I nearly floated away but hi hey hello. Here I am sticking with that new Year’s resolution of mine.
I just got back from a week and a half in Naples, Florida. I had never been before and it was such a nice trip. Florida definitely gets a fairly negative rep., but I very much enjoyed it. Granted, Naples is a super duper rich area (I had no idea!), but beyond the mansions and brick streets, and perfectly curated gardens was the west facing ocean! The ocean is so beautiful and calming and can make any bad day good again. It’s so peaceful to look at and simply by sitting on the beach doing absolutely nothing, time is being well spent. I think one day I’ll send up near the beach. Not today, or tomorrow, or truthfully anytime soon as my U.S. visa/Greencard keeps me tied to New York City (and i’m not done with the city yet), but one day.
I have such a bad habit of always thinking “I’m not busy at all,” but have come to realize I kinda sorta maybe am. This past weekend was busy with a virtual baby shower I threw, a product management workshop I did on Sunday, flying back to NY, a doctor’s appointment etc. etc.
My apartment is like 80% clean. Like, it’s not super messy or gross, but there are things laying around I want to put away or clean and I just don’t. It just stays in this constant state of nearly really clean. Maybe after I’m done this post I’ll actually clean it.
“Do you love where you live?” I think about this question a lot. I find most Americans/people will eventually move back home, but as my home is a across a border (and I’m 100% going to stay in the states), I wonder where I’ll end up. My fear is ending up in limbo. A suburb or in-between area - where you can’t actually frequently go to the city, or walk/see a beach/mountains. I want to be *in* a city, or way out by a beach or mountains. This is the gift that I personally find most Americans take so much for granted. It’s so cheesy to say the states is the land of opportunity, but I am awe of how many cities Americans can choose to live in. And cities with enormous variations in temperature, climate and scenery, and cost. I love Canada, but all the cities are hugging the U.S. border (for warmth) and there are just so few options. It also really bothers me that to vacation in Canada (at least Ontario) you have to move North - where it’s colder! I’m rambling a bit now, but I find this so amazing and such a shame Americans don’t really realize how lucky they are.
What else is new? My scale is broken and it occurred to me today how I haven’t really cared about that. Wild. I will replace it soon, but I used to weigh myself five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred times a day, so what. a. change.
My mom comes to visit me soon in NY! So excited - we’re heading to Broadway to see Hamilton, Swan Lake the Ballet, and the view Vanderbilt view spot - assuming covid doesn’t ruin everything again.
There is sooooo much going on at work right now it’s crazy. Sometimes I feel paralyzed from everything going and like I can’t get anything done. But today I have someone a 10% raise which is my favourite part of the job as she deserved it so much, and I love moments like that.
This morning I got a pap test. My first pap test in one thousand moons. Ridiculous. If you haven’t got a pap smear in the past three years please go and do it - it was SO EASY. While she was all up in my hoo-ha I thought, “Huh. I can’t believe someone chose this as their career path” - what a job.
What TV shows are y’all watching recently? I need new shows. I think i’ll watch Cheer’s Season 2 tonight. No, wait - I must clean!
Okay, I’ll be back soon to post photo collages of Florida - especially as my nephew is so chunky he deserves an award. But until then, catch y’all on Instagram.
I am home - in New York - hurrah! In my cozy apartment which I love very much. The place is a mess, I’m functioning on way too little sleep, my plants appear to have died while I was home for the Holidays, and I have a work and personal to-do list which feels overwhelming, but I’m so grateful and happy to be home.
When I’m in Canada I feel like I hit pause on my own life. Like I step into my sister and family’s lives and exist in a weird state of pause. I’m not too sure how to explain it, but every-time I return to the city I feel a sense of peace, like it’s exactly where I’m supposed to be.
Last night my plane was early flying into LaGuardia so it circled Manhattan and my heart went ka-boom looking out the window. I have an overwhelming sense of happiness here. This morning I walked around the West Village after a night of snow (lots of snow pics in my Instagram stories) and appreciated every detail I saw.
But… I think I’m going to move soon. Well, let me re-state that, I have to move soon. I need and want more space. I want a two bedroom apartment as all signs point to I will be working-from-home forever, and I also have big new little plans on my horizon, which means a fourth floor walk-up won’t soon cut it. (Not to mention the insane construction next door.)
As I’m Canadian and working towards my Greencard I have to stay in New York City (or the surrounding area) so the question is, where do I move? If I had a magic wand and a lot more money, I’d stay in my area and move to a better apartment, but as we’re talking about $7,000/month rent, lol, that won’t be happening.
Lots of friends (and my own logic) are telling me to move to Brooklyn, NY, but I feel so disconnected from Brooklyn. To me that would be like moving to Denver or Seattle… somewhere brand new. Somewhere with no community or close friends or places to walk (although I know this is actually not true).
With all the change on my horizon I think moving to a new city will be too much - too overwhelming, so I’ve become obsessed with looking for two bedrooms in Manhattan. From downtown to the upper east or west sides. My requirements are this: two bedrooms, washer-dryer in unit, elevator (or floor 2 or lower), a normal layout, and, of course… a decent budget.
But ohmygosh it’s slim-pickings out there. Manhattan is notoriously challenging to find real estate in and move, but I’m starting to feel slightly stressed about where I’ll end up.
Some days I even pop into Charleston real-estate, or Florida, or Boston… but then am pulled back to NY because of my green card requirements. So yea, we shall see, but for now I am soaking in time in my little apartment I love dearly.
This is a challenging post to write, as everyone has an opinion on it, and before I get into my point, I will acknowledge that millions of folks have been affected by covid in immeasurable ways, which is way worse than the below.
In the early days of the pandemic I told my sister that I thought single women 35 to 40ish were going to get screwed the most by the pause on life from the lockdowns. Today, I still somewhat believe this (although I also have a serious soft spot for the kids isolated during this time (Ontario is headed into yet another lockdown with schools closed starting tomorrow), the high school and college kids missing out on those epic years, and elderly people not seeing their loved ones).
Time is a scarce resource in general, but for women who know they want kids, every passing year of missed opportunities feels like it has a greater negative impact. Life paused for nearly two years, especially in the dating world, and it really sucked. I wanted those years… needed them.
I actually still tried to date during the last two years as I was so conscious of time slipping away, but, well, it was way harder. My first pandemic date started off like a movie, “let’s meet under the Washington Square Park Arch” at 6pm and go for a bike ride.” Perfect. When I showed up he was wearing a full gas mask, it was his first time leaving his house in 53 days, and he was so paranoid we could never get close enough to chat. Ummm… okay.
I was actually speaking to a friend about this recently; about how women in their 30s are broken into categories; those who don’t want kids, those who know they want them, and then those who are in limbo - if it happens, it happens. I am in the middle category; I know I want kids. I also greatly envy women who confidently do not want children.
I don’t know how I know I want them, but I just do. If i had to explain it I’d say I have an overwhelming sense that it’s a major experience of life and one I don’t want to miss out on. One that i am confident would leave my life feeling unfulfilled if i don’t do it. I have a (biological, I assume) desire to be pregnant, breast feed, experience delivery, and the love I have for my nieces and nephew sometimes hurts, so I want to experience it for myself with my own kids - because whoa, it must be so crazy and beautiful and amazing.
But for those women, like myself, in that middle category - who want kids, but haven’t met someone yet - well, the pandemic pause was horrible. I felt robbed of time and life and experiences. Robbed of potential moments and nights out and cupid’s arrow having a shot in hell at hitting me.
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I’m going to call this post “Part I” as I have a whole other line of thought that goes with “Part II,” but I’ll save that for another day.
Let’s add some colour to my blog as walls of text aren’t fun to scroll past.
Whenever I’m bored (usually on planes, trains or automobiles) I create collages and then they usually sit on my phone and are never viewed again. But wait! Here they are… a rough visual timeline of my 2021. It’s impossible to capture all the friends and moments and life, but here’s my attempt
January
Work from home
Empty New York
Lots of walks
February
pretty pretty snow in NYC
March
Fostered dogs
April
Flowers and drinks and vaccinated
Chess (lots and lots of chess… throughout the year, actually)
May
Don’t remember much
June
Iceland (a collage of collages!)
Volcano
Birthdays, parties, rain in New York
July
Boston
Rhode Island
Grand Bend, Ontario
Best friend’s wedding
Lake Superior Road trip with friends
cottage with the family
August
More cottage/being outside
Chicago weekend with besties
September
Toronto trip home to renew my viisa
Friendssss
New York
Livin’
SLT
October
Haloween
Canadian Thanksgiving
Construction
Pretty leaves
Ballet & Broadways (Swan Lake, Hamilton, Come from Away, Company)
It’s day three of consistent posting - hurrah, look at me! I feel like the previous two posts have been a bit long, so let’s switch it up shall we?
I am writing this post to you from Toronto where I headed home for Christmas. I usually spend my time at my sister’s place, but tonight I am in my old high school bedroom at my parent’s place which is a bit of a mind f*ck for me and makes me feel very behind in life. I love elements of heading home for the holidays, but I always feel like I hit pause on my actual life in New York when I do.
In 2018 I bought a small apartment in Toronto (woo!) which I now rent out to a lovely couple. I drove past it yesterday just to take a peak and suddenly decided that a future life goal of mine (when the mortgage gets wayyyy down) will be to furnish it as my Toronto go-to-spot for when I come home (and probably airbnb it out at other times) . As a side but related note, my mortgage rate is 3.49% which makes me want to cry. It was a fixed 5 year, and now I feel like I’m just throwing money at the bank. Pre-pandemic the place nearly paid for itself, but I dropped the tenant’s rent 20% during the pandemic, so now I lose roughly $700 a month (including maintenance fees, taxes, principal, interest) which is too bad, but I’m still happy I own it.
Today I went to a beautiful Birth Blessing Ceremony for my dear friend Sarah who’s due at the end of the month. It was such a wonderful hour of women blessing her and her future baby, and if you’re looking for an alternative to a baby shower, I would highly recommend one
My mom is coming to NY in February and we’re going to see Hamilton and Swan Lake - I’m so so soooo excited to have her back in New York for a bit, but I’m also worried about covid…
After over two weeks off, tomorrow I head back to work and I genuinely looking forward to it. A few hours ago I was rummaging through old posts from years past looking for a photo, and came across this post on my OG blog, heyliz, and it was crazy to read posts about how much I wanted to escape the finance world. I also stumbled across this “secret/anonymous” blog, My Skinny Therapist, about when I wrote about doing therapy.
Like I said in a previous post, stepping back into your own thoughts is weird. I don’t actually think humans are meant to remember and document everything at the clarity and consistency that we can; our memories fade for a reason.
This was a very random post! Tomorrow, let’s do some photos.
I don’t know how much you know. Or perhaps what you’d care to know. Or more importantly what I want to tell you.
I guess there’s a lot and not much to share all at the same time. If you’ve followed along for awhile you’ll know me fairly well, and truthfully I don’t think too much has changed since I was consistently writing here.
My life has settled into this comfortable rhythm of a single-something woman in New York City. I stay in more, have less but higher quality friendships, travel when I can (pandemic and all), am doing very well in my career, head to broadways and ballets and evenings out often, and return home to Canada to see family frequently..
But I think this is is why I’m back in this space. The lack of my life advancing has scared me. Does scare me. Sometimes I think the scariest thing of all is when there is no change in my life; I’m feeling this feeling strongly lately. My photo albums and summers and winters and apartment photos are on repeat. Even gorgeous dinners out in the West Village, or walking the streets alone in New York I find myself asking,is this really it?
The elephant, of course, in this post is that I’m single. Still single. After all these years, so I think I’m just tired of always being alone, y’know?
I think most people naturally advance move to another phase in life when they meet someone and/or have kids. But when you’re single you sit fairly still in the phases of life. I’ve even noticed the average age of my friend groups dropping as I stay in the going-out-seeing-doing-and-eating phase, as friends my age move to the family one. And this would all be fine and dandy and even fabulous if it’s what I wanted, but I don’t. I want more. I’m ready to move out of this current phase that is on repeat.
Last year I got really into “manifestation,” which is essentially a fancy way of saying “constantly think about your goals.” I quickly learnt that I’m actually very good at it. I’m very good at obsessing and thinking and believing and setting goals for myself - from travel to money to friendships to career moves to my apartment in New York City which I so clearly imagined for myself when I live in Toronto. It’s remarkable, really. How thinking about something consistently will adjust your behaviour and decisions to work towards whatever it is that you’re thinking about and then one day, poof, you’ll have it.
Well… I’ve never ever been able to obsess or think or believe or imagine a partner or family for myself. It’s always been this weird mental block for me. Even when I was writing out manifestation things each day, I struggled to write any to do with love. I once wrote out the words (actually, many many times) “I deserve the love I want” and I just stared at them, not quite believing them.
Today I don’t know if I do. I want to believe it, and sometimes do, but other days just can’t fathom someone really liking me and vice versa.
I also often feel like I’m dramatically overthinking being single - there’s so much chance and luck and pure randomness involved in it all, and in a world where men statistically are taking a back seat, I don’t think my single status is all because of me, but rather this place of transition society is finding itself in.
In 2021 I signed up for a matchmaker service and after hearing about who I am, the women who worked there said firmly, “I want to be honest with you, only about 30% of men will like you. You’re too successful for most of them. They tell me they want to date the nurse, not the doctor.” A recent podcast I listened to shared that women look for two things in a partner - competence and patience, while men’s ultimate trait they look for is appearance well beyond anything else. I’m not mad or angry about any of this, I think it’s reality and probably feeds back into our biology a bit. But I am indeed looking for competence, which translates into many things, and I’m sure I’ll get eye rolls for this, but the last guy I went on a date with in NYC hadn’t had a job in seven years… so, umm, yea.
I’m going into an unintentional rabbit hole right now, which wasn’t my intention of this post, but this is all to say I feel very consistent in my life right now. It’s a very good life which I’m immensely thankful for, but i’m just feeling like the years are groundhog years, and I’m very ready - mentally, emotionally, financially - to move into another phase, so yup.. there’s a lot on my mind lately… because meeting someone is only within your control to a degree, but some other things aren’t… we shall see.
Hello you. It’s me, Liz. Are you still there? It’s January 1st, 2022. Can you believe it? For whatever reason as the clock struck 1am I came to this blog and read all my New Years posts from years past.
It was weird doing that. Like stepping back into my mind and soul for a brief moment in time. I got to re-read all my self-deprecating (annoying!) posts about goals and weight and life and my great concern of turning 25. But it was also neat to see my life advance and to remind myself that once upon a time I did live quite a bustling and lively life.
Isn’t life and its phases wild? A few days ago I walked past the elevators I had once used nearly every single day for four years for work, an alleyway I had once made out with a guy in, the bar I spent many late nights and brunches losing track of time with friends in, a park where I sat on a bench and cried about some guy to my sister, or the corner I called my mom from to tell her I was moving to Detroit, and then two years later, New York City.
Toronto is filled with memories of my twenties. Ghosts of myself and my past. Memories of another time and phase and person. I imagine this happens to everyone. Time ticks on and all your thousands and thousands of incremental decisions advance you forward and then one day you’re older and wiser and living a completely different life than you once were.
Today I live in New York City and today I am 37.
Did you know that?
I don’t really mention my age anymore to people; at work, on Instagram, to my friends. I’m one of those woman now. Sometimes I even lie about it. But here I am, in 2022 at 37 years of age, and I am good. Really f*cking good. Despite the pandemic and being single and still over weight thing, I am good.
About twelve hours ago I wrote on my Instagram my purposeful lack of resolutions for 2022, but as I type this I do actually want to set one: to write more in this space.
I miss writing and getting things out there. Unraveling my thoughts and using words to help me solve my own questions. I genuinely love taking photos and truthfully with or without publicly blogging I write a lot regardless, but it’s more fun to share my words and thoughts and photos with you. And thus I want to try to find the momentum of posting again in this space as I used to love it so much, it’s good for my soul, and I know one day I’ll look back on being 37 and at this phase in my life and want to see what I was up to when I was still so young.
2022 is also expected (hopefully) to be an exciting year for me. Non-traditional huge life changes are on my horizon and I am scared and excited and alone, so I think this space may help with that.
So here I am. After a few years of putting this blog and space to the side, hello, it’s me, Liz. Let’s be friends again.
Like a crazy cool one that was exploding like a kid’s science experiment.
It absolutely blew (PUN!) my mind, and I still think about it so much that here I am back in 2008 on my little Tumblr blog telling you about it.
I feel so fortunate that I was able to go to Iceland, and even more fortunate that I was able to get so close to Fagradalsfjall - the volcano that was erupting - as the next day the lava had crept up enough that they closed off the super-duper-close-section which we had got to admire it from.
I don’t like saying things like “I’m not religious” or “not spiritual” because I have my moments, and watching liquid rock spew out of the ground was indeed one of those moments.
Feeling the warmth of the volcano on my face, and listening to its thunder-like sounds made me spiral into a deep thought web… it gave me the same inconsequential feeling I get when I look at the stars for too long; What’s the purpose of life? Who am I? Why do i exist? Why does the world exist?
When my friends and I started the one-hour hike to the volcano at around 6am we passed a group of American guys heading back to their car, as we crossed paths with them I said, “how was it?” and one of them replied, “It was the coolest thing of my entire life.” And OMG he was absoltely right. Perhaps giving birth could surpass it? Or seeing the world from space? But for me it was the absolute highlight of my existence and I am left in awe of our planet and world and feeling all the feelings of gratefulness.
I’m not really sure what I was expecting walking towards liquid rock spewing from the Earth, but nothing could have prepared me the eruption. The hike was fairly easy and took us exactly one hour. It was a baron hike until we rounded a corner and saw the volcano and the “lava rivers.”
In the videos of the eruption (which are posted in the Iceland highlight on my Instagram Stories) I squeal like a school girl with excitement - it was pure, genuine joy for what I was witnessing.
As you can see from the photos, we are practically the only people there - this is in part because Iceland had just opened up their borders, and because we had started the hike at around 6am.
The volcano would erupt every few minutes so we found a spot on a little hill very close to t he action and waited in awe for for the lava to suddenly do it’s thing
As II noted above, tourists can’t get this close anymore - we literally (by chance) went to the volcano on the very last day they allowed people in this spot. One of my most fortunate life moments.
(As a random fact, these hiking boots (which I bought on Aug 22, 2011 wearing one of my favourite twenty-something-work-dresses - see post here) have now hiked all over the world with me! In Nepal to see Everest, New Zealand, Australia, Patagonia, Canada… and now Iceland!)
I wanted to stay for hours and hours and forever and forever as it was just the coolest thing I’ve ever in my life - and I’m so thankful my two good friends were with me too (originally I had planned to do this alone).
As with all incredible things, photos and videos don’t do it justice, but below are a few more attempts to try to convey how magnificent it was (the videos on my Instagram showing the lava moving slightly give you an idea of it all).
My Iceland highlight story wheel also shows how the lava rivers eventually become lava tunnels - as the lava will cool on top first, but the hot lava will continue to run for years, and how it takes (ready for this?) 100 YEARS for the lava to fully cool down *insert mind exploding emoji here*
I plan/hope to do a full blog post on Iceland soon - as out of all the countries I’ve ever been to, it’s the most requested blog post by far - and I have some thoughts on the country (spoiler alert, I actually found it underwhelming - except for the spectacular volcano of course!!!), so I’ll create a separate post to share those details - which will include our map, and many photos of black sand beaches and waterfalls and little red little churches and the money side of things.
