Category: Writing A Book-ish

The Vigil

I hate waiting. It is a character flaw.

I should be a model of patience by now.

I am not.

It is uncertainty that bothers me most.

I don’t trust easily. I am a small “c” control freak. If a job needs to be done well, I need to do it. Etc.

I could analyze ad infinitum how I evolved this way but I think it is pretty textbook. Chaotic childhood. Addicted parents. Chronic upheaval and instability.

To not become something of a control freak in such an environment would be a little crazy in its own right.

So even if waiting for what I expect will be a positive outcome, I dither.

I harbor the anxiety that the proverbial rug will be pulled out from under my proverbial feet.

Op. cit. childhood.

The trick is to manage the anxiety of waiting and not the other way around, letting anxiety manage you.

I sometimes think of the frightened bird hiding in the reeds in a vignette from the classic Disney animated film, Fantasia.

Instead of keeping her head down and staying put, the bird panics. She flies out of her hiding space into a hunter’s clear shot. I had similar metaphorical experiences in my life. Many instances when things might have gone much better had I simply kept my head down and my mouth shut.

But no. Anxiety is a powerful driver. And with a nervous system deeply gouged with life threatening memories of a danger-filled childhood, it is not an easy emotion to quell in emotional heat.

Sometimes the emotional game in my head was akin to playing defense in a basketball game. Feinting. Parrying. Watching for one move or another on someone else’s part. Blocking constantly, frantically, and in this analogy, one’s own emotions to boot. I already need a shower.

Waiting drags at the nerves. It forces you to think or, at the very least, spend time alone with your thoughts. While it might benefit you to think about anything else but what you are waiting on, that is easier said than done.

I remember back to memorable waiting periods in my life. For grades to be posted. For a boyfriend to call. For the outcome of a job interview. For my children to be born. For my father to pick me up. Ordinary life events made tolerable or intolerable in direct relation to the extent of my anxiety and distrust of life.

Let go, the self-help books say. Let go and let god, the 12 step programs say. Let go, the religious tracts say and, if you fall, god will pick you up and you will fly. That is a lot of faith to invest in reassuring platitudes. If, and especially when, life has given you plenty of personal evidence to the contrary.

I have slowly learned positive benefits of cultivating patience. It makes waiting easier. It lessens the gap between triumph and disaster. As Kipling counseled in his poem If, I have learned to “treat those two imposters just the same.” Well, similarly at any rate.

A friend from long ago suffered from a rare and capricious form of cancer. She traveled as far as Sweden to the only clinic in the world that specialized in treatment of her condition. She wrote about waiting. For test results. For updates. For word of developments on her condition. Her writing was full of frustration for what she couldn’t control. She sounded like a lot of us managing much less difficult circumstances.

My friend died. And that was the end of her uncertainty about everything. Everything ends eventually. Death is so final, after all.

It seems that is the trick of life and living. We do what we have to do while we have to do it until one day we don’t. Or can’t. And then really, really can’t.

We can be patient and learn to put up with life’s uncertainties or we can act out along the way like overtired toddlers. The end result is the same. How we handle these inevitable frustrations is what informs the quality of the journey. That is going to be a lot more important to you later than you may realize now. Trust me.

I have been that peevish toddler in the past having a temper tantrum and throwing shade at every person I perceived as an impediment to my goals and wishes. I have also hung back and talked with others in the queue misery bitching about our shared calamity. We often got a laugh out of it and a shared – if temporary – sense of connection. It was the spoonful of sugar that made the line move faster.

So today I wait again. For an uncertain outcome. In a dire situation. I am better at discerning what I can control and what I can’t. The person for whom I am holding vigil is on their own journey. I am simply a fellow traveler.

On that note, I am going to go top up my coffee. Completely within my control.

A chore utterly without frustration.

Unless the coffee is lukewarm.

I hate lukewarm coffee.

America at 250: Inconsistencies and Hope

My ambivalence toward America on its 250th birthday is not an isolated personal feeling.

A lot of people – Americans and others around the world – struggle to define what America is these days, as well as their place in, and in relation to it.

A lot of that ambivalence can be directly attributed to the current administration. The world has been witness for the past 18+ months (actually, ten years off and on) to the attitudes and actions of the nominal leader of this great country. Many have watched with mouths agape.

In some corner of my memories, I remember what the US was to me growing up as a little girl on Canada’s East Coast. America was the metaphorical older cousin, tall and slim, with sandy hair, freckles, a lopsided grin and a frog in the side pocket of his overalls, oozing certainty and self-confidence. If there was a barn that needed building, he was the guy you wanted on your team. If there was going to be a fight, he was the guy you wanted in your corner.

Our main interaction with America was hopping across the border to Bangor, Maine for school shopping at the end of the summer. New York City was many more levels of magnitude in the realm of astonishment – akin to the Parthenon. An unapproachable playground of the gods.

Visiting that metaphorical older cousin was a mere step down emotionally from seeing The Beatles in concert. Everything about the US was exciting and bristled with hope and possibility.

Those qualities of hope and possibility have been a through line in America’s history. They have allowed its citizens to pull themselves back time and time again from near certain disasters; homesteading, world wars, the stock market crash, the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, Viet Nam, Milli Vanilli. Some might add the current administration to that list.

The United States of America was formed with a pretty clear roadmap laid out in its Constitution. It has traditionally been treated and deferred to as the country’s immutable roadmap with its lofty and sacred aspirations. It held up over time because its precepts were well thought through by the men who wrote it. It has lately come under relentless assault. And that assault has come from those entrusted with upholding its sacred values. The ship of state has flipped upside down.

I learned some things about my sandy haired older cousin in my ten years living in this country (off and on). The almighty dollar is a primary driver for most of its citizens. Even if it isn’t a primary individual value, the culture keeps it front and center. There is plenty of charitable impulses and activity here but far fewer social safety nets provided by government than in other countries, like my native Canada, for example.

Money is visual and palpable. No cultural constraints keep its citizens from going after or building the best, the fanciest, the best as that mantra is fed to its citizens as their cultural due. There is a collective certainty about America’s superiority that is fed to Americans which can be read as self-serving arrogance. And it may be that but it has dragged people out of the most dire of circumstances that might have crushed others. Americans love a great comeback story.

America thrives on heroes and villains. An often capricious elevation of ordinary citizens to extraordinary heights for acts of common human decency. And it reviles and excoriates its underclass whose crimes may have simply been the stumbling of ordinary sinners. That fascination with story may explain a lot. People’s fortunes rise or fall in the American public eye depending on the utility of the narrative being deployed.

The Duggar Family and their nearly twenty children held this country in sway for years on a long-running reality show. Until tendrils of evil began to erupt in the shiny family facade. When their eldest boy was accused and then incarcerated for sexual crimes, the bloom emphatically fell off the rose. It is probably safe to say the Duggar name will never regain the former reputation and respect it once commanded.

Most humans like certainty and it has been my observation Americans like it more than anyone. Rules are rules and it follows logically that if the rules are broken, consequences follow. There is little by way of context to ease the hammer blow of the system’s harsh judgment. The death penalty still thrives in this country. Rehabilitation is a precept and a word you find in the dictionary.

Navigating America on its 250th birthday and beyond appears to be a matter of weighing and accepting inconsistencies. Broad and deep-seated inconsistencies. First a welcome and open arms to immigrants to meet pressing labor needs and now system wide rejection of those who answered the invitation. It means making sense of widespread poverty and homelessness in a country so rich in resources and opportunities. It is reconciling the intransigence of gun laws when – it sometimes seems – children are routinely murdered. It is reconciling disparities in a health care system that bankrupts people when their bodies betray them.

As a Canadian with access to universal health care, I am used to a system where health care is a basic human right. That it has become a capitalist juggernaut in America is perplexing. Bankruptcy caused by illness? A health care system that actively markets its services? Marketing that siphons money away from actual care? Perplexing indeed.

I’m painfully aware my perspective and analysis of the USA today is personal and superficial. I call ‘em as I see ‘em. I believe general satisfaction would mean living amongst a relatively settled and happy population. I don’t see much of that around me lately. Free floating anxiety seems to be the prevalent zeitgeist in America these days.

If the Republic implodes and the forces determined to dismantle Democracy succeed, these observations will be moot anyway. But I choose to remain hopeful about America and its future prospects. We can hope for a generation that rises up to meet the threat that has emerged and start working toward system wide reforms.

Sure that is a Pollyanna perspective. But hey. Relentless optimism in the face of impossibility is pretty much what has sustained America all the way to its 250th birthday today. It is likely ill-advised to abandon that guiding principle now.

May the Fourth be with you!

Letting Go of the Reins

One day I will be taken. I don’t know how or when, of course. All I know is that leaving Earth – the only home I am familiar with – is inevitable.

It is a mildly discomfiting feeling but doesn’t consume my daily thoughts. Except some days, it does.

Does death scare me? I suppose so, yes, on some level. In the same way going on a trip to any unknown destination scares me. More nervousness than fear. Traveling is a hassle. There are bound to be nerves. Any trip causes internal and external upheaval. What do I pack for starters?

I have lived long enough and traveled often enough to know that wherever I go, there I am. Exotic destinations and white sandy beaches stretching off into the distance are alluring. I appreciate them in direct correlation to the vantage point of the mood and headspace I am in. Over my lifetime, positive and negative internal states have been many and various. My internal state always mattered in my recollection of the experience more than any external situation I was in. I could appreciate or adapt myself to the degree that I was capable of reacting to or appreciating it.

One stunning travel memory was the beach at Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka. Local boys brought us freshly cut spears of pineapple that dripped with juice and had the mouth feel of biting into heavy whipped cream. I snorkeled in shallow waters off the beaches there. I nearly inhaled water amazed and distracted by the orderly kaleidoscope of colors among fish wending their way through equally colorful coral reefs.

When I think of travel experiences that stayed with me, I think about the synchronicity between my inner self and what was going on outside me. Often nothing. Standing at a rock cairn in the Himalayas, I watched clouds gambol across the peak of Mt. Everest in the distance. No hurry, no drama. Just mountains and clouds being mountains and clouds. Just being.

I often try to reconcile the disparity between growth and stagnation. It is said life on Earth is largely for spiritual education. Damned if I know exactly how that works. Damned if I have ever been able to fully recognize and internalize graduation markers from one “grade” to the next.

I only know by comparison that my values, hopes, and ambitions are radically different than those of a younger me. Younger me was largely consumed by the drive for survival. Older me wonders more often what survival’s end will be like. I often reflect on the enduring shame and distress certain actions or situations created in me as a youth. Those situations would never happen now and the memories cause me pain and pause. Maybe that is the point. That feels like learning.

I have often said, however, that many life lessons I learned I would rather have read in a book. Were the lessons of devastation of loss, humiliation, upheaval and searing emotional pain really necessary for the ultimate good of my eternal soul? That seems doubtful. I spent a lot of time wondering if those crushing lessons were simply a case of me being the a—hole. The uncomfortable answer was often yes.

Life for me has been like some talented, untrained filly full of spirit and energy and bumping into its mother and the paddock rails out of sheer, unbridled enthusiasm. The filly needed to grow up, become trained, focus that energy and spirit in a controlled way to be of any value to the herd or its owner. And protect its mother’s ribs. Otherwise it would simply grow bigger and continue to be an unruly, undisciplined horsehole that outgrew its cute phase and was eventually labeled delinquent and dangerous. At which point, it would become isolated and avoided. I’ve been there.

As a child in Pony Club being trained myself, I would often let go of the reins. It signaled the end of the lesson. It was the moment where riders relaxed and the horse relaxed, too. We often caught flak from instructors if we let the reins go in a field where the first thing the horse did was start grazing. That seemed to bother the instructors terribly but I never really got that. I always thought it was a nice treat and reward for a horse that has just worked hard and put up with your childish incompetence for the preceding hour.

On a horse trek across the Andes, I relaxed the reins at certain points when I couldn’t possibly imagine what my instructions to the horse could constructively add to the situation. The group of fellow riders edged along narrow mountain trails within way too close proximity and clear sight of cliffs plunging thousands of feet down the mountain. If the horse took any misstep whatsoever, we would both free fall to our deaths.

It finally occurred to me that the horse did not want to die either. It had crossed these pathways many more times than I had, after all. It needed to be sure – and was likely very sure – of its own footing. Self-preservation is not confined to the human species. I had utterly no control over this animal in that moment. I loosened the reins and gave over my trust to this steady, wordless equine. It worked out, of course, or you wouldn’t be reading this blog post!

Facing death with an attitude of peace would seem to mean arriving at that portal having come to terms with most of the problems and relationships life threw at you. Combined with surrender for what you could not and cannot control any longer, which is a form of grace. I have lately been learning that lesson in real time.

When facing a situation where you have explored every option, you have given a project or person your all, you have asked all the questions, done all the readings, shaken the curtains for every last remaining bit of insight until, one day, for no discernible reason, you let go of any control over the outcome. Where the illusion of control was deployed as a survival strategy, it becomes obvious you have little to no control whatsoever. Control over getting the dishes done, yes, of course. But not for the ultimate outcome of life’s trajectory.

In the vernacular and wisdom of the 12 step groups, one ultimately decides to “Let go and let god.” I assume and hope that will be my conclusion on my deathbed, or death sidewalk, or death seashore or airplane wherever I happen to be at the time I cross “the great divide.”

While it causes anxiety to let go of control, it also comes with a certain sense of relief. There are burdens worth setting down along the journey of life. To surrender to forces greater than you are. Surrender undoubtedly comes at no more important or impactful time than at the end of that journey.

Sounds like relief to me. At the end of the ride, let the damn horse eat all the fresh grass he wants, say I. He’s earned it.

Well, Well

Like a fickle lover, I had turned my back on writing a while ago. Away with ya, wench! But like all true love stories, the compulsion to write kept wriggling under my skin. Like a persistent itch. An observation here. A bon mot there. Next thing you know … I am sleeping with the alphabet again.

Paul Taubman’s 30 Day Blog Challenge starts again on July 1, 2026. That seems as good a day as any to dust off the keyboard, set my cap for July 31st and see what manner of blather arises over those following thirty days.

Since I last turned my hand to hen scratching on a daily basis, much has changed. I have real hens scratching daily in the dirt. They produce so many eggs, I feel like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice awash in recalcitrant broom handles.

My dear husband’s health has altered and has changed the trajectory of our life journey together. Not unexpected and part of life. Rife with opportunities for growth, love and challenges. We face them together.

And I have appeared on HGTV in a show called Zillow Gone Wild. They called me a diva on camera. I chuckled thinking, “You can fool some of the people all of the time.”

I have met a good number of neighbors after recently throwing the doors open to Wissthaven – our magical, mystical rolling improbable acreage in Central Florida.

Much to report. Reports to deliver. Delivery awaits. As does landing. And so we shall see where it all does. Soon enough.

Why I’ll Never Write My Memoir

Life can evolve much differently than we expect.

I often fall back on the old adage to explain life’s twists and turns: “(Wo)Man proposes. God disposes.”

I started writing this blog over a year ago to grease my writing wheels. One day – I told myself – I would write the “great North American memoir.” Admittedly a grandiose ambition, but if you are dreaming anyway, dream big say I.

I wasn’t sure what I expected to learn by writing a daily blog for a year. What I eventually learned surprised me. In terms of writing my own memoir, my lust and ambition had subsided.

I realized I had already written a memoir, in fact, but not in a conventional way. My memoir was written down in a thousand daily journal entries in dozens of journals.

In plaintive emails to friends and supporters. In counseling sessions. Family not so much. Family was more often the subject of painful emails than the recipients.

When the time came for me to set out on a blog writing journey, my intention was certain. I would eventually gather all the words I wrote after that pivotal year and compile those musings in a book that was sure to become a New York Times bestseller.

That bestseller would put me on par with revered writers Mitch Albom and Anne Lamott and dozens of other insightful spiritual and psychological authors whose wisdom I’d ingested over the years.

As you can tell, writers must have considerable hubris and ego to believe sharing their words and insight might have any universal appeal.

I had an unstable and violence-riddled childhood. My parents were unstable and troubled. So they passed on what they knew to me and my two sisters. In logical order, those qualities carried on in me through adolescence and young adulthood and beyond.

Underneath all of the emotional muck that had built up inside me over years, I held onto a single belief: I was worth something and would one day make a contribution to the world that would justify all the pain and upheaval I had lived through and caused.

That once seemed like a noble, if presumptuous, ambition. I now realize that it was an acquired survival strategy. A decades long “Hang in there” mantra that kept me moving forward when I all I wanted on many days was for the ground to open up and swallow me whole.

For the life of me, I could not figure out how a seemingly bright and well-meaning sort, such as myself, could go through daily life and repeatedly make so many dumb and incomprehensible life choices.

I couldn’t figure any of it out until I learned about the impact trauma and neglect can have on a child’s delicate and emerging psyche. I couldn’t figure any of it out until I learned there such a thing as “personal boundaries.”

More pointedly was the learning that it was up to me to set those boundaries for myself and my life and that those boundaries were supposed to be inviolable. And if they were to be preserved and strengthened, it would be my job to do so.

Duh.

How odd these revelations must seem to “normal” readers. Those who grew up with “good enough” parents who provided the necessaries of life and a safe home environment without fanfare or expectation of laud.

Only much later in life did I come to realize my narcissistic mother had an addictive and almost pathological need to hear what a great job she was doing and had done for her children. It was her survival strategy and often tenuous attachment to sanity.

My life today is 180 degrees from the life I lived as a child. I have everything I need and much of what I want. I have a strong and loving relationship with an equally flawed and delightful human being in my husband.

I chuckle a little when I realize my assertion about enjoying a happy marriage would have had as much currency in my family as claiming the moon is made of green cheese. Incredulous and ridiculous my mother would surely say. Yet, here we are.

I am not old enough to have arrived at the rigorous stock-taking phase in old age about what my life was, the part I played in it and how I feel about it all. In truth, some chapters and paragraphs are too painful to revisit. But not all by a long shot.

I had an interesting balance of experiences, adventures and learning opportunities that balanced out the tragedies. There are many stories from those positive experiences that are worth sharing.

Trips to Europe, Egypt, India, Nepal in my youth. Argentina, the Arctic, China, Korea and Hong Kong in mid-life. And now the biggest trip of my life by marrying, pulling up stakes in my home and native land and immigrating South. Who knew it could be even more educational (if by times utterly perplexing) than any of my earlier travel adventures?

Writing and publishing “the” memoir has receded in importance. I have internalized the lessons learned by wrestling with the myriad of issues my childhood forced me to confront and deal with.

That I did more or less successfully is infinitely more gratifying than seeing my name and image plastered on a book cover in bookstores across North America. (Remind me, by the way. Are there still bookstores out there? I’ve been out of touch.)

I now know that all published works are a compilation of applied intellect, imagination and creativity. Even and perhaps especially, memoir. I now write when Spirit moves me to write. Like today.

As for my childish dreams of fame, fortune and global admiration by millions of strangers? That ambition has been traded for the hundred daily satisfactions and frustrations of a happy and peaceful daily life filled with loving friends and family of choice.

For me, that is a more than satisfactory trade-off for the bright lights and big city.

Been there, done that.

Sometimes, Ya Just Gotta Laugh

These sayings/insults are incredible gems from an era before the English language got boiled down to 4-letter words! I hope you delight in them as much as I have. 😅♥️

1. “He had delusions of adequacy. ” Walter Kerr

2. “He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”- Winston Churchill

3. “I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure. – Clarence Darrow

4. “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”-William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

5. “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”- Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)

6. “Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it.” – Moses Hadas

7. “I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” – Mark Twain

8. “He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.” – Oscar Wilde

9. “I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend, if you have one.” -George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

10. “Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second… if there is one.” – Winston Churchill, in response

11. “I feel so miserable without you; it’s almost like having you here” – Stephen Bishop

12. “He is a self-made man and worships his creator.” – John Bright

13. “I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.” – Irvin S. Cobb

14. “He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others.” – Samuel Johnson

15. “He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up. – Paul Keating

16. “He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.” – Forrest Tucker

17. “Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?” – Mark Twain

18. “His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.” – Mae West

19. “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.” – Oscar Wilde

20. “He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts… for support rather than illumination.” – Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

21. “He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.” – Billy Wilder

22. “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But I’m afraid this wasn’t it.” – Groucho Marx

23. The exchange between Winston Churchill & Lady Astor: She said, “If you were my husband I’d give you poison.” He said, “If you were my wife, I’d drink it.”

24. “He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.” – Abraham Lincoln

25. “There’s nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won’t cure.” — Jack E. Leonard

26. “They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.” — Thomas Brackett Reed

27. “He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them.” — James Reston (about Richard Nixon)

—Robert L Truesdel

I’ve Been Outed

My deepest, darkest shortcomings have been outed yet again by someone sharper and more insightful than me.

To be fair, I did submit one short story to a competition in the past year.

It did bupkis in the contest but the editor/readers did say good things about my submission. It did encourage me to submit to other contests.

That’s something, I guess.

“I have a young friend who dreams of becoming a novelist, but he never seems to be able to complete his work.

According to him, his job keeps him too busy, and he can never find enough time to write novels, and that’s why he can’t complete work and enter it for writing awards.

But is that the real reason? No! It’s actually that he wants to leave the possibility of “I can do it if I try” open, by not committing to anything.

He doesn’t want to expose his work to criticism, and he certainly doesn’t want to face the reality that he might produce an inferior piece of writing and face rejection.

He wants to live inside that realm of possibilities, where he can say that he could do it if he only had the time, or that he could write if he just had the proper environment, and that he really does have the talent for it.

In another five or ten years, he will probably start using another excuse like “I’m not young anymore” or “I’ve got a family to think about now.”

He should just enter his writing for an award, and if he gets rejected, so be it.

If he did, he might grow, or discover that he should pursue something different.

Either way, he would be able to move on.

That is what changing your current lifestyle is about.

He won’t get anywhere by not submitting anything.”

Ichiro Kishimi

(Book: The Courage to Be Disliked [ad] https://amzn.to/4aAyXmO)

Good ‘Ol Chuck Bukowski

This was too good not to share.

(I lasted exactly two whole weeks on my blog publishing break. More, maybe, on that later. I did promise not to overwhelm you…. )

Looks like poet Charles Bukowski said a few years back what I finally came to believe.

The message certainly bears repeating.

So much truth in this poem: death before death, dead-in-spirit.

Or as I once heard it put: “When you grow old and die, dear, how will you know you’re dead?”

Don’t do that. Don’t be that. Save yourself! Save yourself!

In perpetuity if needs be ….

Nobody can save you but

yourself.

you will be put again and again

into nearly impossible

situations.

they will attempt again and again

through subterfuge, guise and

force

to make you submit, quit and /or die quietly

inside.

nobody can save you but

yourself

and it will be easy enough to fail

so very easily

but don’t, don’t, don’t.

just watch them.

listen to them.

do you want to be like that?

a faceless, mindless, heartless

being?

do you want to experience

death before death?

nobody can save you but

yourself

and you’re worth saving.

it’s a war not easily won

but if anything is worth winning then

this is it.

think about it.

think about saving your self.

your spiritual self.

your gut self.

your singing magical self and

your beautiful self.

save it.

don’t join the dead-in-spirit.

maintain your self

with humor and grace

and finally

if necessary

wager your self as you struggle,

damn the odds, damn

the price.

only you can save your

self.

do it! do it!

then you’ll know exactly what

I am talking about.

Charles Bukowski, “Nobody But You” from Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way, 2002

The Last Post … Sort Of

Happy anniversary to me.

I started this blog a year ago today. I wasn’t sure then whether I would successfully make it to today or not. Publication wise.

But I did. I published a post every day of varying quality and length for a whole year.

Mission accomplished.

Do you know the haunting musical lament The Last Post? Usually played on a trumpet and followed by two minutes of silence, it is meant to honor those who lost their lives in the Great War.

It is a standard offering at the annual Canadian Remembrance Day services on November 11th across the country. (Known as Veteran’s Day in the US.)

It is a musical thread of continuity that, when we hear it, can snap us back to a particular time or place.

My strongest memory of The Last Post was hearing it played at my father’s funeral in 2005. A couple of his Legion buddies showed up at the service to pay their respects.

When the eulogy and all other elements of the service had been delivered, to close the ceremony, they played The Last Post to send Dad onwards.

The two minute scratchy trumpet solo was played on a handheld cassette tape player held aloft for better hearing by the gathered mourners. It was both moving and comical.

It could have been a scene in a TV series about an old soldier who had lived and died in the countryside among unsophisticated folk who were salt of the earth. And a touch salty, too, if memory serves.

In the end, all that mattered was that Dad’s old buddies showed up to send him off. The low quality of the recording notwithstanding. They showed respect to an old veteran who had done his bit when called upon to do so.

None of us really knows what happens when we die. It is – outside birth itself – life’s biggest mystery. There is no end of speculation about consciousness continuing after we die. Maybe.

I am inclined to think consciousness does continue in some form even though I have no clue what that form might be. Energy doesn’t die only transmogrifies. (Love that word~!)

Reincarnation and its variants are a preferable alternate to the “once and done” end of life theory that so many realists expound and insist upon with just as little evidence for their certainty.

If we don’t really know anyway, what harm is there in believing the more comforting scenario?And then there is that Ouija board session that utterly convinced me there is another side. That is a story for another time however.

I say farewell today in a similar low-key fashion. No big production or insights to share. Just a wistful sense of gratitude and completion in achieving a goal.

I’ve promised to share posts occasionally going forward as and when moved to do so. If a new writing venture develops, I’ll share that news with you, too.

Next week, I am going to a writing retreat. Today and tomorrow, I will rest and see what fills in the space this blog occupied in my life all this year.

Other than that, no concrete plans. Blessedly.

As with most aspects of life, the future is not completely in my control anyway.

I think I’ll just settle in to enjoy the ride wherever it leads.

Thanks for following along.

I’ll likely pop up in your inbox now and then as promised.

We’ll see what happens next

Maggymac out, with much gratitude for the ride and the company.

Plus One Year’s Eve

Well, folks. I made it. This is my 366th post in a row having officially started writing this blog one year ago tomorrow. Happy anniversary to me.

Funny how anniversaries and life just seem to creep up on you. No fanfare or fireworks. Just progression.

I started this blog as a place to gather my thoughts while I committed to writing a book. There has been a book sitting in me for years, or so I’ve been told. I finally wanted to let it out.

So did that book get written? That depends on how you look at it. I wrote enough copy to fill a book certainly. But the technical aspects of book writing were never brought to bear on this project.

A beginning, middle and end to start. No. I chose to share my thoughts and insights into a range of eclectic topics as they arose or came to my attention. In that sense, I honored my own unfolding process and not a publisher’s checklist.

It has been an opportunity to share wisdom I’ve gleaned over the years through the writings of others.

It has been an opportunity to explore and share where I came from and how I healed from it.

It has given me a chance to publicly grieve the loss and raise up some people I admired.

I have a better sense of what matters to me and what I will no longer tolerate. Peace is top item on the list of goals these days. I have turned my back on drama.

This has not been a journal. I’ve done that before. In journals, I shared my deepest fears and insecurities. I bitched and wailed and generally pursued a story line of “woe is me.” This blog was deliberately something other than that.

I distilled the key learnings and strategies that kept me going on my “woe is me” days. I shared what I did to endure and prevail over “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” I worked at learning to forgive myself.

The gap between intellect and emotion can be vast. Such is the process of learning and growth. All of us seem to be slaves to unconscious programming we work our whole lives to understand and overcome.

I have carved out a little niche. An intellectual mini-garden that I can nurture and visit frequently. I don’t yet know what my next steps are. I will write a final post tomorrow just for the symmetry of ending on the same date I started last year.

I will once again this year attend the Getting Away to Write workshop in New Smyrna Beach, Florida next week. A geographic coda to this writing exercise as I started this blog there last year.

I must thank all of you who subscribed and read what I wrote. The comments were usually spot on. Insightful and helpful. The likes were encouraging and kept me motivated. I’ll pop up again from time to time in your inbox like other bloggers.

It’s time now for coffee and morning meditation. Time to ground myself and prepare for the day. It will be deliberately low-key as most of my days are lately. Such a welcome gift.

I love living this way. Forgiving myself as well as forgiving those who trespassed against me. Marinating in the memories of a lifetime and looking back with gratitude. Enjoying the living environment I’ve created whilst living with someone I love who loves me back.

Above all else, I’m certain that my journey – like a billion other journeys taking place in the world out there at this moment – is but a single cell in the vast corpus of life on our planet. Both unique and utterly ordinary.

Whatever is ahead, I plan to enjoy the remainder of the ride to the best of my ability.

Thank you for sharing part of the journey with me.