back to reality and back in the office – miles of files, this is my lifestyle..

… and back home to my own bed, finally after so many weeks away!

this city, this city is haunted.. by ghosts from broken homes – alexisonfire boiled frogs lyrics

city and color “two coins” lyrics

don’t let anyone dull your sparkle – click image for the full post if you missed it!

pre-shower post-midnight selfie’s.. its how I roll #socool

these are a few of my favourite things; band tees, full skirts, converse, sunnies and the sound of music

36 crazy fists concert tee, monikee skirt (DK) CO-LAB cross body bag

out for lunch with the boss – found out I get to go on the company trip to Spain in November!!

brunch at The Ladybug and Cafe with my BFF & breakfast guru. She always shows me the best places!

waiting for my nails to dry with tea and snuggles in my favourite hoodie.

these two girls have my heart – misty & lina lookin all majestic like on the hillside.

now y’all know where I got my style, daddy rockin’ the fringe, the original hipster circa 1990

we planted trees for father’s day in my grandpa’s park. i come from a family of tree huggers – click photo for my mom’s blog

thinking over the weekend of another man I learned a lot from – missing this little pony, my BFF’s noble steed

This week was one of coming down.  Coming down and landing back in reality (how unpleasant).   Down from the cloud 9 of a European vacation – relaxing by the beach and stuffing my face with delicious Danish cuisine. while visiting family and shopping.  It was an amazing experience.  I really feel like the Europeans just have their ducks in a row when it comes to social programs and food… OMG the food you guys, go to Europe and just eat!!!  They believe in quality not quantity, that’s why they are famous for being slim and Americans are famous for being fat. I ate so many delicious things there!  Eat like a European – that’s my motto.  Mostly for one reason: seriously do you understand how much better their desserts and chocolates are?? I mean for reals.

 While we were in Denmark my grandfather took me to his childhood home and showed me oak trees he planted as a boy.  They tower up now, it was so beautiful to see how much they had grown – he told me there were three times more trees in Denmark now than there were when he left.  This fathers day we had an amazing family brunch with my dad  (the handsome fellow pictured above sporting the fringe jacket) and with his father who is basically a second father to me. (We call him Farfar, Danish for father’s father.)  He has been working on the land all his life, he was our farm every day of my life, and the changes over the years are unbelievable.  Looking at old photos of our farm, seeing him standing at 89 years old in his childhood home with the trees he planted towering over him- I’ve had a lot of time lately to think about how grateful I am for my family and how simple acts of ordinary people are what make all the difference in the world.

I think the history my family has given me such a strong sense of who I am and what I want.  When I spend time on the farm with my family, with my horses, with the animals and the trees and the wind in my hair; I feel free, I feel happy.  When I look around and see well sites dotting up like pockmarks on the once perfect prairie I am afraid; afraid of what is yet to come and that our collective greed will destroy all the earth has to give.  I apologize for being a bit behind schedule with my posts here, but sometimes I have to focus on the country-smile side of myself, you can find me in the meantime helping my somewhat technologically challenged mother with her blog. Click HERE or, add your voice to the conversation on ALBERTA VOICES.  I urge any Canadian citizens, or any concerned individual from any corner of the world to educate yourselves on the dangers of Hydraulic Fracturing .  We all talk about the weather every day, make jokes about how mundane our lives are.  Well, the weather lately has been so weird… its almost like there is some sort of global climate change happening. Perhaps from the massive amounts of fuel we have burned in the last 100 years?  Perhaps we need to pause more often, leave the concrete jungles where everyone is perfect and we never speak to strangers and go back to country roots, where we aren’t afraid to get dirty, do hard work, create a home and a FUTURE.  In the “now” generation we have very much lost sight of the “and then”.  We are failing to plan for  future, which is looking pretty bleak if we, collectively as humans, don’t turn things around a bit.  Stat.  The latest assault on the Rosebud River valley that I grew up in is some rich person’s idea of fun  ”a European style country club with luxury condo’s and a paved race track” smack dab in the middle of  Absolutely No Where, Alberta. Also known as the the most damn important place in the world to me because I happened to be born in the center of it.  Read the Calgary Herald article HERE.

The most unforgivable lie we humans tell ourselves is that we, alone, will make no difference.

Alone, we can make all the difference in the world.  A single act can be everything to someone.   It takes ONE person with passion, one catalyst for change to happen.   Why are so many afraid to use their voice?  Afraid to be passionately involved in their convictions for fear of offending someone, somewhere.  As Eleanor Roosevelt put it – “Do what you know in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized for it anyways.”   Its why things like the Steubenville Rape make me so sick to the core – because if ONE person at that party had pro-actively intervened, had stepped in and said, ” THIS IS WRONG AND YOU NEED TO STOP BECAUSE I WILL MAKE YOU STOP.”  If just one person had had the courage to use that inner voice that must have been screaming at them, then that girl’s life could have been so different.  And those “poor boys” would never have had their “bright futures ruined” by this “misunderstanding” had someone acted (perhaps by knocking some sense into them). I’m so tired of victim blaming.  In other words, EVERYONE WINS WHEN SOMEONE ACTS FOR WHAT IS RIGHT.  Do we see where I am going with this?  You have a voice, use it for the truth, use it to ask critical questions, use it to stand up for what you know in your heart to be right.  Do not be silent.  Do not sell yourself short to think you make no difference, the only difference is between the choices you make every single day.

” there will come a time when you must choose between what is right and what is easy “

-j.k.rowling

It will not be easy, but it is our generation that must be the change.  I like to complain that I am back to reality because in some ways, I am terrified of the reality we live in.  Other days I think to myself, how lucky am I to have a steady job to complain about coming back to? Then I remember that luck had nothing to do with it, I worked my ass off to get it.  I am ecstatic to go to Amsterdam and then Barcelona in November, to see Europe again and have to come crashing back to reality in Calgary.  You make your own luck, you get what you give.  You plant a seed and one day it will grow into a forest but first you have to get your hands dirty and dig a hole for it, cover it in water and hope it grows to something beautiful.   Find your passion and let it grow.  Thanks for reading! xo, aiyana

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