Category Archives: inspiring

Waiting for the right train

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If you are a blogger, or an aspiring novelist, you may have seen the acronym NaNoWriMo, which is an abbreviated version of National Novel Writing Month.  The eleventh calendar month has been designated as the month when writers challenge themselves to write 50,000 words, or more, in a time span of 30 days.

I thought this year I would board that speeding locomotive of creativity but, as the train neared the station, I stepped back and watched the silver bullet speed past my stop and continue on its journey without me.

As the caboose rattled down the tracks and the last of the smoke had cleared from the air, I realized I don’t want to put so much pressure on myself that I scare my characters away.  I want them to tell their story at their pace.  I have developed a relationship with these unique personalities over the last couple of years and I don’t want to be the bully in the school yard making these other kids make decisions based on any peer pressure I put on them.   I will push their swings as high as they want to go but let them slow down when they want to stop pumping their legs.  This is their journey and I am only here to tell it as they tell it to me.

swings

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I envy those who can focus so intently for thirty days, and perhaps if I were starting a new project I would be more eager to dive in and lose myself in the process.  But, for now, I have chosen to create my own acronym – NaNoWriWin……  National Novel Writing Winter.

My writing train will still stay on track, but a track that doesn’t have such a condensed schedule.  It will meander along its path, at a rate of speed that is conducive to its creativity and not just its deadline.  And I can only hope that by slowing down the velocity of my train, that my silver bullet with travel through beautiful, and sometimes scary, landscapes over the next few months.  I’m anticipating some bumps along the way, and perhaps a few derailments, but it is the journey that I am looking forward to and not just the moment I finally reach my destination.

 

Into the Mystic

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orbs-in-the-woods

Faint whispers.

Rustling leaves.

Movements in the bush.

As I strain to hear them,

I know they long to be seen,

if only for just a moment.

They are the ghosts of my past,

the purveyors of my future,

and the keepers of my secrets.

They linger in the spaces

between shadow and light.

Their consciousness

meets my curiosity,

and I strain to see their light

in my twilight vision.

Their dance

is my celebration.

 Their presence

is my comfort.

They seek my truth.

They are my warriors, my army,

and they will always

be the reason I smile in my sleep.

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When you just have to listen to show tunes…..

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“What greater thing is there for human souls than to feel that they are joined for life, to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories.”     George Elliott

~~~

Some moments sneak up on us, catching us completely off-guard while other moments just slap us in the face.  The hand print is still on my cheek from my experience this afternoon.

We were being bombarded by the first snowfall of the season.  It was in our forecast so it was no surprise.  What was a shock was my immediate thought to call my mother and tell her to stay indoors today.  I was driving home from work and, without hesitation, was reaching for my speed dial to call her number when I realized what I was doing…..and then the tears came.  My mother passed away in March of 2014.   Even though I was a mere 1/2 kilometre from my house, I had to pull over at the end of my road to collect myself.

I have felt my mom’s presence quite a bit lately, and so has my brother.  He actually admitted to me that he was listening to the Cabaret soundtrack at work (sorry, Jamie) and I know that was my mother’s doing.  Cabaret was one of her favorites, and although my brother didn’t spend the countless hours my mom and I did watching old musicals, the nostalgia of the music was not lost on him.

cabaret

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I never doubt that my mother will always be here when we need her.  As I took a break from writing this post, she prodded me once again in her subtle way.  A duet with Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb magically appeared on my news feed on Facebook and it was one of my mom’s favorite Barbra songs.  “What Kind of Fool” doesn’t believe that messages can be sent from those who have passed?

She is here….inserting herself into the moments that she feels she is needed.  Her mother-instinct is still alive and well and she knows, perhaps better than we do, that she can still help guide us through those moments when only a mom can say or do the right thing.  And, once again, she is correct.  I do need her now…..and maybe my brother does as well.  And even if my worries are not about me, her presence and her calming influence are making me feel like everything is going to be ‘real fine’.

 

 

 

 

Getting the green light

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The lodge where I am employed is closed for the season, our quaint little village resembles more of a ghost town with a few tumbleweeds rolling down the main street and the silence at night can be deafening.

But in these times of serenity, behind the doors of seemingly empty kitchens, a group of women and men are readying themselves to wield sharp knives and give even Gordon Ramsay a run for his money in the chopping department!

Our small group of devoted volunteers meet for a couple of hours over a couple of weekends to create crockpot freezer meals to help a few families who may be struggling, for whatever reason.  Last year, it was a young family who had lost their home in a fire just after delivering twins.  This year we are doing our best to spread the meals to a few families and not just one.

crockpot

There have been a few hurdles along the track to finding these families but the ribbon at the finish line is getting to be within striking distance.   Although the meals are being prepared in an inspected and certified kitchen, many of the choppers have not taken a food safety course, so there was a question as to whether the food bank was going to be allowed to accept our donations.

The joy of living in a small town is that you can literally ask your neighbors if they know of any families who could benefit from our knife skills and they will immediately give you a list of names.  And I have recently discovered that, as long as the meals are labelled with all ingredients (which they are), the food bank will give us that long awaited green light and accept the meals – so the only thing left to do is shop and chop!

 

 

 

 

Letting the taste linger

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“The many moments in your life that seem small end up leaving the largest imprints on your heart.” ~ SN

~~

 There are so many moments that we take for granted, times in our life that we should document and put into a time capsule but they seem to slip by, unnoticed.  Those small pieces of our lives, the ones we seemingly overlook, can leave the biggest impression on our lives without us really being aware of it at the time.

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Lately, I have really begun to take notice of those small moments.  I savor them like a fine wine and let those precious seconds sit on my tongue for a little longer before I swallow them.  Sure, remembering how that wine tasted is easy but truly enjoying it in the moment is important or that wine is nothing more than fortified grape juice.

Yesterday I was able to embrace some of those small moments – those moments that, to anyone else may seem trivial but to me, will take up a special corner in the vault of my memory.  And although the way in which I recall the details may become slightly altered over time, for now they are the strings pulling up the corners of my mouth when I least expect it.

I am in love

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“Life is about finding someone who understands the sum of your parts….and not just some of your parts.” ~ SN

~~~

 It seems my brain, lately, has been running programs in the background that I have been unaware of, until now.  Being in the hospitality industry, and being a student of life, I have had the good fortune of meeting a great number of couples.  Some couples go through their journey alone and many travel the road of life with their children.  And over the last few months, I seem to have been paying much more attention to how these couples interact with each other – the nuances of the looks they give each other, their unspoken communication and the respect they have for each other as best friends and as lovers, and not just as parents.

man-touch-woman

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There is a silent language they speak, an inaudible conversation they have been having for years.  You can see it in the way they look at each other and laugh at the same silly things.  Their declaration of love comes from a mere touch, their bodies speak to one another, and their understanding of each other comes from years of really getting to know everything about that other person.

I have slowly come to realize that I am in love with the way they are in love.  They just get each other.   They realize that they have found the person who loves everything about them and not just the things they are supposed to love.  They share crazy habits and the same sense of humor but they are mindful of the mannerisms that they don’t quite understand.  They can spend hours just talking and never be bored in each other’s company.

The opening line of this post is one I came up with earlier this year and it has stuck with me.  Enough so that it has haunted me until I was able to eventually use it on this blog.

Whether I have yet to meet him or he is somehow already in my life, I’m willing to wait for that someone.   That person who will know me, really know me, and take every opportunity to let me know that he gets my math.

Can we be honest for a moment?

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“Three things cannot be long hidden – the sun, the moon and the truth.” ~ Buddha

~~

I have lied.  I have told untruths throughout my life.  Whether it has been to protect another or to surreptitiously protect myself, words born from the fictitious have previously escaped my lips.  But as a great student of life, I learned early in the game that lying only creates a web in which we will eventually become entangled.

Lies beget more lies.  Soon enough, the merry-go-round of deception increases its momentum and those who intentionally expound on their distorted reality are eventually hurtled into the real world at full speed.  And when their trickery finally meets the facts of sensibility, the results can be disastrous.

honesty1

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Small white lies aside, I like to think of myself as an honest person.  I leave the fiction in my life to my writing and deal with my life in the most honorable way I can.  Being honest simply means I am living my truth.  Being the most sincere version of me allows me to never have to think twice about the words that have escaped my lips.   And just being truthful with myself grants me the luxury of never having to second guess the reflections I share with anyone else because I don’t ever have to keep track of what I have said in the past.

Big or small, lies are lies.  And when you know a lie has been spoken aloud by another, it is enough to make you question the factual integrity of anything else they say.  Knowing you are being lied to is bad enough….but knowing you aren’t worth the truth is excruciating.

Are you there, blog? It’s me, Susan.

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Frenetic pace aside, the last few weeks have been draining.  It’s a good problem to have when your resort is so busy that you cannot find the right moment to take a day off.  But it is a bad problem, personally, when you cannot find the right moment to take a day off.

For anyone in the seasonal hospitality business, the start of the school year is a dreaded reality.  The summer staff are solely focused on Frosh Week and moving into residence while I am busily focused on the treads of my new running shoes, hoping that they will carry me through until Thanksgiving.  And while I am intent on putting forth 100% to make everything at work a glowing success, my personal accomplishments become non-existent.

mower

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But the past two and a half days have been, thankfully, concentrated entirely on my needs.   I slowly morphed back into all of the roles I had been ignoring and gained some of my life back.  My lawnmower is fixed and the ridiculously long grass has been cut.  Order has been restored to my life and all of the menial jobs I had been unable to accomplish have been triumphantly completed.  I am currently sitting back with a glass of red wine, happy with the amount of tasks I have been able to complete over the last two days.

Now it is time to get some balance back in my life.  It’s time to allow the words to become more of a focus than the numbers – the number of people at the lodge, the number of meals I serve and the number of steps I complete in a day.  It’s time to get back to the things that feed my soul and not my punch card.

Are you there, blog?  I’m back….and I’ve missed you.

 

What’s a few grey hairs between friends?

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The grey whiskers appeared almost overnight.   In the blink of an eye, my dog had matured beyond the youthful puppy I have known for 9 years.  Sure she still has the spunk of a young pup on occasion but I can slowly see time creeping up on her faster than I would like it to.

My solace lies in the fact that our affection for each other is timeless.   Her devotion to me, whether her joints are currently aching and she has no desire to jump on my bed, is endless.  She is, and will continue for years to be, my true companion.   She is happy to see me when I have returned home after four hours or four minutes.  She never judges my idiosyncrasies and she still manages to hear my soft sobs when I am trying to quietly cry and she comes to clean away the salty tears.

callaway

I thought my life was full before she came along.   I was dead wrong.  We have always had dogs.  Growing up, my life was filled with hairballs and doggy kisses.   But Callaway is a unique soul.   There is not a doubt in my mind that she was meant to be my dog.   The picture we fell in love with on the adoption website (the one above) was a picture of her brother but it was Callaway who came into my life and into my heart.  I fought for her during my divorce because I couldn’t imagine my house without her in it.

I know I must face the inevitable – time will not go backwards and those grey hairs on her muzzle will slowly multiply, but so will the grey hairs on my head.  We will face this truth together knowing that however long we were destined to be in each other’s lives, we will make the most of each moment.

 

Sometimes you can go back

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rearview-mirror

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Some would say to leave the past in the past.  Over the course of this previous weekend, parts of my past engaged with my present and it was a wonderful blend of remembering old and making new memories.

I’ve never been one to shy away from the things in my past.  All of those moments, good or bad, made me who I am today.  And although things may not have worked out the way I may have wanted, I always like to think I learned a lesson from each one of those experiences.

I learned to be strong when I needed to be and to allow myself to feel vulnerable when I needed support.  I have learned that each one of the people in my past still holds a piece of my heart even though they may not be an everyday character in this act of my present.

But the final chapters of my story have not been written.  There may be a rough outline but the story has not been sent to print and there is always room for a few backspaces and some new paragraphs to be written.  Sometimes you can go back, not to the past you had but you can go back to reread the story line and see if any of those characters can be written into a few paragraphs of your future.

I am not going to live in the past, but I will always allow my past to live within me.