We Were Strangers Once

I'm overwhelmed by the generosity of strangers in my life lately. At some point in my life, I believed that I was the only person in the entire world who actually wanted to help random people. That would have made me a narcissist.

Suddenly, my world has opened to the beauty of strangers: people who open up their hearts and their lives to include you in it. The strangers who are just unknown friends at the time. Here's the three types of strangers I've met in the last few months:

The Person Who is Great at Customer Service

This is the person who loves serving others and will go the extra mile to make sure you're a happy customer. I've encountered this twice when I've been planning out my wedding. The first was when I ordered some special pans to help my uncles better serve food to my guests. The lady mis-calculated the shipping cost for me, and instead of asking for more money, told me it was her mistake, and agreed to give me the order $50 short of what it should have been. The second incident occured when I wanted to order a whole lot of syrup and just casually emailled the company to ask if I could get a bulk shipment. They offered me a discount on the syrup at half the price it was in store - even for their more expensive syrup!

The $200 Random Donation

Recently, the love of my life supported the Greater Edmonton Animal Rescue Society, which I volunteer for, by playing video games for 24 hours to raise funds for some much-needed vet appointments for orphaned animals. I casually threw out an email to everyone I knew that wasn't on my Facebook friends list, including my soccer team which I had played a one hour game with once a week for the last six weeks. I barely knew my team mates, and had only spoken to them about the sport of soccer. Yet, one of my team mates took the liberty of sharing my email with her work office and rounded up $205 for my charity, and I was so incredibly humbled, I think I said "thank you" about 100 times. A complete stranger had donated a matching amount of money to the cause as we had raised from long time friends alone (not that I'm disappointed - most of those long time friends donated what they could, and I'm grateful for it).

The Wedding Videographer

Okay, this is the one that made me cry. During the same 24 hour video game marathon, I managed to bond with another volunteer from the animal rescue. However, I had met this person face-to-face for a thirty second conversation in a volunteer meeting, and was only friends with her through Facebook. She asked me about the wedding, and I had mentioned I didn't hire a photographer or videographer because the price was just simply too high. What happened next still brings me to tears. This amazing individual offered to video tape my wedding for us for FREE - and insisted that it was something she wanted to do. I couldn't even say no. She already decided she was coming with a video camera in tow. So now I have a wedding videographer and I will cry the entire time she's video taping me.



Strangers are the best kind of people. I've always thrived at a party where I know nobody. I never could figure out why. I think I know now. When you know somebody inside and out, it's a lot harder to act the way you want humanity to be. When you get to "test" out how people will react to a world you want to create, it's a lot eaiser to be a good person, without expectations or wondering what your friend who knows you as "standoffish" is going to think.

That, or I've just finally hit the gold mine where good people actually exist. Or I'm less of a narcissist.

The Art of Being Busy

My wonderful fiance, Jon, recently implemented a strategy of creating a schedule to stay on top of everything that needs to get done during the week. Normally, I considered myself a busy person, and felt like I had absolutely zero time in my current activities to schedule things like errands that popped up, or even time to really do some of the hobbies I enjoyed. I work part-time, and go to university three nights out of the week, as well as about a million things I try to volunteer for. I was too tired to really think of what I would want to do on a Friday night.

As it turned out, I ended up sitting down with myself one evening and literally opening up an Excel spreadsheet to figure out how I was using my time. I had a five hour span Monday-Friday that was dedicate to work. I had four hour time blocks dedicated to university Monday-Wednesday. And then another three hours dedicated on Sunday evening to my soccer games. This is all accounting for the time it takes me to bus back and forth. But then I was left staring at some three hour time blocks in between all of that, plus my weekend time, that was never really dedicated to a specific task. A lot of that was reserved for napping, which, admittedly was an excuse to put off more daunting tasks.

So I took the bullet and decided to cut my naps out. Instead, that time would be used for "Jillanne's creative hour" (blogging, painting, creating), homework, and cleaning the house for an hour on Thursdays, along with - yes, actually scheduled - baths. And of course, I entered a time block on my Friday nights and Saturday evenings for "mindful social interaction". "Mindful" being a key word. I had to reserve time for people in my life who I knew mattered to me, and try to make sure that whatever activity I was doing with them was somehow enhancing our relationship or benefitting both of our lifestyles.

Three things happened when I started scheduling my time:

1. I began to be productive

Somehow, by seeing "clean house" written down on a list made me actually feel guilty if I didn't clean the house during that hour of time. I started looking at all the things I had to do in my day, and stopped making excuses for being lazy. If I couldn't check something off the schedule, I felt like a loser. So it made me compete with myself to see how much I could do in my day.

2. Meal Planning

One of the major things I did with my scheduling was schedule an hour to plan meals for the week every Wednesday, grocery shop on Thursdays, and prep Monday-Wednesday's meals on Sunday afternoon. I was starting to eat out a lot before scheduling because having to go to university at night after working during the day time makes you really not want to make a meal for yourself in the short time you have in between. Sure, this meant my entire Sunday afternoon was spent slaving over a hot stove, but then I had ready-to-go meals stashed in my fridge that only required me to throw it in the oven for a half hour the day I wanted to eat it. So far, the only thing I've purchased that isn't in my fridge is a chai latte to get me through a long day, with the exception of one pizza-ordering Thursday where I worked overtime and missed my grocery shop.

3. Somehow, I have more time

Now that I've scheduled myself, I'm less busy. I seem to keep on top of things so not everything piles up for the last minute. The meal planning means I'm busy for a Sunday afternoon, but it takes a load off stress and time constraints for the other days of the week. Giving myself time to be social and creative actually makes me feel like I'm making the most of my time and not just wasting it by being lazy. And lo and behold, when I've beat the scheduled time to do something (re: I have less homework than I scheduled for), I still get a few naps in!


Scheduling doesn't work for everyone, but if you're a busy person like me, it could be worth a try! This is a new concept to me, so hopefully it will give me a good enough routine to last long-term. If anything, I still highly recommend the meal planning. Trying to fit dinner in on a busy day is stressful, and there are some great casseroles you can prepare ahead of time!

Today I Let You Go

Today, I let you go.

It wasn't an easy decision, and it doesn't mean I didn't value our time together. In fact, it was because I knew that there was a history there, that it was so difficult. I know you did me favours when I couldn't return them, and that you spent money on me when I couldn't afford to pay you back. But at some point, I had to ask myself, should I stick around because I owed you my appreciation, or was hanging on just a form of leading you on to believe something was working when it wasn't?

I had been mulling over leaving you for months. Maybe even a year. I knew I didn't feel right when we spent time together. I knew I came home and would be a different person. I was negative, gossipy, and judgemental of so many things. I can be a negative, gosssipy, and judgemental person on my own accord. I know that. But something about our time together was bringing out the worst of those qualities in me. And then, somewhere along the line, I started being negative, gossipy, and judgemental about you. And that wasn't fair. You didn't know the way I felt after having our conversations, but people who you never even met did. I would tell other people "oh, I have this friend who..." Maybe that was mean of me, but I felt I couldn't tell you. It wasn't something that could be fixed.

You see, the truth is, there was never an issue with you. You never did anything wrong. But our friendship was the issue. Our friendship was wrong. It wasn't based on mutual interests, or ideas, or even mutual enjoyment of each other's presence. It was based on hatred and negativity. And it was eating my soul, and wasting my time.

So now you can see why I had to let you go. And now, you see, there's a reason why I never gave this a chance to be resolved. There's nothing to be resolved. There isn't a problem. It's just not meant to be.

Breaking up isn't just for lovers. This is a break up that will lead you to better things. All of them do. I hope you find the friends you deserve.

So today, I choose to let you go.