vivian gietz

I’m sitting on a patio at a restaurant, alone, munching on fries. What can I say? I would never write at home. I’d lie on my bed and watch Netflix like anyone else. I know it’s been over two months since my last post. When are we going to stop pretending we believe me when I say I’ll update more often? We really should stop.

But I have excuses (again). I went to California to see a Taylor Swift concert and visit a close friend, I went to Ottawa for my brother’s wedding, my beautiful little sister came to visit me, my place of work had our annual conference (requiring several Very Long Days in a row), my cat brought in about five dead animals (I’ve lost count). You know, the usual things that keep a girl busy. The last couple months have really flown by.

Continuously, I learn and stress the ease and beauty of a life well and simply lived. The friends, family, colleagues, and people I surround myself with are a completely different group than I would have found by my side a year ago, even a few months ago in some cases.

I used to say, in my times of depression, that I wanted “a life worth writing about”, a life which inspires. It’s something I certainly spent a lot of time dreaming about and asking God for. But when you have a life as blissful, as easy to fly through, as “worth writing about”, you hardly have the time to do any of the goddamn writing. I certainly hope to inspire something with my life everyday, just by living it around the people that I do, even if not by writing. After all, I live, take in, and learn every moment.

I store up words and thoughts and emotions in time as it passes, every precise moment of eye contact and hug and meal shared between myself and another human, and I learn from this life and this job and these people in ways that school never taught me and never could. I learn things about patience and forgiveness and emotions and how we are all, really and truly, every human on this planet, just doing our best. And you should never fault someone for just doing their best.

Sometimes, someone you never thought would hug you will hug you, or sometimes you will kiss someone in a club and never speak to them again, or sometimes you will be in your cousin’s arms sobbing at your brother’s wedding reception at the last moment you ever thought you would cry, and sometimes you will not speak to a girl for months that you once thought you couldn’t live without. And if you are lucky, you will love and pray and breathe graciously and thankfully through every bit of it.

I keep saying I would attend and write for more poetry events, and I haven’t. I even have personal business cards now! The only people that currently hold them are a few family and friends. But I’m not going to feel guilty about being kept busy (and sometimes, being kept lazy and tired on my bed with Netflix after work) when I have been so productive in my words and in my every day, or even just in my thoughts and feelings and love every day.

Daily, I recentre myself around goodness, patience, and forgiveness for those around me to the best of my ability, sometimes difficulty. Like any good and flawed human, I sometimes fall short of this. I recentre everything around Christ and my relationship through Him, through myself, and through others. Life and its holiness is taught and reiterated in meetings and weddings and errands and cats, in sleepovers and coffee and beer and sunshine, in cousins and siblings that are more like friends, and in friends that are more like family. My cat follows me partway to the bus almost every morning to work, and greets me every night when I am home.

All I ever wanted, from back when I was in high school, was to spend my twenties living alone with a cat in a good, big city, and wear bright lipstick to work at a job I love, and I have it now. And you know what? I would have waited another year for it if I had to, and it would have been worth every second. Here in the heat of Vancouver you can feel the love, vibrancy, and summer of it all, in every moment.

I’ll stop promising things I don’t deliver, like more frequent blog posts or poetry. That doesn’t mean I’m ever not trying my best to deliver in many other aspects of my life, in friendship and work.

And you should never fault someone for just doing their best.

Love always,

Vivian