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. 

Sore heads and Snow.

Yesterday, I had a large lump taken out of my head by a remarkably unsympathetic surgeon. (Although the words "unsympathetic surgeon" may actually be tautology. I have been a Standardized Patient - role-playing for medical exams- for years, and surgeons almost always have the best brains... and the worst people skills.) Doctor Meanie (not his real name, sadly) offered to do the surgery for what he called "a tray fee" instead of the usual 400 dollars (this wasn't covered by MSP as it was not an essential surgery). But when I went back for the operation yesterday he complained throughout the procedure, and generally made me feel guilty for accepting something that he'd suggested in the first place. I contemplated the wiseness of getting into it with someone who was about to slice into my head and bit my tongue, but it made me feel simultaneously angry, and also like a charity case. 

Anyway, when I sat back up after 15 or 20 minutes, I was surprised to realize that I felt much shakier and crappier than I'd foreseen. I'd been living with this annoying thing behind my ear for over 2 years, and when the opportunity to lose it had arisen I'd quickly accepted... but I hadn't really thought about how losing it would actually feel. What it feels like is as if someone sliced hard into my head, removed something, and then pulled the skin together really tightly and sewed it together roughly. Which is exactly what happened. 

This is a busy week, what with Christmas and all. There are dinners to help cook, gatherings to attend, a couple of gigs, last-minute shopping to do. (Thank the gods that I only have a couple of people to buy for, because I've hardly done any shopping at all.) Today I had a gig at a seniors home, and my dear mother offered to drive me, my harp(!), and my accordion there. Twenty minutes before she arrived to pick me up... snow! We white-knuckled it through the unsalted streets to the gig, where my mother was thanked and applauded more than I was, for getting me there. It transpired that one of their other entertainers had had to cancel, and many family members had also backed out of the Christmas party. I played my motley assortment of Christmas accordion tunes and faked my way through a few harp instrumental numbers, and then we happily accepted their invitation to stay on for a turkey lunch. 

And then, instead of trying to get things done, I took myself and my throbbing head home (actually, my mother took me. Thanks mom!) The Christmas tree is glowing, the rosemary-caramel popcorn I'm eating is a perfectly acceptable dinner substitute, the Christmas blues/soul hits are playing on Spotify, and there is just enough snow outside to make it look wintery. I may regret this idleness in a day or two, when shopping and cooking overwhelm, but for today, it just feels like the most Christmas-y of days so far. Even with (or maybe because of) this sore, stitched head of mine. 

Actual, real SNOW! Not likely to last, though. Sigh. 

Appetite For Destruction

I had an ice cream today.

Actual ice cream not exactly as pictured. It was actually a double scoop
of Earnest Ice Cream's Strawberry Swirl and Salted Chocolate, in case you care. 

I really hate that it's even a thing I have to think about, let alone feel guilty over. I mean, God, I just went for over a month without having a single dessert so I could break sugar's hold on me and maybe lose a few pounds and get healthy and all that crap. It started slow, while I was still in Saskatoon. It felt hard, damn hard. But by the time I got home the self-discipline had taken hold and I was rockin' it, you know? It even started to feel good.

Then I levelled up: I started biking everywhere. Taught some music classes on Granville Island: biked. (Easy- not even 30 minutes from my house.) The next week I helped teach a creative drama camp in West Van. Did I want to take the bus every day? I did not. I got on my bike 4 days out of the 5 and I biked through downtown and along the Coal Harbour seawall and through the @#$ Stanley Park Causeway and over the mighty and terrifying Lions Gate Bridge and past Ambleside and then I worked with active little kids for 2.5 hours and then I got back on my bike and did it all again... in reverse. I got addicted to the feeling of getting myself from A to B under my own power. I still didn't eat the sweet stuff. And at the end of those 2 weeks of teaching, I wanted to stay active. Hell, I don't even want to be indoors at all when the sun's out and it's hot. 

My lovely landlords went away for 2 weeks and left me in charge of their house, garden, and cat, so every morning I was also getting up to give the kitty some company and water the plants and spray the veggies down before the full heat of the day made that a bad idea. (It's the one thing I know about gardening: don't water things in the middle of the day. Oh, and that deadheading is always a good thing.) Not only that, but I was allowed to harvest things as they grew, so suddenly it was lettuce with the dirt still on it, and tomatoes and cucumbers right off the vine, and tiny eggplants made into the best Baba Ganoush... 

And you know what? These things work, dammit. I could see a change, see my face thinning out, feel my clothes fitting better. I felt stronger, faster, firmer. Drama camp ended (and with it, the commute across the bridge), but I discovered HIIT workouts. I still bike everywhere, and I'm starting to swim at New Brighton Pool, an outdoor pool which kicks Kits Pool's ass, in my opinion. In short, I am one healthy person right now, and I don't want to screw it up. 

At the end of July, my 30-day sugar challenge was over.

You know what? Cold turkey is easy, really. I mean, making it stick can be a pain in the ass, but once you get going, it snowballs. You feel proud. Empowered. All you have to do is one thing: stay the hell away from whatever it is you need to stay away from. (Okay, I don't have experience with hard drugs; I'm not speaking about quitting heroin here. But cigarettes? Been there, done that. Several times, in fact. Sweets? You know it. Again, many times.)

What really stymies an addict is trying to wrap their heads around moderation. 

I recently worked with someone who had it way worse than me. He had to bring pre-made, portioned meals to work, because if left to his own devices he would have eaten a week's worth of lunches in one sitting. "Food addiction is tough," he said gloomily. "It's not like you can just quit eating." Indeed. 

In the past I've tried:

• Having "dessert days", where I could only indulge on certain days of the week. That went about as well as expected. 
• Counting calories (The biggest pain in the ass ever. Forget it. Seriously.)
• Joining various websites. Spark People. Noom. A Facebook page/support group for a cult way of eating called My Bright Life, where people- almost all women, by the way- regularly posted about how naughty they'd been for eating some bread! Or having a glass or two of wine! 
• Keeping a food diary, to be more accountable. (This worked somewhat. But not for long.)
• Buying a too-large bag of treats and then throwing them away somewhere where I wouldn't be tempted to retrieve them later. When I read Ann Lamott's writing about her addictions and she described running water over food so she couldn't eat it later, I felt a shock of recognition. 
• Started my own Facebook page to support and empower myself and my friends- again, mostly women- who wanted to do something about their health. A good idea, but almost no one ever posted anything, so I gave it up, not long before I gave up on Facebook altogether. (Which is still one of the best things I've ever done, by the way.)

I have never been bulimic, thank god. I've certainly binged, but I've never purged. 

So I'm really nervous that having to be moderate about this whole eating thing is going to screw it up for me. 

Here are a couple of rules I'm putting in place to help cope: 

Every morning, the first thing I do when I get out of bed is put on workout clothes. And usually the next thing I do once I'm dressed is a quick workout, or some yoga- something to start the day right. (The only problem is that on hot, sunny days, I'm often inclined to leave the stinky workout clothes on all day so I can stay active. You have been warned.)

I have the poor man's Samsung version of the FitBit. It's called a  GearFit2, and when I remember to charge it, it's fantastic, at least for nagging me when I've been sedentary too long, and for logging my runs, walks, yoga sessions, and bike rides. It doesn't log swims (not waterproof), or HIIT workouts, although if I just kept it on during those it would probably measure my rocketing heart rate and know that something was going on.

Speaking of getting up, most days I'm getting up early. Now that my garden-tending duties are done, I'm hoping this trend will continue. It just sets the whole tone of the day, for me. 

I'm varying my routine when it comes to staying active. Some days, it's just yoga, to be honest. Other days, it's a quick HIT workout in the morning, and maybe a bike ride to the pool later on. I'm digging Fitness Blender for their workout videos, because although their workouts are torture tough, they're also blessedly short. 

What to eat (and more importantly, what not to) is, of course, the biggest challenge. I'm lucky, in that in the summer  I really want to eat less, and to consume lots of fruits, some veggies, and less carbs. In the winter, that changes. (So does the getting up early. It's just really hard to get out of bed when it's rainy and dark. If you have any suggestions to sweeten the deal, I'd love to hear 'em.) 

This time around, after my 30-day ban on sweets lifted, I hit upon a new idea to help with moderation. Most of my unhealthy behaviour takes place alone- it's harder to indulge in over-the-top portions and choices with an audience. So my new rule is dead simple and, I hope, effective:

Eat the ice cream, on occasion. Have the cake. Don't feel guilty about it, and for god's sake, don't be a bore about it. Just...

Don't do it alone.

Ever. 

I'm betting that this rule should keep my bad habits under better control (except for my boyfriend's unholy love of Chicago Mix, but I can avoid that, I think). 

Because when it comes to food- the good and the bad- the goal isn't to avoid it entirely. For me at least, the goal is just not to over-think it. Or over-eat it.

Bon appetit. 

2016: Year In Review

I so don't want to join in on all the "Fuck you, 2016" sentiment that's going around right now, but I have to admit that it is hard not to hate a year that brought us President-Elect Donald Trump, and took from us George Michael, Carrie Fisher, Alan Rickman, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, and a host of other luminaries. 

Sometimes I see social media posts from my circle of friends and acquaintances, and they make me want to weep. Even worse, they make me want to give up. My goal for the coming year is to try and find a way to be informed while still staying positive. I don't want to be a Nero/Pollyanna, endlessly fiddling while Rome burns, but if all we ever point out is the dark, the despairing, the apocalyptic... aren't we feeding the beast? No, wait- I'm going to be more declarative on this one: We ARE feeding the beasts of negativity, despair, hopelessness, and apathy if all we notice and write about are the bad things that surround us. It's all too easy to be a dark tourist in this life, watching the world crumble and posting things like "We're all doomed." But it takes real guts to see the world at its worst and face it with humour (sometimes very black humour indeed) and hope, and then to actually take action against the things that scare us. Some of my friends have faced unimaginable pain in their lives and emerged angry and fierce and funny, dammit. They are my inspiration as we limp into 2017.

For me personally, 2016 was actually not a bad year at all. I am- still- lucky enough to love and be loved by a really wonderful person. I have a great relationship with my parents and sibling. I grew to like teaching more and more, and for the first time in ages, I made enough money to live on comfortably. I'm still living with family/roommates, which keeps my rent low, and I'm even starting to look for my own place, which I crave. But I love my house, and I love my neighbourhood, so I have the luxury of having lots of time to find my own digs. Considering the current Vancouver rental market, that's a damn good thing. 

(Although doing a post like this may seem self-indulgent, I like writing them, because I'm often reminded of events and occasions I'd totally forgotten.)
Here we go then, the year in review:

January: I dragged myself out of the sleepy torpor created by almost a month off, and got back to work, albeit reluctantly. I screwed up the courage to back out of a gig that I really didn't want to do, and felt nothing but relief once I did. But, as my sweetheart always says, I am the busiest lazy person he knows; I helped him to move apartments by finding him a place (Facebook luck) and by unpacking and helping to set up his new home. 

February: Halfway through the month I dived happily into rehearsals for a new play. It reminded me that although teaching puts food on the table and is becoming more and more fun, theatre really feeds my soul. The process for this show required everyone to be onstage for the entire performance, and also to be at all rehearsals, all the time. What could have been arduous was simply wonderful. I happily took the bus to rehearsals, and it was the perfect time to be working 6 days a week, because it barely ever stopped raining. 

March: My show opened, to good reviews and decent houses. I got the chance to work at a theatre I'd never worked at before (The Firehall Arts Centre). During this busyness, I was also rehearsing for an album release concert, and of course, I was still teaching as well, both privately and at a music school. 

April: The album release concert happened, and it sounded beautiful, although it could have been better-attended. I worked, trained for a Standardized Patient roleplaying gig, and learned to make yoghurt, a feat I have only attempted twice since. 

May: "This life I wanted to build for myself in Vancouver? It's happening." I wrote last May. I was realizing that, much as I may miss my crazy life up north doing interpretive theatre in a gold rush ghost town, my new life is rich and I have no regrets about turning my back on that world. (Except that I wish I could visit, but it's so remote and expensive.) I went to Victoria to see friends, played gigs, got a volunteer gig ushering so I could see more theatre. 

June: The day after my music school job ended, I jumped on a plane and flew to Saskatoon for the second summer in a row, to work for a different theatre company for 6 weeks doing theatre-in-the-park. Our play was a Cree story, and I got to work with indigenous actors, do workshops with youth, play 6 different instruments, go to a sweat lodge, and reaaallllly get to know parks all over Saskatoon. I had also made a strong commitment to getting healthy, and this was helped immeasurably by the fact that I had to bike and walk everywhere while I was away. I loved doing the show, and I loved being back in Saskatoon, my new second home. 

July: This month gave me the rare gift of being able to focus on one job for a while, while getting to know my second home a little bit better. Despite weather that was often more like Vancouver's than Saskatoon's, we were only rained out twice. I took the plunge and got my hair cut. Then I cut it even shorter. I started to be very aware of the discrepancy between my idyllic life and the injustices that were giving rise to hashtags like #BlackLivesMatter. 

August: Flew back home, went to a job interview (quite hungover), and managed to secure a new job, teaching music to preschoolers, which was not something I knew anything about. Decided to procrastinate like hell on that one, and enjoy my month off to the hilt. There was a great deal to enjoy: I made a music video of one of my songs (or rather, two lovely people made it; I drank a lot of wine and sang along to a recording of myself over and over); a cousin of mine came over from the UK and we all made a trip up to the Okanagan to have some wonderful family time (plus, I learned to rock climb); and my lover and I spent several blissful weeks house-sitting a converted barn in Fort Langley. We also spent a lot of time working, because we discovered to our surprise that our creation, Little Ali Fox, was one of ten finalists in the Ottawa Animation Festival's Pitch This! event, and therefore we needed to raise funds so that Jay could travel to Ottawa. I continued to run a lot, and because we were living in the middle of nowhere, I also used my bicycle a great deal. It was blissful. 

September: Holy switching gears, Batman! I transitioned from rural life: dirt between my toes, homegrown veggies, river swimming... to so many new challenges. My music school underwent a huge shift in its way of operating which ultimately benefitted me greatly, as I was able to use my skills as a multi-instrumentalist rather than just being a reluctant piano teacher. I began teaching preschool music at another music school, a job I hated for several months until I got on top of it (more or less) and learned to love it. I started playing ukulele  On top of this, I went back to school as a student, taking a psychology class at Capilano University. which is one of the prerequisite courses of the Music Therapy program.  On top of all this, I decided that there was JUST NO WAY that Jay should go to Ottawa for this animation festival without me. So I impulsively bought a plane ticket and went with him for 31 hours. Which was AMAZING. Expensive, but amazing. We didn't win Pitch This!, but it was still worth it. 

October: More work, more music, more running. I really enjoyed my new band, which I formed in the fall when the old folk band dissolved due to members moving away. I bought a U-bass, which I love playing, both at the music school and in my band. Music, music, music. And Psych 100, which I loved, to my surprise. 

November: Man, what can I say about a month in which we watched a narcissistic orange get elected president? We all felt the world collectively cringe. We all struggled to feel any hope at all. 

December: Somewhat to my surprise: It snowed!!! (The ground, over 20 days later, is still more white than green.) In fact, this is the first white Christmas in Vancouver that I can remember. Also to my surprise: I got an A minus in my Psych class (maybe because my exam was delayed by a day. THANK YOU, SNOW.) I finished schools of all sorts, and dived happily into doing fuck-all for 3 weeks. Oh, and I decided to set myself a fitness challenge and try to run every day for 30 days. Aaaannnnd, the gods said:
Ha
ha
ha
ha 
ha.
But hey, I ran over 10 times! So it wasn't quite as impressive as I had hoped, but I still ran way more than I usually do.  
I got to score a short film, which was a blast. I attended, and participated in, my music school's Christmas concerts, and felt more love for my work than ever before. It's a complicated, frustrated love at times, but hey, what love isn't? 
Oh, and Christmas! I love Christmas! 

And by the way, if we're speaking of love... I have to give major kudos to Jay for his amazing ideas, his crazy work ethic, and the way he gives 110% to everything. I love you with the passion of a thousand fiery suns, to quote from the podcast I'm listening to as I write this. Also my friends, both the ones I talk to on Facebook, and the ones I actually, you know, see. 

That was my year. Welcome to 2017, folks. In the spirit of hope, I hope I'll see you all next year. Be fierce. Be funny. Above all, stay alive. I love you. 

The Eye of the Beholder

I ran 10k today. Last time I did that was over 3 years ago, so it's kind of a big deal. 

Am I bragging? Hell yeah. Two months ago I wrote this on my other blog. I was overweight. I was eating any old thing I wanted. I was unhappy with how I looked and felt. Every day I started off with good intentions and every night I craved and caved and loathed myself for my lack of willpower. 

But I had a job coming up that I knew would be highly physical, so one day after I kind of hit bottom in terms of self-loathing, I got up just enough willpower to stop eating bread, pasta and desserts. I went on a few runs with my boyfriend, who likes to jog 2 to 3k to clear his head after working inside all day. 

A friend of mine was doing this and losing pounds, so I started doing it too. (Although I must say that my Bright Lines are a bit fuzzy 'round the edges at times, and I eat a few things that aren't approved in this plan.) I joined their Facebook page and I appreciate the support we all give each other. 

I moved to the prairies for 6 weeks and started bike-commuting every day. And running. And doing this very physical outdoor show. We built our set every night, did the show, took down the set again. I revelled in the heat of a Saskatchewan summer; kept biking, kept running. Kept eating well. 

I feel great. Dammit, I look great. I am so proud of myself. I can't wait to see where I'm at in another couple of months. 

And yet...

I shot a music video recently; or rather, I was in a music video for one of my songs. When I watch the rough cut I see my big eyes, my smile, my strong, sexy legs... And I see my flaws, over and over. Thin lips, short grey hair that never rippled or flowed down my back the way I wanted it to and when I cut it off this summer it felt like freedom but it also felt a little bit like failure. I see the weight I haven't yet lost, may never lose, because I am built to be short and curvy and I will not, will not starve myself, work out for hours, deny myself every last treat or cocktail just to attain that magical number on the scale. 

I know that my female friends will tell me how beautiful I am- and I will believe them- but when my male friends tell me I look good, I will feel more validated, because I am a hetero woman and I want to look good in men's eyes. Tell me you haven't felt that way; go on, tell me. 

I know that there are as many types of "beauty" as there are people on this planet, and yet I will always feel too short, too brunette, too plump, even though I know that even models are eaten up with self-loathing. 

I read, nightly, about rape, about abuse, about the ridiculous ways that female athletes at the olympics are treated in the media. I know people who can't run, can't exercise because of health issues, or abuse, or depression. Are their bodies any less lovely than mine because they don't have my good genes, or good fortune? 

I want to say that my decision to eat better and exercise more is an experiment in willpower- and it is- but it is also firmly rooted in a desire to look good, and not just for myself.

I can't tie this post up tidily at the end here; I have a few disjointed things to say and that's it:

When I work out, when I eat better, when I do yoga, I feel fierce and strong and self-confident. I am proud of what I can make my body do. As a musician and a writer, I see it as a strong example of what happens when you cultivate a daily practice. (Funnily enough, I have always been far more successful when it comes to exercising regularly than when it comes to playing music or writing on the daily.) I will not apologize for either my good genes or my good luck, but I will try to honour them by treating my body with love. In all its stages and levels of health.

I want to tell everyone- and especially anyone who's just feeling as if it's all totally beyond them- that it IS possible. You can make small changes in what you choose to eat. And then make bigger changes. If you are able to, you should do something physical. Because there are so many people who would kill to be able to do what you take for granted. (But if you can only handle one thing, change what you eat.) 

If you are a big, healthy, confident woman who revels in her sexy curves, then I salute you. I want to believe that I am as beautiful as you. And I know how hard you've worked to love yourself. If you're thin, tall, blond model-material who hates herself, I wish you peace and self-acceptance. 

For me, I just want more years of good health, more days of smart choices, more moments of happiness and confidence. I want to carve out some time for myself, even when things get hectic again this Fall, as they surely will. And I want that for you too, whoever and however and wherever you are.