Gratitude

Today I was badgered and heckled by a terrible mood that would not let up. I'm tired of sleeping and walking up feeling exhausted. I'm tired of having no appetite. I'm tired of the crazy cat I'm fostering who won't stop farting (that's another blog entry.)

By any objective standard, being really sick over holidays of any kind just sucks. And I was really REALLY looking forward to this break for a long time. Two years ago Indigo died. Last year I spent most of December recovering from emergency gallbladder surgery. This year, I am employed full time and had some vacation to carry over into the New Year. "Great," I thought, "this will be a really good break."

Instead, on December 23rd I started to cough and by Saturday morning, had a fever of 101 degrees. And that was that. I've been home ever since and will finally get to see my parents on Wednesday for an overdue Christmas celebration. So far, I've spent this entire holiday, sick, worn out and alone.

I was finally able to get out today for a couple of hours and finish my Christmas shopping. Two hours was more than enough. Two hours felt like six. But still, it was nice to return to the land of living. Given how easily I can get into a bad funk and stay there, I decided to focus my thoughts on those things that I was grateful for despite my current circumstances.

I like doing this because it is a great way for me to refocus my thoughts and not dwell on the negative. I walk an emotional tightrope, one in which I try to acknowledge and give voice to my emotions, whatever they may be. I think this is good and healthy. Unrelenting positivism is as bad as negativity. It's important to understand and acknowledge everything you're feeling.Feelings aren't good or bad, they just are.  But like a good buffet, it's important not to stay in one place too long. You just end up overstuffed and unhappy.

So in no particular order, here are the things I decided I was grateful for today:

I get to see my parents on Wednesday to celebrate a belated Christmas. Some people love their parents very much and don't have them in their lives anymore. Some people spend every Christmas alone and have nobody to care for or celebrate with them.

I'm employed full time. I really felt for the contractors at my office this year because I've been there, heading into a Christmas break where the office is closed and I'll have no money coming in or the certainty of a contract renewal in the New Year. Not fun. This year I have a job, however imperfect, and for the most part can pay my bills.

I've been sick, but I've also been on vacation. This means that I've been able to get as much rest as I want without feeling under pressure to get back to the office asap. I've been able to focus on just getting well.

I was able to get caught up on some chores and despite being sick my house hasn't gone to hell in a hand basket. Disorder stresses me out so I've been grateful to be able to keep on top of things.

I've watched a lot of great television. So far, I've discovered some series I've really enjoyed and have been able to watch a ton of TV to pass the time being sick. That's no small thing when you're too sick to peruse social media or read.

Quiet. I've really had a lot of peace and quiet the last while. I really needed to experience this so I could recharge.  My job is noisy and bustling and pulls me in a bunch of different directions all day long. It's been marvelous to just not have to do or say anything, to just be still.

This blog entry. I honestly didn't think I'd get this done today, but proved myself wrong.

A Little Voice

I'm going to give this a try.

It's a New Year. Like many people I know, it was a new year that I was decidedly glad to see arrive.

2016 felt like a slog. I can't even say it was a bad year, discounting of course the unrelenting loss of celebrities and rock stars that seemed to happen every other week. But no, it wasn't that bad a year. In fact, a lot in my life got better or mercifully didn't regress and get worse. It had its share of disappointments, things I didn't see coming or didn't have the wherewithal to foresee. But nothing insurmountable, nothing irrecoverable.

And so what? I'm still here. I'm still hopeful my life is going to get better. I'm still hopeful I'll get better at seeing all the good things I already have in it.

So as I sat on the couch today, navigating day 10 of recovery from an awful flu, I took it into my head to start writing here again.  And then a little voice said "Do it every day. For a year."

I'm not sure I can. I'm not even sure I want to. There's part of me that doesn't want to be on the internet at all. And yet I feel I'm losing part of myself when I don't write. And writing has been really really hard the last few years.

I wonder if it would have helped? In a way, I'm glad I don't have everything that's happened documented. It's not stuff I want to relive. And yet having something to look back on is important sometimes, if for no other reason than that it creates a memorial of sorts, a testament to what happened, a corralling of it in the past.

So I'm going to write every day in 2017. I'm going to fence this year in and find out later what doing so will mean.

I don't think I can do it.

Mood Indigo

"We are given each other in trust. I think people are much too wonderful to be alive briefly and gone." ~ Marilynne Robinson

I don't know how to say this, except to say it.

Indigo is dead.

She passed away just before Christmas 2014 and I've been trying to kindle any desire to write ever since.

Because I cannot write something, anything here, without first writing about Indigo. And that prospect has simply remained too painful.  She is so much a  part of the world around me, but no longer of it. I've only now gotten to the point where I can reconcile it's happened, that she is gone.

I remember getting the call from Ragdoll, a recounting of a headline seen in the news, my brain splintering, a wrung out, heartsick Christmas vacation.

She has occupied my thoughts so often in the past months. I see something beautiful - a slant of light, a bumble bee rummaging in a flower,  a mother unhurriedly walking hand in hand with her toddler, and I think about how much Indigo would have appreciated these moments.

That was the great gift she gave me, reminding me to appreciate the simple moments of pleasure and beauty that are always all around us. It was something for which she had a sixth sense of sorts, the ability to find in life's every day mundaneness, the special, the overlooked, the essential. She captured it in her photography, spoke of it in her poetry, talked to me about it over coffee.

And what is even more astonishing to me, is that as MS ravaged her body and carved out her life, it's as if her ability to appreciate beauty was amplified. She still noticed it all, still made the effort to keep in touch, to wish me well, to be my friend, to speak of these things.

In August, I was very privileged to attend Indigo's memorial service, what her family called a Celebration of Life. It was wonderful to meet Indigo's relatives, see her husband again, to talk about her with her mother. I thought that is what would buckle me, seeing the loss contended with, the swath it had cut in people's lives. But what really drove an icepick in my heart were the pictures of Indigo that were showing in endless slideshows.

They were pictures taken before her MS began to progress. It was the vibrant and driven Indigo I remember meeting and becoming friends with, the Indigo that could dance, make plans for summer and could come to friends' houses for monthly cheesy movie nights. I'd never lost that Indigo, even as MS ravaged her body, she was still herself despite it all. We just found different ways to be together. We would meet for coffee and good food, chat as her hand shakily raised her favourite chocolate tarte for a bite. Eventually we would chat less as the MS began to affect her speech. We moved on to manicure dates when eating and drinking became impossible.

That was Indigo, still enjoying life, still participating in it. But it wasn't until I saw the pictures at her Celebration, that I began to understand how much she had lost and how hard she had to fight to keep some parts of herself and her life as she wished them to be.

My God, she was beautiful and so full of light. And I realized in seeing those pictures how much I missed her and always would.

I'm so grateful she was my friend. I'm even more grateful that despite all she went through, she made sure I knew it.

If the Door is Closed, Start Looking for a Window

"Your unhappiness is telling you something." ~ Ragdoll

I've been waking up feeling very anxious lately and I'm not entirely sure why. The frustrating thing is that often times there is no clear explanation.

Friday morning I woke full of dread and a story in my brain I'd read the night before about Islamic militants in Iraq beheading Christian children. Quite a way to start the day, the remainder of which was spent axe decidedly to the grindstone right until 6 p.m.

I look at LinkedIn these days the way I used to look at my bank account.

I'd log in, fire up my balance summary and had the feeling that if I just stared at the numbers long enough, more money would somehow magically appear or that I'd gain some glimmer of insight that would reveal the extra money I'd overlooked.

As it is, the only thing that's helped my bank account is remaining employed, sticking to a budget as best I can and regaining the tenets of a normal life. The is no magic, no calvary, no Delphic oracle with some elusive answer. The road back has been step by step by step. Every month, things get a little better and a little more stabilized, despite the addition of more expenses at times, like my tax payments...ahem.

But that's the trade off you make with freelancing and freelancing is what has made the difference between bills getting paid and not. I'm very very grateful for that and despite my general feelings of pessimism lately, I do understand fundamentally that things are better in my life than they were before, and realistically, will continue to get better.

But I now find myself staring at my LinkedIn message area, like I did with my bank account, trying to will some recruiter to ping me about an amazing opportunity that will magically transport me out of the advertising industry. I think that's what the anxiousness has been about. There is just too much work and not enough time or people to do it. I was leaving Friday night and stopped to chat with a client service person who I really enjoy working with and who is really good at what she does. She just looked so downtrodden. She told me she hadn't been able to sleep until 2 am and then woke up at 5 am. She was exhausted.

"I don't know who I am right now." she said. She was that tired from all the work she's had on her plate.

I could completely relate. Advertising is a sector that has some great aspects, but overall the last few years of working in it have been a soul crushing experience to which I'm craving an expeditious end.

Except I can only drive things so far. You can only make so much happen on your own. I remember after losing my job a couple of years ago spending a gruelling and delirious summer trying to find work. The mistake I made then was not considering freelance. It just didn't occur to me. So I focused my efforts on finding a full time permanent role.

And at least in that situation, I did get quite a few interviews from straight forward resume submissions in response to job ads. I don't know if something's changed, but I'm almost at the point where I don't want to make the effort to apply to job posts any more. It's a lot of work and it's been an absolute Road to Nowhere. I'm convinced there's a black hole in the galaxy that consists solely of unread resumes.

Instead I've been working on making my LinkedIn profile better, going through my vocational counselling to find other avenues, and getting in touch with former colleagues to let them know I'm looking. In fact my vocational counsellor said that's one of the best ways to get a job, through referral, and she was thrilled I'd done it and that I'm planning a phase 2 where I'll get in touch with recruiters. She said she literally sees people for months on end who do nothing to help themselves to find other avenues for getting a new job. I guess everyone gets there when they get there.

All I know is that I've haven't been this motivated to change a situation in quite some time. So all I can do is show up and work hard to do what I can to change it. It's frustrating, and I sometimes don't know if I'm doing all I can and doing it correctly, but I take some solace in the fact that I'm not feeling so overwhelmed by things that I can't even consider any action.

And I can't help but believe that despite my ambivalence, my work in Advertising has not been futile. I truly believe that on some level it's preparing me for something else. What that is remains to be seen.

All The Trouble In the World

"So let us not be blind to our differences -- but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal." ~ JFK's commencement speech at American University, June 10, 1963

Like many people, I've felt decidedly worried about the state of the world lately. Our planet is never without conflict. There is always some patch of land immersed in despair. But with the war in Gaza and Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 getting shot out of the sky and the fact that both these events find their origin in parts of the world not renowned for a lack of conflict generally, the tension in the the air has seemed higher lately, like that of a heavy bow string pulled back by a hand too weak for the task.

You can sense on social media that nobody really wants to talk about either of these events, Gaza in particular. This makes sense to me. Certainly I'm reluctant to weigh in, for the simple reason that I have my opinion, until that is, I don't. We are constantly getting bombarded with another event, another perspective. There are no straight lines or clear paths on this issue and people's opinions are already impassioned.

All I know is that I don't want anyone, Palestinian, Israeli, anybody getting bombed, shot or hurt in any way and this sensibility seems grossly simplistic in the face of a conflict imbued with a patina that only centuries of conflict, intolerance and genocide can bestow. 

This article by Basio Winograd the Washington Post summed it up beautifully for me.  Do your friends follow the news? Then this is what your Facebook feed looks like.

I struggle with whether digital media is the place to be discussing issues of such import and complication. I don't know if an editorial on Gaza should be in the same place as funny cat pictures. And don't get me started on the Comments sections of newspaper sites, or as I like to call them Troll Lounges.

But where digital media falls down in terms of reasoned discussion, it excels in spreading information and building awareness. Again on social media, a friend had posted this article and it did me a world of good to read it.  I hope it does the same for you. We need reminders that as wretchedly desperate some situations in the world can be, it also has parcels that shimmer with hope.

7 Reasons the World Isn't Totally Screwed Right Now

Set Adrift on Memory Bliss Part II

"It really is amazing how a song can take you to a place, a time from the past and make you feel the way you did back then...no matter how you feel at the present time...maybe that only happens to me...but I doubt it." ~ Martin Streek

"But I had to put her right back with the rest.

That's the way it goes, I guess." ~ P.M. Dawn

I've written about P.M. Dawn's song Set Adrift on Memory Bliss before. It's one of those early 90's rap gems that gets perilously close to cheesy, yet ultimately has remained a morsel of pure pop sampling goodness.  In the early days of Hip Hop's ascendancy, it was one of the first rap rehashes to get it right.

When I wrote about this song previously, I was talking about it in the context of music and memory and how visceral an experience that can be. Set Adrift...reminds me of a happy time in my life, the summer I stayed with my Grandmother in Glasgow, of having more time ahead of me then behind me, and of feeling hopeful.

This past Saturday, my family and I convened in our former home town of Brampton to say goodbye to an old friend, our family dog Gussie. My parents had kept her ashes since her passing in 1995. 

But with their move to a new town and the inevitable reflection that downsizing can bring, my parents decided it would make more sense for her ashes to be scattered in a place she loved. With summer vacation schedules converging, a task my parents were going to complete on their own became something our whole family would participate in.

We agreed to meet in a small plaza by our old house. Our old subdivision borders on two man made lakes that were added to the established forests already in the area at the time. Gussie loved walking along these lakes and in fact made many solo expeditions over the years from which we would frantically retrieve her. She had no road sense at all, and we were always worried she'd get hit by a car whenever she took off. 

The plaza was the best place to meet as it was close to one of the lakes and small forests through which we took Gussie on many walks. When I pulled into the parking lot, my family were already there. My Dad and I coordinated where we would be parking and I then followed him out. As the car started to move, the song to come on via my Itouch's shuffle was...you guessed it.

Coincidental? Perhaps.

Sentimental? Absolutely.

I felt as if it was a little visit from Gussie, a trip back to the time we had together. 

We parked in front of the path into the forest and headed in. None of us really felt like saying anything. We sprinkled some of her ashes amongst the trees and then down by the lake. The forest still had the same quiet rustling sound from summers past. The lake was slightly misty and more overgrown, with its requisite contingent of ducks and geese. It just felt right to bring Gussie back there and I said as much to my parents.

Afterwards we had dinner and then headed to our respective homes. It felt strange not going back to my parents' old house. And yet it felt right too. Brampton isn't the same city any more, and we're not the same people. And as much as I tend to live in the past these days, would I really want to go back there? Not really. I like who I am now more than I liked myself when I was younger. But I can't say I like my life as much.

I suppose I just feel my possibilities were better then. That sentiment and a general lack of progress in my life is something I've clearly been contending with for a long time now. It's hard not to go inward, to not feel afraid. There are many times where it feels like there is no point. Why invest in a new career path? Some bean counter can just take it away. Why try and have a relationship when your instincts and sense of self are so out of whack in that area that it will inevitably implode. Why try and build a home when paying your mortgage and repairing your home take all the financial resources you have? Why have artistic dreams and ambitions when it's all you can do to keep the sink clean and empty of dishes most weeks?

You might say that the above events are just part of the ebb and flow of life. You would be right. But I would like to win once in a while. I would like to stop being good at just surviving, and actually get some place I want to go. I didn't always win when I was younger, far from it. But I won sometimes. And that's what's been missing the last few years, a sense of progression beyond just edging ever so slightly more away from the precipice.  I'd like to feel I'm heading in a new direction entirely, that there is momentum, that I am leaving the wreckage of the last few years behind.

To be completely honest, I don't feel life is bad. I just don't find it currently or in the last while, to be particularly good. I just don't feel it's going to get much better than it is now, and that is frightening. I can say with certainty that as I get older, life will be filled with more loss. I'm not so sure it will be filled with any more gains.

And I suppose that's why when Set Adrift... came on my car radio, I gasped. I have been trying so hard lately not to focus on the negative, not to be glum and stuck mentally in what was and who I have been, but stay right in the present to try and make it better. One opening riff, and I got pulled right back. 

I'm tired of being adrift in my memories. I'd like to live in more bliss here and now.  

Just Four More Days

I haven't posted in a while as work's been a real slog. We had two project managers leave in one month and yours truly got their work to do.

I wrote the above sentence on June 11th and have just come back here now. Not much has changed unfortunately, and I'm having one of those Sunday nights where
I just.do.not.want.to.go.into.work.tomorrow.

Maybe the fact that I was at work until 830 pm Friday has something to do with it.

It's been bloody relentless, not only on the job front but personally as well. I am this close to getting my laundry service downstairs. The last part of the process is getting the electrical aspects transferred. I'll get there eventually. It's just been hard to get an electrician who is free at the same times I am. Working from home isn't exactly an easy exercise for me, given my job depends so much on my being on site.

I've also been taking some vocational sessions to help me hone in on something new to do for a living. I had an epiphany recently in that I realized for a long time, I just thought making my day job better seemed a waste of time. I know what I really want to do for a living and figured I'd get to that eventually. But I haven't gotten to that and I think it's because at times in my career, my day job has been draining in that when it's structured a certain way, it can be really unsuited to my personality. So given this, it's really no surprise I've had little energy to devote to my own artistic pursuits. I just don't have the mental and physical energy to devote to it. I'm too busy trying to recharge from the day or the week that's just passed.

At least that is one aspect. Certainly there have been other factors, but this one's a biggie.

Turning the vocational aspect of my life around is what's giving me hope right now as I continue to work all the hours God sends. That and slowly but surely bringing organization and livability back to my home. Every week I make progress, no matter how small. I get something on the house fixed. I get a cupboard or a drawer organized and it stays that way.

The one thing I do need to regroup on is exercise. My spin gym closed down, not for any financial reasons but because my instructor had an epiphany of his own and realized he hated running his own business. I've found another place, but given how much I'm working I'm feeling a lot of fear about signing up given the exhaustion factor. Then again, I'm just as fearful not doing anything. It's not as if I'm getting any younger.

I'm not going to lie. The last few months have been really hard. I feel like I could kill for a two week paid vacation right now, but that's not where I am. And for whatever reason, I'm feeling a bit gun shy writing here, not wanting to be too negative, not wanting to contribute to that energy.

And yet I do feel like something is in the air, and things are going to start really changing for the better, versus my efforts just being solely dedicated to survival. And some things have happened lately that have been sad and have been negative, but I have really gained some important insight from the experiences. Perhaps I'll write about them later. Perhaps not. All I know is I have four days at work this week and then I'm off for six. I'm clinging to that. For now that will do.