The active goals of '17

I’m afraid I’m quite behind on my blog. Sorry, not sorry. I thought I’d skip ahead to a post for a New Year and backtrack when I feel fit, or perhaps find a guest blogger.

So, I’ve just had some beverages with some lovely girls, one from my past Peruvian Adventure and another  new found friend who I have met during my Asian Experience. The three of us sat on some stone steps listening to a cover while having a detailed, intimate and all too personal conversation about where 2017 is headed and what this means for our generation.

For me, 2017 means not only having an open discussion about important, personal, complicated and very much uncomfortable topics that we dare not speak of, but acting on those messy discussions by actually doing something about them. An ex once told me that I shouldn’t ever go to my boss (or whomever, really) with a complaint, but bring up the issue and provide a solution to that problem, and I think that’s what I need to start doing in my life. Mostly I just feel like all I do is bitch. I can see myself twenty years down the road sipping wine coolers and ranting to my nieces (my fleet of feminists, really) about the most recent worldly problem and huffily explain that we used to have hero's and humanitarians' who once upon a time provided solutions and helped solve these problems.

Earlier this trip I had met the lovely Heather, a Canadian, who, in her own words (okay, I’m paraphrasing) said that her life was changed when she went from essentially ranting and bitching about feminist issues while dabbling with substance abuse, to actually doing something about those issues: she now lives in Thailand half her life and is now the CEO to a non-profit organization that provides support to North American’s who ended up in the Bangkok Prison system (a blog on this soon).

I’m sure that within the next twelve months, I’ll encounter difficulties of over stressing and balancing my work-life, including my never ending debacle of finding a job with financial stability vs. finding a job that I’m passionate about, and how the hell I roll that into one; I also guarantee you that I’ll struggle and over analyze my personal life, given how I seem to enjoy taking the Long Way ‘Round. This means that rather than finding a Nice Boy I’ve managed to somehow put the theory to an end and rather than resigning myself to being the dog lady who lived on the Bearhead Rd, I've instead given the intercontinental romance (we always new you’d chance a boy across the world, said my sister) and fully embrace the possibility that sometimes insane is just what I need.

So, yes, I’ll still focus on the small stuff: completing a full marathon, playing Sex and the City in NYC come November with my two dearest Nurse Friends, saving money for yet another trip in fourteen months (India, Indonesia and Nepal), volunteering at a BC Ops Clinic and really figuring out this Provincially Funding Birth Control debacle, actually becoming a Grass Fed Girl and perhaps even buying new set of Cross Country Skis; however, the bigger picture is less talk and more action, because as one of my new found travel friends bluntly explained, while listening to covers of the Red Hots’ and Radiohead and sipping Singha, no one is going to save our generation, it’s going to have to be us to get our shit together and saving ourselves.

Ultimately, I guess what I’m really saying is that, with our current situation on political oopsies (thanks America), which is bringing up a boatload of issues from worldwide topics becoming local strains to racism, hate-crimes and sexism becoming as bold as ever, to the Canadian economy remaining ever sporadic (oil ‘n gas, softwood lumber agreement), to my own issues on what city/province/country I’ll end up in, it’s going to be a whirlwind of bumps and bruises and one hell of a ride. But I’m not going to sit back and simply complain about it. I want to make a list and find some solutions on both a small, personal perspective as well as a larger scale. It's going to be a fabulous year, but it's also going to be hard.

Cheers,

Kirstin

If you know you can do better, then do better.