Well, Hello You

This morning, I caught this on a stroll nearby. Beacon Hill Park, Victoria.


I haven’t blogged in, well, a really long time. Especially here.
I won’t apologize. Life’s tough, kids. Get a helmet. Sometimes people just stop blogging.
Did I stop writing? No. I just chose to do so when it came attached to money. Amazing what things like rent will do to one’s decision-making process.
That’s okay. I’m cool with it, yo.
Life, my dear minions, has been a fine and glorious thing. Okay, no. But good! Flawless? Hah! Far from. Good? Indeed. Or certainly improving at a likable clip, with many fun discoveries along the way. Which I’ll take.

A fiery sunset on Victoria’s Dallas Road earlier this fall.


I live in a super-cool new apartment. The kind I always saw in movies and wanted. 1930s, art deco. High coved ceilings, two kinds of beautiful hardwood floors, plaster walls. All that crazy old-school stuff that makes my heart go pitter-patter.
My hood’s the fabulous downtown part of Victoria, BC. It flies a little under the radar, but I love this city and it feels like I’ve come home after a long, noisy, distraction-laden trip.
Writing only when one is paid for it means leaving a whole lot of moments left in the air to evaporate, but for the record provided by my incessant iPhonography and Instagramming. It feels so hipster of me, but as the saying goes, the best camera is the one you got on ya. (Exhibits of which are provided in the photos on this post.)

Another sunset I captured on Dallas Road a few weeks back.


Not blogging, journaling, or any of that — it’s been a real release for me. A funny thing to say considering most of us writers like to write as a way of expressing ourselves. Until the day we decide that not expressing ourselves is the best way to express ourselves.
I talk to other creatives, people who live and die by the way of having thoughts and putting them out there, out in the world, whatever their media is, and they seem to get me when I tell them I just had enough. I had to walk away from words long-form for a while. Just… get a whole lot less introspective and a lot more “Ooh, shiny” in-the-moment-ness.
I wasn’t in a good place, kids. Not for a long time. I fought the good fight but inside I was losing the war. I didn’t get depressed or anything. Just real fucking tired. Bone-dragging, soul-smooshing tired, and that’s enough.

Just before Halloween we were blanketed with fog, a perfect time to visit old Gothic-ish architecture, like St. Ann’s Academy, a National Heritage Site downtown.


It’s not like I decided not to write. I just didn’t want to do it. Not for myself, and most certainly not for you.
Instead, I wanted to stand by the ocean and think deep thoughts. I wanted to let a world of mindfulness sort of drift away. I wanted to snap photos, watch dogs run, stroll through little stores, cook in my quaint kitchen, and watch a whole lot of Netflix.
I wanted to live for myself. Not for my friends, families, readers, connections, or any damned other person. I just wanted to be a party of one with more self-determination and a whole lot less bullshit.
An autumn sunset on Dallas Road in Victoria, par moi.I read once how Danial Day Lewis ditched the movie world to go off and be a shoe cobbler. Not even a big “Fuck you, Hollywood,” just a “Huh… shoes. Okay.” Sit there, make shoes. No big picture. Just one shoe, one stitch, one sole at a time. Make this one thing the best thing it can be. It’s a noble calling, being a skilled craftsman of any description.
I’m no Day Lewis, but I kinda had my own “Huh… shoes” moment. ‘Cept it was a little place called Dallas Road. A big shiny ocean. Ripply waves. Barking dogs. Fluffy clouds. Millions of honed-by-nature stones and rocks and battered driftwood scattered about a long shore on a big ocean to remind me how we’re all just put where we are and live what we do, and it’s a lot less complicated than we like to make it.
Like today, I had my back fixed. My chiropractor tells me my hip flexors hate me. I show him my stretch. I’m overdoing it, he says. Less is more. Only until I barely feel it, then “let the breathing do the work.”

Dallas Road’s Holland Point, which ate up most of my 2012. Just too beautiful to stay away.


And isn’t that just like us? We, the silly humans? Doing something far harder than it really needs to be? I bet lions and bears don’t “overstretch.” A bear of very little brain, indeed.
I don’t really know what I dropped in to tell you. I’ll start with: A very merry Christmas to you. And Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, and whatever else you got.
Will I be blogging more in 2014? Meh. Do you really want promises? Can I respect myself in the morning for a bit instead?
I would like to. As much as I’ve needed, wanted, enjoyed walking away from recreational writing, I identify as a writer. I am a writer. It’s what I do, how I am, who I am, why I am the way I am. How many more ways can I say it? I write therefore I exist. Apologies to the dead guy I’m paraphrasing.

Fog in late August. It was incredibly warm, so unusual for fog, and a beautiful day for cycling in Esquimalt, just over the bridge from Downtown Victoria.


What I can tell you is… I’ve been wanting to come back here lately. But this blog has some kinda legacy. Oof, does it. One needs a little mojo to step up to the “Cunt.” It’s been a happy, fluffy time of rainbows and growth of late. Not a Cunty mojo for me, to say the least.
That’s not necessarily a great thing either, happiness without a side of Cunt. I don’t regret who I was when I wrote this blog. For much of it, I really enjoyed the ride. I sort of stopped being her far longer ago than when I merely stopped writing it.
But maybe, just maybe, I’m coming full circle. In a better, wiser, older kind of way.
In any case. A merry Christmas to you all. Here’s hoping we can get it on again, blog-style, in the new year.

4 thoughts on “Well, Hello You

  1. Zee

    Thank you for this. I had to come back today to read this again, because I’ve missed your writings, but I’ve enjoyed your pictures so much more! I got that you were taking a mug needed break, a retreat of sorts, as I did. Yet, I’m happily blessed to see another side to you via pictures… And since in a visual learner, it meant a whole lot.
    So, there. Thank you!

    1. A Scribe Called Steff Post author

      I’m only now seeing comments after many months of ignorance. Thanks, Zee. I’m getting the urge to blog again… often. I’m going to follow through soon, now that my schedule is normalizing after an insane year. đŸ™‚

  2. Overblown Victoria

    You really need to stop waxing poetically about the glories of Victoria. Victoria sucks too; maybe not quite as much as Vancouver but it’s not a fantastic place to live either. The job market here sucks, it’s expensive here too, transit service to many areas of the city is lousy, and employers have kept wages down since 1995. The inner core of the city isn’t being maintained properly and the place is a magnet for welfare recipients and homeless people. You aren’t doing any great service to anyone by suggesting that they relocate here. Given more time, you’ll hate Victoria almost as much as Vancouver.
    Also, there really isn’t any industry here to keep the economy going unless you consider government “industry” or tourism “industry”. There isn’t even much here to attract tourists anymore…

    1. A Scribe Called Steff Post author

      I’ve been here for over 2 years and don’t regret the move. I don’t argue with a lot of your points either. I’m not advocating others to move here. Just me. You probably need to sort out your own unhappiness without expecting your city to resolve it for you. The pace of life here is right for me, and I’ve set up my life in a way that most of the shortcomings you’ve listed have no relevance to me.

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