Tag Archives: Writing

Sarah – 1

25 Monday Apr 2016

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“Please join us for the fireworks, Sarah. It’ll be a lot of fun.” Chris was being persistent in his attempts to encourage Sarah to join a small group of friends who had been hanging at her house and decided to go to check-out the Canada Day firework display.

“Alex will be disappointed if you aren’t there. He’s really hoping you come.”

Sarah and Alex had been spending a lot of time together and had had started texting regularly. This might seem like no big deal but this was back in the day when every text message cost you and there was no such thing as unlimited. If you were texting, it meant that someone meant enough to you to pay per flirt.

But, Sarah just wasn’t feeling it. She didn’t want to be out and around a bunch of people. She liked Alex well enough, but the truth was, she was in love with someone else.

Tonight she was feeling particularly melancholy after having a great evening with Alex and their friends, because she spent the entire time wishing Ben had been there, not him.

Alex was great. He was funny, intelligent, artistic, athletic and kind. He was slight of build which was not really her taste, but had a smile that could light up an entire city. They would talk about movies and art and he would share with her his dreams about becoming a famous photographer. There was something exciting about him and she liked being around him. She wanted to have his energy and thirst for life.

Alex had taken a summer off school and biked across Canada, a thought that would keep her up at night. She wanted to have the guts to try something like that, but felt overwhelmed that she wouldn’t know where to start.

A night of fireworks could have been the perfect setting to take their relationship up a level. This is what was in Sarah’s mind as Chris continued to beg her to join them. And this is why she said no.

She was in love with Ben and didn’t want to have a romantic evening with anyone but him. Chris saw that he was fighting a losing battle and finally left her to join the crew. She clung to her tea cup and listened as the sound of the group of revelers grew further away from her.

She sat in the kitchen for, nearly fifteen more minutes, in the silence, staring at the mustard coloured wall and then towards the entrance to the kitchen, hoping that, at any moment, Ben would walk through the door.

He never did.

Let’s Get Dirty

24 Sunday Apr 2016

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I love to write. But, it doesn’t always come easy. Sometimes there is a thought or idea in my head that I think will flow easily, but when I sit down to write, I soon realize that it is actually a tangled mess in my brain.

It is at these times I remind myself that I must be more disciplined with my writing. I have to carve time and be protective of it so that I have the opportunity to write a little bit, every day. This will give me the freedom to do a bit more with my writing and not get so hung-up on it.

The problem with writing a blog is that there is an expectation to sit down, write and have a finished product- just like that.

However, I want to explore my writing more than just making short editorials on life and memory. I want to work on my story writing again. It has been years, and I mean YEARS since I have taken the time to properly write a story.

In fact, the last time was probably in High School. I have been out of school since 1999. That is a long time.

I have been playing with the idea of just writing stuff, unfinished, in bits and pieces and just posting whatever it is that I have written. No matter how bad it might be.

This is my playground. This is my place just to get the writing muscles warmed up and back into some kind of shape.

I don’t need to feel like I need to be able to produce perfection from the start. I want to be able to just write, no matter what it is, and no matter how unfinished it might be, post it, be proud of it and continue to strengthen these chops.

I want to approach it like I am my health and fitness- progress is progress, no matter how little it might seem. A bunch of small changes all add-up over time. A little bit is better than none at all. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be something.

These are the kinds of mantras I tell myself about my health and I think I want to apply them to my writing as well. I’m writing, primarily, for myself. I’m writing as a release. This is the time for my brain to breathe. I have to allow it the room it needs to run around and play.

And so, I’m just going to start posting whatever it is I’ve managed to write in the times I have forced myself to set-aside and do some writing. It might be great and it might be complete rubbish. But, either way, it is my mind finding freedom, release and embracing life.

My friends have always told me that I’m a ‘windows are wide-open, curtains flapping in the breeze’ kind of a person because I’m really open with my thoughts, feelings and memories. I guess it’s just in keeping with that to allow my writing the same kind of freedom to just be what it’s going to be.

I heard a parent at a playground today tell their child to stop playing in the sand because he didn’t want him getting dirty. I thought that was one of the saddest things I’d ever heard a parent say to a child in a park and I thought ‘well, why did you bring him here, then? Isn’t having fun and getting dirty what it’s all about?’

I guess what I want to say to my mind is: Write.

Write. Write. Write. Write.

Get as dirty as you want to get. This is your playground. Go wild. Have fun. Get messy.

After all, that’s what we’re here to do.

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Heather 2.0

29 Tuesday Mar 2016

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For many years, I wanted to be able to hit a reset button on my life and try to do it again the way it should have been done all along.

I have wanted to set myself up to be more successful than I’ve been with the first attempt. I have often felt like I made the wrong choice in “The Game of Life” and it has ruined the whole game for me. You know, when you choose to skip college and go straight into the workforce and then there is no way you can win the game.

But, the older I get the more I realize that, although my life choices up to this point have not helped me get a ‘leg up’ in life,  they also have made me the person I am today.

And, although I’m not perfect (not even close), the truth is, I think I do actually like myself. I like my sense of humor, my intelligence, how much I care for people and my ability to make people feel at ease.

And so, instead of starting over, I’m going to approach my current state as a sort of system upgrade. Heather 2.0

It’s easy to sit-back and say “well, I never went to university and I’ve missed my chance. Boo-hoo for me”. But, I’ve never been someone who likes “easy”.

I’ve always loved a good challenge.

It’s true that I never went to university. It’s true that I have a family now and a desire to be in bed by 10:30pm and so I will never have the “college experience”.

But, that doesn’t mean that I can’t pursue my dreams.

There have always been a great number of ares that interested me and all kinds of things I have wanted to do and to be in life.
But, none of these have ever been as persistent as being fit and being a writer.

Therefore, Heather 2.0 is all about pursuing these dreams.

I have spent the bulk of my life doing what I was told, what I thought people wanted from me, what I thought people needed and being a person who always put others before myself.

It is my time.

It is my time to do what I want to do. To do what makes me happy. To think about and put myself first some times.

And, truthfully, to stop being a whimp and start doing what needs to be done to be the person I want to be.

As with all system upgrades, however, there will be glitches as I go along and things will constantly need to be tweaked and adapted. But, the important thing is that I’m all in. I’m totally invested in myself in a way I never have been before.

Welcome to the world, Heather 2.0.

It’s gonna be great.

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Pizza and Exhaustion

10 Thursday Mar 2016

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When I’m exhausted I have no resolve.

My husband suggests we order pizza for dinner and, even though I know I shouldn’t do it, I agree.

Not only do I agree, but I arrange for us to also get the super-duper, gooey, yummy, cookie-pizza thing as well.

Yeah….so that was my day.

I was doing fairly good up until that point.

I’m already exhausted and have spent 2 hours trying to rearrange my blog site to better suit my preferences.

Exercise? Well, I did hold a downward dog position for 5 minutes while my son sent trucks, buses and cars flying through the tunnel I had created with my body.

Now that I have my blog site a little bit more user-friendly for my purposes, I will be back to the business of writing and getting healthy tomorrow.

For now, I’m going to be heading to a much-deserved, well-earned, rest.

Good night one-good night all.

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This is Life

07 Monday Mar 2016

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My husband is out for the evening and, the truth is, I love these nights.

We can be somewhat codependent at times. We enjoy being around one another, feel comfortable together, and are both home-bodies, so we tend to do everything together. Neither of us go out with the girls/guys or are overly social.

Therefore, these nights when he is out and the little one is in bed are special to me. However, my geek attachment to Star Wars Battlefront threatened to completely derail the evening. And, while I played one more game than I would have liked, I did find the determination to, shut it off.

One more battle won. Take that, Darth.

But, the dark side was calling me and it was strong. I had turned-off Battlefront, but I flicked over to Netflix and found a documentary on a ballet competition to start watching. Ugh. ‘Didn’t you want to turn it off, listen to music and write?’ My conscious can be much more well-behaved than me at times.

There were several years in my life when I didn’t watch tv. And, I don’t mean that I only watched a few shows/night, or everything online/downloaded. I literally mean that I never looked at a screen of any kind.

I have been thinking about those days recently.

Every evening was like tonight. The mood was chill, my mind was free to breathe and explore itself, my stress was low and I felt truly alive. Just like I feel now.

Diana Krall is weaving her rhythms around my peppermint tea and I am doing something I love- writing.

There are many things that can get lost when you move-in with someone and even more that disappear when you have children. It can be difficult to negotiate how to provide the room everyone requires to have his/her needs met, while leaving room to grow.

For me, the matter of “space” has always been an issue in our marriage. I am an introvert. I love being alone. In fact, I need to be alone in order to really be myself, to recharge, to get in-touch with my thoughts and to regulate my stress levels.

Life is busy. It’s loud, constantly moving, satiated with entertainment and it is exhausting.

Take time to unplug. Turn-off the visual entertainment, and audible if you need to, and just let yourself be. Explore your mind and give your emotions a break from processing other people’s stories and a chance to experience your own.

This is life.

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Creativity

24 Wednesday Feb 2016

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While creativity can be something that you either have, or you don’t, it also doesn’t mean that you can just turn it on and off like a faucet.

For me, the most important thing to allow my creativity to flow is the ability to quiet the outside world. This means more than turning off the tv or avoiding checking-in on my smart phone.

For me, it requires a quieting of the world that, even after these external resources have been powered down, exists in the mind.

I can quickly overwhelm myself with thoughts, expectations and pressure to live up to a certain standard, be a certain way and to create a masterpiece.

With this pressure screaming at me loudly, banging its fists, stomping its feet and demanding that I perform, I will, inevitably, clam up and produce nothing.

I become like a flower under extreme heat. I wilt and lose my luster.

Many years ago I had the privilege of sitting in a small group of people and free writing. The guy leading the group was an editor for a non-profit magazine at the time. He instructed us to just write for 1 minute, 5 minutes and then 10 minutes without stopping or going back to correct or edit while we were writing.

This was an incredibly valuable experience for me. It is difficult to allow yourself just to write without allowing the drive to self-edit take over. When we start to edit ourselves our thoughts change direction and we can lose something really beautiful, honest, vulnerable and powerful that was about to come out because we have choked freedom in exchange for perfection.

This little lesson was only a couple of hours long, one evening, 7 or so years ago, but I am amazed at how many times, when I’m sitting down to write, I close my eyes and bring myself right back to that room. I picture the tables set-up in rows, the others in the group sitting around me, the darkness in the sky outside the window, the pen and paper in front of me, and this person standing before us telling us to write.

I keep my eyes closed and I can hear a clock ticking, ‘tick, tick, tick’, counting down the 60 seconds for the first minute to be finished and as I allow the gentle ‘tick, tick, tick’ to clear my mind of all other thoughts, I suddenly find myself writing. Freely, unedited, messy, jumbled, inspiring, terrifying and beautiful.

To the person who changed my life so many years ago, thank you. I know it was just a blip in time and may have felt fairly insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but for me it has been a lesson that has held priceless value as it continues to help me be able to freely express myself time and time again.

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