Share Your World 2015 – Week 11

It’s Share Your World again! Here are Cee’s questions for this week…

List 2 things you have to be happy about?

1. I’m feeling better than I was. At this time last year, my mental state was getting pretty bad. Now, I can still feel the darkness with me. I know it is there, just out of my line of sight, waiting for any sign of weakness. I am trying to fight it. It’s hard, but I have some hope. Hope that things will be better one day. I don’t know when, or how. I just have hope. That keeps the darkness at bay, for now.
2. I am enjoying my artsy stuff. At this time last year, I was forcing myself to draw because I needed to find something to enjoy and do something besides work. Now, it comes naturally. I look forward to getting my supplies out and creating something, however good or bad it may be.

Do you prefer ketchup or mustard or mayonnaise?  

It depends what I’m putting it on. Ketchup is for regular french fries and tourtiere (meat pie…a Canadian thing). Mustard is for sausages and deli sandwiches (I like honey mustard or Dijon). Both can go on hamburgers. Mayo is just ick. I’m not sure if it is the taste, or the colour I don’t like. Maybe both.

If you were to paint a picture of your childhood, what colors would you use?

I would use basic colours, the kind that would come in a kid’s finger paint set. Probably red, blue, yellow and green. I had a good childhood, an innocent one. I had my family and friends. I learned to read, tie my shoes and ride my bike. I coloured on the walls, scrapped my knees and got sent to my room for being bad. I had a typical childhood, I did everything a kid was supposed to do. For that, I will be forever grateful. I was a serious kid and often had to be reminded to smile. I’m not sure why. I don’t remember what went on in my head as a kid. That’s just the way I was.

Do you prefer a bath or shower?

Shower! It is fastest. There are so many other things I need to do/would rather do.

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

Last Week: My sister was in town, a bunch of us went out to the Ritz for afternoon tea. It was to celebrate her getting engaged. It was fun to dress up a bit and do something out of the ordinary. The Ritz was quite fancy. They had beautiful chandeliers and a Cinderella staircase. Even the tea nibbles were fancy.

This Week: I am having a really hard time thinking of anything. All I can think of is all the work I have to get done in the next few days. Let’s go with St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. The parade is this coming weekend and my family, cousins and all, usually go together to watch.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day Everyone!!

Share Your World 2014 – Week 30

This is the Share Your World Challenge. If you missed the last couple of weeks, more information can be found at Cee’s Photography. Essentially, four questions are asked every week and you have to answer them. Simple and fun! (Thanks Cee!)

 

List 2 things you have to be happy about.

1. I’m on vacation!! It is a much needed vacation and a big relief. I’m not as happy as I should be though…I have so much work to do, I feel guilty to be taking vacation. I might end up doing some work while I am off.

2. I just finished a sketchbook for the first time ever! Usually they get lost, destroyed or I lose interest in drawing for a few years and feel the need to start over. I think having the blog has really helped me keep up with it.

List at least 2 things in nature you find most beautiful.

Just two?! That’s hard!!

1. The Pacific Ocean. I’ve seen the Atlantic many times, but this past winter was the first time I saw the Pacific. I was hiking along a trail on the California coast outside San Fransisco. Wow! It was impressive. The waves were huge! It was the perfect display of how powerful  Mother Nature can be. The colour of the water was gorgeous too, such a unique shade of turquoise. I’m sure this doesn’t have much of a wow-factor if you live near the Pacific, but to someone who is used to the dark waters of the Atlantic, it is definitely a wow! Even this photo (from Google Images) doesn’t do it justice.

2. Sharks. Some of you are probably thinking “What?!”. Yes, they can be scary and I wouldn’t want to meet one face to face, but it depends on your definition of “beautiful”. I define it as anything that pleases you senses or mind. Sharks please my mind. The idea of a species surviving from a time before the dinosaurs and with evolving so little is truly amazing. Check out the photo (Google images) below. You can’t tell me it’s not kind of cute. The Shark is even smiling!

Note: later found out photo was taken by Andrew Fox and Google had cropped off the watermark.

Most of you would still probably prefer this though….

Show us a 2 of your favorite photographs. Explain why they are your favorite. If you are not a photographer (serious or otherwise), think of a two favorite scenes in your life and tell us about them.

This is a tough one. Not only am I not a photographer, but most of my favourite pictures have me in them. My absolute favourite photo is one of my close family (minus one person, my aunt) on Christmas Eve about ten years ago. I have the photo in my scrapbook. I’m not sure if I want to post it. I’m kind of nervous about posting pictures that I am in. I guess it’s kind of blurry, so you can’t really see me, whatever, here it is.

Anyway, we are at my cousin’s place for Christmas Eve and we are all seated around the sofa smiling and laughing. I’m wearing a Santa Claus hat. My mom and sister are looking at each other and laughing about something. My Dad and I are doing the same and my Gran is on the end of the couch kissing my cousin’s golden retriever, Teddy. The photo just exudes happiness. It is one of the last photos I have of all of us together. It reminds me of happier, simpler times…before we lost Gran and before I was diagnosed.

The second photograph is a scene I have A LOT of pictures of. It’s a sunset over the lake at a resort my family used to go to every summer. The best sunsets I’ve ever seen were at that resort. Seeing this photo reminds me of childhood, old friends and happy family memories. It’s the kind of photo that gives you that prickly feeling behind your eyes and nose whenever you see it.

List 2 of your best personality traits.

1. Generosity. I think it’s important to be considerate of others, to help others and pay it forward. It’s also a lot of fun to give/make presents!

2. Hard worker. I think (I hope) this makes me valuable to other people. No matter what it is, work, hobbies, relationships…I give it my all. I may get tired, but I keep trying.

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

Last Week: I lost weight. I haven’t been weighing myself or measuring, but I’ve noticed my clothes are looser and I feel better. Yay Insanity Workouts!!

This week: Vacation.

Self-esteem Challenge: Day 2

This blog challenge was developed by betterthandarkchocolate.tumblr.com. If you missed the introduction or want to see a summary of all the questions, go here.

Day 2:
A physical feature you like.
List 5 things that make you smile or happy.

Physical feature I like: My hair. Like I said in the last post, it’s a unique colour, healthy and for the most part, behaves itself.

5 things that make me smile or happy…I’m going to define “things” as non-living, so that rules out family, friends and pets.

1. Planning a Vacation. It is always nice to have that anticipatory excitement to get you through the day. I don’t plan my vacations with the hour to hour details, but I do some research on where I’m going and what I want to do/see while I’m there. I enjoy learning about new places too. I spent a week or so planning my 30th birthday trip after I found out we wouldn’t be able to do a trip. Even though I’m not going, planning what I would have done was fun. I don’t remember having to fight my depression that week.
   

   I wanted to go snorkeling off the cliffs in Negril, Jamaica

2. Extra Time. I am much less stressed when I have time to do the things I need to do and some of the things I want to do. Knowing that I get an extra hour when we turn the clocks back every fall makes me smile.
   

   sloppy experiment

3. Success. Setting a goal and achieving it makes me happy. I will be happy if I get my Ph.D. It doesn’t have to be that big though. Little successes can help too, if I remember to focus on them. For example, getting my eyeliner straight if I decide to wear it or completing my running route in less time.
4. An excuse to eat cake. I love, love, LOVE cake and I feel much less guilty for eating it when there’s a reason for it. Birthdays are the best reason, how can you say no to birthday cake? Then there are things like retirement parties, baptisms, and bake sales for a good cause. My dad even turned break-ups as an excuse to eat cake. The first time my now-hubby and I broke up, my Dad bought me a cake that said on it “Another one bites the dust”. Good Ol’ break-up cake, lol. 🙂
5. Jeans that fit. If you’ve ever gone looking for a new pair of jeans, tried on dozens and then got that one pair that slides on like it was made for you, then you’ll know what I mean. I’ve got that big hips/butt, small waist problem that causes jeans to either get stuck mid thigh or have a horrendous gap in the back at the waist. Finding jeans that do fit right without having to wear a belt is the clouds parting and the angels singing kind of a moment.

Discounting the positive

I am so guilty of this. I never realize I am doing it until I look back on the situation months later. When I say discounting the positive, I don’t mean just negative thinking. When you have depression it’s just natural to look on the negative side of everything. That kind of thinking is hard to reverse in of itself, but discounting the positive is taking it one step further. When your experience contradicts your negative outlook, you go as far as to discredit the good that’s happening by saying it doesn’t count.

I’m sure I do this regularly for little things, but when I catch myself having done it for a big thing, I get annoyed with myself. Last summer I found out that I won a fellowship I applied for. It was from the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB). I should have patted myself on the back. A national agency liked my research proposal enough to fund it. I should have taken advantage of that moment and celebrated it. It’s not an everyday occurrence that you get funded, especially in my field. But no, not me, I didn’t celebrate. I said to myself, I guess no one else applied this year and that’s why I got it. *face palm* I even waited a few weeks to tell my supervisor the news. She was wondering why I wasn’t doing the happy dance all over the place.

I expected not to get the fellowship, so when I did, I told myself it doesn’t count because no one else applied. In doing that, I completely disregarded the good in the situation taking away the potential happiness it could have given me. Instead, I felt sorry for myself being their only choice. Now that I look back, what was I thinking?! First of all, I have no idea who applied and second, who cares. If my research proposal wasn’t good they wouldn’t have given me the fellowship. It’s not like these nonprofits just throw money at people.

So now, almost eight months later, I will be a little proud of myself. I’ll celebrate by putting another check mark in the I’m not such a loser after all box. It’s never too late to be happy about something. It doesn’t have to be something big-ish like this either. The small victories count too. I have been told at the end of everyday, I should take inventory and write down something good that happened, no matter how small. I have been trying to remember to do this and it does help a little. Today, I got to sleep past 7am. I’m going to relish in that for a little while.