The "men" in my life!

Holy moly me oh my!  Two posts in a matter of minutes, must be one hell of a night.  Kidding, but not kidding I believe is the popular hash tag on twitter.  This is just me, looking for the opinion of anyone who would like to share.  Which do you think is the better city?

Here is my current place of residence.  The lovely Calgary.  Loyally in my life giving me exactly what I need.  Made of pure money potential, with a beautiful heart and a wide range of people to meet, Calgary is safe.  If I stayed here I wouldn't have to worry about much, family is always a hop, skip and a beat away.

Now here is the possible affair.  Vancouver in all it's glory.  A city I've only had a brief opportunity of experiencing.  The allure of Vancouver is it has the potential to be the greatest affair of the ages, offering a wide variety of chance, experience and maybe even a little danger.. but in a good way.  That way everyone craves.  Honestly, how do you compete with that?  

I believe you need to truly love as many aspects of your life to be the happiest you can be.  All the people in it, your job, the choices you make and yes, even location.  The city in which you chose to reside makes up the rest of your life and that's something you should love.  So, in the words of Damon Salvatore, (yes, I'm really going to quote a fictional character from the television show Vampire Diaries, if you want, we can get into how ridiculous that is later..) "you want a love that consumes you.  You want passion and adventure, and even a little danger", based on believing in that alone I should really just stop being a scared little girl, and jump right into Vancouver.  I guess you'll all just have to wait and see!

from that crazy girl that loves tvd so much she applies quotes from the show to real life,

small town girl taking on the big city.

Commitment Issues.

I'm coming at you with a play list full of Kings of Leon, Brandon Flowers and Ed Sheeran (my 3 new favorite artists!) and washed clean from a refreshing shower.  For this post, you may thank that shower.  I've come to realize that most of my best ideas come to me while I'm in that 20 minutes of almost scorching hot down pour of relieving goodness, in fact, I pretty well wrote this whole post in my head while taking my sweet, precious time scrubbing clean.  I've even managed to give you all an excuse to stay in the shower extra long!  Next time someone says something about you taking too long, just simply let them know you're taking that extra 10 minutes to let your creative juices flow!  Mentally, not physically I would hope.  

Anyways, back on topic.  When I first started writing this I warned you all that I was never any good at committing to a journal/diary when I was young and this may very well turn out to be the same.  So far, I'll toot my own horn and say I'm doing pretty good.  No commitment issues when it comes to writing.  That could be a very good sign considering I'm thinking about making this a permanent life choice.

Three paragraphs in and you may be wondering where these commitment issues lie, since that is the title and all.  Well, as of early this year there were certain circumstances that opened my eyes a lot, made me think and at times over think situations.  Since then, I've had an extremely hard time committing to things.  School, people, cities.  When I first came to Calgary it was set in stone, this is where I would set up camp for the next 3 years while I got my diploma in Journalism at SAIT.  Now, after two months of being here I'm not entirely sure.  A few years back, I lived in the lower mainland for a couple months and while I'm sure I didn't give it half the chance it deserved, I never thought I'd want to go back, until now.  I can't even really say what made me consider diverting from what seemed like the ultimate plan.  I mean, Calgary is a beautiful city but then so is Vancouver.  Is it possible to relate to a city?  Perhaps fit in more to the atmosphere?  While there's talk about how Calgary is becoming more diverse, Vancouver has been diverse for years.  Vancouver is such an eccentric city, touching all sorts of people with creativity and opportunity to really fulfill much more then oil and money from the land which is more what Calgary provides.  Two beautiful landscapes so different in what they offer.  Everything deserves a chance, (in Vancouver's case, a second chance!) so I applied for school down there.  Kwantlen offers a diploma in Public Relations which to be brutally honest, if I get into both I'd probably go to Kwantlen strictly for that program.  That is mainly what I was wanting most out of the Journalism program, this way I'd have a chance to specialize in PR work.

My mom says I was born a gypsy and as cool as that sounds is that really what I want?  I want to settle.  Eventually find a place and people that are worth sticking around with for a while.  The other day a friend told me, "I think we are in the place of our lives where us moving around and doing different jobs is what we need to figure out what we really want", which is so true and probably the best advice I've been given in a while.  I need to do this, move around, experiment and who knows, when the time comes maybe I'll find something worth committing to.  Until then, wish me luck!

Sincerely, 
small town girl taking on the big city.

Just to clear the air.

It has been brought to my attention that what I have chose to name my blog could be some what controversial.  That perhaps, people reading may think this is being written about someone who is on drugs.  Personally, speed is not one of the drugs I've had the chance of experiencing, which quite frankly I'm okay with, but from what I know about it... if someone on speed had the self control to sit down, and concentrate and be patient to the point where they're writing as much as I have so far, I would applaud them.  That's some pretty intense self control.  Then again, people may also think that maybe I'm recovering, and that this is my story from a time before help, or rehab, whatever you would like to call it.  Well, let me just clear the air nice and simply.  I am not a drug addict, I never was a drug addict or addict of any kind and this is not a blog/story about drugs.  I am truly sorry if this turns you off of continuing to read whatever I feel the need to put on here, or if I have disappointed you in any way.  My title was not meant to be misleading.  


The personal meaning to me naming my blog Life on Speed, is because that's exactly how my life feels at the moment.  If my life could be interpreted as a volume level, it would be on full blast.  Everything is coming at me at a mile a minute, new city, new home, new friends, new job, new everything really.  And truth is, sometimes it's horrendously overwhelming.  I feel like that's what an intense dosage of speed could do to a person.  Give them the feeling that no drug is giving me, I'm getting this feeling by just living.  But hey, who's going to complain about that, it's a lot cheaper then feeding into a drug habit. 


I sincerely hope assumptions were not made simply over the word speed.  Bubbles of thought may be burst after this post.  Until next time!

Yours truly,
small town girl taking on the big city. 

Everything needs a beginning.

So here I am, for the very first time, taking my writing and putting it into the open.  Who's to say it's going to get very far, but no one has the ability to knight their own self.  You can't give yourself a title without first demonstrating you have a right to the crown.  What is my title you ask?  Aspiring writer.  What kind of writer you may also be asking.  Well, that is still up for debate.  I may begin with explaining what brought me to blogging in the first place, let us begin with that story.

I suppose most would start with a hello.  Maybe even a proper introduction.  I, am Hillary Rich, of small town origin from a beautiful little place nestled deep in the Okanagan Valley.  They call it Penticton on the maps.  Fortunately, growing up in a small town also helped produce a growing urge to get out of this tiny little place.  That folks, is how I made it to the much larger, some might say, city of Calgary.  Here I am, living large (with my father and step-mother, paying no rent..), experiencing a vast list of things I was never given the chance to experience before, struggling with a job on most days I can hardly stand (retail has a number of joys that go along with it), and for what may be the first time in my life, also struggling with making friends.  However, I'm not 100% sure you can call having conquered two wonderful ladies to listen to me rant and mumble about mindless things in less then a month, struggling.  Maybe conquered isn't necessarily the word you would use to describe making friends either.. but it happened; a lot faster then I thought it might have too I might add.  

Now these ladies helped me with one experience in particular.  Well, quite simply they opened my eyes to the experience of "ladies night" at Cowboys, a local club and casino.  Call it sad, but at 20 years old, I have never been to a "ladies night" of any sort.  Especially not one that consisted of finely built and tuned, male strippers.  Yes, you read that right, male strippers.  For all the women who may possibly be reading this, I'm almost certain you have had the joys of watching Channing Tatum's latest Magic Mike, well, no disappointments to real life exotic dancers, they are all a treat for the eyes!  After swooning for what must have undoubtedly been an inappropriate amount of time, I came to my sensse and started enjoying the rest of the joint I had placed myself for the night.  

As distracted as I tend to get, I have not forgot the point of this story.  In case you have, let me remind you we're getting to the person, place or thing that brought me to blogging.  It happened to be a person.  Mind you, a middle aged man, whom my dear friend thought I was hitting on.  After a countless amount of assuring her it was all business, I'm only now starting to believe it only was.  Like most small talk leads to, this man asked me what I was doing in Calgary.  Well, he wouldn't allow me to get away with my simple response of "oh, I'm here for work!"  No, he wanted more and thank his soul he did.  What else could I tell him but that I was here for school, that I was here to go to school for journalism, that is the truth.  He then proceeded to ask me why he hasn't heard of me, why he's never had the chance of seeing my writing, why I'm not getting myself out there?  He was right.  If I truly want to be a writer I have to start writing.  I can't just wait for a professor to hand me an assignment and start from there.  No doctor ever just walked into an emergency room and started operating, no teacher ever walked into a classroom and started jotting calculus questions on the board.  To say you do something with passion, you do it whenever you can not just when it is expected of you.  I want to write with passion and I want to earn my title.

Everyone has a story, turns out, you just read the beginning of the story to my future and lifetime career.  I should warn you now, I was never good with keeping a steady and consistent writing in my diary or journal.  I do like to type though, with any luck this will be different.  Stay tuned, I'm about to keep the world up to date with a brand new journey.

Sincerely, small town girl taking on the big city.