The Bra Street Rambler

This week, I received the devastating news that a friend of mine had passed away. For days, I have been bawling my eyes out at this turn of events trying to find a way to cope. I am fortunate and exceedingly grateful to have a group of friends to lean on and go through this with that have also had the great pleasure of knowing him. Together, we have been sharing photos, videos, stories, and memories with one another to keep this wonderful man alive in our hearts and souls.  Some of you may have known Kenneth McAlpine from the phenomenal duo that was Team Give'r on Amazing Race, but we knew him from college and residence life as RA's (Resident Advisor's), and having grown to become a working family.  This man was a force to be reckoned with, and while he joined out staff a little late, I am not exaggerating when I say it took Mere Moments to catch up it terms of bonding and team building. That's just how he was, his extreme energy and enthusiasm drew you in and he...

Welcome Ramblers, to Week One of this years Ten Week Challenge! What's the Ten Week Challenge? Well, last year I created a small series of challenges designed to help people prep for their first attempt writing a book for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writers Month: a challenge issued to writers around the world to spend their month of November writing 50, 000 words in 30 days.) That being said, I couldn't very well write ten challenges for them and exclude anyone who had no interest in writing, could I? So every week, I would throw in an additional challenge for those non-writers. So let's dive in, shall we? Never fancied yourself a writer? Scroll down below for your alternative challenge! Good luck! Looking to teleport yourself to the wonderful world of writing? I hope you enjoy this Ten Week Challenge and highly recommend you check out last years equivalent challenge each week, you'll be providing a link with each weeks post. Good luck! Ten Weeks of Writer...

Last week, I mentioned using my own emotions as research for my books. This week, I'd like to take a moment to elaborate on this not only from a writer's stand point, but also in self exploration. For anyone who knows me, or has spent enough time reading my posts, I'm definitely known as an emotion based individual. I feel things deeply and I am true to those feelings. I am a firm believer that exploring and understanding my feelings allows me to better understand myself as an individual and if I can be honest with myself, then I can also be more honest with those around me about who I am. So how does knowing I'm hurt or sad, angry or happy, anxious or scared help me to better understand myself? By accepting how I am feeling, giving myself permission to feel it, and then asking why I'm feeling it. I ask myself if I am feeling sad because of the triggering event alone, or if I am perhaps hurting more deeply because of a build up of instances that lead to that mom...

Hey there Rambler's, Those few of you who tuned in last week are probably expecting the Ten Weeks of Challenges this week however, I've had a bit of a blunder and miscalculated the number of weeks to November in my excitement to commence, so that will Actually begin on August 29th. To those of you who did not tune in last week and are now confused; don't worry, you didn't actually miss anything. I went back and updated the post to remove anything making mention to this week being the debut to that series. That being said, much like I explained in  My Heads in NaNo  a few years ago, it can be hard for me to pull my head out of  the NaNo verse this time of year. After a conversation last night with a dear friend of mine, I've realized that with each passing year the time period in which this mental takeover occurs is expanding, so I thought I'd take advantage of this weeks post to delve deeper into that. When does NaNoWriMo mode begin? Every year begins so...

Well Rambler's, soon begins our 10 weeks of challenges, I hope you're as excited as I am! Speaking of challenges!  Some of you may or may not know this about me, but I often have a difficult time holding myself accountable to my goals. Especially when it comes to morning routines. There are so many things I know I could accomplish in that time, but I'm a Snooze Queen. I will choose that snooze button every time. That being said if you read my blog regularly, you'll know that I encourage asking for help in your goals. That's why when I recently decided to start waking up early to workout, I turned to a friend for assistance. See, I knew that if I woke up and saw my alarm clock and focused on the fact that I was tired and in want of more sleep, the snooze button would win my attention. However, if I woke up and was distracted from my alarm with a text message, then I'd be more keen to see what it said than to slip back into sleep. So I asked my friend wh...

Well Rambler's, Last week I wrote about the differences in Canadian and European after-work culture ( See Here ). This week, I'd like to let you in on a little secret and give you all a little bit of an update. Posts like the last one, are realizations that occur to me during the writing process. What does that mean? It means the beginning of the post is the idea I wanted to write about, and towards the end when I wrote about trying to redefine the way we recharge after a long day of work... that perspective only developed as I was writing my post. I use my blog both to share my perspectives, and to explore them myself. So, last week I had a plan to write about my observation that Europeans in the countries I had visited were far more social on weeknights than people where I live are. As I wrote, I thought about my own experience out with friends mere hours before writing my post and realized that I felt much better than I would have had I simply come home, ...