NYE 23

 I feel too tired to write a big, or even small reflection for this year, but I have been doing some thinking. This year has been another interesting one. I guess humility remains a theme, but there are others. Perhaps I'll take some more reflection time tomorrow. Tired and supposed to go to a NYE event still... Whew! 

NYE 22

You're not that big of a deal. That's my pearl this year. One of them. Its unoriginal and on-the-face uninspiring and i suppose that suits, because I'm not that big of a deal. 

Now, of course, on the other hand, I think the individual life is remarkable, I might feel this more than ever these days, the soul, but that's not what I'm disparaging here. 

Actually, I think that I am not that big of a deal and that my human being-ness is profound are quite tied together. 

I guess what I'm going after is the societal insistence that you must perform, the culture (certainly pop culture) influence toward self-specialness, and the economic pressure that you should aim to excel. I suppose I've been challenged to check some narratives that influence the way I think about myself. 

We are entangled with one another, and with the earth. I am complicit in many things which we could define as good or bad. I am a human wading through the grey, but in this I am not alone. I can reach for imagined futures for myself, but perhaps there is maturity in acting toward futures that are beyond my lifespan. My insular neoliberal individualst recoils, what!? I notice it. I wonder. I take a step forward, back, back forward. Further forward? hard to tell. Spin in an eddy for a season. Get pushed out. Am i stronger or weaker? 

As I let the idea of my own granduer potentially disolve some, other possibilities open. Perhaps I embrace the present, I see others, I make less fanciful decisions opting instead for those which are concrete and adventurous and scary as all get-out. 

You're not that big of a deal. 

New Year Eve 2021

Does New Year's Eve get an apostrophe like I just used? I would think so, and yet, it seems somehow wrong. 

I certainly would like to write a personal piece on some of my personal development and exploration over the last two years, but that won't be tonight. I could probably eek out some of the triumphant moments that made life rich in 2021, but to give them justice? Not tonight. Tonight I'm tired. Seems I'm usually past the long sleep ins and lazy days of this holiday season by now and am about ready to jump back in, but tonight? Tonight I don't plan to stay up 'till midnight. I just realized, however, that I might be woken by fireworks and the like at 12:00am. Despite Vancouver's apparent ban on fireworks, it still seems a city as lustful for them as ever.
So is that it? I'm old now? Ha! Despite a hairline that seems undeniably receded I know I'm still young in body, mind and relative position to others. This year has seemed to sneak by sneakier than others, however. Is it because I found some balance, some station of regularity, some semblance of predictability? 

I am concerned that these might seduce me, and yet in some ways, maybe they aren't the enemy entirely either. 

I suppose I love moments. Big memorable ones. The spice of life or something. So to close out the year, allow me to recall a few moments that did happen in this year I am dreadfully close to calling mediocre. 

1. Walks with friends in the neighbourhood after work. Walking around with salvaged scrap lumber and eating fish and chips down by the docks. 

2. Reconnecting with a romantic flame during the dark days of physical distancing. 

3. Standing in a long line on a beautiful day to get a #1 vaccination at the Vancouver waterfront. 

4. Surviving the heat wave that rounded out the working year by going to the theatre and drinking an icy-cold fountain drink instead of going home. 

5. A baking hot day at the beach on Bowen Isl.

6. Coming upon an Elk (or having an Elk come upon me) from a short distance away while walking a rural road near Earl's Cove. 

7. Swimming in the tepid clear waters around Savary Island at the start of summer vacation.

8. Being given a tour into one of the lighthouses along the West Coast Trail because of good timing to come upon the lighthouse-keeper. 

9. Seeing an orca close to shore at Thrasher Cove

10.  Swimming between two waterfalls on a woodland river near Campbell River with a kindred spirit. 

11.  Kayaking out to Wallace Island and jumping in the ocean from the rock. 

12. Driving the wagon road up to William's Lake, breaking free of the smoke and enjoying several days with dear friends before taking a scenic route back. While up there, heading out to the country and stopping by the bridge where I didn't drink from the Fraser, under a mythical warning that if I did I wouldn't leave. 

13. Starting my masters' program

14. Hitting the Sunflower "festival" out in Richmond

15. Spending so much time on the farm, both in the summer, and over winter break. 

Sure, some things may have slowed down. Some people and places I may be missing, but on the whole I think I'm still headed someplace while still sometimes quite present. I feel lucky. Or maybe we could call it privilege, maybe both. Tell you something: I'm pretty grateful. Maybe not near enough, but still grateful I am. I think sometimes one can be both grateful and striving for more, but now, today, I think content is a good word to lean on. That and sleepy. 

A good bye year that was, and still is in many ways. Soon enough, i expect, goodnight as well. 

A year in review. a little anyways.

Well, its about 30 minutes to midnight on the eve of a very strange year. 

I was just chatting with my house-mate about how the world of last new years felt like a whole different life. We were different people. 
I suppose we aught to be. 

This spring I worked on a few projects: 

1. a boat

2. a guitar

3. calling friends on the phone more

4. therapy

It's in the last of these that I really started to dig into some issues I've been dealing with for some time. Honestly, I don't know if here and now is the time or place to try to explain the patterns I was working on, but I'll tell you about my last therapy session. 

After a lot of time being practically unable to accept a version of myself that didn't match with the ultra-version I had constructed in my mind, I finally was able to contrive a solution that gave me permission to step into alternate possibilities. Thus, rather than my problem being fixed, or being told that I'd never function in relationships, the breakthrough came when I stopped judging myself so harshly and gave myself freedom to be myself, whatever that means. 

As I write this, I'm reminded of a song. Hang on, I'm going to try and find it, put it on the speakers. 
There it is. Come as You Are by Tenille Townes. 
I loved hearing this song on the radio. I remember that I parked at work and left it on in the car to play out blasting loudly. I loved how it evoked Billy Graham and the "Just as I am" refrain. It reminded me of his legacy through his son and how perhaps there were always some limits on what that means. I loved how the song joyfully pushed that shit down and used a very similar refrain against the exclusion that evangelicals so often give power to. 

And yet it's hard to always take on this spirit of freedom. This year a lot of us have had to go easy on ourselves, and cut ourselves some slack. We don't need to be perfect, and in fact we are beautiful flawed creatures. Imagine God's grace and then imagine more than that. I don't even know if I believe it, but if I believe something, I want it to be that. I want it to be severe love. 

And yet today has been tough. I like to create little narratives for myself around moments like a new year where my story feels like its turning the page to a new chapter. The last one is tied up nicely, the new one laid out unencumbered. But I did feel encumbered, and I didn't feel fresh. I didn't feel like I had adequately turned over a new leaf and I didn't feel like it would be a new world tomorrow. I felt like I had made terrible mistakes, I felt like a mess, I felt depressed, I felt shame. 
Then I spent some time chatting with my roommate (conversation, the great healer)
and having drank some wine (the great feeler) 
and having listened to some music (the great emoter)
and having looked at some old photographs (the great evoker)

I think I may just survive January and thrive in February and in grace, rage and a daring hope perhaps even curry some courage in 2021. 
Surely we need it now. 

It's almost midnight, and with that I leave one moment from 2020. 

I had departed from Quadra island with three accompanying friends, in three accompanying kayaks when we saw the mist blast from the sea. 
The moment a humpback breaches is a moment one could live and die inside. Yet I was left to keep on living, looking for moments and realizing that they are gifts. 

In gratitude we take one step after another. 
In grace we stand. We stand upright to look one another in the eye, to say the words we feel we don't deserve, but desperately need to hear. 

The disparity of my life and the life on the planet

Dec 31st again. 

Its been a good year. Actually, as I think back, for me it has been a very good year. A rough patch here, a tough bit there, but its been good. I enjoyed playing music and creating songs in the first part of the year as I lived in Victoria, I worked two seasons at the Outdoor School, and I recently started working as a Teacher on Call at a pleasant private school in Vancouver. I co-operated a flower growing and selling enterprise, I met a lot of new people and I saw a Humpback Whale breach gloriously from one of my many ferry rides. There’s been some magic. 

There’s also been some angst. 

I’ve come to accept- well I guess I’ve been coming to accept and am still accepting- that climate change is going to be really really bad. 

It says something when the people who seem to have done good research on the topic and who I generally trust to have a good sense of what is going on tell me that they think we’re screwed. I mean, it seems that the vast majority of top scientists in the field agree that we are either screwed or very very very screwed. 

I sat down with a very intelligent and very educated friend recently, who has been doing work on the interaction of climate change and migration. This friend said that those in power basically aren’t as smart as we might believe, that politically the world is set to get increasingly volatile in coming years, and that “we’re fucked.”

People have been using the word hope a lot recently, and I do think that hope is an active thing that can keep us moving when we are faced with realistic defeat and the despair that accompanies. “Hope” however, too often seems like a substitute for “optimism,” which, of course, we often see as a positive trait too. But in this case, if it means hoping for the best, watching others to little and doing little ourselves, it might also mean delusion. I agree that the new concept to hold onto might be “courage,” which, in this case, i take to mean accepting the pretty-overwhelming likelihood that we will lose to climate change very very badly but that we will stand up and fight it at personal cost anyways.

I say this, but am i actually prepared to live it? I feel like a lot of the blog posts i’ve done in the past are about carving out my story on the world- which is a pretty privileged place to be, since it suggests that i have power over my situation in life. But now the world might push up against my sensibilities, ask me to be carved into a story rather than carve, which might feel powerless, but what is left after i push back, back off or get pushed down might simply be my convictions- and I suppose I’m a little concerned about what will show. Maybe this is why its easy to make excuses; in addition to the fact that the reality is hard to swallow, when it comes down to it, this thing might test my metal, and i don’t know if i want it to. 

This is hard stuff to process, and I think I might start a new blog to do so. No promises right now, but maybe I'll put a link to it here on this blog if/when that occurs. 

Why not? One for 2018.

So. It is the eve of another calendar year, one which sees me sitting at home with a strong beer not planning to take the party far from where I now sit. What would I expect to happen if I went out? What would I expect to happen to change the course of my journey, which, in itself is more gradual than the drop of some balloons or a strange kiss and richer at that.

A bit over a year ago I got out of renting in Vancouver and moved into a minivan I purchased. It was, perhaps, one of the most singular impactful choices I have made in recent memory. And to think, it was one that I made out of some sense of anger, frustration, and unwillingness to accept status quo. Perhaps that's lesson one. The next lesson, however, is also valuable, and the reason, I suppose, that I choose to start a post to sum a year about living in a van. It is this: if what seemed rediculous or haphazrd actually turned out being completely achievable, rewarding and even fun, what other things are out there waiting for me (or others) to simply step out and try instead of waiting to be initiated or told that it is now socially acceptable?
It was a rich experience living in the Van, and I did so for about 7 months, though I would head back to the farm on many weekends which would append my showering and eating regiment. Near the end of my adventure, however, other adventures started opening up.
Perhaps I should stop and clarify that not everything was extremely optimistic at this time. I'd quite wrecked a relationship and I had some reckoning to do. It is the benefit of hindsight, sometimes, that it allows us to see the stories about ourselves that we'd rather tell- not, perhaps, the ones that make us look like sociopaths.
Anyways.
I was offered a really great job near the end of the school year (I was teaching at a fancy school in the Vancouver area) at the school I was currently working at. I had pretty well just decided, that I wasn't going to carry on with the position I had, in lieu of striking out on a new adventure. The new offer, however, made the decision to leave much more difficult and I spent quite some energy considering it and asking the opinion of friends about it. I don't know if i've ever been more on the fence with a decision. I remember that I was almost decided to take the job, and then right before my answer was coming due, I made a realization that switched my mind and I walked into my boss' office ( the classic, principle office trope ) and told her that I was turning down both the job I currently held and the one offered for the coming school season.
When I was accepted to a new job, she announced it at a staff meeting- sending me off with good feelings.
Ok, so the different job. This is an outdoor school gig that is really neat, but importantly, gave me some five months off in the off-season (nov-march) to do something else. This is the part that I am in now. Five months of focusing on music. A dream come true.
Now, with some 3 months to go, with some challenges but also forward movement I suppose I can head into 2019 by leaving some simple thoughts behind.

1. If you feel like you are slogging through a long and often-pointless-feeling season (like university or a job that is a means to an end) that the end might actually come someday and might feel quite unexpectedly worthwhile at that point. At that point, you might actually get to start dreaming and following through on dreams, because you've learned how to work, how to see things change slowly, and will have the education and maturity that society so values to give you the income or influence you need to make things go forward.

2. Maybe you don't need to be a professional or initiate to try something you've dreamed of. You can learn a lot on the job, and a creative mind is a wonderful thing.

3.  If you sometimes ignore the feeing that you have to go along the typical strains of societal norms, you might find that you are in a completely feasible alternative which might not only create cultural change for the better, but open up a whole new world of possibility for yourself. This might mean trying something and then quitting it, because quitting isn't always such a bad thing. It might mean picking just one thing to focus on and making it a reality through intentional and strategic means. It might mean taking a hit on your income to do something that you feel compelled is more important.

We change. Maybe this is one of the great acceptances that generally happens in one's thirties. We change, and that's cool. What is also cool, however, is recognizing the ways we are the same, and the ways in which our relations remain steady, even if the way they look alter. Perhaps one of the most beautiful thing about our human stories is that we change alongside one another. Maybe not unlike that layered cliff I marvelled over today out at Mystic Beach. Layers belie time, and result in something that is still in flux, but beautiful and astounding and layered and simple all along. Here we are, with the depths of disconcerting news from this past calendar year, but maybe with the hope that the stories we tell this year will be full of conviction, ingenuity, and beauty.

And Love. May we keep finding it. May it keep finding us. 

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Don't know Love
Sentimental
Crowded