I Gave Up Ambition For 2019 (clickbait title)

Can we talk for a second about guilt?

Specifically my  guilt, because I don't know if you've ever felt like this. Or maybe you have?

Do you, as a "creative", feel guilty if you're not doing something All.The.Time?

Do you glance over your shoulder to see if the wolf is almost at the door if you have a few days or weeks to put your feet up?

Ever felt like less of a person because you weren't madly writing your next play/song/book?

Let's talk about this quote for a second:

For the record, I agree with Mr. Tozer 100%. But here's the thing. If we're not taking a little time to enjoy our progress before launching into the next thing, what's the point? 

Let's recap:

Five years ago in January I was subletting an apartment. Then I moved into my brother's place. For three years. I barely got any work in the city, putting all my effort instead into my spring/summer job up north. I had yet to meet my boyfriend. Finding the 500 dollars (!!!) I needed to pay rent for the bedroom I lived in was often a challenge. I had never taught a class. I had almost never performed professionally, except up north.

And now:

It was almost exactly two years ago that I found my sweet little basement suite on Craigslist. I have never had to borrow money to pay the (substantially more than $500) rent, and I've never been late. Not once. I started teaching music classes. I've performed professionally all over the place. My new band has recordings I actually enjoy listening to. In order to help pay for the apartment (and to pursue my theatre dreams instead of playing it safe), I was out of town; away from my home and my love for 25% of the calendar year. 

So here I sit , at 11:30 am, in my Space Kitty onesie and a toque (my apartment is cold in the winter, it turns out). I had a green smoothie for breakfast- part of a regimen of health and lifestyle changes and challenges I'm spicing up my life with- I did my yoga, I was just about to get into the shower... 

And then I thought: I don't have to. I don't work on Thursdays, the onesie was soft and fleecy and warm... 

So I sat my fleece-covered ass down and started writing this post. 

You know, if you've read this blog before, that I struggle with The Hustle. I love my work, but I also love my downtime. I believe strongly in a work-life balance, except for me? the scales will always be more weighted on the Life side. 

I came back from two months away and I started working pretty soon after, but let's be real here: I only work about 20 hours a week right now. I have a sweet deal, because my teaching jobs pay pretty well. So, what's happening during the hours in which I do not work? 

Am I calling colleagues and making connections and generally hustling for the next contract? 

I am not, but I AM calling venues and looking for places to play gigs and gearing up to play regularly with my band after a forced hiatus because I was away for so long.

Am I writing songs?

I am not, but I've started work on adapting a favourite novel into a 1-woman show.

Am I running/doing HIT/going to yoga class?

I am not, but I'm doing 20 minutes of yoga a day at home (thanks, Yoga With Adriene!), drinking green smoothies, cutting out alcohol and coffee, limiting sweets, cooking at home, walking or biking to work, drinking lots of water. 

I'm also learning German. (More on this soon.) I quit using Facebook again (okay, only 2 days so far, but it feels good).

I have a list of goals on my bedroom wall, in colourful post-its. I am actively working on most if not all of them. 

I'm also watching more Netflix and YouTube videos than I have in ages. In my onesie. 

This is precious time for- much as I loathe the term- Self Care. Precious time to enjoy my home  and re-connect with my sweetheart after being away for 8 weeks. 

So, do I have a takeaway from this post? Is this just monstrous self-justification for a month of laziness? 

Perhaps. 

But you know, when I stop feeling guilty, I realize that I also feel... happy. Would I want all my months to look like this? Well no, but I also don't want all my months to be frantically busy, either. 

I think we- as women, but also as a culture of creative, self-employed people- are conditioned to sacrifice, to be uncomfortable, to hustle, to be overburdened.

 [Read this post, by a blogger I adore, if you want to get an idea of what it means to be juggling too many things.]

When we don't feel like this: stressed out, exhausted, juggling multiple projects, we feel guilty for not Doing It All. What bullshit. 

I have a holiday booked for this summer. When it rolls around, I want very much to feel that I earned it with a lot of honest, hard work. But when the soft times come, I also want know that I savoured them in the best ways I could, with leisure and self-improvement and domestic pleasures.

And then, just maybe, the wolf at the door will also just lie down on your doorstep and take a little nap. 

Impulsive

This time last week, I was watching an outdoor play that was a 6-hour journey from Vancouver. What a crazy thing to do! To get in a car and drive all day (massive props to Mom for driving, since her daughter STILL doesn't have a license), and by evening we were there watching the show, hugging our talented friends... and by the next day we were home again. The entire trip took less than 24 hours. 

Which was followed by a 3:30am wake-up on the following day to get to the airport for a 6am flight to Toronto, so I could run a 5k race with a friend of mine. Two impulsive trips in the space of a week. (You can see lots of pictures of my travels and adventures here on Instagram.)

Toronto was amazing. The sun shone. I crammed a lot into four and a half days. And then, with my bank account dwindling, I flew home to some unsettling news: no Fall teaching job for me, due to (another) impulsive decision of mine: to accept a part in a musical in another city. I'd be away too long, and the music school, which patiently bore my many absences last year due to my theatrical career, changed their Leave of Absence policy (probably entire due to my shenanigans). I am now out of steady work until November. 

We all love to post memes and hashtags urging us to #FollowYourDreams; telling us #YouOnlyLiveOnce. It is part of our (my) privileged-as-fuck culture to do so. There is a part of me that is so happy and surprised that people want me in their shows, that wants to follow these opportunities wherever they lead. And there is another part of me that sits here, in my dream home, the home that the teaching job pays for, and wonders
                                                                                    
                                                  what the hell did you do? 

I lead a charmed life. I have the luxury of having no dependents, so I can take these kind of risks. I know that I would have been angry with myself for turning down the risky performing job to keep the safe job. 

And yet. 

I don't want to be scared that I can't make rent over the next 60 days. 

I don't want to go back to "scraping by" instead of having a decent paycheque. 

I don't want to be replaced at work.

What I really want, I know, is to have my cake and eat it too. And sometimes, that just isn't possible. 

Sometimes, being impulsive is a gift, but sometimes, it can get you into some scary situations. 

I'll let you know how this works out. It will work out. I think. 

What do you do when interesting opportunities turn up? Do you follow the safe bet? Or do you follow your heart? 

Surviving a Post-Show, Pre-Apocalyptic August

My show closes on Sunday the 5th. 
Two-show-day: AC fail so sweating buckets; cast member sick; everyone sad but ready(ish) to move on; sing-act-bow-sing-act-bow-partyparty-sleep.
My beautiful show closes on Sunday night.

Monday morning, I buy a new bicycle. A beautiful blue bike and I ride it everywhere. I'm goal-oriented, so I make a list of all the places I want to get to, on the bike or on foot, and I GO. 

Deep Cove. 
Arbutus Greenway.
Port Moody.
Burnaby Heights Trail.

Those are the ones I've crossed off the list and there are more to come:
Bowen Island, Richmond Dyke Trail, Fort Langley, The River District, Vancouver Island. My satisfaction grows with every red line I use to cross off the names of places I've been. 

I have coffee with a dear friend I haven't connected with in a long while. I get free tickets (a perk of my job) and I see Mamma Mia with a new friend. 

I record two new songs with my band. It's some of the best work we've done. 

My love and I bike to the Burnaby Blues & Roots Festival, where The Rural Alberta Advantage sings keening songs about Canada, and the Suffers charm us with their funk, and Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats simply blow us away. During their headlining set, the heavens open and sweet rain pours down, which is wonderful, until we have to bike home again and it's still raining. Hard. But we make it, and it's even kind of fun. 

For a few days it's cooler, and grey. Then the heat comes back and the air is sting-your-eyes thick with forest fire smoke. The world is burning up. 

I eat dim sum with a friend and go on a 25km bike ride, even though I am sick with a summer cold. I am knocked on my ass with fatigue that night, but the next day I start to feel better. 

I watch a concert in somebody's front yard, everybody sitting on steps or on the lip of the sunken patio to catch every note of the sweetest voice you ever heard.  Even in this grungy block between Broadway and 10th, in this nondescript front yard, there is so much beauty that it will make your eyes sting- with real tears this time, not just smoke. 

I catch the bus to a lake- A real lake! That you can catch a city bus to!- and I walk its small circumference, just like I did this time last year. Just like last year, it's hazy with smoke; just like last year I am filled with equal amounts joy and dread at the world. 

Just like last year I jump in and let the lake wrap her cool arms around me and I pretend things are normal and it's just another hot sunny day and maybe the world isn't ending, not just yet, please not just yet.  And then I dry off and wait for the bus to take my out of the forest and back to my home. 

Too Late

Late night in my living room. I spent the day tending to my house, which was sorely in need of some love. Grey skies kept me inside, or at least close to home.

It's a summer of love and good, good work. The first summer in years that I've been able to stay in town. This evening, I found out that my job has been extended by one week. I couldn't be happier.

I like to eat early, so I don't go on stage feeling too full. Then I bike home and by the time I get there I'm ravenous. Many nights I've devoured late-night snacks (my go-to is chicken fingers, for some reason). There's a place close to my house that stays open strangely late, even on Mondays. I spent a couple of hours in there last week with a friend who was walking by. Two night-owl musicians catching up over beers and Irish whiskey.

I am in love with my night work. With lazy mornings and and taking bows and singing my heart out. With bike commutes and two-show days and waiting for the next heat wave.

I think about summers where I was working up north, ready to crumple the paper of my life's plan at the slightest hint of a better option. I was a drama queen, a troublemaker. I fell in mad love several times a week. I was careless.

My life is less fraught now, but new options still raise their heads. The difference is that I don't fall in and out of love at the drop of a hat. Love is here to stay, and the choices I have to make are work-related. Play it safe / Follow your dreams. Beautiful decisions. I may be poised on a cliff, but the ground beneath my feet is rock solid.

This song creeps up on me, like all the best ones do. One day it's just another track on an album I like, and the next day it's wrapping its tentacles around my heart. Soundtrack to the drama that still plays out, if only in my head. Missed connections and late nights and feeling strangely aware of that person sitting just to your right.  Looking up and someone's eyes lock onto yours and your breath catches, just a bit. It's not for nothing that my favourite movie is Lost In Translation. I am a huge fan of the breathless crush, the unresolved but staggeringly strong attraction.

The drama is not mine anymore. I swam out of the rapids and now I get to float in the warm shallows. This song is where I go to remember how it feels to be madly in love and crushingly sad, all at the same time.

It wasn't all bad.

Humbug!

Have you ever tried to force a feeling or a mood and come up... just a bit short? 

The seasonal holidays are upon us; as usual I have bushels of time off (unlike my theatre friends, who often get the 25th off and are back at work for a Boxing Day matinee), but although there are lights twinkling on my house, a tree brushing the ceiling of my apartment, AND QUITE LITERALLY A HARP LYING ON THE CARPET AT MY FEET, I'm not quite feeling that Christmas spirit yet. 

Blame the snow, or lack thereof. Last December it snowed on the 5th and stayed snowy right into March, so I got my long-for White Christmas with a vengeance. Everything about that December felt almost stolen and delightful: the snow blanketing everything felt stolen from a colder country; my little Christmas tree crammed into a corner of my bedroom defiantly (my roommates had just gotten kittens, and had wisely decided against a tree); the last month of stolen relief before that orange buffoon ascended to the White House and destroyed the world... 

This year there are no kittens to attack my tree, and I bought it so early (too early?) that now it doesn't smell all pine-y and fresh when I walk in the door. The weather stays Vancouverishly temperate. Some snow fell in early November(!) and I was delighted, but that was the last time. I cannot for the life of me think of the perfect present for my lovely Jay this year... There are a hundred small reasons and yet I know that it is mostly that I am missing the magic of snow, and I am trying too hard to make up for it, and you just can't force an atmosphere. 

Tonight, my friend Tanya and I went to the Christmas Market together, which is now an annual tradition. We drank overpriced but delicious Gluwein and waited in line so long for perogies that we were actually happy to cough over the twelve (gasp! rage!) dollars each for a small plate of them. Then we waited in line to get into the tent where they sell the really expensive Christmas ornaments... and then suddenly I looked at my phone and realized that it was almost 9pm. Closing time! And we still had to get our photos taken with Santa and ride the carousel! We gave up on the carousel ride and proceeded to the photo booth, where Santa was looking decidedly livelier than last year (we'd thought he might die on us, actually). 

And so, even in the absence of snow, and in the (saint) nick of time, a little Christmas magic after all. I think this sums up this year's Christmas really well: a little bizarre, a little weird, but still with a lot of potential. 

Kudos to Santa for playing along. 

Impromptu Road Trip

Sometimes you decide to take a last-ditch, last-minute trip to celebrate the end of summer. Neither of you has much money to spare, but you jump on the ferry and borrow someone's car on the other side and drive to the capital. There is eating and walking and lots of laughing. You might all decide to walk the one whole block(!) to the beach to catch the last of the sunset. 

Then there is bedtime in a small apartment, with three of you bedded down in the living room. One of you snores. Loudly. Not coincidentally, only one of you gets a single wink of sleep all night. 

The next morning, you and your love will stumble to the beach again and search for sea glass, clutching your coffees like a lifeline.

Why is Victoria such a great place to find
beach glass? I have no idea. 

You will find the best and cheapest breakfast place, right on the water, and the rest of your party will stumble in, and plans will shift and change, and soon you are heading to the river in two cars in the intense heat. 

Of course, you are not the only ones who thought that tubing on the river during a heat wave on a holiday weekend would be a fine idea.

The first place is sold out of tube rentals(!), but there is a second place. Fast forward through the yucky stuff: lineups, waitingwaitingwaiting on the asphalt in the heat, figuring out how much time we have left before someone needs NEEDS TO BE HOME, packing hot bodies in a smelly van to drive to the river. Nothing matters but hauling your tube to the water and AHHHHH! you're in. 

Even then, nothing's quite how you imagined: the water is still high but the current is sluggish so the breeze blows you backwards and it takes forever to float downstream to the rapids. But who cares? There is beer, and swimming, and lazy conversations. It's hard to capture this spectacular place, seeing as only one of you brought a phone. And- whoops!- guess what? Ziplock bags aren't waterproof! Someone's phone takes an impromptu bath!  

You finish later than you thought, of course. So two of your party race away, and you and your love linger at the ice cream store that sells homemade cookies, cupcakes, and other treats. You eat ice cream for dinner #1.

Dinner #2 is at the crazy little Mexican restaurant in Nanaimo. There's a lineup, and it's only open 'til 8, but the wait is short and the food is great, although it's so hot you might as well actually be in Mexico. And guess what? Even though you couldn't make ferry reservations and you're sure you won't get on... You drive to the ferry anyway and bliss! There's no lineup at all! You will get home earlier than you hoped, and a good thing too, because by the time you hit the sack you will have been up for over 36 hours. 

Sleep deprivation catches up to someone. 

And you learn- again- that nothing ever goes quite according to plan, but that the way it went was actually better than you had planned, and you need to let go of always wanting to be in control of things. And he learns- again- that maybe making a few flexible plans isn't always a bad idea. You learn and you grow and you squabble and you laugh, and you have happy, imperfect holiday time together as the summer draws to an end. 

Auntie Alison's Christmas Spectacular

Well hi there.

I admit, I am a little woozy from all the Bailey's I've had tonight. Although I must stay vigilant enough to keep the kittens from destroying the Christmas tree. Which is in my bedroom! And taller than me! And makes my bedroom smell like a pine forest! 

Just LOOK at this damn tree.
Try to ignore the bad lighting job though. 

I'm not sure when I turned into such a Christmas nut; it sort of crept up on me slowly. I should say that I'm actually more of a Christmas anticipation nut, since most of my joy is actually derived from the weeks leading up to Christmas rather than the actual day itself, culminating in the rapture that is Christmas Eve. I swear I feed on the excitement that's floating around in the air. The joy sharply diminishes for me once The Big Day actually rolls around. 

Christmas Eve always means dinner at my mom's with a loveably ragtag collection of Christmas orphans and eccentric friends (last year it was at my place, but the same principle applied.) I highly recommend gathering together  a small group of people who've never met before and watching what happens. It's always been sweet, odd, and sometimes really fun, depending on who all gathers at my mom's place since it's never the same two years running. A couple years ago I randomly invited a woman I only slightly knew from my days up north because she happened to be in town; she turned out to be a delightful addition to the party. One year it was the couple who were my bosses in Barkerville, plus a roommate (and ex) of mine; another year an Israeli Jew who is a theatre lighting designer-slash-Christmas orphan... The point, of course, is not to simply collect amusingly eccentric people, but to mix things up a little but (or a lot) every year. Fresh blood is essential. After all, do you really want to hear Uncle Albert's off-colour stories for the 10th year in a row? You do not. 

I am extra-lucky, because I get three weeks off around Christmas, so I have plenty of time, if not a great deal of money, to really get into the spirit of things. (Perhaps too much, if my tightening waistband is anything to go by.) It also means that I am soppily yearning for my boyfriend to whisk me to a cozy bar for hot toddies after a frosty walk, whereas he is trying mightily to squeeze money out of his online gallery  and ship out last-minute parcels before business drops off. I can sit on my bed drinking Bailey's, blogging, and listening to Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas album for the eleventy-millionth time by the light of my adorable Christmas tree (true fact: I am doing all of those things right now.) 
But hey! My sweetie managed to squeeze in some time with me today, and we took an ear-freezing walk along the Fraser River while the sun and the temperature went down together, and airplanes roared across the river at the airport. We even managed hot, alcohol-spiked coffees at the Milltown Bar. Because you know the best thing that's happened so far this Christmas season?

Well now, hold up. We have to backtrack a minute. You see, every Christmas aficionado has a very specific list of things that make their season perfect. For example, some people's Ideal Christmas List might include: 

1. Listening to Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas" on repeat, plus swooning over every Christmas album Michael Buble ever made
2. Watching Love, Actually with a box of Kleenex at the ready
3. Getting 'lucky' at the office Christmas party
4. Plastic christmas trees that fold up neatly into a box for the other 11 months of the year
5. Spending Christmas Day surrounded by every.single.member. of their extended family, even though they don't actually like many of them, because It's Christmas And That Is Tradition 
6. Flying off to a hot country where Christmas may or may not be celebrated at all.

And while I am not here to judge you for any of those choices (just kidding! I am so judging you right now!) my Ideal Christmas List includes:

1. Listening to Wham's "Last Christmas" on repeat (even this version, which is twisted magic), and also lots of classical Christmas carols from the land of my people, which is England, of course. Because other than Wham!, Christmas music should have stopped being written at around 1920.
2. Are you fucking kidding me, Love, Actually? This movie is so gross on so many levels that I won't even go there. (This Jezebel article does go there. Brilliantly.) My favourite crappy Christmas movie of choice is The Family Stone. Diane Keaton being tough and funny and tragic! Sarah Jessica Parker as an uptight, neurotic bitch! Rachel McAdams as the tomboyish  family rebel! The gay couple consisting of a deaf guy and a black guy who adopt a baby for maximum political correctness! As you get drunker: Scrooged. If you really overdid it: Bad Santa. 
3. I don't mean to brag, but my office Christmas party was spent not with Bob-from-Accounting drunkenly trying to slip his tongue in my mouth under the mistletoe; but instead with some of the coolest musical cats in town. My boss told me repeatedly how great she thought I was; we ate a shit-ton of delicious nibbles; and the night culminated in a drunken jam in which I played the ukulele bass, the vibraphone, and the djembe, because my 'office' is a kick-ass music school. 
4. I want my tree to smell so good, the cats are drawn to it like moths to a green, needly flame, compelled to nibble at low-hanging branches until I forcibly eject them from my room. Plastic's what your credit card and yo' mama's face are made of. Not my tree. 
5. This year, my Christmas Day will be spent with my boyfriend, and my boyfriend's female BFF,  a cool kitty who pours the vodka with a terrifyingly liberal hand. 
6. My roommates/brother and sister-in-law have actually done the tropical-country-Christmas-thing on several occasions, and they loved it. I admit I was in Hawaii one December, and really enjoyed watching the Christmas deccos vying for attention with the palm trees, but when I jetted back home into a cold snap (this was about 3 years ago), I was delighted. Christmas means one thing. And guess what we got this year? 

SNOW. In Vancouver. Can we take a moment to appreciate just how rare this is? 

Jay takes a moment. While standing on some snow. In minus-4 degree temperatures.
A huge sacrifice on his part, this walk, considering he was a) incredibly busy and
b) is one of those Vancouverites who actually loves the warm and rainy weather. 

The morning it snowed last week, I actually got dressed and went out at 7:30am just so I could coo over the freshly-fallen white stuff and stumble around in it for 90 minutes. The fact that it's still here, kept here by a freakish cold snap, is a bloody Christmas miracle. It won't be here by the 24th, I've reconciled myself to that. But it's enough that it came, and that it stayed around for a while, which warms my Ontario-born heart even as it freezes my fingertips. 

But wait! It gets better! Is all this Christmas making you jaded? Are you feeling frazzled? Spending too much time at the mall? Lost the magic? Auntie Alison has some suggestions for you:

Music? Watch my friend (and fellow-Reptiles band member) Noah Walker drift moodily around Metrotown Mall while lip-synching his song, "Shortest Days of the Year". This one's for all the cynics, as Noah sings lines like "It's just the shortest days of the year/That's all this ever really was", and other myth-busting reasons why Christmas is really NBD, all while sneakily shooting a music video in one of Vancouver's busiest malls as passers-by do the totally Canadian thing and studiously ignore him. 

Also? live music, people. I saw a carol concert by musica intima last night that just blew me away, and they have several more concerts this month. Do yourself a favour and buy tickets now. I have several friends who dislike Christmas carols because they have no faith and dislike organized religion. To me, they're missing the point. I know that Christianity has visited terrible atrocities on the world. It's also given us some of the most incredible art, architecture and music in existence. This is the sound of pure wonder. Is it diminished because I don't happen to believe in the mythology that inspired it? Not to me. 

Decorations? IMHO, few stores do Christmas better than Welk's on Main Street. And if you're looking for genuine vintage touch, slip across the street to Baker's Dozen Antiques and pick up a few slightly battered glass ornaments from the '40s, '50s and '60s. 

Shiny balls at Baker's Dozen. You know you wanna.

Performances? Vancouver is lucky enough to have two productions that tip their hats to tradition while also being straight-up wacky Vancouver. 

Bah! Humbug! sets Dickens' A Christmas Carol in the Downtown Eastside, which would be genius enough. Add in beloved performers like bluesman/actor Jim Byrnes and sets designed by local artist Richard Tetrault and you've got grubby, gritty magic. 

The East Van Panto has also become a tradition, skewering all our east van obsessions: yoga, biking, organic food, political correctness... the list goes on. With music by east van's Queen of Quirk, Veda Hille. 

Shopping? I know. I haven't walked around in your shoes, 'cause I just have to buy prezzies for a couple of people. Literally. But dude. If you're still buying 30 presents you've gotta ask yourself why. And if you really can't cut back on the number of gifts you have to give, then for god's sake do the duty-buying online (I love these guys for fun stuff) and get thee to a craft market for all the stuff you're buying for peeps you actually love. There are so many, all around town, starting in November. 

Heaven. For me, anyway.

I have friends who are indifferent to Christmas, or even actively hate it. They have really good reason to, some of them. They've been traumatized by abuse; worn down by family obligations/discord or by overwork; made weary and wary by loneliness and isolation. I acknowledge their distaste/loathing, but while I hope I can be sensitive to their feelings, I will not be ashamed of mine. 

I am also very aware that all this...joy and indulgence is a huge luxury denied most of us; also that things like drinking water, safety, and basic human dignity are things denied many of my fellow humans while I go to carol concerts and get misty-eyed over manipulative seasonal commercials. 
I am hesitant to suggest too many organizations without being better-informed, but I donated to Doctors Without Borders this year, and I hope to be able to negotiate the thorny path of charity more often in the future, as my own earnings modestly increase. 

At heart, I am a pagan. I worship lights, music, friends, food, trees, mulled wine, lazy days off, snow... and the sense of wonder and magic that lies underneath all of those things as we fight through the coldest, shortest days. If those things don't do it for you, don't summon a shiny feeling in your soul, then I wish you the strength and the imagination to find something that does. 

Merry Christmas, whatever that means to you. 

Wild and Precious

Too bad I'm not drinking these days...

So Tuesday happened...

And then Leonard Cohen died today, just to ice our cake of despair nicely for us.

If my Facebook and Twitter feeds are accurate (and when is social media EVER NOT totally unbiased and accurate, she said with heavy sarcasm), the world is teetering on the brink of destruction, and apocalypse is nigh.

It may very well be true, though. I was reading a book when the U.S. election hit (Emily St. John Mandel's excellent Station Eleven), which is set in a not-so-distant future where a virulent flu has wiped out 99% of the world's population and survivors live in a word without electricity, internet, gas. It paired all-too-well with actual events, to the point where I looked down at the cat, rolling plumply on my bed, and promised mournfully, "I will never eat you, Molly." (I might have to though. People have been forced to do so much worse; unimaginable actions. You don't know the half of what you are capable of, good or bad. You have no idea what's coming down the pipe.)

Enough. Mourn, if you want to. I cannot take my emotional temperature from the same ten or twenty people I always turn to for wisdom on Facebook without feeling frustrated.

What are you going to do with your one wild and precious life?

What am I going to do with mine?

Am I going to rail at the shittiness of the world on Facebook or am I going to DO something about it?   I am sickened by how much time I have wasted staring at that damn feed, watching the same people say the same things, agreeing with each other, "liking" each other's comments; an endless snake eating its own tail.

I am going to try and spend less time online and more time actually connecting with my friends and family in a way that is meaningful to me.

I am going to keep teaching preschoolers and underfunded and at-risk kids how to make music, how to channel all that crazy energy and those wild impulses into something beautiful. I will keep being simultaneously exhausted and renewed by their daffy, impulsive, annoying, beautiful selves.

I am going to try harder to be part of change. To support people who feel threatened and marginalized. I will not apologize for being lucky,  but I will try to acknowledge my privilege.

(I will also stop using the word privilege. Or the word creative, when used as a noun: I'm a creative. What the actual fuck does that even mean? Hell, if we're making early resolutions, I will stop making the thumbs-up sign, which looks dopey as hell but I can't seem to break the habit. And saying "like", as in "I'm like...")

A wise person said to me yesterday that social media allows everyone to feel as if they need to editorialize everything, all the time. I will say this: that if I, or anyone else, watches this shit go down and thinks that writing about it is enough, then we are part of the problem.

Enough. I will post this (and yeah, link to it from my social media platforms) and then I will get off the damn internet and enjoy my two days off. Because I don't know how much time I have left, but I won't live as though I have a sword hanging over my head. We all have that, all the time. Nothing changed except maybe it got a little sharper this week.

That's what I'm going to do.

What will you do?

The Disconnect.

The other night, as we were performing our outdoor show, a fighter jet kept passing noisily overhead, high in the sky over Saskatoon. 
My actor brain: Why the fuck does that thing have to be circling around here right NOW?

Not until later, walking home, does my writer brain kick in: What a perfect analogy for the state of the world right now! 

Here we are: Sum Theatre, doing our free show in a city park. Part of Sum's mandate is to do shows FOR the community, IN the community, with stories about people working together to help each other. We get the kids in the audience to participate during the show: it's ragged and beautiful and funny and corny and hopeful. 

And up there, raking the sky, is this noisy death-machine, making it harder for us to spread our little message of hope and peace. 

What's going in the world makes no sense. Black people are being shot by trigger-happy police and white people keep braying All Lives Matter because for some reason they just DON'T GET IT. Hundreds of people are killed in Baghdad and Istanbul, and the same Facebook friends who couldn't change their profile pictures fast enough to that cute little photo of the Eiffel Tower when Paris was attacked don't seem to be able to muster up a fraction of the same outrage and support when it's brown muslim people who are dying. 

I hesitate to post anything on social media because... oh, for so many reasons. For fear of spreading misinformation and my own, ill-informed opinion. For fear of armchair activism, where posting a meme or changing my profile picture or writing some suitably outraged post takes the place of any real action. For fear of preaching to the converted, because let's face it, almost all my Facebook friends will agree with what I say. They're called "friends" for a reason. And yeah, also for fear of conflict, because unlike some of my social media friends I do NOT relish the idea of an online comment-battle. 

So much disconnect:

I am so very happy here, doing outdoor theatre in Saskatoon, and yet there is so much anguish in the world that my joy feels tainted. It's like last year, when I learned that a wonderful person I knew had fallen gravely ill, and that many of my friends were hurting and scared, and yet the sun beat down and the cherries in the back yard glowed red and lovely, and I could not help my health and my happy life, even though I felt an undercurrent of dread. How lucky I was/am, to have the luxury of joy, a luxury denied so many!  I have seen the incredible moments of (somewhat black) humour that spring up in the darkest moments, and I'd way rather go that route than deny that humour and happiness exist. 

I feel so at home here, but to be at home in many places is always to feel a certain amount of disconnect. I miss my lover back in Vancouver, my friends and life in northern BC, and when I go home I will miss this city and my wonderful friends here as well. But I wouldn't trade that slight nagging sadness I always feel (Fear of Missing Out is magnified the more places you call home) for not having traveled in the first place. Never. 

In the end it's not really disconnect at all, is it?  It's the push-pull of life; it's the luxury and the poverty, the joy and the terror, the homesickness and the absolute certainty of being home. What I know is that I will carry these experiences with me always: love, good work, travel, happiness; and hope that they warm me when life turns cruel or cold. 

Saying No: When is it okay to back out of a gig?

Monday night, I couldn't sleep. It is a cliche to say that I tossed and turned; like many cliches it is also a truth. Beside me, my boyfriend lay sleepless as well. Our reasons were different: he had to move house in the morning, which is one of the most stressful things you can do. Me? I had to make a difficult decision about a job.

The problem was, I'd been offered the job in early December and accepted it. It was now the end of January, the job (music directing a high school musical) was supposed to start February 1st... and I was thinking about backing out of it. 

But oh, the dread: How could I back out so late? What would my contact for the job say? Would he be angry? Or worse- upset? Would he blame me for sabotaging an ambitious show, for leaving them in the lurch? 
But how could I do the job? I was unprepared- I had never received the musical score and rehearsals were now only days away. The job had gone from something a bit out of my comfort zone- working on a classic musical with high schoolers- some of whom I'd have to shape into a live band by opening- to something I was dreading: a show with 15-plus songs, none of which I'd ever seen a lick of music for. 
On one hand it was easy to say well, they never got me the music and I've been asking for it for weeks. Now I haven't got the time to prepare. And on the other hand: If you were a really good musical director you would have found a way. You'd be able to sight-read the score. You'd be excited about this show rather than frustrated. You'd make it happen. The real issue was, I didn't want to make it happen. I wanted out. 

Back and forth my mind went, through the pros and the cons of saying no. There was the money of course, because in my life there's never enough money and now here I was turning it away. And there was pride: by backing out I was essentially saying I wasn't good enough to take it on. There was convenience though- if I did back out I'd have more time to do the jobs I was really excited about rather than spreading myself too thin. 

In the end it took that night and most of the next day before I worked up the courage to email my contact and tell him I was backing out of the job. And then I had to wait for his email. More dread.

Hey, look! I'm using this dumb stock footage of a woman who looks nothing like me to illustrate my stressed-out state of mind.  

I started realizing that I was not just saying no to the job. I was saying no to the idea that we freelancers have to say yes to any job that comes our way, lest we refuse one and then all the work dries up. I was saying no to being overly busy, which is such an ingrained part of our work culture. How many Facebook statuses and articles have I read where someone is about to start a 12-hour workday, or hasn't had a day off in a month, or is juggling childcare and work and school? Hell, my own boyfriend would never stop working if I wasn't around. I salute you people. I applaud your work ethic and your dedication, but I am not you. And I don't want to be.  

I was also admitting some inadequacies in my skillset, which is a tricky one, and something again that freelancers in general have a hard time doing. We've all said yes to gigs that challenged and stretched us. Arrange music for an ensemble you've never worked with before? Gotcha. Teach piano to kids?, Sure, see you Wednesday. Run from the orchestra pit to the stage and back again multiple times in one show, being both the attention-seeking diva and the quiet-but-efficient music director? Yep, just did that for my last play. Hang upside down 30 feet off the ground while singing opera? Sure, I can do that. (Not really. But I'd probably give it a go.) 

I have a tendency to downplay my abilities. But there are certain things I am not that great at, and while I am learning to love (and improve at) my job teaching piano to kids, when it comes to piano music I am simply not a great sight-reader. I need practice and lots of it. I would (and could) happily step in at a moment's notice to replace a singer onstage. But a piano player? Never happen. There are times when you have to accept that saying yes won't be a case of challenging yourself. It'll be a case of being the wrong person for the job. 

Am I over-justifying? Of course. There will always be a part of me that regrets the missed opportunities. The part of me that wonders what could have been if I just said yes. If I'd made it work. Because hell, almost every time I say yes to new and exciting and scary things, it's led to the best things: great gigs, travel, new friends, new loves. 
In my mind, I try to look past the door I just closed, and see the path I could have chosen. But of course I can't; that's the price you pay for closing doors. What I do see is a spring filled with excitement: 3 weeks of full-time rehearsals where I get to be a musician and performer; the continuing joys and challenges of being a music teacher; an album release concert, and who-knows-what other jobs that will pop up along the way? 

I blame myself for not being more clear about my needs (getting the score in plenty of time) when I took on the job in the first place. And of course, I blame myself for overbooking myself, which is the constant curse of the freelancer. But having finally taken action and refused the job, I feel nothing but relief. 

All the worst-case scenarios I feverishly mulled over never came to pass. My contact for the job accepted my news with disappointment, but with total class. I dreaded reading his replying email to me, and yet when it came, there were no recriminations, no accusations, no guilt trips. We wished each other well, and that was that. As always, my worst enemy had been myself. 

To Be A Rock and Not To Roll

Good gravy! Is anyone else having trouble yanking themselves out their holiday torpor, or is it just me? This December I had a dangerously seductive combination of (just) enough money, and plenty of time off, and I'm a bit ashamed to say that I really did very little over the holidays. I read, I lazed with the cats, I didn't even see many friends, if I'm going to be honest. I was a wee bit of a hermit, and I kind of liked it. 

But now the New Year is here, with all of its
New! 
Fresh!
Beginnings! 
Jolting me unwillingly out of my comfortable little rut and back into the fast lane.

Jay sent me a link to this lovely little animated video. Go ahead, watch it. It won't take long:

"I feel like that rock," I admitted to him the other day. "All this stuff keeps happening to me and I just want to... sleep." 

I feel a strange kinship with the sleepy little rock in this movie, who just wants to rest, but keeps being yanked into the most extraordinary situations, kind of like an inanimate Forrest Gump. 

Which is making me face an uncomfortable truth about myself:

I am the kind of person who lets things happen to them rather than making things happen. 

Which isn't to say I haven't had an amazing professional life. Let's see, I've

• played live gigs in Istanbul
• spent 5 summers doing historical theatre in a gold rush town
• made my living (kinda) as a freelance musician
• played in all kinds of bands, from Turkish to left-wing folk to Slavic soul
• worked for all kinds of theatre companies in Vancouver and elsewhere, from tiny struggling companies to some of the top professional companies in the city. 

...and all kinds of other good stuff.

But imagine how much more interesting it could be if I made my own plans?

If I said 

• I'm going to write and perform my own 1-woman show.
• I'm going to record an EP or album this year and get some of my talented friends to play on it.
• I'm going to take classes and learn something new this year to make myself more hireable.
• I'm going to actively improve my singing and piano playing.
• I'm going to contact more seniors' homes and get them to book me as an entertainer, rather than waiting for them to call me. 

Wow! I just came up with most of that stuff in 5 minutes! Imagine what could happen if I put some real time into making my life happen. 

But making your life happen instead of letting life happen takes courage.

It means letting go of your (my) fear of rejection and ridicule.

It means working hard, every day. 

It means never getting comfortable, always challenging yourself to try something new, something scary, something hard. 

But there are so many rewards, and my own history proves this. 

When I decided to apply for a music director job on the BC Arts Alliance website, I made a connection that would lead to six years of demanding, rewarding, life-changing work in a northern town.

When I left a stagnant relationship, I opened myself up to new adventures, and it gave myself and my ex-partner a new lease on life.

When I say 'yes' to teaching a class that I don't know much about at the music school where I work, I learn so much, and feel way more relaxed and at ease the next time I am challenged to take on something new.
I decided on a whim to go to Seattle and take a class with a yoga teacher who really inspired me. It was a wonderful weekend.

When I took decided to join a dating website, I met a wonderful man. And yes, I was the one who contacted him! In fact, he'd gone on to the site that day to shut down his profile, as he hadn't had any success, and then he saw my message. So...

When you take action, amazing things can happen. And yeah, I know that I sound like a goddamn motivational speaker on TedTalks right now, but I'm psyching myself up, yo. 

Today I got up, went for a run, did yoga, and worked- actually worked- on some stuff when I found out I had extra time because a meeting got cancelled. It's the first day in this new year that I can actually say that I felt supercharged with energy and purpose. And yeah, I know I'll backslide, but I really do believe that there can be a snowball effect. After all, as that cute little cartoon shows, an object in motion tends to stay in motion. 

The time for being a sleepy little rock is past! 

If I can look back at 2016 next January and honestly say that I took more control of my life, I will be beyond proud, even if I failed at some things. Especially if I failed, because that means that I put myself out on a limb, big-time. 

Because I'd like to say "Oh, torpor? Apathy? That's so 2015!" 

I don't know about you, but I'm feeling...41.

Last year, I celebrated my 40th birthday with some of my best friends. Campfire, cake, wine, and some wicked hash brownies to finish off the night. I literally felt surrounded by love. This year will be quieter. The friends I shared a fire with mostly live in other cities. But I am no less loved, for all that. Some of the people I only met last year are now some of my best friends. Distance makes it hard for us to stay in touch, but we do. I am slightly less thin, and my hair is greyer. But today, as I played accordion for a room full of seniors, one of them proposed to me, and another told someone she thought I was nineteen. Sometimes I’m amazed that I’m not. 

It's been an exciting year. Literally a week after I got back home to Vancouver last fall, a month an a half after my birthday,  I met somebody through an online dating website. My 3rd date. And we fell in love. How does that even happen? The other day, I marvelled to him, “I didn’t even know you existed this time last year!” We don’t always agree, as I wrote in a song about him, but he makes me laugh, he makes me think, he makes me feel precious and sexy and loved. With him, I am slowly learning that the occasional spat doesn’t signal the end of the world, that my “It’s all over!” is his “Did we even have an argument?” I may have him for five more months or five more years or fifty, but I’ll be the luckiest girl any way, just to know this kind of love.  

This was the year I started teaching piano at the Sarah McLachlan school of music, started teaching private accordion lessons, and realized that after all these years of saying I wouldn't like it, that I love teaching. I worked on a hit musical about a video game. I spent most of my summer in Saskatchewan, playing piano and double bass in a musical about poultry. As always, there were many times when I stepped outside my comfort zone, but I also felt my confidence growing every time I tackled something that scared me. I dislike this expression intensely, but I can think of no other way to say it: I feel blessed. I am blessed.

There were shadows this past year. I wasn't always well. For the first time since my surgery four years ago, I worried about my health. Something is making my lower back and hips sore. Something is making me tired and headachy. There were days this past year when I would get out of my bed after a nine hour sleep and have almost no energy. I would go to work in a fog. Probably very few of you knew this, because my work, especially when it involves teaching or performing, energizes me. But some days it was a struggle. It still is, sometimes. I have totally normal bloodwork; I’ve been screened for a number of things, including diseases I will forbear to mention in polite company. I have a great doctor, and we'll figure this out. But the fatigue and low energy took its toll when it came to my fitness regime, and I gained back some of the weight I lost. It’s an ongoing struggle. There are days, especially when I try on clothes, when I curse my curves, and the love of good food that makes them grow. But I am routinely mistaken for someone who is 10-15 years younger than she is; I can walk for hours (my friend Ari and I have invented Extreme Walking, where we ‘hike’ up to 30km in the city); I can bike 30-40 kilometres at a stretch. I know exactly what to do if I want to lose weight and I know I’ll do it again. Although I just started a food blog, so it may be a challenge. One of the awesome things that came out of my health issue was that a friend urged me to try a daily yoga challenge to help my sore back, and I totally fell in love with it. I can only say, with the fervour of someone who’s been practicing yoga for a whole 21 days, that it’s the best way to start the day EVER, and it is now the first thing I do when I roll out of bed. 

Writing- blogging in particular- has become steadily more important to me again, and I love it. I’m still figuring out how to make it pay, but for now it feeds my soul and that’s a great start. From someone who routinely wished she could think of things to create, I’ve become someone who hasn’t got enough time to fit it all in. I’ve recently started crocheting again. I have a food blog. My guy and I are working on some children’s stories. I take photographs. Sometimes- not as much as I’d like- I even write songs. I’m coming to terms with the fact that I’m a Jill-of-all-trades rather than a specialist. I may lack the dedication to focus and work really hard on one or two things, but trying lots of things has made my life much more rich and interesting.

This year, the year I become 41, there is already hope and excitement on the horizon. I'll be teaching again at the Sarah McLachlan school, hopefully learning how to become a better piano teacher as I assist four group piano classes and teach one. I get to music direct a musical parody of Jurassic Park. I'll be returning to Saskatchewan in the spring to compose some music for a show at the Globe Theatre in Regina. Not only is my work exciting and fun, but for the first time in such a long time, I should be making enough money to actually get by. 

Someone today commented that I’d paid my dues, but it never feels like that to me. To me, it always feels like I’m getting away with something. I think it always will. The difference is that these days, I can enjoy myself instead of guiltily looking over my shoulder. Happy birthday. 

Death and Blue Skies

Death and blue skies.

I can't get that phrase out of my head these days. Death and blue skies, because both have been such a feature of my summer.

I've been intensely happy these past 6 weeks, doing a job I love in a beautiful place. I fell in love with Saskatoon, and it's going on my list of Places I Would Like To Work In Again. But it's been an unsettling summer too. My home province is burning up. Vancouverites pray for rain. And death has left its mark on people I love dearly.

A few days ago, my second homes, Wells and Barkerville, lost an extraordinary man far too soon. Although I liked and admired him (and shared a drink or two with him at the Wells Pub), we weren't close, and I am more saddened because of the untimeliness of his loss,  and devastated on behalf of the community and the people who were close to him. One of those people wrote a beautiful tribute to Tim here.

When people in Barkerville die, my friend Danette will often post a moving tribute to them, and end with the phrase "forever part of the story of us." It's a beautiful expression, and it's resonated with me over the summer for a number of reasons. For one thing, of course we want so much to believe that when someone we love leaves us, some part of them will live on in our love and memories. For the ones who are left behind, stories and memories and love are our ways of immortalizing and honouring the ones who are gone. Every memory is a building block, and so I take the time to remember Pat's love of music, or Corinne's long braid and twinkling eyes, Pinchy's solo stick-wrestling games, or Tim's truculent posture, booming voice, and love of theatre and whiskey. Friends and family all over will do likewise, and I think one of the very best things about social media is that it gives us a place to share these stories with each other, however scattered we are.

But the story of us has another meaning to me.

Every time we get on a plane, step out in front of traffic, hike in a forest full of bears- fuck that. Every time we wake up in the morning and start another day we are politely asking death to pass us by, again.
I am the heroine of my life story, just as you are the hero(-ine) of yours, and the friends, family, enemies and co-workers who surround us are players in that story too. And when someone dies, our stories change, and when someone dies unexpectedly young, or tragically, we are rocked. The story wasn't supposed to go that way. And if we can lose someone we love suddenly in a car accident, or a massive stroke, or an asthma attack, who's to say that we cannot be lost as well? At any moment.

A friend of mine wrote to say that she "couldn't stop crying" after someone's sudden death, and my first reaction was to think to myself but you weren't that close. But that's not the point. A piece of her story is missing now, in a way she never expected; the world has tilted and shifted. For a moment, the facade slipped away and death was frighteningly near. As it always is, and the walls we build around us to forget that fact can crumble so terrifyingly fast. Someone dies, or- as has happened to me this summer- a handful of deaths occur, and those of us who are not close enough to the dead to be actively grieving that person must still rebuild our concept of what life is. Not a stroll down a quiet street but a tightrope walk over a gaping chasm. And that's why we write those old, tired truths: Live each moment as if it's your last. Tell your friends that you love them, every day. Make it count. 

I have no words of wisdom, I wrote to someone who just lost her love, her best friend. Only hugs and rage and hope. 

We live. We step onto the tightrope every single day. We meet people who become part of the story of us. And we lose them; our protective walls are knocked down over and over again and if we're lucky we get through with the love and determination of the community we build around us. Because whoever you are, living each and every day knowing that death is coming for you? That's the bravest thing you can do.