unusual not conducting an interview with a team coach or quickly editing a player photo before writing a game recap at 10 PM on a Saturday night.
The reason my university job has finished is because I'm not enrolled in enough courses to continue my job. That may seem trivial, but it's the rules. UBC Okanagan requires at least three courses per semester, and I only need two more courses to complete my undergraduate degree in psychology with a Spanish minor. As this season of being an undergraduate university student draws nearer to a close, I am doing some self-reflection. My mind is now w@ndering: wandering and wondering.
I've badly needed to deal with the "clutter" in my life, both literally and metaphorically. I'm currently sorting through clothes and giving away stuff that I don't wear to Value Village or somewhere similar. I see my old Safeway apron and Wal-Mart vest, the last remnants of work attire from my first two "real" jobs at age 15 and 16. I flash back briefly to being the shy, clumsy and naïve teen with a victim mentality. How far I've come in 11 years, I think to myself as I decide to finally get rid of them and leave that portion of the past behind for good.
Next I come across a custom T-Shirt that I made with markers and glitter pens as a 19-year-old youth leader at one of Sun-West Christian Fellowship's high school gym nights. I flash back to comparing myself to a youth leader named Dan Bold, a younger guy who'd hit the gym pretty hard in the last few years and was looking incredible. I remember resolving to keep the T-Shirt I'd made until the outline of my body filled it out and made me look as good as he did wearing his T-Shirt. I try it on, 7 years later, and find I fill it out much better than the self-loathing 19-year-old me did, but the body image issues I had then still remain. I opt to keep the T-Shirt, determined to make my original goal and kill the body image monster that remains.
I see the pile of National Scrabble Championship T-Shirts that have amassed over the last 7 years. Scrabble has been an amazing place of refuge from an often difficult set of life circumstances. I see the black New Orleans 2004 T-Shirt, a memory of the very first NSC that I ever attended. It represents for me the excitement of playing against Scrabble's best for the first time, including the memory of taking on elite expert player Joey Mallick in Round 1 and almost beating him! I want Scrabble to get back to the place where it was all about the joy of playing and nothing else. New Orleans was the perfect symbol of that, hence I opt to keep the New Orleans T-Shirt and send the rest to the giveaway pile.
Mom shouts up the stairs to remind me that my younger brother is modeling in Kelowna's Bridal Show in an hour. That's enough w@ndering for now. Time to shift back to the present and move forward...
The reason my university job has finished is because I'm not enrolled in enough courses to continue my job. That may seem trivial, but it's the rules. UBC Okanagan requires at least three courses per semester, and I only need two more courses to complete my undergraduate degree in psychology with a Spanish minor. As this season of being an undergraduate university student draws nearer to a close, I am doing some self-reflection. My mind is now w@ndering: wandering and wondering.
I've badly needed to deal with the "clutter" in my life, both literally and metaphorically. I'm currently sorting through clothes and giving away stuff that I don't wear to Value Village or somewhere similar. I see my old Safeway apron and Wal-Mart vest, the last remnants of work attire from my first two "real" jobs at age 15 and 16. I flash back briefly to being the shy, clumsy and naïve teen with a victim mentality. How far I've come in 11 years, I think to myself as I decide to finally get rid of them and leave that portion of the past behind for good.
Next I come across a custom T-Shirt that I made with markers and glitter pens as a 19-year-old youth leader at one of Sun-West Christian Fellowship's high school gym nights. I flash back to comparing myself to a youth leader named Dan Bold, a younger guy who'd hit the gym pretty hard in the last few years and was looking incredible. I remember resolving to keep the T-Shirt I'd made until the outline of my body filled it out and made me look as good as he did wearing his T-Shirt. I try it on, 7 years later, and find I fill it out much better than the self-loathing 19-year-old me did, but the body image issues I had then still remain. I opt to keep the T-Shirt, determined to make my original goal and kill the body image monster that remains.
I see the pile of National Scrabble Championship T-Shirts that have amassed over the last 7 years. Scrabble has been an amazing place of refuge from an often difficult set of life circumstances. I see the black New Orleans 2004 T-Shirt, a memory of the very first NSC that I ever attended. It represents for me the excitement of playing against Scrabble's best for the first time, including the memory of taking on elite expert player Joey Mallick in Round 1 and almost beating him! I want Scrabble to get back to the place where it was all about the joy of playing and nothing else. New Orleans was the perfect symbol of that, hence I opt to keep the New Orleans T-Shirt and send the rest to the giveaway pile.
Mom shouts up the stairs to remind me that my younger brother is modeling in Kelowna's Bridal Show in an hour. That's enough w@ndering for now. Time to shift back to the present and move forward...