Brand New Spaces.

Thank you dear MBF for helping me see the light.

I mourn the loss of leaving Calgary for a number of reasons. The most glaring is that for the first time in my short life I had found a fairly stable community that I loved being part of. I have amazing friendships, a routine - Bingo Tuesdays, Ship Fridays with L, I had haunts and schedules, even in my ultimately unscheduled life. And I loved this. I am deeply adverse to change when it happens. I Love planning for and thinking about change but I actually hate the process. Being outside my comfort zone makes me uncomfortable. shocking...

Here's the deal. I get to replace stability and the joy of routine and familiarity with the adventure of brand new spaces and brand new faces. New runs, days filled with searching for the best flower shops, coffee bars, wine, food and people watching. Change helps us grow. Without it we become stale, uninteresting. And who wants to hang out with boring people? Who wants to fall in love with someone who is anything but extraordinary! I may not even have to get a 'grown up' job to fill my time!

The good news is my cities, the one I come from, deep roots in black soil and rocky mountains, and my new one, busy streets and salty ocean air, are trying to make it all easier on me. My mountain town of a city has been in the throws of a blizzard for 2 days now. My ocean village is seeing the second sunny day in a row. One glaring difference between the people here and there is that Vancouverites just don't appreciate dressing ahead of the season the way Calgarians do. Warm and sunny here I am the only one embracing skirt and flip flop weather!

Ahh, Brand new spaces. 

And you are not alone in this.

Oh crap. What have I done?

The words that cross our minds when we've just followed through with something that is outside our comfort zone. Or maybe it's just me. Either way this is what is rolling across my mind today. Oh shoot, groceries ARE way more expensive here, and I'll NEVER be able to afford gas. Where would I even park? or get coffee? or anything? Where am I going to work... oh god, what have I done.

After 24 hours I am still not sure of the answers. My sister took me out for dinner to a local treasure. Some of the best Greek food I've had pilled high on plates, delicious wine for less than $10 for a half litre and a line up out the door just after 5 o'clock. All good signs that this is the first step to finding "those spots". Life is looking pretty good, just have to let people show me the way.

Coming Home.

The journey to get here was not short. It was not the 8 hours by car, or the 7 hour trip to get to my half-way-5-day stop over. It has been 11 years of saying, I DO love this place. It has been 3 years of half hearted promises of moving west. It has been 2 months of making the changes to get me here.

I never really freaked out. I complained about leaving yes, but solid heart stopping freak out, no. Not until this morning. The whole drive was a test of all the deep breathing I practiced in yoga classes. Half the songs on my iPod I had to skip, the loss of what they represented was still too near. And then... I arrived. Nothing as I expected and yet I think all for the better.

Welcome home.

Love that will not betray you, dismay or enslave you, It will set you free

Driving has always meant one thing to me - Music. Long trans-Rockies car trips with our family introduced us to classic Paul Simon, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, the Eagles, and Gordon Lightfoot. As I got older trips to summer camp on the coast were an opportunity to share new tunes, discover bands, rediscover songs we loved as children. The older I got the less I was able to drive even short distances without a CD or an exceptional radio station, even planning playlists to the geography of my trip.

Leaving Calgary the other day I knew would need something special. I would need a few songs with encouraging beats, thoughtful lyrics, and the mood of a journey. Mumford and Sons  would do nicely. A good banjo always says "we are off on a great adventure!" The Cave came on the line "I need freedom now and I need to know how to live my life as it's meant to be" rang more true that ever before. The encouragement I needed to not just go back to bed. 


The impact of music hit me harder as I was reaching the top of Scott Lake Hill, half hour hill as my parents always referred to it when travelling home from the coast. Alberta Bound, the Paul Brandt version not the Gordon Lightfoot, turned up on my shuffle. On a perfect Alberta morning, golden prairies spread out before gleaming mountain peaks under that seemingly endless cerulean Alberta sky, the song tugged at the strings of this prairie girl's heart. "Ohhhh! It Doesn't matter where I go
This place will always be my home, yeah I have been Alberta Bound for all my life and I'll be Alberta Bound until I die." I felt both unbelievably epic and so uncool all at once, sobbing along to my stereo in my loaded to the hilt volvo station wagon speeding west down the trans-Canda. Kind of comforting to a born and raised Calgarian heading out to the big city on the ocean.

Here are some snippets of my playlist. 

And my head told my heart let love grow, But my heart told my head this time no

My whole world fits in the back of a station wagon.

I thought I would be somewhere else at 25 (going on 26).  Maybe settled, maybe I own my own place, have furniture to fill it. Maybe I share this space with a handsome man, maybe a pup. Hopefully both. I would have a job that paid me handsomely, could afford warm vacations. I would be grown up. In contrast my whole world fits in the back of a station wagon. Yes, even my shoes and stretchy pants.

There is a beauty in being without floor, without ceiling. I may not be living the settled life, and I know some days I deeply wish I was, but owning things, compromising, cooperating, collaborating, there is time for that ( I hope!) and in the meantime I will be tire to road. Westward bound as my heart always is. It is harder to fling yourself to the wind when you are grounded. It is harder to be grounded when constantly chasing the salt air, tall trees, the pull of the ocean. Catch 22 I guess.

Maybe one day I will write " My world fits in the roots I have planted deep".

Lemon Meringue Pie.

A little something to pack by. Heart.

A falling star fell from your heart and landed in my arms.

Sometimes you get everything you want without realizing it. Countless times I peaked just short of this. Work would be great, the boy I liked would be interested in me enough for me to notice, small goals were being achieved. I would grasp onto this vision with my whole strength and then, in almost no time, it would all fall apart like a fragile sugar sculpture squeezed between hands too tight and I would start again from scratch.

This afternoon, in my lazy attempt at packing I came across my journal from Fall 2008. I had just started a new job that would become my first career and was learning to goal set. I was deeply passionate about a lovely boy who lived in England and when writing my first 10 year vision I stated that I would be the Manager of a store in London. Not a possibility at the time it is likely that just such an opportunity will become available in the near future and it will not be me who fills it. This got me thinking of how different my 'perfect' vision life is now and how much closer it is than that distant place across the Atlantic.

Now instead of that relationship I want one based on new criteria, and a little closer to home. Instead of running a big store in a big city I want my own business, built from the ground up by my own hands. I want happiness, nature, creativity, and freedom. I want things that didn't define my young, 23 year old life. I didn't know better.

I am currently not employed by anyone other than myself. I am single, having not yet to met that man who both catches my fancy and is strong (read:brave) enough to take me on, though a few have fallen into the first category! I am not all those things that I used to compare myself against when looking at where I stood in terms of achievement.

The thing is, looking at my bucket list I have crossed off far more in the last two months (or will shortly cross off) than in the prior 3 years I have had a list for. I have ran a 10km race, will attend a music festival at the Gorge, I have sold my art, am about to be published, I teach yoga. All the things that when I cross them off the list really make me feel complete. Knowing that my days are numbered in this city I am finally ready to leave it for a while and move forward (sorry friends who have heard me complain about leaving for the past month or so). More than being successful at a job or having a boyfriend for the sake of it I have found a deep sense of community here. I have created and nurtured strong relationships not based on circumstance but on some strange desire to spend copious amounts of time together. I have cleaned up my messes, not so much the ones inside my car or bedroom but the ones that prevented me from moving on.

My big realization is that it is not what you have, what titles you place on yourself or others place on you, how you can define your self in terms of status that matter. If I smile, laugh, sometimes shed a few tears, if I feel something that is what I want. If I can say that my work makes me happy and satisfied then that is more significant than titles and salaries. One day the money will come. Standing in almost nothing I feel like I have everything I want and all else is coming, without noticing, without trying quite so hard. Big. Love.

And that has made all the difference.

I stopped going to funerals the March after I turned 17. I swore I had had my fill and that I would celebrate the lives lost around me in other ways. It was selfish but the pain, the memories turned nightmares, were too hard for me to bare any other way. So I thought.

Yesterday I woke up with a decision weighing on my mind. It was the memorial service for a high school teacher who had changed the course of my young life. Being an outdoor education teacher I justified the idea of going skiing by saying to myself " Mr. P would have appreciated me spending the day in the mountains he loved so much".  A text message from my best friend put this idea to rest, she would be picking me up half an hour before the service. No time to make it west and back.

Truly I was expecting it to be relatively easy as funerals go. I didn't expect to cry, I had not cried much at the funerals of my own grandparents, not diminishing my love for them but just I had felt all cried out from the seven funerals in five days I had attended in high school. Also Mr. P had been fighting cancer for almost six years, heartbreaking to say the least but not an unexpected death. I did wear waterproof mascara but was cocky enough to leave the kleenex at home.

Stepping into the church, seeing the same faces imprinted on my brain 8 years ago I started to shake. A tiny tremor in my right hand that moved to my legs as the service progressed. Teachers holding me in tight embraces I was transported back to the grief of that February. I was shocked at the reaction I was having, embarrassed that I was not as OK, not as 'moved on' as I had convinced myself I was. The flashbacks and vivid memories I had shoved way down arose, flooding my brain. As I watched the service deeply moved, I could see the Prefects sitting two rows ahead of me in their formal uniforms. Like it was yesterday that was me, my uniform like an armour, allowing me to be simultaneously strong and proud, representing our tiny devastated community. I wept openly, reaching for my friend's hand sharing the same tight bond we had so many years ago.

Mr. P had a far greater impact on this earth than he probably ever knew. His brother in law spoke of his ability to make the ordinary remarkable, whether it was the drive to Lake Louise or the way he made maps come alive. He did the same for those in his family, for the students who he instilled a passion for the wilderness in. For me. He persisted in living big right until the end. Focusing on what he could do, not on what he couldn't. His best friend, struck with more tragedy in his life than most people will ever have to face, spoke to Mr. P's mannerisms. He always saw the best in people and in situations. Opportunities for learning and living. I was reminded of some of his famous quotes yesterday that resounded in my head like I was a grade 9 student again, hiking stunning peaks, learning to carry my world on my back.

- Be good first then be fast.
- Stay together, stay together, don't separate.
- Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate, then drink more water.

Yesterday afternoon put me in my place, was an experience in rediscovering and coming to terms with where I came from, how much I've grown, how much hard work is left to go. I was scared, sad to the point of heartbreak and yet inspired beyond belief. I want to be remembered in the way that Mr. P is, for making a difference, for my love of nature, for my ability to inspire and shape people. Though it was an infinitely harder day than I had anticipated I am so very grateful that I went. John Wayne said "Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway". Yesterday took courage for everyone there, a group of people faced with hardship and tragedy and yet full of love and celebration. This lesson, of doing the things that are truly challenging yet with great possible reward, is one I will carry with me forever.

I will leave you with two quotes from the service.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- Robert Frost

Everyday you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.
- Sir Winston Churchill.

And this.

Forget what we're told before we get too old.

Landmarks. Decades, birthdays, anniversaries, promotions, due dates, all the significant pieces of the timeline that make up our lives. When as much change occurs as it often does in our lives these days it is challenging not to live between these markers. I have been excitedly blogging towards 100 posts, a sign for me that I was truly committed to something that gave me no tangible benefit or, more likely, that I like to share a little bit too much. Today this accomplishment seems a little anticlimactic to the sweet life I have been living lately.

Giving up the things that used to validate me was uncomfortable, even downright sad at first. I was used to taking pride from my career, feeling that my title was the defining piece of my identity. Once I gave that up I had to rethink what I would tell people when asked "So, what do you do?". I was also very proud of always being 'too' busy. Too busy to run, to paint, to see my friends, to celebrate Christmas eve traditions with my family. In fact I felt that if I was sleeping more than 7 hours a night, waking up after 6am or had no plans for a day off I was failing. I placed value on myself based on what others wanted me to be doing, who they wanted me to be. My life was based around by-whens, quarterly reports, sales weeks, and yes, years, decades and anniversaries. Now this would have been fine if this was not it. If this was not everything.

Letting go of this wasn't easy, and will likely never be complete. Stripping away all the external definitions that I could no longer use forced me to figure out who I actually was, not what my title told people I was. I have had a habit this last year of claiming disaster. Of telling myself and anyone who would listen that this was the hardest year of my life. That I got my heart broken, lost myself, lost others, struggled at everything. That if I could just sum it all up in a timeline, set out between landmarks, that when I passed through it it would all be over. In the words of our beloved Punk Rock Bingo caller "I call Bullshit."

Being without traditional employment has removed all that I defined myself by before. It has been the most remarkable learning experience. I have had the opportunity to be totally lost and scared to wits end. I have slowly built a foundation and climbed out of that place. I have figured out what lights me up, makes my heart skip a beat. I have been able saturate myself with the good things in life. I have given up that which doesn't serve me, sadly in part that is pretty new clothes and weather inappropriate foot wear. Without job, without a lot of extra cash, but with the unwavering support of those around me I have never been happier, more content, more at peace. I have never laughed so much and with such ease.

Before I was anxious about making plans, my time outside of work was far too valuable for commitment. Those around me sensed this and so in turn, never committed to me. Having loads of time has been a vacuum for wonderful experiences. Yesterday was the perfect example. Tuesdays are not traditionally a day of escape and socialization and yet I was lucky enough to be having beers on the patio on Sunday and a plan was hatched. Escape the city with a bottle of wine and delicious lunch for a day of spring skiing in the mountains, on a Tuesday. The best day of the season, my face and sides hurt from laughing, 6:30 am until far later in the evening when my night ended after a rowdy game or two of bingo at the pub with friends.

The longwinded moral of the story seems to be this. Create the space, be happy. Ski on a Tuesday.

Lunch View... not too shabby

“To change your life: start immediately; do it flamboyantly; no exceptions."- William James.

You show the lights that stop me.

There is nothing. nothing. Like the first easy Sunday afternoon of spring. In a city where it can all change in a skipped heart beat this is one of the true simple pleasures that is celebrated by all. For some it is a pair of boots exchanged for flip flops. For others it is breaking out the bike for the first ride of the season. For me, today, it was thick wool socks tucked into suede boots and a skirt short enough to proclaim, SPRING IS HERE.

I celebrated by wandering 17th for a coffee and later, a few drinks. I ran into other dear friends who were simply doing the same. Everyone seemed to have time to enjoy this taste of what was to come. Everyone seemed to 'get it' that this sunny afternoon was more important than what ever else there was to be done. Though I was undeniably unproductive  I wouldn't have changed today for the world.

Oh, and I found this...

You bought me a book, to be caught adrift.

For the last 24 hours 2 ideas for posts have been rolling around my brain like the marbles (my weird sense of humour wanted to write - eyeballs... or just balls.) I pick.... the first. I will save the other one for tomorrow!

Community means a hundred different things to a hundred different people. My definition has changed throughout my short life. It has included the community that was a close knit private school, a deeply intertwined summer camp, small town after small town, neighbourhoods, jobs, interests. A few years ago I moved downtown, off the hill. I feared that I would not find community, there were fewer parks, I didn't know anyone, how would I connect?

All these worries subsided within a few months and this urban community is the one I treasure most. My dry-cleaner's name is Auto, I also know they names of my baristas, the people who bag my groceries, and the servers and hostesses at my favourite restaurants. There are people who I recognize from walking the same blocks to get coffee or new shoes who overtime became the people I most enjoy running into. Friends from eye contact. What I treasure about this community is that the interactions are mutually out of a desire for contact with others. People who are looking to share with someone a simple moment, a story, a message. It is a beautiful part of my life.

I often thought I would live in a small quaint town, thought again about living in a 'nice' neighbourhood, a safe, family oriented neighbourhood. There is NOTHING wrong with either of these options. In fact their pros far out weight any possible cons one could come up with but I want something else now. I love my funny little community, a mish-mash of all walks of life, of all nationalities, of people just out there looking for a connection over coffee.

I can. I will.

Living alone has taught me a few things.

There is no one to clean the kitchen or take out the garbage but me. This means I have to do it. If not, I am the one who lives with the consequences and they're not pretty. I am also the one who digs out my own car if it gets stuck. Thank god I drive a Volvo and this rarely happens. I am the one who double checks the doors are locked and who fills the fridge. If anything is missing it's just me. This is normal stuff, I get it. I am just saying.

The big lessons haven't come from the grownup stuff though. Living alone has taught me the beauty of laughing till I cry and crying till I laugh. Daily. Usually it is a song that comes on, an email from a friend. Some thing I see on TV. Yesterday I read a random blog post and fell out of my chair laughing and laughed so hard I cried. Today I watched a TED Talk as I emptied the dishwasher and stood crying, out loud, in my kitchen, over the beauty and truth in the words that were spoken. Before the 'roommates' left I wouldn't have been brave enough to do these things so blatantly.

Living alone has taught me to see the value and authenticity in myself. If I want to make a delicious meal and drink a big ole glass of wine I do it. I laugh, cry, walk around scantly dressed because I am finally ok with me. I am enough. I listen to pop music obscenely loud when I'm in the shower so I can't hear my own voice when I sing. I practice yoga after midnight. I created a studio on our antique dinning room table.

Living alone has given me the freedom, space and inspiration to be exactly who I am and who I want to be every hour of everyday. It has let me see the beauty in both strength and... being less strong (yeah I'm still not ok enough with it to say weakness... perhaps vulnerability is a word I can be at peace with). It has empowered  me to make any decision I feel with just myself to answer to and it has taught me to learn with the consequences of those decisions. Today I bought perfect red shoes - no take out for a few days I guess.

Keep my head in them books, I'm sharp

Now that that's finished I can finally get on with my day. There is something so satisfying with a productive Saturday morning and a lazy Saturday afternoon, especially on a snow day and what a snow day it is! (thank you Calgary in April when blizzards are anticipated - no snow tires off till Stampede).

I got to thinking this morning about moving to Vancouver, yes in part due to the foot of snow in my driveway when it has officially been spring for 13 days. Why had I been saying for so long I was going to move and yet it took me until now to set the date, pack my things, and start heading West?

The answer came to me in a blur. This was the email I sent as a result.

• 
  

Just had a realization and need to study not blog so I am sharing with you.

Part of the reason I was scared to ever move to Van, even though I said I wanted to a thousand times was that I felt I would be an even smaller fish in a bigger sea. In Calgary the areas that I am passionate about are getting more competitive but are not totally established yet. It is still profitable and comparably easy to start a studio, get paid well to teach yoga, take photos, get your art out there, start a cafe... who knows! All in all there is less competition, I think in part because Calgary tends to be so focused on oil and finance not on arts and wellness. Vancouver is a different ball park. New studios have to compete with the YYogas and Sempervivas out there. New instructors with the likes of the wonderful and established Eoin Finn's, the market is saturated with art and food and wine and coffee.

The cool thing is once I realized this I also realized I want to play that big.

Funny how all it takes is a switch in believing in yourself and what you want that can make all the difference. I want to have a chance to fight for the Stanley Cup of life against the best players, the ones that had to beat the other best players to even get there. It doesn't seem so much like failing more just like getting the chance to play with the best.

OH p.s. I heart this video!