January 2016 - My Soul is Scottish

Stuck between two cliches…

My life is stuck between 2 clichés at the moment; never put off until tomorrow what you can do today and nothing ventured, nothing gained. The irony of it all is that I know I need to cross the line that keeps me in my comfort zone yet I keep telling myself that there’s always tomorrow; that mythical day that never arrives.

I have often imagined my dream life and the person I would be in it. Yet, when faced with the choice of doing what it will take or doing what I normally do, I tell myself that it’s just ‘one last day of bad eating because I’ll fix it tomorrow.’ The only problem is tomorrow is about a decade overdue. It never came.

Do you put yourself out there and do what you’ve always wanted to do or stay on the hamster wheel? ‘I’ll write tomorrow.’ ‘I’ll start my photography on the weekend.’ ‘I’ll work on my craft at some point but right now I have to do this other thing.’ The list of creative excuses is endless. I’ve made them all.

The intention when I started this blog was to find my way home; no small project by any stretch of the imagination. Emigrating is not for the faint hearted. It’s not simply a case of picking a destination on the map and heading off to pastures new. Nothing stays the same when you emigrate.

To do this is going to take an indestructible willpower and the resources to get it done.

While most of us are stuck in a scarcity mentality there really is no need to be. We live in an infinite universe if we’re only willing to see it; instead we see lack because that’s what we’re focused on finding. The resources are there, the means to do this are all there. There’s a BUT here. The resources are there BUT they are outside of my comfort zone. If I want to fund this endeavor, this is going to mean finding alternative flows of income to supplement the one I already have. It might involve making money doing something I’ve always dreamed of doing yet never grew the balls to try in case I failed.

To win the prize I need to venture outside of my safe zone into the unknown. If you will not venture there you cannot expect to gain. At my core I know this to be a fundamental truth. This isn’t the first time tackling emigration. So why I can’t I remember what pushed me to succeed the last two times? What was the catalyst that propelled me out of the paddling pool into the ocean?

Instead I’m consciously putting off until tomorrow things I need to do now. Why do we do that? We know what we need to do, yet we resist. We want to change our situation yet we simultaneously fear changing. We want the situation to change while wanting ourselves to stay the same.

Wherever you go you take yourself with you. The scenery might look different but the view will be the same. Your view on the world will not change if you do not change. It really is that simple. Expecting your life to change when you hold the same limited view of it is a bit like expecting to see a different view out of your window just because you changed the glass.

Growth demands we venture out of what we know into what we don’t know in order to learn something new. Sure, it’s risky. Change always is but risk and fear are not synonymous and maybe that’s the clue.

You can’t please everyone.

This should be glaringly obvious but we’re a stubborn species; we’ll try and prove this one wrong all day long. We get our clichés confused and insist that impossible is actually ‘I’m possible’. We undertake an epic attempt at being The Little Engine That Could in our quest to please everyone.

Then we hit a wall. Sometimes gently but most times going full speed. The shattering realization that you’ve thrown your energy into a bottomless well that will never give you water.

Taking a step back to gain perspective is necessary and at times soul-destroying. It was for me. I rearranged my entire life as a pre-teen when my parents divorced. The choice was Mom or Dad. How does a 10 year old make that choice? It wouldn’t be an easy choice as an adult; it’s practically impossible as a child.

My kid logic looked at the question very simplistically. If I choose Mom, Dad will be hurt. If I choose Dad, Mom will be hurt. I love them both so who do I hurt? I couldn’t choose so I went to live with my Grandmother from the age of 12. My choice.

Needless to say my life turned out differently than it might have if I’d chosen a different path. In some ways I think it was the best decision; in others it stunted my emotional development. More than a decade disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle of depression. The darkest years of my life when I could barely get myself going every day and I still threw the miniscule amount of energy I could find into making sure no-one got hurt. Everyone around me needed to be happy.

There are different levels of being a people-pleaser. I took the express train into the wall. Thankfully the wall was at Flight Center and I booked a ticket the hell out of my life. I relocated my will to live to distant shores and set up my life in England.

Being geographically separated from the people I’d been trying to please since I could sit up straight made a world of difference. I was finally myself.

It’s not easy choosing yourself when you’ve never done it before. It’s harder realizing that the people you’ve so carefully ‘protected’ and sacrificed for would not do the same for you if the roles were reversed. I’m not referring to parenting here, that’s a different scenario altogether.

Each person is solely responsible for their own happiness. Happiness is a conscious decision. It’s not a guaranteed response to what’s going on around you. You cannot consciously choose for someone else to be happy if they are not making that same decision for themselves.

There are people who are naturally optimistic and then there are the others. I am sometimes that other. The one who is angry all the time and more than a little bit negative. Most times it’s something getting on my wick, I blow a fuse, vent some crazy and then I feel better again.

The others are the ones who expect happiness to knock on their door with a string quartet in tow. Happiness knocks but they don’t open the door because who the hell is bugging me at this hour?!

This might be a crazy analogy but when you’re a people-pleaser, you’re a bit like a window washer. You’re cleaning everyone else’s windows except your own but you can only ever reach the outside windows. You can’t clean someone’s windows from the inside, that’s their domain. So they can have the cleanest damn windows on the outside, but if they haven’t cleaned the gunk off the inside, they’ll never appreciate the view. People who thrive off people-pleasers are not the window-washing type. They’ll always have dirty windows on the inside so your efforts will have been for naught.

When you live your life entirely to make other people happy at your own expense, they get to live twice. They live their own life and they live yours too. You don’t get to live at all. Before you throw more of yourself into a one way transaction, remember that time is irreplaceable. You might want to be careful where you spend it because every minute you spend trading your happiness for someone else’s, is one minute closer to the end of your clock.

The grass is always greener on the other side.

Funnily enough, this little nugget has been rearing its head a lot lately. The irony is that the pastures we’re trying to escape are probably the same pastures we ran to with open arms in the not too distant past.

I see this in my own life and recently I’ve been noticing it in others too. Is it part of the human condition to never be satisfied?

In my own life it’s disguised as the need to keep moving. The constant whisper in my head that something needs to change. The change is never clear and eventually frustration drives me out of my mind and I go all in, balls to the wall and just change it all. That way I’m likely to find the offending culprit because nothing stayed the same.

That’s the call now. Pack. Move. Go. GET OUT OF HERE. Yet only 5 short years ago I was on the piece of land I’m now longing to return to. I was living in England and packing up my life to move here because I was just sick of it all. I needed a change. So I changed.

I envisioned a life here, the friends I would have and the things I would do. I would live.

Turns out the plan got lost in the move. I left my friends behind and moved to a place where I became the square peg in the round hole. Stubbornness has stopped me from rounding my edges to fit in. Why should I?

My aunt told me once that I need to maybe be less honest when dealing with other people. Not in the sense that I should lie to them but tone down my life experiences ‘because it intimidates people.’ Tough. Sorry but just because you’ve never crossed a state line in your life doesn’t mean I’m going to pretend I’m like you. I’m not.

I moved my life to this pasture and I didn’t water it. My life was lived in half measures that didn’t make the best use of the energy I expended living. The grass died and it’s a pretty damn barren field right now. Meanwhile the field I left behind is so green it burns my retinas.

Maybe it’s a design flaw in humans. No matter how much we have, we need and want more. I see it in the people around me. We fault and complain about our jobs for whatever reasons; not enough money; don’t like the people we work with; not enough time off; the list is endless. So off they go and look for new jobs with better money, nicer people, a boss they can live with and all the other magic ingredients that make up a greener pasture.

Voila. Found it. New job and off they go. For a few weeks you hear about how amazing it all is and all the new magic stuff they get that they never got before. The people are great, the perks are pure magic and finally they’ve arrived at the greenest pasture ever grown.

Fast forward 3 months, 6 months, maybe a year and it’s back to ‘FML, I hate this place. I hate my job. I need more money. I don’t earn enough. I’m sick of working hard and getting no reward and recognition for it. My boss wants too much and I’m out.’

Where was the tipping point? On what day did the scale fall out of balance back onto the barren pasture side of the equation? Or is it that our lives expanded into the new pasture so completely that it sucked the life out of it? Our lives now need infinitely more to be satisfied and the cycle starts again.

How much is enough? Or do we even have ANY clue as to what would make us happy?

Happiness is a fairly nebulous concept when you think about it. Maybe it has a colour or a sound to it. Maybe it has a shape. Maybe it has none of those things. It floats up in the next pasture like a will-o-the-wisp luring us forward only to disappear the minute we reach it and pop up in the next field; taunting us to a never-ending game of catch.

The grass is greenest where you water it. So what stops us watering it with love and attention? What prevents us from tending the pasture when we arrive? Is it that we’re distracted by the will-o-the-wisp in the next field and gardening duties just fall by the wayside while we try to chase it down? Do we spend any time enjoying the view from the new pasture before setting our sights on the freakishly green one over the next hill?

DSCN6659 — The cottage on Culloden Battlefield in greener pastures

I haven’t given one iota of care and attention to my life here. I’ve lived, paid my bills and traded my hours for money. Well….. actually that’s not entirely true. I’ve travelled more than I ever have before. I’ve seen my bestie almost every year since I moved here because she’s just a hop over the border in Canada. We’ve gone diving in Mexico which was never on my list of places to go and I loved it! I’ve visited cities it never occurred to me to see and they’ve all been incredible. I’ve made some great lifelong friends. I’ve spent time reconnecting with my family which are bonds I’d never nurtured before. They mean a lot to me now.

Those were the flower beds I planted in my field. Some of those will continue to bloom each year, coming back better and more beautiful than the year before. Others will die off as seasonal plants do. They were beautiful in their time and they will fade from view to be replaced by something new.

Switching pastures is a tedious affair, make no mistake about that. So before you do it again, decide if the new pasture will be worthy of your care and loving attention because that’s what it’s going to take. If you want it to be burn-your-eyes-green, you need to appreciate and care for it. Enjoy the view and stop obsessing about the field over the fence. It’s just another field.

Ignorance is bliss!

The search for meaning in mundane clichés has yielded some unexpected nuggets of clarity. Well, maybe that’s not entirely correct; I did expect to find meaning. What I didn’t expect is how relevant that meaning would be.

Let’s start with ignorance is bliss. Oh the irony… I don’t suffer fools gladly so out of all the clichés that could possibly hold meaning, this was the last one I thought I’d ever find wisdom in.

The start of a new year generally brings new beginnings, resolutions we mean to keep in the hope they will bring meaning and balance to our frenetic lives. We all do it, even knowing as we do that those resolutions will probably fall by the wayside before the month is out. The hardcore among us manage to pull off some of their resolutions; the rest of us are sipping hot chocolate with extra cream even while bemoaning that blasted 10 lbs. that just won’t shift.

My only resolution for this year is to be happy. Find what makes me happy and do that. Never mind the weight, forget winning the lottery; just be happy!

This means simplifying, decluttering and making room in my days for happiness to intrude. I whittled down my e-mail lists, cancelled subscriptions and I stopped reading the news. I went from reading news sites dozens of times a day to nothing. Complete cold turkey on anything remotely news related. The only exception is I still check the weather because that’s just sensible.

If there’s been a shooting/bombing/murder/robbery/riot/racist incident/terrorist threat, I don’t know about it. It’s been 24 days of no news articles. Nada. And let me tell you, BLISS! Ignorance really is bliss!

The constant inundation of bad news and tragic events isn’t necessary to function. Information overload doesn’t always serve the cause. When you click into a news site, you have no control over what’s going to be in your face. You can control whether or not you actually read the entire article, but there’s no control over all the car crash headlines jostling for your attention. The headlines suck us in with the lure of gory details; it’s like a car crash that sickens you to your stomach but you can’t look away.

We don’t need to be hooked up to every little thing in life. People are so afraid they’ll miss something that they’re constantly monitoring everything to make sure nothing slips by them. Here’s a question. Does having all of this extra information make you any happier?

It doesn’t make me one iota happier knowing that Kim Whatsherface has decided she’s only going to eat foods that start with a P or wear her hair in a side parting instead of tied up. Who gives a damn?

It’s time to pull the plug on all the meaningless and depressing bullcrap that doesn’t matter to you. By all means, be informed if you need to be but don’t drown yourself in every little detail. If you can live without it and it doesn’t make you smile, kick it to the curb. You can’t get flustered and uptight about things that aren’t on your radar and therein lies the bliss.

Hidden in plain sight

I read a book at the beginning of the year, The Babylon Rite by Tom Knox. In a nutshell, I couldn’t put it down and read it in one sitting. If you’re squeamish, you might want to give it a miss.

What drew me to the book initially is that it started off set in Edinburgh and we all know I love all things Scottish! It starts off with a scene in Rosslyn Chapel and having recently been there, I could relate to the imagery described. My knowledge on the Templars is patchy at best but the topic fascinates me.

Rosslyn Chapel - The symbols in this mantle above one of the doors is just a tiny taste of everything that lies within the rest of the chapel. — Rosslyn Chapel – The symbols in this mantle above one of the doors is just a tiny taste of everything that lies within the rest of the chapel.

I’ll try not to give away any spoilers but I will say the theory presented, while fictional, is interesting nonetheless. The theory that there’s a link between all the ancient religions is set out in a way that is almost plausible. I read somewhere *wish I could remember where* that all the religions are depicted in the carvings at Rosslyn. There’s so much symbolism and imagery in the walls you could spend a significant chunk of time there and never decipher it all.

An interesting idea comes out of the book. The ancient civilizations used pictures, carvings and paintings to document their history. Since the discovery of these glyphs, carvings and pictures, people have been looking for the meaning behind them. It’s assumed that the depictions are metaphorical, maybe even a simplistic view of rituals and customs from a time we are desperate to understand. But what if….. What if what you see is what you get? What if the depictions aren’t symbolic at all but more along the lines of what a photograph would be? An actual representation of ritual and custom? While we’re trying to decipher the hidden meaning, what if the meaning was never meant to be hidden?

Maybe the best place to hide the truth is in plain sight because who’d look for it there?

To be clear, I’m not a scholar in archaeology or theology. I’ve never spent any time attempting to decipher hidden meaning in anything, it’s just never occurred to me to do so.

My interest in this idea is trying to find other places and ways where old wisdom was passed down in plain sight. The clichés we are sick of hearing, what if there’s a fundamental truth at the basis of it? Ancient civilizations had an immense knowledge of nature and the cosmos which seems almost impossible to explain when you look at what they had to work with. So how did they know and have they left clues to that knowledge hidden in plain sight?

There’s an order to the universe, that much cannot be denied. I can’t speak for anyone else but I want to find it for myself. I need order and logic in my life but most days life feels a lot like farting against thunder; pretty damn pointless.

Something as simple as please and thank-you being called the magic words. If you think about it, maybe they are because when you use them, they bring more into your life. Well, they do for me anyway. If someone doesn’t say please or thank-you, they get nothing further out of me. They come across as entitled and rude and I don’t do favours for those kinds of people. When people say please and thank-you, I go the extra mile for them because I know they appreciate it. Maybe that’s the magic in those words. Using them draws more people to want to help you and do things for you. Lack of them pushes supply away. A cliché with a ring of the truth to it.

How many others are out there? They came into being for a reason but overuse has dulled the meaning. It makes me wonder if there’s a cache of old wisdom waiting to be uncovered that’s veiled by the grime of overuse.

This isn’t going to be a quick discovery but I need to find order and meaning for myself. The world as it stands now is draining my will to live; people barking on about everything they’re entitled to for nothing; people being offended because it’s profitable and someone will always be made to pay. Common sense isn’t common anymore and the world is going to hell in a hand basket as a result.

Life was simpler then and that’s what I crave. Simplicity. Order. Harmony. Bliss.

It’s going to take balls to get it done

It’s been a mixed bag this week. My leave of absence ended and I returned to work. It was both better and worse than I expected. For the most part, there were no problems to return to. On the other hand my body has struggled immensely and I’m frustrated.

The train commute has been brutal and by the time I get to the office I feel like I’ve been punched in the kidneys repeatedly. It has left me tired, cranky and irritated by my limitations. A distance I could cover in just over 5 minutes now takes me 25 minutes. I feel broken.

In among getting up to speed on my work, I made some time to research UK visas and the cost has increased significantly since I last applied. It’s good in a way in that the extra cost involved is a health surcharge which goes towards funding the NHS, which is something immigrants and residents have access to. It’s a brilliant service and well worth the charge, no question about that!

It does, however, change the finances of the game and my impulsive decision to be gone by June has been put back into perspective. November was a more realistic target. That has put a damper on my mood somewhat.

Given the financial target I’ve set myself for the year in terms of savings, debt repayment and all the costs involved in relocating, it’s not a far stretch to say that I need to step outside my comfort zone to reach that target.

The mere idea of that terrifies the hell out of me.

To save the money I want and need to do this, I need to consider alternate streams of income. That means taking a chance on something outside of my regular 9-5. It means putting myself out there and risking criticism by putting my creativity on the altar to be judged.

It means I need to put my fear in a neat little box up on the shelf, stop listening to the eternal dialogue of ‘you don’t have what it takes’ and just do it. Take any endeavour in life and look around you; there are people just like you stepping up every day and doing it. Writers writing; painters painting; singers singing. Maybe the fact that we identify ourselves as something other than our passion is the problem here.

On the inside I’m a writer yet when people ask me what I do, I immediately say ‘I’m in finance.’ No. No!

Fear has a very loud voice and a captive audience. We need to stop identifying ourselves by the ball and chain that depletes our will. It’s time to take a risk and put into words what you really are.

I am a writer. I am a photographer. What are you?

There’s no cure for this…

It’s midnight and I’ve been pacing around my apartment unable to sleep. I’m so homesick I want to crawl into a hole and cry. The pull back to Scotland is so bad right now I can’t begin to describe the hollow feeling it leaves behind.

The song by Dougie MacLean ‘Caledonia’ pretty much sums it up right now:

Let me tell you that I love you and I think about you all the time
Caledonia you’re calling me and now I’m going home
But if I should become a stranger you know that it would make me more than sad
Caledonia’s been everything I’ve ever had

I have moved and I’ve kept on moving, proved the points that I needed proving
Lost the friends that I needed losing, found others on the way

Caledonia was the Roman name for the lands north of Britannia. Scotland. There have not been many times in my life when I’ve felt the certainty I feel right now; the certainty that my life is headed down a specific path and nothing is going to stop it. The HOW of it is still out of sight but the certainty is starting to spiral.

I rolled out of bed close to midday today and after making some coffee, I checked my e-mail and blow me over George if there wasn’t an e-mail from my ex. I’m not even sure if ex is the correct term for him as we only dated for a few months. Well, I dated him, he was in it for the sex.

Turns out his agenda hasn’t changed. After the prerequisite chitchat he came right out and asked for it. Just like that. Uh….. what? Haven’t heard from the guy in almost 2 years. Given that I walked away the first time, what in the name of Pluto’s pox-infested grandmother makes you think I’d consider the same arrangement again?

That just rammed another half dozen nails into the ‘oh-HELL-no’ coffin. Between his dumbass and the wind chill of -29C I’m just nailing shit into this coffin all over the place today.

I just found a recipe for hot chocolate with scotch. Man, if it wasn’t so late/early, I’d haul out my beaters to whip some cream and make it. Two birds with one stone, decent Scotch to chase the blues away and hot chocolate to take the cold away. Sadly I’m a considerate neighbour so the whipped cream will have to wait until the sun comes up in the morning.

Here’s the link to the recipe in case anyone is having a hot chocolate/scotch emergency:

http://www.thekitchn.com/a-recipe-for-hot-chocolate-and-whiskey-yes-please-hot-cocoa-kilbeggan-whiskey-the-10-minute-happy-ho-180132

Until then I’m going to go back to listening to Sad FM and hopefully fall asleep before I pace a groove into the carpet.

Life is a banquet

It’s a sunny Wednesday morning and I’m parked on my sofa with a cup of hot chocolate and mini marshmallows. It was a slightly rough start to the morning. My sleep was very broken last night and I woke up cranky and just a tad tired.

I messaged a friend who now lives in Texas; she moved away from Chicago a few months back. She’s a special kind of crazy. A few weeks after moving to Dallas she was in a motorcycle accident which ended with the police and bystanders lifting the car off her body because she wasn’t breathing and they couldn’t wait for the fire department. She lived because they did what they did in the face of a seemingly impossible task. The Dallas PD and those random strangers are why she’s alive today. Her hand was basically reattached and she was back out there doing her thing with a smile because she refuses to be stapled down.

She’s a few years older than me but looks 15 years younger because she makes taking care of herself a priority. She teaches yoga in her spare time, she eats right, she makes time for fun in her life. She lives her life in bright red while most of us plod along living in dull shades of grey. She’s travelled to random places alone; so what if she can’t speak the language; so what if there’s no-one to go with her; she goes anyway. Dog sledding? Why not!

She throws her heart at life, sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. Even when it doesn’t, she just does it again somewhere else and the cycle of Kara continues. Her life is full of exotic places and memories most of us are too chicken-shit to try. Yes, I know, not everyone can do that and not everyone wants to. This isn’t a judgement. My point is, are YOU doing what you want to be doing? Are YOU living a life that makes you happy? Are YOU filling your pages with memories or are you living like me? Safely hiding from life so you don’t get hurt, never fully living because you’d rather be safe? Safely surrounded by shades of grey because the colours might hurt?

Some areas of my life have been lived with crazy abandon but not many. There are the crazy memories of diving with Great White sharks in South Africa, going white water rafting in Canada, swimming in the cenotes in Mexico, zip-lining around an obstacle course in England, learning to scuba dive and climbing a Mayan pyramid in the jungles of Mexico. The best memories are of the things that scared me shitless. There’s something to be said about stepping out of my comfort zone, all the best stuff is on the other side of that line. I’ve been fortunate and I’m grateful.

While I don’t have the means to traipse halfway around the world on a mad adventure right now, there’s always room to make happier choices on smaller things.

Everyone should have a Kara in their lives. Someone to remind them to take risks and dare to live gloriously.

I knew a woman many years ago when I lived in South Africa. She was marvelous! An English woman in her 70’s with a boyfriend many years her junior. She wore crazy clothes and beautiful hats; she did yoga every day ‘because it makes you a lot more flexible for great sex my dear’; she travelled wherever the hell she wanted when it pleased her; she indulged in great foods and wines because life should never be boring. Sort of like a Bohemian with expensive taste in pleasure. She brought me back a pair of French lace stockings from one of her trips; the scandalous kind that end just above the knee. This was a woman who never let a damn thing get in her way. Over an afternoon cream tea one weekend she told me if she had to do it again, she’d come back as a courtesan.

Seeing women living large tends to offend quite a few people for some reason. Especially if that woman makes no apology for sucking the juice out of life. A woman who doesn’t care what others think of her is a terrifying creature. For many years I’ve said I would like to be like her when I get older. Well, I’m a decade older than I was the last time I saw her. I don’t know if she’s still alive. I hope so. Have I made a single inroad into living a large colourful life? I don’t think I have. I was called a Renaissance woman a few years back. It was the best compliment I’ve ever received.

I’ve limited myself in the interests of not getting hurt. Here I am, on my sofa, missing out on my life because it’s what I’ve chosen until now. Weeks, months and years have been wasted in an attempt to keep myself from the bumps in the road instead of learning to glide around them. I may never be the type of person who can join in the crowds and dance salsa with a stranger. I can be the type of person who prioritizes pleasures in other things; things that I enjoy doing.

The person I am inside and the reflection in the mirror don’t match. They haven’t for the longest time. I know who I am and it’s time to take her out of storage, regardless of whether it suits anyone else. There’s a possibility I’m going to be that crazy aunt at the dinner table who comes out with something randomly inappropriate at the oddest time. I pretty much do that anyway. Aim to be the bright splash of colour in a world of grey.

birdie

My plan to relocate to Scotland has ruffled a few feathers and I have one friend who categorically thinks it’s a dumb idea. Sorry mate, the road is calling and I must go. I hope one day you follow the road that calls to you and may the wind be at your back when you do. There are people who are born to live and die in one place; who need to be anchored with roots. I am not one of those people. The winds of change whisper and I go. I may be tired and resist the change, but I go anyway because the whispering will not stop until I do. It’s beyond a whisper now. It’s an outright scream in the void and I will go.

The one thing I know for sure is that this will be the last time. I have found the missing piece of the map home and it’s time to complete the journey. The HOW remains to be seen.

Between today and the HOW is the business of living. In the meantime, remember the timeless wisdom of Aunty Mame. ‘Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death.’

Dish up a big plate and savour every morsel of it. Now is not the time to be mindful of your figure.

The art of doing nothing

I reckon a happy life is built up of a pile of little things that make you happy, rather than a series of huge things. That’s going to be my experiment for this week. Little snippets of happiness wherever I can find them.

Today was a mostly lazy day. I woke up earlier than I’d planned on which was initially annoying but then I figured it gives me more time to do things I want to do.

There’s definite pleasure in easing into your day with a good cup of coffee on the sofa sitting under the skylights on a sunny morning. Granted it was 0°C outside but it was a bright blue sunny day.

I skyped with my ‘husband’ for 2 hours while he was cooking up a storm for dinner guests 6 time zones away, with him imparting culinary knowledge along the way. He’s the only person I know who gets home from work at 8pm then ‘quickly roasts a chicken’ for dinner on a week night as a regular thing. #lunatic. Today he was making curry with all the accompaniments. It looked GOOD!

He’s going to teach me how to spatchcock a chicken over Skype one weekend. If someone can quickly roast a chicken for dinner, then I need to know how to do that! He definitely doesn’t save fancy meals for weekends only. He’s a regular Jamie Oliver, only better looking and infinitely more interesting.

He gave me his mom’s recipe for pea and ham soup so I made that for lunch. OMG delish! I’ve never made it from scratch before and I bought the goodies to make it so it was good having adult supervision. Score 1 for cooking something new and trying a new recipe (even if it wasn’t from my crazy collection of recipe books!)

The end result - get in muh belly! — The end result – get in muh belly!

The afternoon was spent under my blankie reading my Kindle, incense burning on the table and a glass of good Scotch. I also wiped down all of my orchid leaves with a damp cloth which I haven’t done, ever. They’re all sparkly and fresh now.

Today’s gratitude is for skylights on a sunny day, comfort food from my childhood, a great Scotch, a crazy friend to laugh with and having absolutely nothing urgent that needed taking care of. I walked a whole 0.56 miles today according to my Fitbit and I’m ok with that.

I’m planning to get outside tomorrow for my first decent walk since the surgery to see how far I can go without needing a nap. It’s probably only going to be laps around my apartment complex but it’s a start for now. Baby steps.

Somehow things got done without any conscious plan to do so and no list of things to tick off. Life had its own effortless rhythm. Here’s to many more days just like today.

Start as you mean to continue

It’s the end of the first day of a new vintage. If ever there’s a day when motivation levels are sky high and things are going to get done, it’s today.

As I’ve already posted something for today I’ll keep this brief. One of my goals towards finding balance was to restart my gratitude journal with 5 things I can be grateful for each day. No time like the present to get a wiggle on with that, so here goes:

Today I’m grateful for a truly spectacular snowy sunset. It was totally worth freezing my butt off to get a picture of it.

Sunset 2

I’m grateful for spending a great evening with my family last night over a delicious dinner, even though we all fell asleep before the New Year 🙂 It’s what makes us special!

The Christmas tree came down and there was not a single decoration fatality this year so YAY! I also managed to Tetris it all back into the storage boxes exactly right so WIN!

I did a short drive today and feel pretty good so that’s huge progress for me. I’ve missed being able to drive myself around.

Tubby-time Skype with my crazy friend. We both lay in our respective tubs 6 time zones apart having a chat and a chortle. I can officially say our friendship has moved to a new level of nuts. While taking a swig out of my water bottle I got asked if I was sipping shampoo. This is probably how warning labels come into being… Mykal, never change dude. EVER! You rock!

Now I’m all good and clean and fresh tra la la under my blankie savouring a good Scotch. May every day end this perfectly.