Category Archives: musings

Second, third and fourth thoughts

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I am a thinker.  I’m not like the bronze statue perpetually perched on bent hand in a state of posthumous concentration but I am equally consumed by thought.  I never give things a second thought, I give them a third and fourth thought until I am satisfied that I can think no more. Maybe Winnie The Pooh was on to something.

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I never do anything on a whim.   I have to examine things from many angles, deconstruct the complete picture and piece it back together while thinking of all the probabilities and possibilities of that situation.  I replay conversations in my head thinking about what words were uttered even examining the inflection in the words that were spoken.  I don’t have an eidetic memory but I can certainly recall conversations, sometimes verbatim, and I  will analyze those words until I am satisfied that what I heard was what I was supposed to hear.

My brain likes to disassemble moments or conversations, examine each piece and then slowly rebuild that moment until it is once again the sum of all of its parts.  I don’t know why I am the way I am.  There are moments that I would like to be that duck that allows the water to bead and roll from its back, just lets it go, but that is not how I am built.  I need to analyse – I need to dwell on an idea until my thinking has left me satisfied and content.

I am a thinker.  I am a re-thinker.  Potentially, I am an over-thinker.  In any case, I can rest assured that I have exhausted every angle before I’ve come to a final decision and that thought helps me sleep at night – until I think I may have missed something and spend many early morning hours thinking about what thought may have eluded me.

Where are you on the think scale?

In the wee small hours

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With no curtains for protection, the jagged streaks of moonlight spilled through the bedroom window across my duvet.  I had awoken only moments before, trying desperately to talk my body into falling back to sleep before my brain woke up but it was too late.  In the same time it took me to blink twice, my brain had formulated twelve simultaneous problems that it was determined to solve before I was allowed to return to slumber.  And, as an afterthought, those cranial neurons began formulating ideas for new blog posts and I was scrambling to record them before they evaporated into dream dust.

I have lost count of the number of times I have awoken from a deep sleep with a great idea for a post.  But between the darkness on moonless or cloud-covered nights and my inability to locate my phone to document them, those potentially great ideas vanished into thin air.

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There must be a gigantic vault of lost ideas – a safe so large it contains all of the great writing ideas that were unable to come to fruition because they were never forced from our subconscious onto our keyboards.  It hides in the vacuous space of our imagination and traps wandering thoughts as they escape during those wee hours in the morning.  If only I knew how to break into that vault.

As my late-night Kathleen Turner voice gurgled out incomprehensible syllables I tried my best to recall and record the latest gem last night but, as I replayed the audible gibberish this morning, I couldn’t really comprehend where my thought process was taking me.

One day I’m going to crack that safe and I’m going to need a lot of Red Bull to keep me up long enough to record the wealth of ideas that is trapped in its metal casing.

 

It was too late to even ask

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He asked for my forgiveness

and in my continuing silence

I found an abundance of long-buried strength.

~

Daunted by the conviction of my strength,

and with no more interest in asking for my forgiveness,

he returned my stare with his silence.

~

 There was nothing golden about our silence.

But in that quiet, there was no weakness in my strength.

And because of that, never will he receive my forgiveness.

~

 Forgiveness should never be assumed.  His feeble request was met by deserved silence and fueled by my inner strength.

 

moonshine

My first ever attempt at a Tritina for YeahWrite.Me

I already went through this once…

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“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” ~ E.E. Cummings

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It is a rite of passage and a fact of nature that, when we grow from a child to an adult, our voices change.   Perhaps I hadn’t realized when I began my blogging journey that I was a child of writing.  I was a mere toddler grabbing at words like they were all mine but contrary to a toddler’s way of thinking I wanted nothing more than to share those words.

Recently, I have been going back through the moments of my childhood.  I have not been pouring over photographs in family albums but I have been going back through the early stages of my blogging days and I am amazed at how dissimilar my writing voice is from then to now.  The nuance of my phrasing is a far cry from what it once was and my voice has changed to signify the growth in my writing.

Contrary to going through that awkward teenage phase in life, my progress as a writer has been uncomplicated and relatively steady.  I feel comfortable in my writing skin and I walk down the hallways of the writing school in my mind with great confidence.  There are no cliques to contend with, no teachers to please and the only club I wish to join already has my name on the roster of its members.

I want to write, plain and simple.  I want my voice to continue to develop and be able to show the experience I gain each day by simply writing more words on a page.  I want my voice to whisper.  I want my voice to sing.  And I want my voice to yell at the top of its lungs when it has something to say, anything to say.

Maybe this is the puberty stage in my writing.  And just maybe I have reached the cusp of adulthood and I can finally embrace the voice that will truly represent who I am as a writer.  There may a be a few breaks in the inflection and the tone but I think this voice is here to stay.

 

 

 

Being a human pinball isn’t so bad

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The Christmas Spirit has ruthlessly stalked me, once again, and dug its talons into my inner-elf.  Yesterday I spent the better part of the afternoon spending money that has been generously donated to our 3rd Annual Toy Drive at Shamrock Lodge and strategically placing those purchases around our tree in the front office.

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I have never been a big fan of Christmas shopping but the last three years of managing this toy drive have given me a reason to slightly alter my thinking.  My dad was a big fan of fighting holiday crowds to shop at the largest malls in Toronto.  My traumatic experience with that is described in this post.  But I now understand a bit of the glee he felt.

I became immersed in the spirit of giving and the outside noise of the store slowly fell into silence.  I was in a holiday bubble and the more I shopped the happier I felt.  Feeling like a pinball in an super-sized Christmas pinball game was a minuscule annoyance compared to the immense reward.  A few hours of doing something I am not fond of to make a child smile at Christmas was well worth the discomfort.

Giving myself permission to be me

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Self-doubt is a debilitating phenomenon.  Most of us have experienced some form of self-doubt throughout our lives and the worst time for me was during my formidable years in high school.  For those lucky enough to have had a firm belief in who they were during those years, my hat goes off to you.  I was not one of those lucky people.

I spent many years trying to fly under the radar and just fit in.  The image I presented was varied depending on the group of people with whom I was sharing those hallowed hallways.  If I were completely honest about my years in secondary school, I would say that the vast majority of those precious moments was spent trying to be something that I didn’t feel I honestly represented.

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But now, if I really think back, I can’t help but wonder – what if, in reality,  I was actually being something that I truly was?  Perhaps I doubted myself so much that I was unable to enjoy the different facets of my personality.  Each of us has a gift, maybe several if we’re lucky, but each of us also has to realize that sometimes we have to be our own cheerleader, our own geek, our own jock and our own stoner.

I finally gave myself permission to be proud of the person I have become.  I embrace the many parts of myself and the talents that I have.  No longer am I looking for that gratification from anyone other than myself.  Those years of self-doubt have since been stored in a box of memories and have been replaced by the belief that my opinion of myself matters the most and I can give myself permission to be every part of who I am.

Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.  I don’t know who coined that phrase but I’d like to buy them a drink!

We should give thanks every day

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Although our Canadian Thanksgiving has come and gone, I came upon this post I wrote at the beginning of my blogging journey and I wanted to share it again.  May my friends south of our border feel as many thanks as I do each year during our celebration.

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My family is a collection of characters.  They are as unique as snowflakes.  No one member is remotely the same but they are all intelligent, articulate, thoroughly amusing and fun to be around.  There is never a dull moment at the cottage when the relatives are in town.

With our hectic lifestyles and spanned locations, we don’t get to see each other as often as we used to when I was a kid but that just makes holidays and get-togethers that much more special.  Since it is Thanksgiving weekend, we gathered once again to celebrate the holiday and enjoy each others company.  The stress of life and all of the troubles that we face during the day seem to melt away when the family reunites and nothing else matters except the people who embrace you when you walk over the threshold of the door to the family cottage.  The outside world ceases to exist and laughter and love wrap themselves around our family members like a warm security blanket.  The food is abundant, the conversation is easy and the feeling of love is overwhelming.  There is nothing more important than family.  We can be thankful for all of our possessions, our jobs, our wealth, but all of those things are replaceable.  Family is not.

Thanksgiving is a time to truly reflect on what is most important in our lives.   I am certainly thankful for my health, having a job that I love, co-workers that I admire and respect and possessions and a home that I truly appreciate.  But I am most thankful for the branches on my family tree that continue to envelop me and wrap themselves around me when I need them the most.

With each passing year, the trunk of our family tree grows stronger and it roots itself more firmly in the soil of our existence.  That tree has weathered many storms but still manages to endure the bad times as well as flourish in the good times.  Its bark remains tough but the core of our family tree still remains tender and nurturing.

As seasons come and go our family tree continues to thrive.   I am thankful for my ancestors who planted the original seed.  I am thankful for my family members who have passed and still hold roots in my tree.  And I am abundantly thankful for the family who continue to create branches on that ever-growing tree.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.  I hope you all take a moment to give thanks for the things that are truly important in your lives.