On home

     

I mentioned in a post earlier this month that I want to write a book. So today I thought I'd do my daily writing practice and use it to flesh out what I want to write about. (In between tossing a ball for Mittens, who is up and at em at 6:30 am, of course.)

When I'm driving or walking, that's usually when my ideas come. And they come in little flashes, no real explanation. In this case it was "Write a book about home."

So now I'm wondering what the heck my idea-generator meant by that.

I love reading memoirs and collections of personal essays. Ones I've read lately are "The Middle Place" by Kelly Corrigan, and "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris. I feel like I could actually write one myself (and ooh the vampire voices come up when I type that!).

But seriously, I could. I've been blogging for thirteen years. I got the "writing about myself" thing down, I think.

I want to explore the concept of home. I want to do this about Cape Breton, about my relationship with it (as both someone who has lived here my whole life since I was 8 months old, and as someone who was born Away and whose whole family is from Away too). I want to do this about the Earth, about the ground and trees and sky we are all born from and which we must take care of, for our own sake if nothing else. I want to do this about specific towns. I grew up in Baddeck but now I live in North Sydney. I want to do this about relationships: I didn't move out of my mom's house until I was 28, when I moved in with my partner and formed our own home.

I want to tell stories. Stories that I don't even realize yet are waiting to be told. Stories from my own life. When you just kind of look back on your own life, I don't know about you, but mine feels rather normal. It's just ... my life. But when I read the memoirs of other people, yeah, it's their life, but it's in the way they tell the stories. The lessons they draw from what happened. The humour they find in it. The humanity.

(Oh! The humanity!)

Anyway. It's now 6:54. Time to get ready for work, and a dance party. Thanks for reading, as always, and for witnessing me. Saying things out loud, to someone else, is the first necessary step for a big journey, whether that's on foot or around the world or diving deep into a big project. So, thanks for hearing me do that.

Witness the fitness

Today I want to talk about fitness. (Blog post title from this song.)

In Junior High I was the kid who sat out of gym class.  I hated the teacher, hated the other kids, hated having to work out with everyone else watching. I would make up notes from my mom, or tell Mr. Billard it was my period. I'd do whatever I could do to get out of it.

Flash forward to today. That picture above is me, sweaty and disheveled and with dirty hands from lifting truck tires, in the bathroom at Platinum Fitness. My whole body is sore and singing with having WORKED.

In between gym class in Grade 7, and today, I've been learning how to live IN my body. How to love it. Despite my pudge. Despite my fears of what other people think. Despite my own inertia. I've done yoga, I've walked and hiked. I've swam. And now I'm working with a trainer, something I never thought I could afford (it's actually crazy affordable), and I love it! It's got me all kinds of fired up, thinking up blog posts, imagining being super toned, and feeling stronger than I ever have before. It also just makes me happier. (I'm using the hashtag #leahgetsfit on Instagram to keep track. You can check it out! I think another Leah was using it, but that was like a year ago and so far it's just me using now.)

Onward to the day ahead! Day-job awaits, and then tonight I'm eating at the Bitehouse with some good girlfriends. Life is sweet.

daily writing practice

Get it in however you can. For me, right now, this blog is serving that purpose.

I used to blog for joy. Then I blogged for a mission. Then after a few years of that, I felt like blogging wasn't fun anymore, so I stopped for a while.

Now I'm back to wanting to blog for joy. The trick for me, for that, is keeping it loose. Keeping it unstructured. Keeping it easy. I ask myself each day, "What do I want to write about today?" And I listen for the answer, and then I start typing.

I want to write a book. And I imagine (having written a long thesis) that the way to write a book is to write, and then write more, and write some more.

The un-overwhelming way to do that is to do a little bit every day.

Hence, here we are. Me, writing. Daily. The internet is a tool, not a tyrant. I can use it how I need to. And you can use it how you need to.

Something else: I recently got turned on to Greg McKeown's work on Essentialism. It's blowing my mind a little. Or more like, blowing a fresh breeze through the house of my schedule, my life. I foolishly think, a lot of the time, that I'd someday reach a point where I was good, I didn't need to pare back more, or watch out for what I said yes to, anymore. Ha! That's not true. You always do. There is always something to get rid of. Something nagging, something I'm resentful of. There is always more that I could give love to my husband*, my pet, my home, myself. There is buckets of inattention to make up for.

*Technically we're not married. But I still think of Adam as my hubby. We intend to be together for the rest of our lives, and we hear each other fart, so I'm pretty sure that's what marriage is, right?

Catching ideas

I took a walk on my lunch break today, in the Baille Ard park that's five minutes by car from work.

My hair was loose and as I walked through the fragrant, chirpy, buggy woods at a relaxed pace, my hair swayed a little with my movements.

As I walked I thought about some different projects I'm working on these days. My body in motion helps me come up with new ideas, come up with the next step. Something that's been feeling stuck, if I contemplate it on a walk, and turn it around in my head like a puzzle, suddenly clicks into place. The next thing to do becomes clear. "Oh, of course!" I think, "That's the solution."

It occurred to me that it's like my hair is catching the ideas. Like all the fronds and leaves and needles, green and lush in the woods around me, my hair is alive, sensitive, catching particles in the air, and turning them into ideas for me.

It may or may not be true, but as ideas go, I like it.

love where you live, but still want to leave sometimes

You can love where you live, and still get super excited to leave. #truth That's me these days. We have a trip planned that starts August 3rd. It's a week and a half in Chicago and Wisconsin. We're going to see Phish play twice. We're going to eat deep-dish pizza. We're going to take a boat ride on the river to see architecture. We're going to hug lots of friends. We're going to get away from our smartphones. We're going to laugh a lot. I'm going to hear Adam tell a lot of stories about high school days with his friends. I'm SO PUMPED, you guys. I cannot WAIT.

Meanwhile, it's summer in Cape Breton. It's my favorite goddamn time of year in my favorite goddamn place in the world. (Remember when I went to ten beaches in one summer?) And life is super great right now! For so many years, summer in Cape Breton meant working all the hours I could. Now, I work 8:30 to 4:30, and have my evenings and weekends free. I have a garden. I have a kitten. I have a man I adore and who adores me. I have a car, and money to put gas in it, so I can get out to my favorite beaches and hikes. I have meaningful work to do. This is pretty much the flipping dream.

But I'm still really excited to get out of dodge! I'm excited to be on planes. To be in a big city that's totally not my usual haunt. To soak up the moment and hardly be online at all, and pack super light and see how that changes the travel experience. I'm excited to fill up my journal with ideas. I'm excited to be beholden only to myself and to Adam. And to see where that takes us.

Anyway, there are still a few weeks til then! Right now the weekend is about to start. It's chock full. Tonight we're going to check out Sydney RibFest (I'm bringing dental floss!). Tomorrow I'm working out at the gym with my rad trainer Steph, then selling tickets for a raffle at work. Then I'm going to treat myself to a movie: Magic Mike XXL. I've heard great things.  And then Sunday I'm checking out the Granville Green concert series in Port Hawkesbury: Sarah Harmer is playing! Woot: it's summer! Let's get outside and enjoy it.

what the clouds are teaching me

 

At the start of 2015 I started something called #leahlovesclouds. It came about because I posted on Instagram on January 2nd that "In 2015 I want to look at the sky more." My friend Amanda commented, "maybe try taking a cloud photo everyday!" So I hashtagged it #leahlovesclouds (keeping up a tradition I got from Elise Blaha Cripe of using "#leahloves" for my hashtags) and gave it a try.

I kept up daily pictures for a while, then as these things often do, it got less practical to do it every day. I'd forget or the sky would be flat grey, or something. But I really liked the practice of looking for clouds, and I've kept taking some pictures, and using the hashtag.

The other day I tapped on the hashtag to see what I'd collected, and took a screenshot. (Above.) Now those 67 posts are up to 74! So I thought I'd share what #leahlovesclouds has taught me so far.

• Just how fast time can fly. I started in January and now it's July, and I seriously don't know where that time went.
• That little daily actions add up! It's just one photo, but doing one photo, and then doing it again the next day, and again the next day, becomes three photos. And so on.
• But doing the little daily actions really is only a good fit (i.e. you're only going to keep doing it) if its something you enjoy and that feels (relatively) easy to do. I'll talk about this in a later post about the weight training I'm doing now, too.
• That a "crazy new idea" quickly becomes "just a cool thing you do". I was talking to someone around the time I got my tattoo, someone who hadn't seen it yet. They asked what the tattoo was of, and I said, "I'll give you a hint, it's something I'm known for," thinking, obviously of Cape Breton and the heart. They said, "Hmmm... clouds?" That was funny to me, considering that my vampire voices are always saying about any new ideas I have, "Don't do that! People will think you're weird!" When you get past the fear by doing the thing anyway, nearly all the time people just take it in stride. Some will connect with it, some will not.
• Clouds are really beautiful and various! Just clicking through the hashtag to see all the pictures together, is really neat.

life lately

Whew!!

There's been a lot of "life lately", it's just not happening here on this blog, at the moment. But it will again, now!

My cousin Maile posted over on her blog the other day, that she realized it had been a year since she'd last posted. I never thought someone could forget to blog (kind of like how I still don't think people can forget to eat, but, you know, whatevs). I mean, I used to blog like I used to breathe! But now, I get it. Time goes by and other things (like spending time with your significant other, and getting projects done) take priority.

So, these last few months, pretty much since the day my crowdfunding campaign began, have been Busy with a capital B, for me. But not like "So-insane-I'm-going-to-have-a-panic-attack" busy... which is a nice change from how I used to do "busy"! Just more like, "I'll do my best, some things will take priority, and some things will fall by the wayside, and that's OK." That kind of busy. I've learned a crap tonne. About productivity. About what to say NO to. About my future business. And my current business. And my relationship, and what's important to me, like really truly important.

And, now I feel I'm out the other side of it, of that busy-ness. I'm settling back into my seat as a blogger, a writer, a creator of things, and it's comfortable, it feels right. I want blogging again. I want it to be part of my daily life again.  And I'm actually excited again to share what I've been learning, and going through, and seeing, and feeling, with you all.

So first up! I want to talk about what goals I'm working on. You know that feeling when you get through a busy period, and then you want to take a deep breath, and slow down, and look clearly at, well, everything? And decide what stays and what goes? Yeah, that's the feeling I have right now.

So here is a bit of a brain dump for what's on my mind, in my heart, and on my plate for the second half of 2015. I'm not including stuff from my day job -- that's it's own long to-do list and while it's at times interesting and exciting, it's not what I want to talk about here.

• Finish all the work for the crowdfunding perks. Date: end of this year. (I'll post a longer post about this whole process soon.)
• Get digital photos for the last seven years made into photo books. Delete the digital versions of the photos. Stop worrying about losing them! Date: end of 2015.
• Put a couple of older posts from Dream Big Cape Breton onto "goCapeBreton.com" -- maybe a beaches post, the post about the transportation system.
• Launch and then run a successful first year of the Creative Soul Weekend, with Emily Chafe.
• Launch my business (October!!! Watch out world!)
• Grow a small veggie garden and plan a bit for next year's veggie garden (get tarp, put rock around the corner of the yard where it will go)
• Go on vacation in August with Adam and check email only once a week. Pack super light. Enjoy and soak up the moments. Let the time away from things be refreshing.
• Keep working out twice a week with my rad new trainer Steph. Do an unassisted pull-up. (Maybe by the end of this year, it may take longer.) I don't have a specific weight-loss goal, because my goal with training is to gain strength and muscle, which may not mean any change in the number of pounds I weigh.
• Keep doing yoga once a week.
• Be "hands free" as much as possible when at home with my family. We want to grow our family in the next year or two, and I've seen over the past year that the more hands-free I am, the more connected Adam and I are to each other, and the richer our family life feels.
• Look into starting a podcast.
• Look into doing an extended walk, perhaps around the Cabot Trail, in 2016.
• Look into writing a book. (!!! This one in particular feels SCARY to say out loud. But yes. I really really really want to write a book.)

Whew! That's a lot. But damn it feels good to be back. Writing in my own blog, my own account, again. Let's do this!