About SavingCymbria

View Interactive Resume

Welcome to SavingCymbria – your blog source
for adventures in creative living

First up, a confession: (watch out, you’re up next in this circle ~wink) “Hi, my name is Cymbria, and I’m a recovering overachiever. It’s been seven years and counting.”

Growing up in Ottawa, Canada, as the daughter of an award winning poet and an internationally shown artist/inventor, I thrived in an environment that celebrated innovation and creativity. I graduated high school with a 95% Ave., $45 000 in scholarships, and numerous awards for my writing and designwork. Going straight on to Carleton University’s Bachelor of Industrial Design, I achieved a perfect 4.0 GPA in my first year, then thrust myself into treeplanting to keep pace with a future I had embraced.

This overachiever’s rude awakening occurred at exactly 4:30AM, in May 2002, in a tent in Northern Ontario. My body’s shivering had turned into convulsive muscle spasms, and a scratched cornea was a pine needle stabbing directly into my brain. It was at that moment, weak and near delirious (awkward treeplanting metaphors?!), nauseous from the pain, that I realized I had a choice. And so do you.

Our culture is in crisis. We are being pushed, shoved really, into futures fueled by stress and specialization. We are told that to be succesful we must run ourselves harder and brand ourselves narrower than ever before. But now, after 9/11 and the financial crises, the payoff is no longer secure. This is the time to push back.

I made my choice and stepped back, left university for apron jobs, and started writing. Soon after, I was blessed to meet an incredible man and within five months we were married, eloping on the day of The Great Eastern Blackout in 2003 (but that’s another story!). We now live in Calgary, where my overachiever’s drive for accountability and productivity has been redirected into finding ‘creative balance’ through new projects and ideas.

As a freelance writer, my mission is to inspire people with every article I write. My mission as a designer is the same. I want to inspire you to “get creative” in finding the joy and balance in your own life. My personal path to “Saving Cymbria” is through humour, faith, writing, and design (and don’t forget the golf!). That’s my sparkle. What’s yours?