Photoshoots, Planes and Good-Byes Oh My!

So this could have easily been two posts, but I figured I'd stick to my two posts a week thing and combine the two. So here goes. Light stuff first.

Last Saturday I went out with a great friend of mine, Hannah, and did a bit of a photoshoot in downtown Calgary! It was so that I could have some more professional-looking images of myself to put on things like MY BLOG, the back cover of my future book, book proposals, etc...

What I didn't expect was for it to be such a fun and hilarious time of just goofing around and taking pictures in random areas that you'd never expect would turn out.

So here's a few of my favourites from that day. Calgarians, can you spot where they were taken? :P

One thing I loved about the whole thing was that there were some places that I really honestly did not think were going to be good settings for photos. But they turned out really great! They were some of the most obscure spots ever, but they were awesome, and I'm so glad we did them.

It's funny how often we skip over random places in our everyday life never stopping to see the beauty of it all. We never bother to look beyond the mundane to see the extraordinary because we've convinced ourselves already that it's not there. We subconsciously "know" that something as normal as a mirrored wall isn't worth our time.

This trip has definitely made me more aware of my surroundings, and I actually find myself thinking about other possible venues for photoshoots. I think more than half the fun was just doing wacky shots and running all over the place together. Thanks Hannah for an awesome time! It wasn't even close to being as awkward as I'd feared it might be! (People only stared at us a couple times. I almost felt like an actual celebrity! :P)





Now to Planes and Good-byes.

*Sigh*

This is honestly so sad for me to say, but this is my last blog post from Calgary for quite some time. I won't be back here till September.

I KNOW. September.

I'll try to keep posting lots, but I can't make any guarantees at this point. I'll definitely be taking at least a week hiatus while in Mexico, but after that who knows. Hopefully by the time I'm settled in Quebec I'll be able to get re-established into my routine of blogging.

I'm really not looking forward to being gone for so long though. It feels like I'm some kind of toffee being stretched between hungry children. I have people I want to be with on both sides of the country and in the middle, but never before has the division between them seemed so significant.

I really think what a friend of mine told me tonight is true. When you go into a new situation where you don't know anyone, you become super attached to the people you do latch on to. You feel so lonely at first that anyone you can get along with you stick to like glue and hold on for dear life. It's as if you don't have any life-lines, so you anchor down as soon as you can, and the friends that you make are all really important to you really quickly.

Having said that, I grew up in Nova Scotia, I love the place, and I love the people too. The simple fact of the matter is I don't live there anymore, I live in Calgary. That's really hard for some people to hear, but you have to understand that this is not some kind of 'us vs. them' thing of who can get Seth to themselves, it's just about where God's putting me right now. I feel like I'm meant to be in Calgary, so that's where I'm gonna be. This summer I'm gonna be in Quebec working with my sister whom I love dearly and want to hang out with lots before she goes and gets married.

I'm trying to think of ways to relate all of this back to writing, but to be perfectly honest I just don't feel like I want to right now. It's all so close to home, and all so real that it's hard for me to step back and just say "That makes me consider how this relates to my dreams of getting published..."

 Saying good-bye has never been easy for me. Villa du Carmel, Encounters with Canada, Park View Education Centre, Saint-Prosper, Bridgewater, and now Calgary. The one huge thing that's been super helpful in learning to cope this time 'round is the fact that I'll be coming back for sure. So many times I've had to explain to little kids that I wouldn't be there for them next time. It killed me to say good-bye to my Terrain du Jeux in Saint-Prosper. It killed me to say good-bye to all my Encounters buddies. (I still stay in touch with a few, here's to Sue and Jess! :D)

All that to say, I'm gonna miss all of you guys, and I wish there could be some way for everyone I know to just all live in the same place so that I could be with everyone. It's not fair that cloning hasn't been approved for use by the general public. One of these days...


Feel free to comment on any photos you like, and if you want to see more I'll see if I can make a page on here with a wider selection of the good ones I got. Do you have anything to add on the subject of goodbyes? Leave a comment below. See ya in September Calgary! It's been a blast!