Welcome to The Burnout Diaries
Tags: Welcome, Travel, Burnout, High School, Young Adulthood

I don’t always look like this. Sometime I look like I’ve just crawled out of bed, venti iced coffee in hand, determination and sleep deprivation in my eyes. Ready to seize the day. I have come to terms with the fact that it comes with the territory of being interested by the whole world. Over the last four years, I dedicated my life to performing at a high level in whatever I chose to take on. I am eager to learn and I thoroughly enjoy leadership positions, so I often found myself with many competing obligations. Despite my busy schedule, I followed through on my promises, completed any task I began, and tried my best to find a way to enjoy all of my commitments.

In high school, I was on student council, club head of amnesty international, competed in DECA provincials, and I was Lisgar’s cheerleading captain. I started Lisgar’s first girls who code club. I challenged myself academically with courses like AP stats, AP calculus, AP literature, and the AP Capstone program. Over the last four years, I have had 4 internationally exhibited electronic art pieces that range from video games to interactive poetry and last year I even had the pleasure of delivering an artists talk at the Electronic Literature Conference in Cork, Ireland. I love making things and telling stories.

Outside of school I was just as busy if not busier. I was a competitive cheerleader for nearly seven years and worked my way up to a world championship team. I accrued over 600 community service hours through a variety of activities, but primarily through my contribution to the Ottawa Youth Engagement Council (OYEC). OYEC is a municipal advisory council that identifies goals for young people in Ottawa and recommends or organizes ways to achieve them.

Whew okay. (Is that it?) Hmm… No (seriously?)

I also worked at a non-profit called The Empowher Network as a board member and social media coordinator. This allowed me to foster my love of design and communication with my love of activism and community engagement. I had the opportunity to be mentored by incredible women in my community as well as provide meaningful opportunities for personal and professional growth for other women around me.

Ok how many hours do you think we’re at now… Volunteering, school, work. Right, I still have some time!

I volunteered with Canada Learning Code as a program ambassador. This enabled me to collaborate with people from across the country to design and administer coding workshops all around Canada. And finally, in order to squeeze the last possible hours out of my week, I worked (and still work) remotely as a research intern for The Future Cinema Lab at York University.

And that is how I got to my breaking point.

You see, I love learning. I love math and technology and art. I love helping people. But there comes a time when you don’t have the bandwidth to continue at that speed without compromising yourself. That is why I decided not to go to post-secondary.

I said “Fuck It”.

I needed a hard reset. I packed my bags and moved to Italy. And here we are. I hope you find my journey interesting or relatable or chaotic. I have two main goals: to be everything I can possibly manage to be and to be the best at it. That doesn’t always work, but a girl can try.