year-end questionnaire: 2015

I used to fill in this questionnaire every year. I started I think in 2005, but the only evidence I can find of it on my old blog is from 2007. I also printed some off and kept them, but then for a few years I stopped. This year I'm bringing it back. Mainly because as I get older, my memory gets worse and worse, and this is a good way for me to actually remember things.

1.    What did you do in 2015 that you’d never done before?

Ran a crowdfunding campaign. Did "It's Business Time" - a 6 month coaching program that culminated in launching my own business. 

2.   Did you keep any of your New Year’s Resolutions? Do you have any for 2016?

I didn't really make any last year, it was more about wanting to slow down. I did that, somewhat. My intention for 2016 is to be grounded in a healthy and sane, natural pace. 

3.   Did someone close to you give birth?

No. But two dear friends - Gill and Emily - wed their sweethearts.

4.   Did someone close to you die?

No. 

5.    What countries did you visit?

USA: Chicago.

6.   What would you like to have in 2016 that you lacked in 2015?

More peace, with what is. More time in the garden. 

7.   What dates will remain in your memory?

No specific dates, but months: March - the month of crowdfunding. April - when I got my tattoo. June - when we got our kitty! August - my two week vacation, and our time in Chicago. September - Gill's wedding. And the Creative Soul Weekend! 

8.   Biggest achievements of the year?

Crowdfunding $5000, yo! Starting and running the Creative Soul Weekend with Emily! Holy shit, that's something. I don't think of it often but we really nailed it. Keeping a kitten alive: that's something too. 

9.   Biggest failure?

Geez, I never know what to say for this. Failures tend to turn into gold, in time, anyway. And maybe it's good that my failures don't stick in my head enough to come to mind?

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Not in any meaningful, long-lasting way.

11.What was the best thing you bought?

A ticket to Toronto for a wedding. Time with a personal trainer.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?

Anyone who welcomed refugees. Canadians who voted for anyone but Harper. 

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?

Donald Trump.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Car payments, student loan payments, Dim Sum. LOL.

15. What did you get really, really excited about?

The Get to Work Book!

16.  What songs or albums will always remind you of 2015?

Adele: Send My Love to Your New Lover (song).

Fat Freddy's Drop: Bays (album).

Frazey Ford: Done (song).

17. Compared to this time last year, are you ...

• Happier or sadder? Happier. For sure.
• Thinner or fatter? Thinner, but not by much. 
• Richer or poorer? Poorer, but not by much.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Gardening. Swimming. Reading.

19.  What do you wish you’d done less of?

Worry. Fret. Put off cutting back my Facebook list because I was afraid of what people would do or say. (Spoiler: they did nothing.)

20.  How did you spend Christmas?

With family, at Colin and Mary Jane's. Laughing a lot. Eating chocolate pudding with Baileys on it. Playing Phase 10. 

21. Did you fall in love in 2015?

Only more so with Adam. (Awwwww... cheeseball, I know. But it's true.)

22. Any one-night stands?

Only the guy at the Halloween dance who was dressed up like a nightstand. 

23. Your favourite TV shows?

Call the Midwife, hands DOWN.

24.  Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

This is a weird question. And, no.

25.  Best book you read?

I can never pick just one, but contenders are Farm City, The Dirty Life, Essentialism, Middlesex, What Alice Forgot, Station Eleven, and Longbourn. 

26. Best musical discovery?

Marian Hill.

27.  What did you want and get?

To do It's Business Time! A kitten! A profesh website! 

28.  What did you want and not get?

Marriage and a baby! LOL... but there is still time. Loads of it. 

29.  Favourite film of this year?

Inside Out.

30. What did you do on your birthday and how old were you?

I turned 31. Whew I'm old!! I also can't remember what I did for it... which makes me feel really old.

31.  What one more thing would have made your year more satisfying?

I... have no idea. It was a pretty damn satisfying year.

32.  How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2015?

HA! I used to attempt this question but now I will just laugh. While I love Vogue, I'm no fashion plate. I rock jeans and tops. 

33. What kept you sane?

The same as ever: physical activity, lazy days in bed, writing in my journal, laughing at shit with Adam or with girlfriends.

34. Which celebrity did you fancy the most?

Channing Tatum. I'd fancy him all night long, LOL.

35. Which political issue stirred you the most?

I wasn't stirred politically very much at all this year. Apathy? Burnout? Whatever it was, I couldn't deal. 

36. Who do you miss?

Laura Nelson-Hamilton. Gill. Jess De Groot. Krista. Janice.

37. Who was the best new person or best new people that you met?

Stephanie Rice. Hands DOWN.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson (or lessons) that you learned in 2015.

A little bit every day or every other day ADDS UP. (Thinking about the gym. Also about writing.)

You can make true friendships through the Internet. (Thinking about Leah Wechsler.)

Real life long-term love is hard work and sometimes you don't even like the other person. But it's also the best goddamn thing ever. (Thanks to Renegade Mothering for her amazing words on this.)

39. What are the words to guide you through 2016?

Four P's: Patience. Privacy. Presence. Practice.

December Devotion/24

I'm writing this at 12:24 on Christmas Eve Day. We're waiting for Adam's parents and brother to arrive, and we'll go visiting family in Sydney Mines. I just did the dishes and tidied up a bit, the way you do when your in-laws will shortly be in your home. But, at 12:20 I stopped myself. There is more I can do, for sure. But I also wanted to write a blog post. And I also wanted to just relax a little before they get here. 

So, so what if there are messy things still around? 

This is life.

Grace to oneself is devotion to my own sweet soul. To my own value, intrinsic. Inherent. Not dependent on how neat my house is. 

Anyway, December has been a good month! It turned my schedule a bit sideways, and some things fell by the wayside (ahem: the gym). But we're all here and accounted for. In our messy, filled-with-love, normal, sometimes-cranky, always-sheltering, home.

Merry Christmas.

December Devotion/21

Back on the bandwagon. I go through phases. (So does the moon... so do we all. Right? Right.)

Phases of wanting to be on-the-Internet, and phases of wanting to shut the screens and machines, and just look at real life. Be with real faces. 

I'm still not totally comfortable in my new "blog house," I'll be honest. I'm still figuring out what I want this writing space to be about. I have Vampire Voices that say it must be all about design. Then I'll have thousands of client requests flooding my inbox. Then I look at a blog like Tara Whitney's and I think, it can be about anything. It's OK. (She is one of my favorites.)

I'd like to get better at taking photos. I'd like to just take more photos, really. 

This time of year, before the holiday, I get this weird lonely feeling. Like, a fear of being alone. Or a fear that I'm missing out. It's the same feeling I used to get around exam time at school. Like, we were all on our own now, and about to be dispersed. It's the pre-missing missing. 

When I feel that way, I have to remind myself to lighten up a little. It will all be OK. Chill time on my calendar is OK. Reading a book in bed is OK. 

Right? Right.

December Devotion/17

What I'm learning from devotion this month is... you can only devote yourself to one or two things. Tops. 

Devotion is not a thing that you can do for everything and everyone who wants a piece of you. 

Devotion is "all in", it's laser-focus, it's put-the-phone-down, look-at-the-person-talking. 

For a year or so now, since I started working with Tiffany Han last year, I've been in a process of figuring out what I want to be devoted to, and not only that, but how to actually devote myself to it. I remember around this time last year, deciding to stop writing "Dream Big Cape Breton," the blog I had created and sustained for three years. I remember finally leaving a board of directors I was on, that I had wanted to leave for the past two years. I remember feeling that I was so, so sick of the feeling of frantic.  

It's been a year and it's been, I see now, a slow, piece-by-piece getting to this point where I have only a few things on my plate. I kind of interrupted myself in that process, in the spring, when I crowdfunded $5000 and took a business program with Tiffany and Michelle. Life actually got busier. But I'm glad that that happened. It was worth the hustle.

But I'm glad the hustle is done now. I've got my website, and my little home on the web for my business. And I'm going to slowly grow it... but not at a crazy pace. "Sane, healthy pace" is my intention for 2016. I have a day job. I like that day job. I want to put energy in to this business, certainly. But not at the expense of other things, like my relationship. Like my garden. Like my friendships. Like my "white space".... that delicious time to myself to read, or just stare off into space.

Last weekend I got rid of the Dream Big Cape Breton Facebook group. I manually deleted over 1100 people. Then I culled my Facebook "Friends". I had over 1100 of those, too. I cut it back to just under 200. It was tough, shedding this public skin I had worn for years. I miss it a bit, in the week since. I miss feeling like I have 'influence', whatever that is. (Talking into the void, is what it really is.) 

But I don't miss having to turn my Facebook feed off because I was so overwhelmed by the stuff floating in that river. I'm glad it's back on now, and that the things I see in it are only from close friends, family, loved ones, when I choose to sign in.

I was used to running one step always ahead of my schedule, like a villain chasing me. Like my To Do list was a tetris puzzle -- you have to keep doing stuff, so that when new stuff gets added, there is room for it. 

Over the past year, I've slowly learned through trial and error how to have more white space than commitments. 

It's not easy (there are many things that I'm not devoted to, like the dishes, for instance, or cleaning my floors, or volunteering in my community, and I feel sometimes that I "should" be doing more) but it's ease-making. It's the antidote to frantic.

It's devotion to myself. 

december devotion/16

Devotion tonight is devotion to self... (and to this project, because I really don't feel like blogging right now, but I do want to write a bit each day, for the month). I worked a long day on my feet at work, cutting pans and pans of squares, and then assembling boxes of sweets. It's actually harder than it sounds, as there are a bunch of different kinds of squares to keep track of, and the sweet boxes have to have a certain number and variety of squares in them. It's also really sticky and messy work (think icing, and some squares are made of coconut and condensed milk), and on top of that you're also working with clients of the centre, who are adults with intellectual disabilities. Who are great, but, people can be tiring.

 Anyway, I love my job, but it's tiring at Christmas when I help out in the bakery. 

I had planned to go to the gym after, but when I left work tonight my body said, "nope." So I came home. And I'm about to get into bed and read or perhaps ... nap. 

It's hard sometimes to give yourself a break. My Vampire Voices start up, saying things about skipping the gym and being a quitter. It's hard to be good with the work I've done up til now, and to trust that I'll return to my regime once work isn't as tiring and busy. 

But the more you do it the easier it gets. So I'm signing off now, and going to go let my sore feet go "ahhhh" as they snuggle into bed. 

December Devotion/15

Tonight's December Devotion is a bit like a more traditional devotional, where you read a piece of scripture or religious writing daily. For this, I stood in front of my bookshelf for a minute and looked at spines, then picked out one of my favorites, "The Tao of Pooh." I opened to a random page and read. Here is what I read (it is fitting, I think):

"Ouch!" said Pooh, landing on the floor.

"That's what happens when you go to sleep on the edge of the writing table," I said. "You fall off."

"Just as well," said Pooh.

"Why's that?" I asked.

"I was having an awful dream," he said.

"Oh?"

"Yes. I'd found a jar of honey...," he said, rubbing his eyes.

"What's awful about that?" I asked.

"It kept moving," said Pooh. "They're not supposed to do that. They're supposed to sit still."

"Yes, I know."

"But whenever I reached for it, this jar of honey would sort of go someplace else."

"A nightmare," I said.

"Lots of people have dreams like that," I added reassuringly.

"Oh," said Pooh. "About Unreachable jars of honey?"

"About the same sort of thing," I said. "That's not unusual. The odd thing, though, is that some people live like that."

"Why?" asked Pooh.

"I don't know," I said. "I suppose because it gives them Something To Do."

"It doesn't sound like much fun to me," said Pooh.

--The Tao of Pooh, by Benjamin Hoff.

Image from here. 

December Devotion/14

Adam's devotion, both to me/our family, and to himself, shows in his daily devotion to his work. He rises at 6 am, and he leaves by 7 am, or whatever time he needs to (sometimes it's earlier, if he's working farther away). He's an electrician by trade. He works for a local company. He's a steadfast and devoted worker, from what I hear, and from what I can tell. 

My devotion to him/our family shows in my daily going out to start the truck, which is when I took this photo above. While he's eating breakfast, I put on my rubber boots and go out, unlock the truck, and start it. It runs for about ten minutes before he goes out and leaves. We do this mainly in the winter, when it's cold out. 

It's Monday! The work week begins. My weekend was restful. I also made some changes to how I use some Facebook, which I'll talk about in an another post this week sometime. And, I took part in a virtual retreat led by Mara Glatzel. All in all, it was contemplative, and true to self. I come out of it feeling grounded. 

Have a good one, friend. :)