This is the Valancy Stirling Project

Life never seems to go the way you expect it to, does it? At the age of 28 I had already learned this, but I didn't know just how wildly off-track life can sometimes go. After spending 6 years with a man I was planning to spend my future with, life struck again. He broke up with me. Gave me the old "I love you, but I'm not IN love with you anymore". And a month later he had moved on, while I was still having a hard time getting out the door in the morning.

Add to this delightful experience the fact that my finances were, well, not optimal, and I had to move back in with my parents. Now, my parents are great and living with them has been wonderful, but no grown woman wants to have to live with her parents, especially after she'd been out on her own for years.

To top it all off, my job, which I love, had reached entirely new levels of stress and insanity. It was a hard 5 months. And then, somewhere around the beginning of July, things started to look less cloudy. My stomach didn't drop when I thought of my ex. Laughter started to come easier, tears came less frequently, and I started wanting to spend more time with my friends and family than alone in my room watching Netflix for hours on end.

With my new attitude and my 29th birthday fast approaching I started to think of things I could do to make my life my own again. This happened to coincide with my turn to choose a book for my book club, and I chose my favourite book, "The Blue Castle", by Lucy Maud Montgomery. For those of you who don't know (which is probably most of you), "The Blue Castle" is about Valancy Stirling, a woman from a stern and oppressive family who, as her 29th birthday dawns has been relegated to old-maidenhood. Upon receiving news that she has only a year to live, Valancy sets out to live her life by her own rules and seek out her own happiness. Valancy's decision inspired me to do the same thing for myself as I began my 29th year (minus the threat of imminent death).

So here it is; The Valancy Stirling Project. My goals for this, my 29th year. All 29 of them, some of them big, some of them small, but all things that will benefit me in various ways and set me on a path for the life I want to live. My next post will lay them all out and I'll post as I go to keep up with my progress. Maybe by the end of this I will have found my own Blue Castle. Wish me luck!