Category: Life Lessons

Resolution

I’m not crazy about problems but I do like resolving them.

Depends a lot on the problem, of course.

I like little problems like unwashed dishes in the sink. The solution is pretty easy. Wash ‘em by hand or throw them in the dishwasher. The resolution is the same.

Then there are the big problems. A marriage on a precipitous downhill slide. A job that started out fine but has been tangled up and thwarted by an atmosphere of pettiness. A cancer diagnosis. A child sliding farther away from you into a serious drug habit.

No quick fixes to any of these situations. Each problem demands its’ own unique approach. Each demands a different level of engagement and attention.

We sometimes have enough control over a certain situation to see a positive outcome. But at other times, we simply don’t. The worst is, sometimes we have no idea whatsoever how things will go or how they will turn out. We just have to grit our teeth and press on.

Uncertainty is a bugbear for me. And yet, uncertainty is what life is. I don’t think I am alone here. We all struggle to impose order on chaos whatever sphere of life we are operating in. Career. Education. Home environment. Family. Gardens. And sometimes, we even try to impose order on our love relationships with questionable results.

But we impose order to achieve results. Order can create the conditions for a positive outcome. The wrinkle is we are led to believe that the order we have learned to impose is the only way to achieve something.

I used to be sensitive to keeping up with the chronological order of living life with my peers. I was aghast at those who delayed formal schooling after high school. “They’ll never catch up,” I believed. I couldn’t imagine parents going to university. “How could they possibly attend courses and raise kids at the same time?”

An out-of-wedlock pregnancy before university was tantamount to career and romantic suicide. I was a very narrow-minded young person. I was a product of my time. I learned those beliefs. I did not come up with them on my own.

When I read a story the other day about a 100-year-old woman who graduated from university with her first degree, I celebrated her achievement and her gutsiness. As I read somewhere else, but for Rosa parks, blacks might still be riding in the back of city buses.

Nature has its own order and rules. But it does not necessarily approximate the order rigidly imposed on our social systems.

If that were so, apartheid would never have been upended. The civil rights movement would never have had traction. Most women would still be supporting male colleagues in secretarial pools and strictly administrative staff roles.

There are benchmarks in the scripts of social change that mark the resolution of certain social problems and inequities. It is far from perfect science. Getting to a place of resolution can be gappy and inconsistent. The trick is to keep moving forward.

The problem must be identified and brought to light before it can be addressed. Otherwise, we likely wouldn’t even be aware there was an issue. A new order is often born out of chaos and disruption. Revolution often leads to resolution. And still, any resolution will never be a perfect solution.

Challenging problems is much like living life. A start-stop process of learning and relearning and failing and getting up and starting over again. Once we get that, then we can rest easier in the knowledge that “the world is unfolding as it should.”

We learn that life is a journey and not a destination. So it is with the problems in our lives and their ultimate resolution. Our job is to face problems squarely and work on them to resolve them in aid of our own growth.

Looked at in that way, problems are not only inevitable but opportunities for learning and growth. And yes. Even in the face of a child’s heartbreaking life choices or a cancer diagnosis. We must accept what is and move forward from that point. Few life problems are solved by ostriches with their heads in the sand.

Enough for Today

I am sharing this poem.

Short on length but long on wisdom.

Loves me some (or any) Mary Oliver, I does.

You don’t want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don’t want to tell it.

I want to listen
to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.
And anyway it’s the same old story
a few people just trying,
one way or another,
to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.

Mary Oliver, from Dogfish

Rain On

It is pouring rain outside. Pouring with the kind of intensity that would keep you off the roads and safe at home if it were snow. But it isn’t snow. TBTg.

I used to hate rain. Destroyer of picnic plans. Ruination of spring weddings (though rain on a wedding day is supposed to be good luck. Heaven knows why. Certainly not for the bride’s wedding dress.)

A random rain shower for which you are unprepared can leave you cold and damp. Then the rain adds insult to injury and utterly abandons any semblance of comfort once you go inside.

You might have to sit on a hard wooden seat in the damp and cold while suffering through a less than scintillating lecture. The cold and damp do nothing to elevate the subject matter. Quite the opposite. They mirror it a little too precisely.

At home, at least, you get to strip down, throw the outerwear in the dryer, get into some cozy dry clothes and start the day over.

In point of fact, rainy days have not always been doom and gloom for me. I’ve had magical experiences in rain. Years ago, I was preparing to trek the Pokhara to Jomsom route in Nepal. The crude hotel rooms were a bit makeshift by our standards. They were really nothing more than cinder blocks stacked on top of one another.

Set on the four corners of the block walls, the roof was simple sheets of corrugated metal, held down by fairly hefty rocks. This flimsy arrangement held together well enough most of the time. Until monsoon season.

if you have ever been caught in a monsoon downpour, you are unlikely to forget it. The nearest analogy I can come up with is standing directly under a waterfall with an industrial fan blowing at you.

The corrugated sheets of the roof were no match for the monsoon. I was both dazzled and distressed by its power. When the roof of your hotel room blows off and flies away into the distance, it creates some intense feelings.

My primary concern was for my precious Canon 35 mm SLR camera left in my hotel room. It would not survive, I was sure. I dove into the room, fished it out from under the bed covers where I’d stowed it for safety and tucked it under my clothes. Hugging the lens toward my chest, waiting for the deluge to die down.

In a similar monsoon season in Sri Lanka, another downpour aforded a unique personal care experience. The rain shower was so intense and lasted so long I was able to go out into the hotel courtyard to wash my hair. Not only wash it but condition and rinse it with plenty of time to spare.

They say that into every life, a little rain must fall. That is not necessarily always a bad thing.

More and more, I see rain more as a gift of nourishment. For the earth and the plants and for us. It refreshes everything. It washes the plants and softens the earth. It quenches their thirst. We recently planted fruit trees and a hedge around our house which are still being established.

The frequent rains are not only life-enhancing for the plants, but they let me off the watering hook when they come.

I am more than grateful for this frequent, if unbidden, gardening assistance. Rain on, say I.

300 Posts and Counting

My 300th post in a row today. Only 65 more to go to reach my goal of writing a daily blog post for a full year.

Starting out on March 14th of last year (2023 for any of you who are just shaking off the trauma of whatever last year was), I wondered what the year would bring when I started out. I wondered if my goal of writing a book would be enhanced by this discipline. I wondered what I would learn about life. I wondered what I would learn about myself.

I’ve learned a few things. Among them, I have valued the feedback and support of fellow travelers. People in my life who may have only known me superficially before have stuck with me. They’ve read my posts, liked them and made valuable comments. I am grateful for you Diane and Gary. And Katie, too.

I have connected with other blog authors who are doing their bit to share their voice and insights with the world. Eclectic and interesting.

I’ve gleaned a few faithful readers and commentators along the way. I’ve signed up for their blogs and have learned from and enjoyed their writing. Thank you, Frank and Tony and Patti and Mangus and Kris. I see you too, ThatScaredLittleGirl. If I’ve missed any other regulars, please forgive me.

In the past, I have both applauded and decried the onslaught of technology and the power it has over most of us today. I’m just waiting for the internet to crash one day to see what kind of blind panic that triggers across the world. I don’t really wish that to happen, but admit I find it a fascinating prospect to contemplate.

I have discovered the memoir I originally set out to write is not as compelling a goal for me as it once was. I believe I was driven by a need to be validated and to share my learnings and survival strategies from the challenges of my childhood. How I overcame those challenges might be of help to others facing the same situations, I believed.

Part of me still believes that. Yet my life has evolved from a “survivalist” mindset and into a place of stability and contentment. I don’t have the same fire in my belly as I once had to share the atrocities I suffered in my childhood with the world. My solutions of choice come out in my blog writing practice anyway.

My deep-seated beliefs in spirituality over religion, self-care, meditation, yoga, healthy eating all inform my daily writing. Love over hatred. Kindness and compassion as a starting point for any new connections with others. When others disappoint or hurt me, I simply withdraw. I now believe it is their loss as much as mine for what we might have co-created together.

Like a wise farmer, I need to choose where I sow my seeds and try to pick fertile and welcoming soil. I spent too many years not doing that and have the results (or lack thereof) to prove it. I quote the wisdom of the late Maya Angelou who said: “When people show you who they are, believe them … the first time.”

That is such an important and hard-won lesson. My late mother destroyed her life by ignoring this truth. When she met my father, he was a firmly established drunkard and womanizer with a hair trigger temper. My mother believed that her love would change him. If it were not so sad and the consequences so tragic, I would laugh at that presumption.

Her misguided belief underscores a fundamental learning we all eventually come to. We can’t change anyone. It is difficult enough to change ourselves. Any of you who have successfully quit drinking, smoking, overspending, procrastination or other self-sabotaging behaviors know that truth intimately.

I have learned the hard lesson that you cannot push a string. People are as they are as you meet them in the present moment. What you hope and dream they will become one day, may or may not happen. Deal with them in the present, not in the someday you imagine.

If the present person you encounter proves to be a bad fit with where you are in your evolution, the only solution may be to walk away. You may wish them love and healing.

You do not have to expose yourself to the threat of being pulled under or back into the undertow of their unsettled and unresolved issues. That’s their job, not yours.

That was a tough learning for me. We are all tightly sewed into fraught expectations around family and friend relationships. Abandoning them may be seen and felt as disinterest or cruelty.

In my life, I have made those choices as an action of self-care and, yes, an act of love. It is often only in solitude and isolation that people learn the lessons they need to learn in their life.

Like people we lose through death, they are not gone from us. They are simply elsewhere.

I have learned lots over these past 300 days. I have much more to learn. I will always have much more to learn. It is an immutable truth that the more we know, the less we know we know.

I’m closing in on the final leg of this one year marathon. At the moment, I have no idea whatsoever what I will do on the 366th day. Carry on with daily posts or change direction? I do know this for sure.

Writing is not just a vocation but an avocation. It is an exercise in exploring the depths of the soul and spirit as much as it is a tangible product that others can ingest and ponder. It has given structure to my days, even when some of those days were very rocky and unpredictable.

I am finding my voice. I know her better now. I feel there is still much more to learn. So we’ll see. As we used to say regularly in the news business, the outcome “remains to be seen.” At any rate, you can safely assume there will be one even if I don’t yet know what that will be.

Susannah Says

Anyone who has lost touch with old friends and then circled back with them years later is often taken aback. Not necessarily at how they have aged but at how grown up and mature their kids have become.

This is a nod to Susannah (nee Margison) Everett. A fraternal twin to Gordon and born within a few weeks of my own son, Cameron in 1986. Her parents Jennifer and Douglas are longtime friends.

Lest I bury the lead (and pretty much already have), Susannah switched tracks after law school and decided not to pursue law as a lifetime career.

She opened her own business as a coach to other professional women advising them on how to manifest their dreams. I can think of no-one better suited to that calling.

I’m sharing this post that she recently published. I often do that when I come across someone else’s words that I wish I had written.

The words and sentiments Susannah shares are strong both in vulnerability and wisdom. Similar to Susannah, I left a law career “to do my own thing.” The parameters for women to ascend in the profession of law are tight and restrictive (especially for older women as I was when I was called to the bar).

To me, it meant the road ahead in law was fated to be nothing else if not dull and predictable and not terribly satisfying. The cachet and status of a law career often reads better on paper than it plays out in reality, except for a favored few.

Susannah left law awhile back and married a doctor. She is a beautiful and happy young woman doing her own thing.

And she is clearly wise beyond her years. As you will glean from her words below. Not a bad outcome for Doug and Jenny’s kid. 🙂 The same kid I last saw when she was wearing diapers and a onesie.

She done growed.

A few years ago, I felt rejected and that rejection felt MONUMENTAL.

I was wallowing in what I’d lost. The fun I would have had. The experience I would have gained. The lost financial upside.

Then someone said something to me that felt like the pick-me-up my heart (and ego) really needed. Want to know what it was?

“Susannah, this is the BEST thing that could have happened to you”.

You know what? That comment became like an omen. It lit up something in me that was determined to get over the pain of the rejection and capitalize on the opportunity it presented.

The reality was that (now lost) opportunity wasn’t all it was cracked up to be when I sat down and thought about it.

I was settling.

I had been “playing small”

Better things were not only out there, but attainable.

And the longer I was focused on the lost opportunity and tried to get it back, the less space I had for something better.

As soon as I started playing with the ideas that “rejection is just redirection” and “if it’s not this it’s something better” and that “life doesn’t happen TO you, it happens FOR you”, magic (it felt like magic) started happening.

The bigger, better, more perfectly suited opportunities started showing up.

While it’s important to honour the feelings that come with rejection, it’s also important to keep them and the situation into perspective.

What if being rejected was the best thing that could have happened? What would be possible?

You owe it to yourself to find out.

Vellichor

Isn’t that a beautiful word? Want to know what it means? Do you think you know how to pronounce it?

Pronunciation is easy: velly – core. And it means this:

“The pensive nostalgia and temporality of used bookstores; the feeling evoked by the scent of old books or paper.”

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vellichor

This word and its definition triggered a thousand pleasant memories. Of the library at the University of New Brunswick – my first alma mater. Of wonderful old bookstores I would saunter through in Toronto or London, England. There were many smaller and obscure bookstores I would happen upon in my travels that evoked similar feelings.

The feelings evoked by the ambience and smell were always the same. Comfort. Coziness. Class and certainty. Books that were old enough to emit that odor had obviously been around a while. That spoke to their longevity and value.

Vellichor is as much an emotional response as much as anything else. It evokes the Zeitgeist of a slower and simpler time. I could spend a full afternoon wandering from one section to another in a bookstore or library in search of nothing in particular.

Bookstores and libraries are designed for browsing and browse I did. For hours on end. I fear its’ passing.

“Big box” bookstores have subsumed countless numbers of small “Mom and Pop” bookstores. Indeed, that very phenomenon was the plot line (along with the eventual romantic hookup between Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks) in the 90s hit movie, You’ve Got Mail.

Ryan owned a small children’s bookstore she inherited from her mother called The Shop Around the Corner. Hanks played the “villain” Joe Fox whose family owned business was mega bookstores. (Think Chapters, and Barnes & Noble, etc.) The two unbeknown to each other business rivals meet online and strike up a romance not knowing each other’s true identities.

And that is the plot wrinkle that the movie revolves around. Two business rivals with widely divergent business philosophies. Spoiler alert: Ryan finally decides to sell the shop as the new Fox Bookstore crushes her sales. Love wins out in the end. (Why else make the movie?)

But I bet Fox Books didn’t have the vellichor of The Shop Around the Corner. That quality cannot be bought or sold. Like fine wine or delicate soft cheeses, the aroma of fusty old books must gestate and develop slowly.

Another wonderful book turned movie along the same lines was 84, Charing Cross Road. That plot centers around a twenty year correspondence between US author Helene Hanff and UK resident Frank Doel, chief buyer of Marks & Co antiquarian booksellers, located at the eponymous address in London, England.

The film featured Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins with a sweet and simple tale of a long friendship that unfolds in letters based on the writers’ mutual love and respect for books.

A reviewer notes how much The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a novel comprised of only letters between the characters, owes to 84, Charing Cross Road. Each book (which later became movies) ooze simplicity and charm for what I fear is becoming a bygone era.

I’m not sure anyone even has the time and patience for that type of correspondence anymore. In a world where children are no longer even taught cursive writing, it is hard to imagine that era will come again. It is a great cultural and experiential loss.

Musty libraries and bookstores account for some on my happiest memories. I didn’t have a word to describe what it was about them that I loved so much before. Now I do. Vellichor.

Wherever and whenever I find it still exists, I shall deliberately seek it out. Like a muzzled wild boar seeking out truffles. The comparison may not be particularly flattering at first glance but the urgency and intensity of the hunt is completely in synch.

Books are an addiction I have for which I have no intention of seeking a cure.

Fun At Funerals

Funerals. Bad word. Right up there with shingles, scabies, dog poop and malaria as unwanted life events. Ew.

Yet, they are inevitable. People we love will die. People we don’t love will die. Lots of people we don’t know will die. And we will die.

Here I am borrowing loosely from the LGBTQ anthem: “We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to it.” I say: “We’re here. We’re mortal. Get used to it.” Admittedly not anywhere near as mellifluous.

But are funerals the absolutely worst occasions we have to take part in? That pretty much depends on the above associations. Did you love the deceased? Did you hate the deceased while s/he was living? Did you even know him or her?

The answer to these questions will definitely inform the tone and your emotional response to the funeral you are attending. Although it begs the question, if you didn’t even know the person, what were you doing at their funeral anyway?

My mother used to regularly visit funeral homes in her home town whether she knew the deceased or not. She always stayed afterwards for the free food and baked goodies.

A nutritional mainstay of her diet for a good number of her later years actually. But this is not about my mother so I won’t go there. Not directly at any rate.

I am trying to say that not all funerals are bad. Some engender relief. Some engender gratitude for the release from pain and suffering. Some have unwelcome but noteworthy comic elements.

I have the worst funny story about my great-uncle’s funeral back in the last century. To say Great Uncle Leigh was not a religious man would have been a dramatic understatement.

He worked nearly his whole life as a logger in the backwoods of provincial New Brunswick, Canada and later as a carpenter and house builder. Leigh deftly managed to dodge the marriage and kids trap as a young man. However, as old age and decrepitude started to set in, he apparently felt it wise to give up his bachelor status.

He tossed his single lifestyle in favor of a comely widow hovering in about his age range. A comely widow whose baking and cooking skills were locally renowned. It could be said Uncle Leigh knew exactly which side his bread was buttered on.

The only gaping and discernible gap between them was Millie’s feverish commitment to God, and the Baptist church and Uncle Leigh’s religious avoidance of all of it. Not only did he avoid church as an attendee but he also avoided any of its teachings. Uncle Leigh was a proudly devout heathen through and through.

So he and the widow did the deed. Got married, I mean. Some years and many, many apple pies later, Millie passed. In due course, Leigh got older and sick and soon followed Millie on the path into Heaven’s kitchen. (Though, heathen that he was, that point is certainly debatable.)

A funeral was arranged. Without a church to call home and no preacher who knew him personally, there was no religious eulogist familiar enough with him to summarize his life and character. The pastor of Millie’s church was summoned.

Now as an audience member in the family pew, it certainly seemed to me that the ad hoc preacher did not know anything at all about what – or more precisely – who he was talking about.

Then the preacher man’s eulogy launched into a passionate anecdote about sitting – for a time – beside Uncle Leigh on his deathbed. The preacher fairly swooned as he shared his ecstatic news with the assembled gathering.

According to him, our beloved Uncle Leigh, “in his waning hours,” “had accepted salvation and the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Savior.” Apparently this happened just as Uncle Leigh was hovering on the brink of passing over to his “final reward.”

Sitting amongst other relatives in the family pew, including my mother, I did not take this news well. The image of sweet but tough and resolute old heathen Uncle Leigh accepting the Lord Jesus Christ into his house, let alone into his bedroom and heart, hit me entirely the wrong way.

I struggled to suppress a chuckle. As the preacher droned on about the salvation of dear Uncle Leigh’s immortal soul, the rising chuckle gained momentum.

It was everything I could do not guffaw out loud, in what I knew would have been a most inappropriate and shameful outburst.

Still I was doubled over in my seat in the pew, holding my sides, rocking quietly, in an attempt to regain some self-control. At a point, I just jumped up and fled the sanctuary. The laughter exploded out of me once I was safely out of anyone’s hearing in the hall outside.

If you had actually known Uncle Leigh, the absurdity of the preacher’s announcement was too ridiculous for words. It took me several minutes to compose myself.

But compose myself I finally did. I slithered quietly back into the sanctuary and settled into my seat in the family pew – once again, the very model of grief and decorum.

The little break I took meant the funeral had moved on to another speaker, blessedly. My composure and the family’s dignity were intact.

Then, on my shoulder, I felt a gentle tap. I looked around and saw a white glove covered hand and behind that the sweetest and most compassionate-looking elderly lady with tightly curled blue hair and a tender expression of sympathy.

“There, there, dear,” she comforted me. “I know that grief can be overwhelming when you lose a dear one.” I should have been happy she completely misread the reason I fled the sanctuary.

As it happened, her overture had the unfortunate effect of forcing me to once again repress laughter bubbling up within me. Admittedly, I was pretty emotional. But in the entirely wrong way for the occasion at hand.

I smiled broadly, patted her gloved hand still on my shoulder, and whispered sincere thanks for her kindness and concern.

It may have been Uncle Leigh we gathered to bury that day and whose life we celebrated, but, in retrospect, I feel I dodged a bullet.

At the very least, I managed to save the family’s dignity and my own on that sad and sombre and august occasion.

Seriously close call.

Better Late Than Never

An interesting English language idiom.

I was traveling today so my blog post is late – but “better late than never” say I.

It’s been a recurring fact in my life. I got to do many things later in life than was “normal.”

A happy marriage, for example, which I presently enjoy. Late but the miracle is that it happened at all.

I went to law school much later than my peers did with recently graduated undergrad colleagues, but I did it. Better late than never.

It’s a useful phrase and philosophy. It is much too easy to give in to the perception that it is too late to try something new. Whether that is mountain climbing or a graduate degree or that year off you’ve been meaning to take since you started working decades ago. Or sailing the world.

Whatever it is, if you have a hankering to dust off a dream, go for it. Learn piano. Write a book (personally relevant). Start a blog. (also personally relevant). Travel to Machu Picchu (which good friends recently did with their adult kids). Learn to ballroom dance or take up oil painting.

Whatever you didn’t do when you wanted to do it because life was serious and you needed to settle down and be responsible.

I once had a boyfriend who wanted to change direction and ditch law school. He dreamt of opening a bar instead of taking the bar. But he became a corporate lawyer and life took off in that direction.

He’s retired now and I’ve often wondered if he ever took up that challenge. It would warm my soul to think he had.

I did some digging around on the interweb and found some other familiar examples of “better than never.” The examples should resonate with some of you.

—  The dress arrived after the dance but better late than never—I’ll wear it to the next event.

—  I handed in my term paper a day late, but it was better late than never because the teacher only marked it down one grade.

—  Our flight was delayed 5 hours but better late than never because they closed the airport after the plane departed.

—  We only arrived at the game at halftime but better late than never.

— Just come over now—it’s better late than never and Grandpa would really appreciate the effort.

—  We just received the report. We should have had it yesterday but it’s better late than never.

—  A: Sorry it took me a year to pay you back the $500 I borrowed. 
  B: Thanks, it’s better late than never.

—  Unfortunately, we arrived when dessert was being served but it was better late than never.

Synonyms

  • it’s high time
  • not a moment too soon

I’m sorry this post was so hideously late today. The vagaries of travel. But it’s been published before midnight. The daily writing streak of the past nine months is still unbroken.

Better late than never. 🙂

New Year, Old Me

Hope is a wondrous thing. I’d even go so far as to say it is lifesaving.

In the face of all challenges and heartbreak, hope can rise. Bidden sometimes. At other times, it just seems to pop up. The proverbial beacon of light and direction sitting off in the distance that appears to us, seemingly out of nowhere.

I sometimes wonder how often that very scenario played out for mariners of old. In the middle of being mercilessly tossed about on savage seas with death but a rogue wave away, off in the distance, the lookout spots a lighthouse.

Hope rises. Life continues. The sailors get to live another day.

As we mark this first day of a new year in our calendar, we are similarly touched by hope for the year to come. Hope for renewal. Hope for freedom from pain – emotional and/or physical. Hope for better news. Hope for sanity and peace of mind.

It is, of course, a false construct. Today is no different than yesterday in reality. We are not Cinderella who transforms into a princess and steps into a radically altered lifestyle. Of course, at her midnight, she reverted to her previous state. But altered.

The prince she had met and dazzled set out to find her again. That particular “New Year’s Eve” did not make the changes in her life that night. They foretold them.

Change happens like that for most of us, too. Whatever deficiencies we want to address in our life often have to be faced full-on in an instant. Then the slow process of change gets underway. The outcome we want may take weeks, months or years to accomplish. Then, one day, if we’re lucky and have worked hard enough, we are there.

I had this experience with both drinking and smoking. There was a time when I could not imagine my lifestyle would ever be other than what it was. I took some sense of satisfaction in cultivating the image of a hard-working, hard-living journalist for whom alcohol and nicotine were mandatory kit in the trade. An Ernest Hemingway-compatible type of broad.

Confirmation of a pregnancy stopped smoking in its tracks. I inherited my father’s Dutch will of iron. Ditching drink took a little longer. But with almost 24 years of sobriety behind me now, I can hardly remember how or why alcohol was ever part of my life at all.

Yet through it all, I am still me. For better or worse.

I have certainly changed from my younger self. But the essence of who I am is still there. I believe it is that way for most of us. Change does not always present with glaring neon signs in our day-to-day lives. I still have laundry to fold, beds to make, meals to make and dear friends to connect with. Life goes on.

This eventuality can be a hard learning during the egocentricity of youth phase. For some that phase lasts a lifetime. When I learned the phrase “hissy fit,” I recall how mortified and impressed I was by its’ resonance. “Boo.” “Hiss.” “I don’t wanna.” Ya. That sounded pretty similar to me having a temper tantrum.

I am beginning to find some solace in the immutable fact of my own humanity. That is allowing me to ease up on myself. The big ambitions I had for my life as a youth have been abandoned or pretty much dissipated.

And oddly, I find myself these days in the exact situation I always secretly craved. A happy home life. A wonderful and satisfying marriage to a man I think is the coolest dude on Planet Earth. I had similar feelings about my beloved Yorkie, Bailey. Not that I am drawing comparisons between the two, I only mean to say that when I love someone or something, I am all in.

So I did not create a long and unwieldy and unrealistic list of New Year’s resolutions meant to kick in today. There are a few things and unhelpful habits I want to discard. There are a few things I want to do more of. Others I want to do less of.

Like watching TV news as I said recently. That activity is like voluntarily setting yourself up to develop brain fungus. Ptooey. Don’t need it. Don’t want it.

I find myself drifting back to the homely arts and wishing to strengthen my connection to nature. I want to do more of nothing and less constant of the constant unending to-do lists and busywork. It is high time.

You see life goes on with or without us. That is a hard and fundamental learning we all must get eventually. In the face of that truism, we discover the parameters of own life and what we can realistically achieve for our own happiness and that of others around us.

Peggy Lee, the legendary lounge singer from the last century, sang a song called: “Is That All There Is?”

Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is

I know what you must be saying to yourselves
“If that’s the way she feels about it, why doesn’t she just end it all?”
Oh, no. Not me
I’m not ready for that final disappointment
Cause I know just as well as I’m standing here talking to you
When that final moment comes and I’m breathing my last breath,
I’ll be saying to myself … is that all there is?

https://genius.com/Peggy-lee-is-that-all-there-is-lyrics

I’m going to follow Peggy Lee’s advice. One day, you may discover all of your hopes and dreams and expectations may sit shattered on the sidewalk outside your house.

You may be left to wonder why you lived this life at all and what it was all about. That realization has finally hit me. I’m a grain of sand on a beach. A single star in the heavens.

No matter. I have friends and some family members who love me. I love them back. I plan to keep writing and, as Peggy advises, “hope to keep dancing and having a ball.”

Minus the booze, of course.

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So here we are. December 31, 2023. New Year’s Eve 2023. What a year it’s been.

The world in which I am growing older seems nothing like the world I grew up in. And yet in some respects, it is exactly the same.

I lived through Watergate and Nixon’s “resignation.” A wise and timely choice that he made to avoid the impeachment motion that would have ousted him from the Presidency anyway.

Today, we are dealing with the non-stop histrionics of another corrupt and ambitious soul who is determined to reclaim the Presidential office. Whatever else Richard Nixon was, he exhibited a modicum of decency in certain regards.

Respect for women for starters. His vile thoughts contained within his inner circle. No suggestion of insurrection.

War is raging in the Ukraine and the Gaza strip. Though less invested in these wars than Vietnam personnel wise, the US Congress still votes billions for support for its preferred victors in both conflicts. War is good business, after all.

The headlines of 2023 were full of doom and gloom. Unprecedented wildfires of such scope and intensity as have never been seen in the world before. Not in our time anyway. And so the alarm bells about the negative effects of climate change are rung harder and louder.

Billionaires traveling to the moon in their customized spaceships. Moon travel now a business model designed to rack up even more millions for their coffers. These shrewd businesspeople don’t have stars in their eyes or great dreams for the evolution and betterment of humanity. They have a keen eye on their bottom line.

All of this demonstrates a world badly out of balance with the fundamental laws of nature. I often read that billionaires wealth can be compared to the mental illness of hoarding. The disconnect between what they really need and what they want is incalculable.

And yet, we must adjust to the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. Our only personal defense to all of this external craziness in my opinion is rigorous environmental and personal mental hygiene.

I am no longer watching TV news, for example. It has drifted so far from the fundamental ethics of journalism that I once practiced as to be unrecognizable.

Female journalists who once consciously worked to present a professional and respectable image now focus on their sex appeal. Where has the thinking gone that women professionals needed to restrain exuding their inherent sexuality to be taken seriously? Another quaint and old-fashioned notion.

I am choosing to eat more consciously. Don’t get me wrong. I occasionally enjoy fast food as much as anyone. But beyond the dictates of a good dietary regime is the pleasure that comes from “home cooking.” I’m not a saint and drift away from healthy eating more often than I care to admit. But I am conscious of it and aware that healthy eating is my choice.

I’ve taken up yoga again. I had forgotten how important that discipline is. And demanding. I’ve always laughed at those who see yoga as a simple and not at all strenuous exercise. You try holding a spinal twist or tree pose for several minutes. You’ll soon discover how essential strength and balance are to the practice.

So better habits – mentally and physically are on my list of New Year’s resolutions. Wisely I started them a few weeks ago so as not to experience the tapering off on resolutions at the end of January that so many experience.

When I quit alcohol for good, I started in October 1999 on Thanksgiving Day. That way I had a few weeks of sobriety under my belt before the new year and new millennium in the year 2000. After 23 years of sobriety, that strategy and resolution seems to have worked out.

I am doing the usual stock taking today. Reflecting on the year that just passed and hopeful for positive change in the year ahead. It is ever thus.

I should mention this is my last post for 2023. My 293rd to be exact. I’ll remind you how it started. On March 14 during a writing retreat in New Smyrna Beach of this year just past, I set out to write a daily blog post for one full year. I am flabbergasted by how close that one year anniversary is now.

The logic when I started was to grease the wheels of my internal writing machine in aid of finally revving up the engine of creativity to write “that book” – a memoir still conceived to explore the consequences and my strategies for surviving a violence and addiction addled childhood in a small town Canadian provincial backwater.

So there’s one resolution I will need to make and resolve in the new year. After the one year anniversary for this blog, then what? I am still writing for me. I’ve connected with a few kindred spirits along the way in the form of regular readers. That’s encouraging.

Like most of 2024 or any future speculation, there will be countless unknowns. And like every new year and every day on the planet, I will live as I always do. Hoping for the best while being prepared for the worst.

Buckle up, folks. Whatever else comes in 2024, it will inevitably challenge and change us. For my part, I think I’ll head to the kitchen now and prepare a “colorful” and nutritious New Year’s Eve brunch.

That outcome I can say with some certainty, is something I can control and look forward to. We all do what we can when we can as we can. Happy New Year, folks! See you next year.