Image Credit: Compilation/Jennifer Stahn

I moved into a new-to-me apartment this week that overlooks the Georgia Strait and the entire downtown Vancouver skyline. The rent pretty much means I can no longer eat, but seriously, the view is to die for.

As my team of movers — aka loved ones — dropped off boxes in the empty rooms each stopped to ooh and ahh over the scenery and express their opinions as to how our lives were going to improve. My mother said living in Kitsilano would inspire her to start jogging because that’s all people do when they live next to the Lululemon factory. My father said that if he had a view like that to wake up to he would be able to start writing again. My brother thinks his life is going to get easier because now he doesn’t have to take a 30-minute cab ride home from the Granville strip on Saturday nights.

I’m not exempt from thinking that my life is going to change either. For weeks my boyfriend and I have been talking about how we’re going to establish a routine —because we couldn’t do that when I didn’t have a million-dollar-view — and start grocery shopping and going to bed at 11 p.m. and working out.

Nothing has changed except for the fact I now reside on the 14th floor of a building that is definitely going to crumble the second we have that massive earthquake everyone keeps going on about.

Isn’t that always the case, though? We give ourselves start lines because we can’t find it in ourselves to start today.

When Thanksgiving is over, I’m going to do the Master Cleanse (guilty). When my birthday is out of the way, I’m going to stop buying new shoes (guilty). When I move into that new place I’m going to start eating quinoa and green beans every night instead of nachos and Budweiser (guilty).

We anticipate our start line as having the power in itself to overhaul our entire lives and manifest the most perfect form of ourselves — the self that doesn’t bite her nails, who loses five pounds by cutting out the snacking-on-marshmallows, the self who saves 20 per cent of her pay cheque and doesn’t transfer it back to chequings three days later because Victoria’s Secret is having a seven for 27 sale. We anticipate that with the quick flip of a calendar page we will be better.

I woke up this morning to a fluffy pink sky over top of the grey water and sleeping container ships. I took note — hit my boyfriend’s shoulder and yelled “holy shit! Look at that sky!” — and then hit snooze on my alarm and rolled over. When I woke up for the second time I was running late and I left the apartment exhausted and frazzled and hungry.

I ate a Starbucks croissant for breakfast.

Next week, I said to myself, next week I’ll be settled in and then I’ll be able to get some sleep and wake up early enough to do my hair and watch the sunrise with a cup of coffee and eat bacon and eggs. Next week, I will have the perfect life.

The problem with creating start lines, however, is that they give permission to do nothing in the mean time. While I could be slowly jogging around the block and waking up five minutes earlier and buying vegetables at Safeway I am instead buying ranch corn nuts at Mac’s and hitting snooze, waiting for the moment it will all fall into my lap.

This was my start line, though, and instead of rolling the dice to start the game I just passed go. I didn’t even get to collect $200, either. In fact I paid it. I paid it six times. To a lady named Beverly who handed me my keys and said “see you on the first.”

— Andria is a twenty-something blogger from Kamloops.

News from © iNFOnews, 2014