Unfinished Business

I sit in the parking lot, trying to decide whether or not I should go in, all of a sudden feeling a bit uneasy being on my own.

I wish the girls were here.
We should've all done this together.

No. 
No, I need to do this.   
This will be good for me.
Don't overthink it.
You're going in.  

I pull one of the tall front doors open.  

It still smells like high school.   

I step inside.  

There are photos mounted on the right wall, just past the administration office, after you walk through the entrance.  Past and present High School Principals listing their years of service.  I stop and smile, looking at my past principal Andy Behnan's photo, next to Jim Rooney's, and see that a few more have been added since.  

There is a large white sheet from a roll of art paper across an 8' table waiting for signatures, of those who attend the 50th Anniversary open house, to note their name and respective graduating year.   

Abby Rose-Fallon greets me and I realize at that moment I have absolutely no idea what class I graduated from. 

Was it '91 or '92?  

Luckily, all the class photos are side by side along the main corridor, so I proceed to walk slowly ahead to figure out what year I should be noting beside my name.

I start down the main hallway and stop to read the plaques along the wall.   

Student Senate Assembly Presidents
1987-88   Emily Nichols
1988-89   Ed Finoro
1989-90   Steve Zamin
1990-91   Shino Philips
1991-92   Sarah Lee      

Wait, what?

I'm not sure why it never occurred to me that my name would be on a plaque in the school but there it was.   

I'm standing there frozen, humbled and overcome by emotion.  

I look at it again.  
Nope, still there.  

And there are loads of names after mine.  

How unbelievably surreal.

I glance over and see my name listed on two other plaques beside the Student Senate.  

My eyes well up.    

I look at all of the names of the footsteps I followed and the names of the ones that follow after mine.   

All 26 of them.
   
26 names added for their contributions to the school and community.
26 years have passed since I walked these corridors every day.
26 Senates after ours that have been planing events, fundraisers and formals.
In some ways, it all still feels like yesterday.
26 years without stepping foot in this school except for that one isolated day.

And then I see his name next to mine.

He was truly so kind, giving and disciplined that, of course, his name is listed more than once, as he was recognized in multiple years.

"Citizenship and Leadership".

It is impossible to walk through this school and not take the time to remember Josh.

Joshua Lall.   
Athletic and Academic everything.

Oh Josh.   
Let's go and tour the school.

And so I walk.

I run my hands along the blue steel lockers lining the hallways feeling all the years flood back.

There is a dull glaze from the florescent lights that still makes me squint and see dots.   

The hallways seem narrower than I remember but maybe I was just smaller back then.   

I walk through the hallways, the fitness room, the cafeteria.   

Crusaders blue and gold.  

I think of my school jacket.   
I see the football team.   
I see the trails we ran for cross country.   
I see the portables when the students exceeded the size of the school. 
I see faces of teachers and memories of moments.

I stop in the library and look through the year books all displayed in order of years.

I laugh as I see the picture of Michelle Cathcart, Christine Dimatteo, Tania Tetrault and I in skinny black dresses doing an air band to "I'm too sexy" and think of how very long ago that feels, while silently praying the photo never gets released on Facebook.

Our Lady of Lourdes High School was home to me.  


            
                                             ************
1991 

I stood in front of the entire student body at Our Lady of Lourdes high school, in my kilt and knee socks, preparing to speak for the last time.   

I talked about goals, dreams and promise and I had the confidence of any public speaker on a modern day TED Talk.  

Sarah Lee, what a true role model for all others to follow.   

"Nobody Doesn't Like Sarah Lee".   

The easiest political campaign in the world to put together since a corporation had already done it for me.   

(How on earth I won a student election campaigning as a dessert ad is beyond me, but it happened.)

Student Senate was my "thing".   

I loved it.   
I loved our team, I loved organizing and following up on assigned tasks and running events. I loved it more than I loved any part of going to class.  
I did not want to learn, I wanted to be in charge. 
I wanted to theme the proms and come up with clever invitations and delegate, action and check things off as complete.  

Successful grades did not hold the same weight to me as a successful event and my marks held around the mid high 70's because, to be honest, I wasn't really interested.   

My effort was put into leading, not into learning.

There was also a second undertow at bay in the process of my education and that was FOMO. 

Fear.
Of.
Missing.
Out.

I didn't want to miss anything.  

If I wasn't running around planning something for the school or my sub par attempt to be involved with cross country running and cheerleading, I was making unlimited phone calls to figure out what was going on that night.   

I was incapable of missing out on anything. 

Oh right -  and there was one small other detail.  
I worked.   

I got my first job at McDonald's when I was 15 years old and I have never stopped working since.   
And guess what?  
Work actually paid me to show up.   
So I wanted to work as much as I could so I could pay for my social life, new clothes and my fabulous beat up Honda Prelude.   
Work trumped homework any day of the week because of the pay cheque.  
I worked my way through the ranks, drank all the McDonald's corporate kool-aid and I seriously thought I was going to have my own store.   

So, I worked.   
And I worked on Senate tasks.   
And I plugged all the rest of the holes of time hanging out with my friends.
And miraculously, I still did ok in school.   
Not A+ but acceptable.   
I was a well rounded student who worked and was involved in life beyond studies.

(And quite often made fun of for being Student Council President and working at McDonald's, not to mention my name.  You don't get to go through high school with the name Sarah Lee and escape being mocked.)

And so there I was.   
Standing in front of that audience.  
My last speech.

"Ladies and gentleman, teachers and students... "

Now, I can absolutely assure you that, at that moment, at that very moment while I was speaking to the entire student body for the very very last time, it never once crossed my mind that I would be kicked out of University 3 years later.  

A complete, massive personal failure and embarrassment.  

But it happened.  

Somehow I managed to pull off some great marks in Accounting and Law and absolutely bomb Chemistry and Economics to a point of no return to school. 

(obviously there was a few more courses involved than this).  

I was not remotely interested in Food Chemistry and why eggs coagulate upon heating. Food chemistry to me was the fine miracle of boiling macaroni and cheese and creating the perfect consistency of KD with the proper ratio of butter and milk.  

(And trust me, no one could make better Kraft Dinner than I could back then.)

I scraped by with a 51 in Beverage Management unable to tell the difference between 5 glasses of red wine since I was only educated in the first year beverage consumption of Jagermeister and Singapore Slings, and I might add, I was rather proficient in both.  

(The irony is that I could not only pass this class now, I could probably teach it.) 

And Evie Adamet, no matter how lovely she was as a professor, could not help me understand the Fiscal policy or GDP.  
I took Macroeconomics and dropped it.  
Took it and failed it.   
And then took it and passed with a 51.  
I seemed to forever remain in an Economics class year after year, dreading attendance.
I struggled with some of these concepts and in return, I turned my attention and focus to my comfort zone which was work.    

I ended up working as a Student Manager at the bar on campus where I was able to spend every single waking second drinking coffee, scheduling employees and again, working.   Working took priority over class because I wanted the "experience" and I was better at it than I was at studying.  

I had a horrible FOMO once again from living at home and spent all waking hours on campus wanting to fit in and not wanting to miss out.   I had friends from Sarnia that were back in my life and I didn't want to miss a day with them this time around and practically lived in their dorm room.    

And if I'm honest, as much as I have had many successful years in Hospitality and in Operational Management, it actually wasn't my first choice for a career and I probably wasn't studying what I really wanted to do.

I wanted to be a police officer.   

Now I realize managing hotels is a wee bit off script from entering the police force but hey, it's the truth. 

So, I applied to Western, King's College and Carleton for Criminology and to the UofG for Hotel and Food Management.   

True story.

Knowing what you know now, it isn't surprising my marks weren't good enough to get into King's but I was accepted elsewhere and there were two main reasons that kept me from going away to school.  

The first reason was guilt.

My parents were paying for my education and I felt guilty going away when there was a cheaper option of me staying home to go to school locally even though it wasn't the program I wanted to be in.   

And the other was that there was some strong opinions against me following a career in law enforcement because of the belief (and probably rightly so) that I wouldn't settle.   That I would fight to the death working my way up the ranks and end up downtown Toronto or New York City as an undercover detective somewhere, emotionally involved in what I was doing and seeking an early death.  

So I chose Guelph and I stayed home.

Let me be clear here that I am not blaming anyone at all for what happened.   

I take responsibility that my education was a gift and I should've pursued what I was driven towards, been true to myself in my decision and worked harder in my focus towards my studies regardless.


And more importantly, I'm not saying that this would've worked out any different had I gone away and pursued Criminology instead. 

My Father will tell you that in Class 1 in England my teacher told me to "Listen and you'll learn" and I only seem to be catching up on that concept recently.  

So maybe my true calling in life has nothing to do with missing the boat on becoming a police officer.   Maybe my true calling in life has to do with writing and speaking about my failures and missed opportunities and sharing my story for others to learn from or be entertained by.    

Maybe I was destined to fail out of school regardless of what program I went into or where I chose to go to school because that's the lesson that was in store for me.  And maybe I needed to fall off my path far enough to be able to have something to talk about and write about at this stage in my life.  

Because I can assure you there's plenty more material in the vault beyond the words "DEBARRED" on a piece of paper when it comes to my life lessons.  

I am really lucky that despite my degree, my work ethic and experience and previous job achievements have allowed me to hold some really good positions in great companies and I've been able to continue to advance year after year.

But I carry the haunting failure of my University days with me everyday.   

The incompletion of something I set out to do.  

How I let my parents down by putting my effort into the wrong places and how I let myself down by not following what I truly wanted to do.

And now, years later, the reality is that it is a mix of experience and qualifications required to move forward and I am now missing one of those two critical elements.


                                                  ****************

I breathe in the air as I am walking my way back.

I try to remember the confidence.  

I know I had it here.   

I held my head high when I walked these hallways.   

I want to infuse the confidence back into my bloodstream and breathe in the energy this school once gave me.

Mr. Behnan, my truly fabulous Principal, hugs me tight and says 'Here's my girl".  

I get a photo taken with Andy Behnan and Joe Tersigni and you would think it was yesterday.   They truly are the best.  Laughing and joking like not a day has passed.

I see the smile and welcome the embrace of my old Senate Advisor, Mrs. Shoe, think back to all the days I spent with her and Ms. Conway.

I want all the emotion to release and to tell them how I messed it all up.

The true rise and fall of Sarah Lee.   
High School President to failed University student.

Completely drowned by the masses in a big campus after being nurtured by such a caring group for so long, lost in the abyss between fear of missing out and feeling out of place.   

But I keep it together.

I sign "Sarah Lee, class of '92" in my scribbly hand writing and head towards the exit.

I walk out the front doors and feel the sobering rush of cold December air.

And as I start my car and pull out of the driveway, Our Lady Of Lourdes High School in my rear view mirror, I feel the lump in my throat grow as the vivid flashes of buried highschool memories start to surface and burn into my mind, one after the other.

                                                     *************

I've gone back to school, so to speak.  

I have an exam to write on January 27th.  

It's time I dealt with the unfinished business of my education and sought out some credentials towards my field.   

And if I'm really prepared with a bit of luck, I will end up with a certification that will be recognized in the US as the equivalent of a Master's in HR combined with multiple years of field experience.   

There is a minuscule 53% pass statistic on this exam, so if I'm really prepared and unlucky, then I will just have to write it again until I pass.  

Because this time I want to do things differently and I am determined to put in the effort and finish.

                                                 ********************

As I'm driving home, I think back to my last speech and I think of what I would say if I stood in front of students today with the wisdom of an additional 26 years and some hiccups along the way.  

And I think it would go something like this.

"Ladies and Gentleman, Teachers, Faculty and Students, I stand before you today with a message I hope resonates and stays with you long after you leave this auditorium.  

I'm not going to stand up here and candy coat your future.   

I'm not going to tell you that each one of you who leaves this room will pursue and succeed at your highest dreams, get married by 25 with 2.2 kids and a dog or complete your degree in Honors at the first shot. 

Every single one of us walks our own path and no two journeys are the same.  

Life isn't fair.   

Things happen that are within but also not within our span of control.   

How we react to our failures and disappointments and how kind we are to others becomes an essential part of our future overall happiness.

The most likely to succeed may completely fall apart or be taken from us long before their time.

The kid who graduated with a 51 may become the most successful Entrepreneur you've ever heard of.

And no one standing next to you or behind you has no guarantee of what their tomorrow looks like or if one will exist.

We have to expect the unexpected and find happiness with the simple things life offers us.

There are a few things I've learned when it comes to the value of education and the effort you should put into it that I would like to share.

1.  Experience will only carry you so far.

I have survived both corporate and non corporate worlds and been fortunate to work my way up the ladder through experience and performance.   

But one day when you are least expecting it, the credential will make the difference.   

One day you will interview for a position and your opponent will have the same background, same awards and same succession planning road you have travelled.   

They, too, have held a place on Student council and worked since they were 15.  
They, too, have been recognized with awards for performance.  

And guess what? 
The letters beside your name are the differentiator that will get you the job.

2.  Whatever you put your effort into, will prevail.

I put 20 percent of my effort into my studies and 80 percent into work and my social life.   And my results were exactly where I focused my efforts.

I now perform an honest assessment every week and I ask myself if where I'm putting my 80% and where I'm putting the 20 is balanced towards the results that I want to see.   

And if it isn't, then it's time to make changes.  

I rank my fitness, my eating, my studying, my job, my time with my friends and family, even my time inside and outside of the house and with nature to ensure my efforts are put towards the areas I hold value to. 

When something is out of balance, I try and swing the effort to make that correction.  
When the balance is off, I can't expect the results will exist.

Whatever you put 80% of your effort into has the greatest likelihood to prevail.

3.  Don't let FOMO today ruin tomorrow.

I never understood or found this balance. 

My desire to be wanted, needed, socially accepted and liked, overruled all intelligence that I could find and seek acceptance through self worth rather than external praise.   

So many people fall into the trap of darkness, depressive states, obsessing over acceptance from others and allow themselves to tumble down the rabbit role of mental illness and despair.   

Find the lesson in self worth and internal acceptance.   

Understand that the importance of education and the work and commitment required to graduate far exceeds tomorrow's party.

4.   If you screw it all up, it's never too late to complete unfinished business.

I'm 42 years old.   

I hold a Global VP title and I failed out of my 3rd year of post secondary school.   

I have taken an hour of multiple choice questions every day for the past three months and I'm going to continue for another 2 weeks in hopes to get my designation.   

If I work hard enough, the designation I will hold at the end of my studying will be worth it.  

There's no such thing as too old.   

There's no such thing as too late.  

We can't change our failures, we can only learn from them.  

Failure is most certainly a delay, but it does not have to end in defeat.

Maybe this time around, I will earn some letters beside my name.




To close, I want to leave you today with one last thought.

Every day we have a choice.
Our choice is to be better than yesterday.

That's truly all we can really ask of ourselves, right?

I can't undo my mistakes.
But I can choose to make better choices today.

#bebetter

Just be better.

High Tide

There is something about the ocean that washes everything away.

Watching the sunlight dance on the water as the waves roll in one by one. 

Each breaking, symbolic of troubles floating away, as they crash against the shore.

I belong near the water.

I believe in the power of nature and all of its healing properties and there is nothing quite like the beach to soothe my overactive mind.

I want to live by the water, walk the length of the beach in the morning, swim it in the afternoon and sail on it at sunset.

Even with all my love for it though, I have a strong awareness that nature is not always friendly. 

The tide comes in everyday.  Some waves are bigger than others and the intensity to the ocean is as far as you are willing to venture to beneath the surface of what's presented.

I'm wise enough to know that I could be standing with one toe in the water and when I least expect it, the undertow in the current can catch me off guard and suck me in to a point where I'm left gasping for air.

                                          *******

I had a white water rafting work trip once on the Ottawa River. 

The only rule was that if the raft tipped, you must hold onto the paddle.  

Or was it the boat?  

Maybe that was the problem was that I didn't hear the instructions. 

Somehow I was the only person left with the boat but I will remember that 30 seconds for the rest of my life. 

The temperature of the water was freezing and the pace of movement was too fast.  

The largest rapid was called the Greyhound Bus Eater because it had the depth that could swallow a Greyhound bus.

I knew we were going over.

There are times in your life, I believe, you can envision before they happen and this one was clear as day. That Buseater rapid was flipping our raft without question.

And in one split second, I felt the rush of cold water and the speed of being pulled by the current and held under water.

I remember telling myself not to panic.

That I've been in the water since I was a child. 

I have clung to a capsized sailboat, being pulled down the channel under the Bluewater Bridge, exhausted from the number of times we have tried to right the boat. 

I have seen the skies turn dark quickly when I've been windsurfing too far away from the shore.  A gust of wind so strong that it has literally knocked me over without warning. My depletion of strength wearing on me as I continually haul myself back up onto the board, over and over again, to try and get myself back to shore.

And then, as quickly as it happened, it was over. 

I'm above water and I try to slow my breathing as the raft is still pulling me farther away. 

I look around to find the rest of our crew who are all bobbing like red and white dots from the color of their helmets in the water behind me.  In a matter of minutes, we are all feeling our heart rate come down after we have climbed a riverbank for lunch. Our other team poking fun at our group and our team completely bonded by our experience and the fact that "their team just did not and could not understand".

                                               *****

The water mirrors all my thoughts and emotions.

There are periods of time that go by when I am in perfect balance, symbolized by the sunset behind the trees at the cottage, when the water on the lake looks like glass. Completely undisturbed and picture perfect. Everything still and content.

The contrast mimics the waves of the Pacific Ocean with swells up to four feet crashing loudly against the shore. 

Each one pounding and screaming for attention. 

Dozens of pelicans hover over the water, flying out of sync lacking formation, looking to swoop down for the kill.

Speed boats and jet skis flash by causing chaos to the natural rhythm of the current.

When I'm conflicted or my decisions are cloudy, my thoughts resemble the high tide of the Pacific colliding with the current of the Greyhound Buseater rapid and I long to quiet my mind.  

I can see my thoughts spin, even though it's so obvious that what I need to do is stop. 

It becomes so easy to sabotage completely heartwarming moments by allowing the emotional undertow to take me hostage.

This past year has had some unforeseen developments and accomplishments that have led to a state of restlessness. 

Well ok, restlessness might be too strong of a word.   

Awareness perhaps.  

Awareness that I have more to give and higher goals to reach that aren't being met in my current environment.

I've also rediscovered my love of writing that has been buried for a long time. I've challenged my body and mind to new levels and achieved some recurring goals that were holding me back from progress in other areas of my life. 

And as each of these hurdles were reached, a new vision started to unfold of a direction I need to follow and the shifts I need to make have become clear. 

Clarity and intuition that has been, at times, alarming.

                                                    ********

I would love to write full time for a living. Ahhh wouldn't that be nice.

I realize that might sound far fetched, or more appropriately a retirement plan, but when I've made my mind up about something, I tend to develop an action plan and try and figure out how to get there so I'm putting it out there. 

BOOM.  

OUT THERE.  

My reality, however, is that I have to work to pay for my mortgage and my travels. 

So, I write when I can in my free time.

And I actually believe there is a really good chance that one day maybe I will do this full time.  

Maybe take a course to polish my skills.  

Or write a book and publish it and see what happens. 

Or maybe one day, I will just have an epiphany of a topic or message so strong, that I will just know that this is it and risk it all. 

And listen, its not like I don't have a great job. 

I do. 

But if weeks go by and I haven't written, it starts to tug at me like being tapped on the shoulder.  

An annoying mosquito buzzing in my ear that my priorities need to be rearranged so I can put more words to paper. 

And then sometimes,  I will receive a message asking when I'm going to put out something new and I start to feel this pressure build that my next post might be forced and not flow the way it would if I was in my true writing zone and natural. 

There is just this gravitational force that arrives that is so strong I must sit down and write. 

Sounds crazy, I'm sure, but it is what it is.

Sometimes I require a week to edit.

Sometimes I sit down and it all tumbles out in one shot.  

Vomited thoughts perfectly describing my intent without one correction.

The best way to explain this is that I didn't know I was missing anything until I found it.

Until I wrote the first blog post in March last year, I don't think it ever would've occurred to me how much I truly love to write. 

Or more importantly, that anyone would want to read what I had to say and I could create any type of impact.

I have a different connection with writing. 

I get completely lost in the words.

Time goes by and I barely notice it's been hours since I last got up. 

There is a zone I get into. 

A frequency that allows me to operate at a completely different level.  

How the words lay out on the page.   

Where the breaks are in my thoughts and what the last line is I want to leave someone with.

I believe in finding a way of living professionally and personally that truly feels in sync to that same frequency level.  

I know, I know.  

It sounds like hokey witch doctor self help books. 

Yep.  

That's why I have read every single one of them you can find in the bookstores and likely will write one at some point. 

And let me tell you, when I die,  there will be absolutely no question that I have spent my entire life searching for my own destiny. 

In how I live. 

In who I love. 

In what I do. 

No complacency, always reevaluating and determined to get there.

So I'm not gonna lie.   

My thoughts are a bit like the Pacific at the moment.

I'm in a period of transition where I can see clearly bits and pieces of what the future holds and I can feel the stage being set for change.

Now, obviously, I'm not quitting my day job tomorrow and I quite clearly still need one and want it to be something I love to do.

(so please refrain from messaging them that I'm resigning to become the next Elizabeth Gilbert or James Patterson). 

But it's out there.

Ideas are being bounced around in my mind to make some shifts and adjust pieces of how I live. 

Volunteer towards a cause. 

Improve my writing skills and write a book. 

Write twice as many posts as last year.  

Take a course and learn something new. 

Chase a new personal best for the Toledo half.

I genuinely want to inspire others that there is so much fulfillment to life if we choose to chase after it and never settle.

                                                 ********

I am sitting on a lawn chair facing the sunlight dancing on the Pacific, my toes covered in sand, the sound of the waves rolling in, competing with faint salsa music in the background.

My mind is calm and I am at peace with my thoughts.

The ocean sings in the background, reminding me once again, that our thoughts ebb and flow and that conflict isn't constant.

Nature has a way of balancing everything out when it's ready and the high tide always fades.

I walk down to the edge of the shore, take a deep breath of the salty air and brace myself to jump into the next wave, confident that I'm moving in the right direction.