I’m back into the me I re-invented on January 1st of this year. That girl was going to not care about school grades (so much); she was going to learn to prepare a different food dish every other week (or as often as she bought the requisite groceries/ingredients). She was going to do yoga three times a week, read a book a month and light lavender-scented candles during her baths. 2006 me is essentially Zen me. Well, about February I began caring about grades again after nervously wondering what would actually happen if I did get put on academic probation or –worse—kicked out of journalism school. I actually have stuck to my culinary expansion vow, and so far my favourite dish to prepare is jerk chicken with pineapple salsa. Tonight I am making vegetable quesadillas from Jamie Oliver’s cookbook. I haven’t done yoga in the longest time, justifying to myself that if I stretch after each run, I am essentially negating the reason to do yoga. I am still in the middle of reading the book I started at the beginning of summer, and my wine tasting guide sits with a bookmark halfway though on my bedside table, as it has since, uh, January. Baths were also hard to come by in my apartment, as it was rare to have enough hot water pour through the tap to have an enjoyable soak.
Since I vowed all those Zen resolutions at the year’s beginning, I like to think I have tried to keep most. But now, as summer nears an end, the heat wave ends, summer specials at the mall end and the summer fruits are sparse at the market, I realize, again, that time goes by with or without me. So, I took a fabulously long weekend, stopped worrying about the money I didn’t have, the pressing deadlines hanging over my head, the seeming urgency to find a wedding place and reception and have decided, once again, to just be Zen about it.
I was goofy with my little sister during out movie date, in which we watched 1994’s Matilda, wearing mud masks and sipping blue Gatorade from martini glasses. I thoroughly enjoyed each minute of my movie date with fiancé last night (saw Talladega Nights, and I feel it is due more credit than it may receive), I savoured the feeling of my head on his shoulder, our laughs and looks afterwards, and the calm that spread over my chest as I lay in bed afterwards with a lavender candle burning. It was a feeling I hadn’t met with for weeks.
After a week’s break I went for a run again today, made a grocery list, booked a wedding date and church (November 2007), and have managed still to breathe in and out without a pressing feeling of anxiety over my chest. It’s nice!