“There’s a trick to the Graceful Exit. It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, a relationship is over - and to let go. It means leaving what’s over without denying its validity or its past importance in our lives. It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry and that we are moving on, rather than out.”
— Ellen Goodman

I started out on diaryland before I came here. It was the perect outlet for an 18 year old kid. It was just like writing in an electronic journal and sometimes I would write and write and write. It lasted 4 years before I made the jump to here, but I trickled writing into it still up until this spring, less and less and less.

I came here because everyone was blogging by then. I loved it, the communtity, it became less of a diary and more of a rebounding board, a place to hear my thoughts echoed and then answered, people moved away and we kept in touch. But I come here less and less these days (I still read my friends page daily though) and it may be facebook keeping us on top of our every thoughts, or I may have just grown out of the sounding board I needed. My ideas are my own now and more and more I am looking for bits and pieces of my day to express, an idea, a picture, a thought, a conversation...

I discovered Tumblr, out of curiosity at first and then I had to try it out and made a "project" journal (that I think I will keep) and it was really exactly what I need to express me these days. Less is more, because I can't keep up to myself and really my thoughts have become my own.

I read the above quote last night and i decided to make the leap to another blog. This shouldn't seem so hard, but I felt it owed, some kind of sum up. I've put my life in livejournal's hands for 5 years now. More than I have given my current relationship. But it is time to make that graceful exit.

Thank you everyone.
I'll post my new blog address when I get there

"Memory will rust and erode into lists of all that you gave me:
a blanket, some matches, this pain in my chest,
the best parts of Lonely, duct-tape and soldered wires,
new words for old desires,
and every birthday card I threw away."

There are days that Left and Leaving feels old and tired to me, and there are days where it still resonates as deeply as the first time I heard it. I'm sure tonight it is the snow. The chai tea. Because I'm not really missing anyone, I mean I am missing whole hordes of people, the same people that are usually missing, and maybe in some ways more than usual, or maybe I am learning to retie ties.
But I am not acutely missing anyone.

And I seem to have found me. In learning to retie things I guess, and in a pair of Chuck Taylor's. For real.
And in a two small classrooms I've been in before.
And in the middle of the Iliad.
And in being "teacher" Erin
and Aunty Erin
and friend Erin. Friend Grooms(wo)man Erin ... <3

The snow is too early and yet I have no reason to leave the house.




And why should I when this little man came to me :) Those big crocodile tears when he had to leave just about killed me.

Back at University I feel like me again. I look at my long ridiculous upgrading road and groan, and feel a little apprehension about my plans, but I hope if I work hard enough I can get there.
I have a new pair of converse high tops and they make me feel 18, and that makes me feel alive. Friday night while I was stuck inside with a back to school cold, I watched videos of my 18 year old self and I loved her. I miss her. And I know she is in here somewhere. I feel her with me more now these days. I've shed off the people that made me cynical, the people that made me try to hard at being something, someone else.

The future is wide open, instead of letting that scare me I want to know it means nothing is locked down, nothing is for sure and that it means that I can still be anything, anyone I want to be.

I do wish there were more nights getting ready to loud music for nights out with nothing planned, but were all too far spread and "grown up" these days.

I heard the question "do you believe you suffer for your art?" on the CBC today... It struck me immediately in a million different ways. It hit the nerve of the artist, it hit the nerve of the girl who has loved artists, it hit... well, many of the nerves in my body...
and left me wondering... why? why do we "suffer" for our art? Why not take joy in our art? Why do we all have to be the Van Gogh's with the missing ears in order to believe we have accomplished something.

And it made me question the validity of caring about those that I am beginning to assume do choose to suffer. Choose so much so that they will not stay in one place, will not give any one person the chance to truly make them smile, because what then? How do you stay the tortured artist with a smile on your face?

I would like to smile every day, at something, at nothing, at other people's triumphs and the people that I have let in to my life that would like me to smile with them.

My Grandmother's fall made me see clearer. And while it may sound awful to someone standing outside of my bubble, made me smile more because I remembered why smiling is so important.

... and because I refuse to suffer for my art, because I choose to find the happy in the sad, I am able to make that poor suffering woman chained to her hospital bed by tubes and bruises, a broken wrist and a damaged head smile... and laugh, just for me.

And all that mattered a week ago seems so distant now that I wondered how it mattered at all.

He is coming home. Even if only for a visit.
That much is inevitable.
Whether we are the friends we are late at night through the internet over many boundary lines... or not friends at all (never friends at all) is up to him.

It doesn't matter in the end. It shouldn't matter.

I chose. But this is not what I chose. I'm sad that this is what he chose.

Or maybe... and this is the worst thought of all and it goes through my mind at least once every hour... he actually never cared at all... and I am having a war with myself and only myself.

I chose. And it shouldn't matter. And it does matter. And that makes me angriest of all.

I am my own worst enemy.

The last few days (in fact just after I discovered the surprise arrival time of the north), I've had that peaceful feeling of deju vu. Not the jarring one, the peaceful reassuring life is on the right course one.
So, if I've done this before, how did it end up then?

The countdown to my holidays are ON! 1 more week. I am discovering itunes u and getting really excited for two weeks of solid downtime.

Everything is going to work out right. I feel as though I am being tested to see if I will make the same wrong decisions from years ago.. Its funny how impulsively I feel the same, but realistically... I know how that all ended up, and I didn't like the outcome at all.

I'd like to think I am smarter now. Or at least... more awake.

your damned if you don't and damned if you do.
after the decision was reluctantly made to not go north. the north is coming here, only two weeks behind the old schedule.

maybe the answers all lie in social distortion. maybe that girl on the video tapes was right all along. maybe we grow old and forget how to live without compromise.

...cause 3 am is way past my bedtime these days.

I took the dogs for a walk. Separately. Together would have been a disaster. Odie wanted to run, so that was good, I had to at least work up a sweat keeping up to his little legs (not quite a run for me though).

I'm trying to be nicer to myself. I've been so negative lately, about everything and I'm pretty sure if I am just nicer to myself everything will be a little better.

I just soak up too much of the negative around me and i don't know how to let it all go at the end of the day.

Me and Lou Barlow are becoming reacquainted. In a good way, not a sad mournful way. This time I should really go see Dinosaur Jr.

You get all dressed up to go out and suddenly your expected to be grown up.
And we have all sorts of grown up problems staring us in the face almost daily.
So sometimes it is ok to escape the "grown ups" on account of a case of crowd anxiety.
Sometimes it is very hard to keep a grown up composure when "he doesn't feel good" (about the man who has seen almost every wing of RUH since January) doesn't pass as a worthy reason to go home.

And then the night is passed digging in a box of cd's that hasn't been opened in a year, most of the cd's having not been thought of in much longer.

And now listening to "A Fifth of Beethoven" from my summer backstage A Coomedy of Errors, I think we both have smiles on our faces again.

... and I can't think of a better way to have passed a Saturday night. I'm just not really interested in catching bouquets.

"I am here for a purpose and that purpose is to grow into a mountain, not to shrink to a grain of sand. Henceforth will I apply ALL my efforts to become the highest mountain of all and I will strain my potential until it cries for mercy."
Og Mandino
(1923 - 1996)

I just wrote a bunch of stuff that really amounted to the fact that I don't feel good and I want to be taken care of... That in fact I want to throw myself on the floor like a five year old until it is noticed that I need to be taken care of sometimes.

Who needs to be a grown up?

And who needs to be friends with people they don't even care about.

I quit.

Cause two hours of video chat with Mikayla is just like two hours at the roastery with Mikayla. I don't need to fill my life with people just because they are here.

This last week has got me to worrying that I will spend many hours of every day looking for loop holes.

... aside from that I have a hard time juxtaposing several worlds and times and even loves converging on themselves in one place. And yet it happens more than you would think.

I liked being part of the big top tonight, in my own small little way.

What if the best me I'll ever be is this one? I want to want again, to want so badly that my heart breaks all over the place.

Today was a grand adventure kind of day. I walked to my advising appointment with Pam, not really knowing how long the walk would take me. I was feeling exhalted when I had finished crossing the train bridge only 15 minutes after I had left my house and then momentarly panicked 10 minutes later when i was completely lost in Innovation place.
and then I got less severely lost on the way back.

... and it was a wonderful adventure of finding hidden ponds and pathways and it just felt good...

and everything there after just felt good.

walking through a little clearing and discovering campus was like being pulled from the water and breathing again. I felt so safe inside that circle.

Now to devise an immediate plan to never have to leave again.

The north is also alive and well, and I feel a little better about it just knowing that it is.

If I spend less time trying to fit the mold of being a grown up I might go out and find the times I feel like I've lost.

I miss the nights where I would leave the house not expecting a thing and finding adventures and memories all the same.

"see those kids there, thats what I was like... you know they might be our age."
"Do you think we can get back there? I mean... if there our age..."

Tonight was what summer should be.

Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me...

It turns out that after one video chat, one long distance phone call, one walk with good company and good tea and one continuation of video chat makes me feel good again.

Now if only I could get the story burning and seething in my head out of my head and onto paper... even though it had nothing to do with all the mean and angry thoughts.

or did it have everything to do with them?

I feel like a revolving door.
Little miss Brittany graduated this week and I didn't expect to feel my heart breaking like this. She's off to discover the world.

... and I'm here, in my revolving door.

Most days I'm very content and happy to be here, but this week for whatever reason I have hated every day and have just felt mean. I have had mean thoughts about just about every person I've encountered.

I worry that I'm just not meant to see all of the things I want to see in this lifetime.

I'm sure a phone date with Mikayla will help.
and fireworks with Curtis ...

And a phone call to Chrissy would be loveliest of all.

*sigh*

So Ryan and I are back together. But really I'm just trying not to make a big deal of it. In fact its a whole lot easier to just show up with him now and let people come to there own conclusions.

I'm probably the biggest idiot ever, but I went for a long walk with someone who's opinion I hold in high regard on Friday night, and he helped confirm that I may still be an idiot, but sometimes our hearts win anyway, and that thats ok.

I just hope I'm not here in another year regretting everything.
... and I won't be, as long as I keep on living my life, just with him in it.

I tried to experiment today and went to a coffee shop with my writing to see if stuff would happen there that won't seem to happen here. I think it worked. Maybe I will be spending more time in coffee shops this summer. If nothing comes out of it at least I will have had the romantic notion of writing a play in a coffee shop. And if something does come out of it I will have a play and the romantic notion of writing a play in a coffee shop.

In the coffee shop was a very very young girl, holding her baby. We both caught each other watching each other and when her baby toddled over to me I made sure to smile.
Babies with babies

I remembered to be thankful that while i still have no idea where I'm going in life... I can still go wherever I want.

I started doing Yoga tonight! Finally after years of procrastination. I was pretty irratable all day and even more so when I tried to find a yoga mat ALL afternoon. I came to the realization that first of all, there must be way too many people that own a lot of yoga gear to not do yoga, cause it sure is easy to find all the apparel, but not so much the mat...
In fact I own a lot of yoga pants myself... so maybe I should check those negative thoughts at the door.
The second thing is... why do all yoga mats come in either pink or purple?? I realize its just a mat. I realize it shouldn't matter what color it is in the end... But do I have to be a girly girly girl just to buy a mat that makes me smile when I unroll it? I went with purple in the end... and truthfully probably made the wrong choice in mat altogether because it might just be a little too thin and my hands slid all over the place in downward dog.

I's going to try flipping it and using the other side, but probably when i get paid I will just have to suck it up and buy a better, more expensive mat... that is hopefully a nice neutral calming color.

But after yoga I felt like a million bucks... Like that jelloey wonderful after sex kind of a million bucks...

Its safe to bet between yoga and swimming this YWCA membership is going to be the best expense I ever have.

The show is over and its fascinating how ending a show feels so similiar to a break up. I woke up feeling a little empty this afternoon. But at the same time I was able to see the world a little differently than before.
I opened this show with a broken heart, and by the end, it felt that that heart had been stitched back together. Maybe not healed, but at least mended.