Monthly Archives: July 2009

In My Happy Exhausted Place

Next Thursday is the 10th anniversary of my mother’s death. Usually, by around this time, I’m moping a bit.
Today, however… I have:

  • rearranged my living room, with Gayboy’s incredible help (a wunnerful friend of the bestest variety)
  • changed my shitty old broom closet into an awesome new food  pantry after having installed new shelves and two coats of paint
  • cleaned my basement’s storage unit out and rearranged it
  • took 8 trips up and down my four flights of stairs, always carrying stuff, several times about 30 lbs per trip
  • did the epic Ikea & Home Depot trips
  • loaded up ze new pantry

All in all, it’s been a fucking gruelling day. Non-stop, really. A couple breaks for food, but very short ones. No, not moping.
My mother would LOVE to see me doing all these stuff. I used to guilt trip her for purging things. She’d laugh her ass off that I finally “get” it.
Mom’s day will be bittersweet this year, but I’m proud of the direction I’m heading in, and that’s what’s to hang onto on nights like these.
What a fantastically accomplished day. I’m too tired to share more with you or offer anything else. But from where I sit, I got plenty. This is a good day.
Everything done today, by the way, has been a Terra Suggestion. I’ll link to her when my brain’s working again, or you can check other recent postings, which will have the Organizational Guru Called Terra listed somewhere near the bottom.

Choices: Living with Regret to Get Reward

Being a photographer and loving light, it’s going to be a long time before I get over the regret of missing the sunset-lightning-fireworks for the ages experienced by Vancouver on Saturday night, all for more work on the home, but I will get over it, and then I’ll get to live with the results generated by that loss.
Deep down inside, I know I’m shit company when I’m distracted by things I feel I need to be doing. I get obsessive and focused, and conversation isn’t very conducive to making me on anyone’s top 10 to-hang-around list anytime soon when I’m in that mode.
Which is sort of where I’m at. I know I wouldn’t have been “present” wherever I was on Saturday, I know the price I’ve paid will ultimately reward me more than the regret will haunt me. Continue reading →

Writing: The Art of Digging In?

I fall out of love with writing.
It’s a love/hate relationship. I can’t live without it. I wish I could.
It’s a near-pathological need to dig, writing. For some of us. For me. Dig, dig, dig. I feel like I’m taking a stab at digging my way to China in my back yard. I’ll never finish. I’ll never even get halfway where I’m going. I know this. Thank god it’s a free passage. Taxes would kill me. And, unlike digging to China, the scenery’s interesting. Continue reading →

Pop Culture Smackdown

A lot has happened of late, both in my private world and the big ol’ real world, and I’ve been focusing mostly on me.
Let’s do something different here for a change. I’m gonna weigh in on some of the things Twitter and tabloids have been talking about from the last month or so. Continue reading →

Everything In Its Place

I sometimes forget I’m a writer. I get out of practice, and then it doesn’t occur to me that, to be true to who I am on any given day,  I should be playing with a few words. Sometimes I forget that wrestling hands-on with my experiences and my past is what makes me the person I am, and it’s best undertaken in writing.
But it doesn’t always need to just happen on the page. My Sunday was an infinitely illuminating day, and just the beginning to what I think will be a strange but profoundly fulfilling experience.
I’m undertaking a MASSIVE restructuring of my home. Continue reading →

Unraveling the Headfuck

All these insecurities
That have held me down for so long
I can’t say I’ve found a cure for these
But at least I know them
So they’re not so strong

-George Michael

In my mind, there are two lives. The life I’ve lived, and the life I might’ve lived if all my insecurities hadn’t held me back for as long as they have.
For someone who doesn’t give a fuck what others think, I sure let it prevent me from living out loud. Continue reading →

Why I (Love to) Hate Facebook

There I am, second-last day of vacation, scouring my deck and cleaning my deck chairs. I bought the chairs about eight years ago now. As I scoured them down, a flood of old memories came back — drinks drunk as planes soared in across the southern horizon, headed for the airport’s runways, conversations nattered until wee morning hours with faces that still bring a smile to mine, silent moments spent alone or with others, like one sunny perfect beautiful morning spent with a coffee and a flawless and strangely-quiet empty horizon before finding out a couple planes had earlier crashed into a building and changed America’s future.
It’s just a chair. A measley little chair I see out my window every day, and yet when I really crunch the memories as I scour it down from up-close, a world I’ve lived through in eight years come washing over me. It’s just a chair. Wow.

Imagine if everything had that kind of conjuring power? But then I log into Facebook. Continue reading →

Because Every Adventure Needs a Story

Every vacation comes with that one day when Nothing Really Goes As Planned.
For me, that day was Thursday.
I got up early, psyched and ready for a great day. The plan? Throw my bike on a bus and do an extensive cycling tour of Kelowna for my last day in town. I’d pick up some ingredients to make a good dinner, and would have some Me Time around the water. Good stuff, I figgered. Easily done!
Or was it? Continue reading →

What I Learned on My Summer Vacation

Sometimes I just post a smattering of thoughts. This is such a time.

——-

  • Time evaporates. Make use of what you have.
  • It’s a big world out there. Get lost in it sometimes.
  • When I grow up, I want to be carefree. And aware. Always.
  • Alone is good, but so are people. When meeting them, it’s easier to find flaws than positives, but more rewarding to make the effort for the latter. Continue reading →