Blog summery 3

Looking over the blogs I have posted in the past I talk about what had been going on in my life which I considered to be leisure. Most of my blogs consist of stories about my friends and family and the activities or lack of activity we did together. Looking back to my first blog summery I see that I have evolved as both a leisure educator as well as becoming more leisure educated. There are some areas that I am proud to say that I improved, and unfortunately there are also some areas I had hoped to improve in, however I am still in the same place I was when I started this blog.
Many times I would write about my constraints. I would complain about how school and work and other day to day duties would get in the way of me and my leisure. I have come to realize however that perhaps it is not these constraints which are the real problem; it is my lack of motivation to try new things and force myself out of my comfort zone. I always tell myself that I was so busy in high school and while I was growing up all I want to do now is take it easy. But it should be the opposite; I should stay active now more than ever so I do not lose all that I worked hard for before. Right now I enjoy staying in with firends, shopping and relazing because they are easy and available to me. I need some motivation! I may be busy now but I used to train 20 hours a week in gymnastics how could I have time to do that then but now find time for a hobby or pastime. My new constraint is now motivation.
But let’s not make me out to be a complete lazy person, there are a few things which I am proud that I accomplished this year. I played intermural basket ball and I went and did something that I had never done before, trapezing. I would like to take full credit for participating in these activities however one I was needed because my guy friends had to have at least one girl on their team, and the other was an assignment given as an assignment. Although I was in a way forced to participate in these activities once I was started with them I really enjoyed myself, and that I did all on my own.
What have I learned then from all of this?
I learnt that I learned a lot about how being leisure educated can help you enjoy life and help others enjoy their lives that much more. I learned that my biggest constraint is a lack of motivation, I learned that I really like trapezing, and most importantly I learned that in order to be leisure educated you must be organized. Find a way to make time to do things, the more organized someone is the easier it will be for them once they have a moment for some free time they will be able to jump right into the activity. Because I know I have a lot of free time coming up I’m making plans to go back to trapeze and spend a lot more time doing things for myself!

Finally its over!

As quick as the semester started it is over! Well i have one class left on monday but all i need to do for that is hand in a paper which is already written, corrected and printed, n its folder and ready to be handed in. Few, i made it through another semester, i am now more or less finsished an entire year of university. Yes i still have 2 exams but those seem like they are far far away.
This weekend was the first weekend in a long time that i had no plans to do any work and i loved it. I came home to my parents place with my boyfriend and dog to spend a nice relaxing weekend all together. Seeing as it was Thanksgiving somewhere in the world my family would pass up no opportunity to have another turkey. So saturday night my mother prepared a huge turkey dinner and it was delicious. We spent the day decorating the house for Christmas which was fun because we got to do it together and spend sometime outside. Unlike downtown there is about 4 inches of snow in St. Lazare, this was fun because it was our dogs first time in this much snow. I spent the weekend doing what i love best, nothing. Well maybe not nothing but doing things that i had the freedom to choose and it was wonderful.

Trapeze

For this class you all know that we were assigned to participate in a new leisure activity which we had never done before. I had a hard time coming up with something that was possible for me to do and at the same time something new. I have a friend who is always telling me the new things she is doing at her trapeze class and suggested that one day i should go with her, then it hit me! yes i should join her and that can be my activity, plus it was something that i would have loved to try regardless. I told my friend Margaux about it and suggested that she come with me. i also invited my room mate to come with us because i felt as though this might be something she could enjoy with me. We went to the sports complexe in saint Eustache where the Trapeze classes are held. We were to be there at 1:30 for our 2 hour session, they asked that we come 15 mintes early to watch a video that would tell us what we were going to be doing and some safety tips for the session. Once we started i was getting very nervous as the big trapeze was very intimidating but once i started swining i felt evry comefortable. Because i used to do gymnastics i felt very at ease up there swining. I believe that a sport such as gymnastics teaches you to be comfortable in your body and lets you be aware of where you are. Thats why i belive i enjoyed and felt so at ease while going through the steps. It was a very enjoyable experience and i cant wait until i get to do it again.

The best kind of leisure!

Ever since i have moved out from my parents house my mother and i have kept a tradition that anytime we both have some free time on the weekend she comes down to Montreal and we go shopping togther! This is something that i have always loved doing ever since i can remember and my mom would push me around the malls in my stroller.
Our day consists of an early morning to be in the stores at a good hour so we do not run out of time. We usally start in one area of downtown and see where we end up. We take a lunch break, lately we have been favoring Anton and James on Stanley, yummy pizzas! Also later in the day a coffee break is a must. Some of our favorite places to shop are, Bannana Republic, Club Monaco, Simons (we spent 3 hours there this weekend!), Holt renfrew, Olgilveys, Browns and H&M.
As much as i love to shop i think it is the time that i get to spend with my mother, we both love fashion and its always fun to go and see what new fashions we find nice and which ones we find awful. This will always be a tradition of ours because it has such a strong meaning to us. I love you mom!

Halloween

This Halloween i told myself that i was gonna go all out, have a party (or go to one), dress up a something that looked like it took some careful planning and enjoy the Halloween spirit which i have not been a part of for far to long. What really ended up happening? Not exactly what i had in mind but something that i enjoyed just the same. I love entertaining people! I love getting decorations, figuring out a menu, and creating an atmosphere appropriate to the occasion and watching it unfold. Therefore i decided to have a little dinner party in honor of Halloween night (seeing as my bf did not seem as keen about the whole dress up and party idea). What actually happened was just as good though and i got to go into happy home maker mode! Pablo's (my Boyfriend) best friend was in from Ottawa for the weekend so we had him and his girlfriend over for dinner. We do a lot of couple activities together and his girlfriend veronica, are good friends so it is always a good time.
I went out and bought Halloween decorations and turned the apartment in to a very enchanting place. I had cob webs and spiders and lots of fall colored leafs and wreaths. I decided to try cooking something i had never cooked, i wanted a meal that reminded me of the fall. Therefore i made stuffed pork chops, rice, baked sqaush with a lovely apple nut salad provided by Veronica. Everyone enjoyed the meal, this made me very happy as stuffed pork chops arent as easy as thet look. We theb broke out some alcohool and decided to watch a scary movie. The boys had the choice of I am Legend, and teh girls the classic hocus pocus. We came to a conclusion by playing the only real way to solve such a disagreement. Rock, Paper, Scissors! Of course the ladys one and Hocus Pocus it was. After the movie ended the rest of the night consisted of drinks and quality time spent with good friends.
Although my initial Halloween plan did not pull through, i was still able to have an amazing Halloween. And that is what being leisure educated is all about, when one door closes another opens as there are endless possibilities to find something you can do and keep everyone happy.

Blog Summary #2

I think that in the blogs which i have written since the last blog summery was due i have been able to incorporate a but more leisure related activities in my schedule. I used to write about how i liked to do a bunch of things but very rarely had the opportunity to do them. Maybe because of the thanksgiving holiday i found time to participate in leisure activities such as spending time with family, going boating and carving pumpkins but i think also that this blog has made me more aware of the importance leisure can have on someones life. I also found myself going out and trying a new sport that normally i probably would have passed up. But i gave it more consideration because i saw other people trying new things in our class or that they wrote about in there blog and it made me want to have a similar experience. I used to be a very active person and have lots of things i could say that i managed in my spare time, and this blog helped me realize that i really do miss doing them. However i am still finding myself suffering from time constraints. I did get to have a nice weekend full of leisure on thanksgiving but then latter paid for it by falling behind in my school work. So this is still the question of how am i suposed to be truley happy with my leisure time when i know that on my list of priorities it has to take the back seat?
I even found that time contraint was what held me back from becoming a leisure educator. I tried to get my boyfriend and my room mate to participate in some more leisure activities with me and they to were unable to because they had no time. So this is when me being the lesiure educator should have shown them how to make time and be able to incorparte both into their lives, right? I would say yes as i believe that that is what a leisure educator would do. But how am i supposed to show them how when i can not figure out myself? I would say i would make time and try and rearrange my priorities but i have to study a lot to do well in school, i have to go to work to make money (so when i do leisure i dont have to worry about money being anoher constraint), and i have to keep up my apratment and othe living responsabilities. And once all that is taken care of im left with very little time for myself. My blog has turned very negagtive but i am still trying to keep a positive attitude about leisure! i do enjoy feeling happy and a leisure experience and i am not going to give up on it that easy. I feel now that i acknowledged my contsraint and i acknowledged that i want to do something about it. I also know that i want to help lesiure educate the people in my life and when we have time i am definetly going to make sure we do them together. This blog is a good way for me to reflect on a certain aspect of my life which is important to me and evaluate how i am doing at it, after this blog i realise i am not doing so well but i also realised that i want to do better and that i am sure i will.

Getting somone to leisure with me

So recently i have felt the need to pay closer attention to my leisure and recreation repertoire as it is a little pitiful for a girl majoring in leisure sciences. But i have also realized that i rather doing that kind of thing with people i love. So i began to think who would want to leisure with me and naturally i picked my boyfriend. We spend a lot of time together so i figured this would be easy to try and do some new activities together. Little did i know this was going to prove harder than i anticipated. I tried to make plans to get into the halloween spirit and bought pumpkins, suggested walks in the nice fall leaves, go to the Andy warhol exobition because we had just watched facory girl not to long ago, but i had no luck. So than i figured i would ask my roomate the same things, again no luck. Than i realised that i wouldnt have time to do any of this either because we are all in the middle of exams! Once again my biggest time constraint has come back to time, i just cant seem to get away from that even when im trying to help others to participate in leisure as well.

Camp Kinkora

This last weekend for my leadership class we headed off on a mandatory weekend retreat in Saint Agathe to spend a couple of days in the great outdoors. Did i enjoy this experience? Not particularly. I liked the relationships i started with many of the people in my program, i enjoyed some of the games that we played, but all in all i did not have that good of a time. Was this supposed to be leisure? In a way yes but at no point did i feel like i was having a leisure time. I suppose with some of the games i learned that I could apply them to leisure education but they were a different sort of leisure. It would be more leisure that i would introduce to kids at a day camp them to an older crowd. All of this to say that i was very happy to be home as i was not very comfortable in the camp facilities. I made some good friends and learned some important leadership skills which i am sure will come in handy in my day to day life from now on.

Recently i have been being asked by some old friends from high school to come and play intermeral basketball on Tuesday evenings. I have been reluctant for a few weeks and used excuses so that i did not have to go. I had to much work, i had group meetings, i pulled a muscle. But last tuesday i figured i had no reason not to go so i pulled out my sportiest outfit and running shoes and tried to convice myself that i remerbered how to play basketball. When i got there i was very intimidated because there were a bunch of really big guys dubking and pulling all sorts of crazy moves and i barley remembered how to dribble. Once the game strated i felt very uncomfortable, i didnt know where to run to, didnt know where to stand on penalty shots and just felt all together out of place. I had a few moments of me feeling as though i was doing alright and thats what kept me motivated. After the game ended we lost by thirty some points but i felt a little more at ease and felt like i was something that i could do again.Tonight will be my second game and im actually looking forward to it and i think that it is something that i will try to keep up and attend every week.

Thanksgivin!

Thanksgiving is always one of my favorite holidays and this year was no different! Every year my family goes to Brockville Ontario on the St. Laurence river to visit my granny and spend time with my uncles, aunts and cousin. This year i went down with my parents for 3 days of family fun and relaxation. My uncle lives on the water so every year we all get in his boat and drive down to the marina where he keeps his boat, its always such a treat because you can see all the changing colors from the water along with all the magnificent houses that line the shore. Other traditions which my family does are things like playing the annual football game which always means good times. I love to this because it allows me to get some excercise, be outside and get a little competative with the family. We also go on a nice walk through the park where my mother and her brothers grew up and took all their swimming lessons. These walks are always fun because there very peaceful and my mom and uncles always have funny stories to tell from their past. Also we always carve pumpkins! this year we tried something new, instead of carving it all the way thro we just kind of shaved the image of a turkey into and it turned out pretty well. And lastly the best part was the Thanksgiving Dinner! My granny is an excelleto cook and its always nice to sit down with everyone altogether. All in all my weekend was really fun and relaxing, a perfect weekend for doing my favorite leisure activities. ( would have been even better if i had not been studyting for a specific midterm i had on the tuesday back... just kidding!)

Blog Summary #1

It all comes down to TIME!

When someone asks what do you do in your leisure time I always feel like I have nothing to tell them or that I lead a very unfulfilling life. Usually people talk about the activities or hobbies or passions they have when they talk about their leisure time. However after the class came up with our description of leisure, which is a “state of mind, freely chosen that results in intrinsic feelings of happiness, satisfaction, pleasure and or enjoyment”, I realized that leisure can be anything I want it to be. Therefore I am saying that to me leisure is being in a state of mind where I realize that I am doing something that makes me happy. I cannot say that I have any real hobbies or pastimes, therefore my intrinsic motivation is doing things for myself and others that make me enjoy the time I spend doing it. This could be shopping with a friend, watching a movie on a Saturday night with my boyfriend, going out to dance the night away to an amazing DJ, going home for the weekend to see my family or just curling up in bed with a good book and some chocolate chip cookies. I believe that I show that I understand leisure in my blog by writing about any of the activities I do which fall under the category of making me happy. I have written about friends, family and things that I do where I feel intrinsically happy.

I feel as though my appreciation and value for leisure is shown in my blogs because I write about the simple things in life, I also have on entry where I was feeling upset and stressed out because I felt as though I was not getting enough time to leisure. To feel balanced and fulfilled in my life I need an equal amount of time to be taking care of life’s responsibilities which I am obligated to do and to also have time for myself to choose my state of mind.

In many ways I feel as though my leisure is constrained because of the everyday tasks that are forced upon us. I feel as though there is a bit of an endless cycle that exists starting at a young age. When your a kid it seems like you have all the time in the world to enjoy your life and live intrinsically. Once we begin school a life time of deadlines, appointments and responsibilities follow. In order to leisure you need to have time to do it, however in order to live a comfortable life you need to have a job, in order to have a job you need to have an education and the cycle goes on and on. Therefore my constraints are made up of both intra and inter personal constraints. Technically I could lead a life of freedom and simplicity with no job and very little responsibility; however I choose to live and maintain the comfortable life I have grown a accustomed to (Intra); so I make myself attend school and work. I have expressed my concern about my constraints in a few of my blogs, and even tried to do something about them, for example quit one of my jobs. And I have found that writing about my concern of my lack of leisure time has made me realize that if I put in the hard work well and pull through these hectic schedules and packed to the rim days now, then it will pay off when I am older and I can have more time then to enjoy life.

I feel in order to become better leisure educated I need to become better organized with the time that I do have and be better at differentiating free time and leisure time. When I have free time that doesn’t necessarily mean that I can watch a movie go out with my friends or slack off. I believe my free time is there to get assignments, cleaning, cooking or other daily tasks done. Then once those are done I can make leisure time for myself and participate in something that makes me truly happy.

As much as I do like the way that I spend my leisure time there are still so many things and by things I mean hobbies and pastimes which I would love to say that I participate in. I say this however I always seem to come up with some sort of excuse for why I do not get to it. One day though I hope I pick up my slack and get to them, I guess keep posted to my blog and I’ll let you know how that goes.

My weekend of R&R&R

This weekend i decided i needed a little Rest, relaxation and READING! Therefore i headed to my parents with the boyfriend the dog and a bunch of books. My parents live in Hudson a nice relaxing small town 45 minutes from downtown, the leaves have started to change creating a perfect atmosphere to relax in. I seemed to have a lot of assignments due and endless pages to read all within a few days of each other the following week. So far the weekend has been perfect in that sense, im spending some well needed time with my family who is all back at the old house for the weekend, my boyfriend who seems to be getting lots done as well. And our city dog who is enjoying the big fenced in back yard which he may access at anytime. I find that although the homework which i am tending to is in no way leisurly to me, however the company in which im sharing it with makes it all worth while, therefor im not minding it so much (still not what i would ideally be doing with my weekend and i am having to sleep on the floor because we have not got around to getting me a proper bed since i moved mine out!) All in all so far a productive weekend sourounded by the people i love!

Bruce

Another one of my favorite things in the world and one i can not believe i didn't show off before is my beautiful little puppy! (not so little anymore) Hes a 5 month old doberman named Bruce. Hes me and my boyfriends bundle of joy. I like taking him for long walks or to the dog park. I find this is a good way to blow off some steam, get some exercise and lets me spend time with bruce.

After my last blog I have been really thinking about how i can be happier with my leisure time, or more likely in my case how can i create leisure time. After careful thought i came up with the idea to quit my job! Well quit one of my jobs, I am still keeping an office job but i quit working at club monaco. Im sad to go but i figure that i myself and my schooling will benefit more now that i have more time for myself. I also made the decision to head home to my parents this weekend so i can relax, be taken care of by my mom and hopefully get some homework done. I hope i made a good choice, i had a 50% dicount in the store....

Reflections on leisure.

Am I happy with my choices? What barriers do I need to overcome?

If you were to ask me if i am happy with my leisure I would have to say no. I find it very hard to find time where i can just relax and do nothing. And if i do have that time i begin to feel guilty because i know i should be reading something for school, cleaning my apartment or taking care of everyday duties which i am obligated to do. There are a few things which i would love to pick up and take on as hobbies of mine but before i ever do that i need to be able to manage all the priorities i already have. I cant help but feel like there just is not enough time in a day for anyone to be able to truly balance real life and their leisure.

I have also chosen to add a few images from over the summer of me participating in some of the activities i did for my leisure. Enjoy

My Weekend

So as my first blog I have decided to share my leisure festivities because this weekend was full of me doing the things I love. My favorite leisure activities consist of being with my boyfriend and close friends doing something relaxing like watching movies, going for nice dinners or just staying in having a wine night. I also like to do my fair share of partying where i mostly go to places in and around the old port such as Time Super Club, Santos, Le Confessional or tribe on thursdays for lady's night (ladies drink for free all night by the way) i am also a music fanatic and listen to music as much as possible in my spare time, so i figured i could also use this blog to share great music with other people.

This weekend my roomate is off to NY for school, sadly this was her last weekend with her so we had a nice dinner with close friends and then headed out for a night of fun. We went to st laurent street where we partied at globe for a bit then decided that a good slice of pizza was in order. All in all the night was fun however globe was hot and packed and wasn't the best place to be when we wanted to spend quality time together. However the next night i was off to my parents place for the annual ohio state tail gate party. This is something my older brother a huge Ohio State football fanatic started a few years ago and has turned in to the party of the year. Theres lots of beer and games that starts at 8 in the morning till 8 at night where we then watch the game on the projector screen in the back yard. The night was a lot of fun and gave me a lot of time to hang out with old friends and my family.