Reflect: The Year I Actually Lived

We went to Montreal last October, and I was enamoured with Old Montreal. Rob said I would need to be able to walk a lot, but if I could manage it, he would take me back for my birthday this year. That led me to Aquafit. I scheduled myself for three sessions a week and decided I would walk to and from the classes once spring came. That wasn’t the way it worked out, but that was the plan.

Like many of my plans this year, that isn’t what happened. I tried, I really did, but found that, at least in the beginning, I could manage only one class a week. I even walked there or back a few times, but it just left me in pain. I ended up sticking with one class a week. Halfway through the year, my daughter and son-in-law joined my granddaughter and me, so the classes became fun. I still manage only one class a week, but it was enough to make me stronger and get me below the 200 pounds I had been trying to reach for a long time.

A lot of things were like that. One of the hardest lessons of the year was allowing other people to help me. It was strange, really. I loved helping others, including the Outsiders, but I didn’t like asking for help myself. I had to learn how to trust things and people. Sometimes that trust was betrayed, as it was with the Outsiders, but at other times I was extremely grateful for the help I received, especially from Nessa and Dean.

Last October was also my 65th birthday, and that required me to learn a whole new set of rules. Trust me when I tell you that OAS and ODSP are two very different systems, with very different rules. Among other things, I needed to learn how to budget again—not because I had less money, but because I had more. I had no idea how to handle finally having enough to survive and still have a little fun in the process.

Learning to budget again taught me that rigid schedules and the constant recording methods taught to accountants don’t work for me. I had to create my own way of controlling my spending habits.

The year was also full of medical issues and more trips to the hospital than I have made since my chemotherapy. I am learning to listen when my body says it has had enough, but that doesn’t prevent problems with prescribed medications or change the fact that I react badly to THC.

I started taking cannabis to help me sleep and forgot that it could be addictive. It did help, except for the increased depression and anxiety added on top of the depression and anxiety that were already normal for me. Another lesson learned—I just needed to end up in an ambulance before I learned it.

I remember thinking in October that I didn’t have any hobbies anymore and that I had stopped being creative. It’s funny how we remember things we have accepted as true even when they aren’t. Granted, I wasn’t knitting anymore or doing many of the other things I used to do, but I was writing. I was working on a book I had been trying to write for years. I even finished it, only to discover when I began editing that I had lost the plot somewhere along the way.

I put the book aside for a while, but I began writing blog posts again. I also learned how to make Pinterest pins well enough that I gained a few followers and began seeing my pins on other people’s boards. That was real. It was my work, and people liked it. That gave my ego a bit of a boost.

My creativity wasn’t gone, but I thought my curiosity was. It turned out I was wrong about that too. I just needed a new direction.

I found that direction when I came across a pin on Pinterest about the Wander Society. I don’t know where the pin originated, and I can’t recall the author’s name right now. Wandering sounded interesting, but I needed a way to record it because what is a wander except looking for the strange and different?

Cue my phone camera.

I began taking pictures again. It was like rediscovering an old friend and finding a comfortable companion for those walks. And while I still don’t walk to the YMCA for Aquafit, I have walked between 9,000 and 12,000 steps in a day without becoming bored or even noticing how far I had travelled. Walking returned in a new and much more interesting form. I was even able to walk a kilometre a day with Rob during the summer, at least for a few days.

We did a lot of travelling during the warmer months and even went to Calgary for a week. That cost me the return trip to Old Montreal, but it was worth it. I have been to many places and even got lost one day on the back roads near my old home in Buckhorn. My camera has been my best companion. I now seem to have thousands of photographs and so many happy memories.

One thing that emerged that I wasn’t expecting was an increased interest in history—my own history in particular, and the history of buildings and places in general. I think that as we age, we become more concerned with sharing the lives we have lived and recognizing the history of those who came before us.

One thing I am certain of is that, for the first time since COVID, living has become more than just recovery. My horizons have expanded a lot.

The Things August Gave Me

August was supposed to be my month of rest. You know, where you put down all your burdens and just relax a bit. That did not happen. Instead August turned out to be the busiest month of the year to date, which is perhaps not the best way to go about having a month devoted to rest, but apparently it is the way I do it. 

I went to Buckhorn, Toronto and Calgary. In Calgary I climbed through Reader Rock Garden, wandered through the Central Library, spent a day at Heritage Park and made it all the way to Banff and Lake Louise. I came home with photographs, stories and enough unfinished Daybook pages to prove that at some point the living had gotten well ahead of the recording. There were adventures and ordinary days, family history and new places, good meals and long walks, and somehow an incredible amount of living packed into one month.

By the end of it, I was tired. Not the pleasant kind of tired that disappears after a good night's sleep, either. My body was making it increasingly clear that there had been a cost to all that living. There were headaches and fatigue and days when very little happened because very little could happen, and eventually I had to pay attention to that whether my mind particularly wanted to or not.

And yet, I don't think August failed at rest. I think I misunderstood what I was asking of it. It certainly wasn't restful, but perhaps that wasn't the only thing I needed to learn about rest. What it did do, rather unexpectedly given how busy I was, was teach me a little more about stopping.

Not without arguing with myself first, of course. Even tired to the bone my mind can find work, or somewhere to go, or something I want to see. My body and my mind do not always agree on what I am capable of, and historically my mind has been pretty good at winning that argument. Somewhere during August that began to change. I still pushed myself, probably more than I should have sometimes, but not nearly as hard as I could have.

More often than I used to, I could look at something unfinished and decide that it could wait. The Daybook could wait. A blog post could wait. Aquafit could wait. August itself could spill over its carefully drawn boundaries and into September, and nothing terrible happened because I didn't finish everything on time. Given how much I like to make plans and then expect myself to follow them, learning to draw that line may be one of the more useful things August gave me.

September is a different kind of month for me because, if you have been following me for any length of time, you know my new year doesn't begin on January 1st. It begins on October 7th, my birthday, and I have thought of the year that way for many years. This September I'm preparing to begin my 67th year, and instead of doing the rather hit-and-miss year-end review I've done before, I decided I wanted to be much more deliberate about it.

I don't want to simply look back and make a list of what went well and what didn't. I want to know what this year actually taught me and use those lessons as fodder for my posts, my Daybook, my photography and the way I live next year. I don't want to borrow someone else's list of monthly themes this time either. I want to create my own, based on what is relevant to me and on the life I am actually living rather than the one somebody else's list assumes I should be living.

So before I began the review, I collected everything I've written this year and started putting it into some kind of order, looking for lessons learned, routines that came and went, things I tried that didn't work and things that appeared almost without my noticing them. I was looking, I suppose, for evidence of who I was this year and clues about who I want to continue to be.

That evidence has already surprised me. Parts of this year were genuinely difficult, and I don't need to rewrite them into something positive to make the year worthwhile. But when I began looking at what actually happened instead of relying entirely on how the year felt, I found something sitting right alongside the difficulty that I hadn't really expected to find there. Progress. Quite a lot of it, actually.

Maybe that is another thing August prepared me for. Rest taught me that stopping isn't necessarily giving up. Notice taught me to pay attention. Restore brought familiar parts of myself back into view, and Renew asked what I wanted to do with them. Now September is asking me to look at the whole messy collection and decide what belongs in the year ahead.

I know already that I want to carry my curiosity with me. I want to carry the permission to stop and the growing ability to listen when my body tells me something my mind doesn't particularly want to hear. I want to remember that evidence sometimes tells a very different story than feelings do, and perhaps most importantly, I want to carry something I am only beginning to understand: a difficult year and a year of remarkable progress can be the same year.

There is one more lesson from August that seems especially worth carrying with me: what fills me can also drain me. Calgary filled me. Buckhorn filled me. The wandering, the photographs, the discoveries and the stories filled me, and some of those same things left me exhausted. I don't think the lesson is that I should stop doing them. I think the lesson is that I need to become better at recognizing the cost and listening when my body says it has paid enough for now.

Sometimes being tired really is the receipt for having had a very full life, and looking back at August I wouldn't trade away most of what caused the good kind. What I would like to do differently in my 67th year is learn the difference a little sooner between that kind of tired and the kind that means I have gone too far.

I don't have to carry everything into the year ahead, only what helps me grow. September is my month to figure out what that is.

Renew — Maybe It Isn't About Being New

I know Sunday is supposed to be a rest day, but honestly I feel like I'm failing myself because this post isn't ready to write. Tomorrow is the end of August, today starts the crossover week and, while I'm willing to allow myself some leeway because of how busy this month has been, I would still really like to get caught up.

Maybe the problem is that I haven't been able to figure out what Renew is supposed to look like.

I came home to find that one of the tenants I liked had died a couple of days before. There was a tent trailer parked in the as-yet unfinished parking lot and my house was a mess. We'd taken out the garbage and stuff before we left, but I hadn't swept or mopped and it showed. Even a week later, some of it still isn't done.

Then I got a notice that I need to renew my OHIP and Ontario ID cards before my birthday.

That got me thinking. Maybe renew isn't about making anything new. Maybe it's about updating something so it can continue working. The government seems to think so. Update a photo, pay a fee and continue on, life mostly unchanged.

BTW, that tent trailer eventually ended up parked right in front of my window. The couple and their dog seem okay, but this neighbourhood hasn't been kind to them. They weren't here by choice and they seem like decent people, but because of the neighbourhood some people assumed they must be trouble. Then, because it is this neighbourhood, the trailer got broken into. At least they weren't home.

Cops and ambulances and parties outside my bedroom window at three in the morning are part of the deal here. It's not the best place in the world to live, but it is home to me. Then there are the other sounds. A rainstorm, a child's laughter, even the sound of my neighbours sitting outside enjoying the air, which is surprisingly rare here. Those things don't make anything new. They're simply things I like about being here.

I've been dealing with fatigue and some physical issues. I'm behind on my posts and my housework and there are all kinds of things I haven't caught up on yet. Strangely enough, though, I am starting to feel comfortable in my life again.

I went to aquafit the first Monday I was back because I missed it. On Friday I went back to the Y and finally got the financial stuff sorted out so all five of us can use the facilities without any issues. I ended up getting a good deal too, more than 50% off what I had expected to pay. That renewed a little of my belief in the system I live within. Sometimes things actually do work.

Then I went to Ribfest with my family because I'd promised myself I would. I spent an ungodly amount of money on a rib deal, but when I got home there was enough food to feed three people for three meals, and I always feel good about feeding my boys.

It was worth it for another reason too. It was nice seeing ordinary people in this town out having fun, listening to music, eating too much food and enjoying what felt like one big neighbourhood BBQ. It kind of renewed my faith in the city. Mind you, if I were a more political person I could come up with a few changes to how Peterborough is run.

But it's all part of the whole thing I call my life.

I think I was putting too much emphasis on the new part of Renew. The things that refresh me don't make me new. They're things I like, things I miss when they're gone and things I keep returning to because they're right for me.

Maybe that's closer to what renewal actually is. Not replacing what was there, but doing whatever needs doing so it can continue. Apparently my OHIP card needs a new photo. My YMCA membership needed sorting out. My faith in my city needed a neighbourhood BBQ. And I needed to come home and start finding my way back into my ordinary life.

None of it is particularly new.

Tomorrow is still the end of August. I'm still behind, the floors still need cleaning and September is going to arrive whether I've caught up or not. But the post I was worried about when I sat down this morning is finally written, and perhaps that's part of it too.

I don't feel new, but I am feeling more like myself.

And I think that's what Renew looked like this week.

Restore: Finding My Way Back to Myself

When I chose Restore as the third part of my August rhythm — Rest, Notice, Restore, Renew — I thought I understood what it meant. Then the week arrived and I found myself asking a surprisingly difficult question.

Restore what? And how?

My first thought was energy. Surely restoration means doing things that give me my energy back. But when I looked at it that way, the list was pretty short. Eating helps. Sleeping helps. Beyond that, most of the things I enjoy either use energy or simply give my brain a rest for a while. Reading doesn't magically refill the tank. Neither does playing a game, walking through a garden or working on my field journal.

Maybe I had been asking the wrong question.

When life knocks me out of my usual rhythm, it can take me a week or two to recover. Calgary was wonderful, but it was also a very full week. I walked more than usual, saw new things every day, took hundreds of photographs and filled my head with experiences I wanted to remember. When it was over, I didn't go directly home. I went back to Toronto with Rob.

It was nice to stop moving quite so much and begin getting some of my normal back.

Some of that was very ordinary. There was shopping to do. In Toronto it was coffee and some of the things they don't keep at Rob's house. When I finally returned to Peterborough, it was groceries for the week. Necessities, really, but there is something reassuring about buying groceries for the coming week. It means I am back in my own life and preparing to live it again.

Staying at Rob's can be a challenge sometimes. He lives with his mother and brother, so there are always other people and other people's things around. But his brother has created a beautiful garden in the backyard, and it has become a refuge for me. In the morning I could take my coffee and whatever I was having for breakfast outside to the gazebo, sit among the flowers and listen to the sounds of the garden. Even the June bugs had their own song.

At home in Peterborough, there isn't a gazebo waiting for me. I open my window instead. I sit at my desk with breakfast and coffee and listen to whatever is happening outside. They aren't the same morning, but I realized they do the same thing for me. They give me a quiet place to begin the day before I ask anything more of myself.

There is also a little sitting room at Rob's that I have more or less claimed as my sanctuary. It has a loveseat and a table, although I have to overlook the computer equipment scattered everywhere. I did most of my work there. I read there. I relaxed there. For a while it became an almost-home, a place where I could settle into some of the things I normally do.

I found other almost-home things too. Walking through the garden reminded me of my usual turns around my building and my occasional visits to the garden nearby. Reading and playing my games brought back familiar parts of my routine. Working on the pages for my Calgary field journal let me return to the adventure, but this time without all the physical effort. I could revisit what I had seen, choose photographs, remember details and enjoy the trip again in an entirely different way.

 

Eventually, though, I came home.

There were little moments when I could feel my life clicking back into place. Walking around my building on the new pavement felt surprisingly good. Touching base with my son felt right. Spending time with Ness and Dean after Aquafit felt familiar. Even talking with the Outsiders felt like a return to something I recognized. Rob lives in a suburban neighbourhood that actively discourages people from hanging around outside. Here, people stop and talk.

Going back to Aquafit felt almost like coming home.

Then this morning I made my bed.

It is such a silly little thing. I make my bed every day, so there is nothing particularly noteworthy about it. Except this morning there was. I looked at it and thought, yeah, my routines are back in place. This is home.

My own room. My own mess. My own window. My own sounds. Even my fan at night matters. Rob has a fan too, but it doesn't sound like mine. Mine drowns out the world in exactly the way I am accustomed to, and apparently even that tiny familiar sound helps restore my equilibrium.

I think that's what I was missing when I kept trying to figure out how to restore my energy.

Restoration, at least for me, isn't necessarily about getting energy back. Sometimes it is the gradual return of the things that make my life recognizable to me. A cup of coffee in a quiet place. A book. A familiar walk. Making something. Seeing my family. Going to Aquafit. Making the bed. Hearing the right fan when I close my eyes at night.

Travel disrupts those things, and that's part of the adventure. I don't want every day away from home to look exactly like a day at home. But apparently I do need some familiar threads running through my days, even when I'm somewhere else. And when I return, I need time to pick those threads back up.

Maybe that is why restoration happens so slowly for me. I don't come home, get a good night's sleep and wake up restored. I come back a little at a time.

One routine. One person. One familiar sound. One ordinary thing after another.

Until one morning I make the bed, look around and realize:

There I am.

 

Notice: Paying attention to the little things

I thought noticing meant paying closer attention. Maybe it also means letting myself be surprised.

I am good at seeing things most people ignore. I learned early in my life to be aware and pay attention, not because of any abuse or trauma, but because I was very clumsy. Over the years I have managed to get better at not tripping over my own feet when something catches my eye, although apparently there are still limits.

Noticing starts with seeing. A black-and-white bird I don't recognize. A tiny stream almost buried under greenery and hidden by stone. Those are the kinds of things I see. They aren't necessarily important and I don't have to do anything with them. Something catches my attention and, instead of immediately moving on, I stop and look.

I have no lesson for you this week, only a suggestion. Look out your nearest window and slowly look up, down and sideways. Stop when something draws your attention and really look at it. This isn't a quick scan but a slow, deliberate look. Or, if you can, step outside and walk 100 yards in any direction and do the same thing. The point is simply to see what you might normally skip over. That is noticing.

Noticing doesn't have to be directed outward. I am tired today, and that is another way to notice. Turn the same attention toward yourself. Pay attention to the aches and pains, the feel of the fabric against your skin, what feels good and what feels bad. Notice even the things you generally don't pay attention to. Give yourself the same slow attention you just gave the world outside your window.

Calgary gave me plenty of opportunities to practice this. I went to Reader Rock Garden expecting a rock garden laid out on relatively level ground, only to discover that the rocks were actually steps and the garden was vertical. It was a beautiful place, emphasis on beautiful, but definitely not what I expected. I probably wouldn't have seen nearly as much of it if I hadn't been determined to reach the café, which, as it happens, sits about halfway up what felt very much like a rock mountain.

The next day I went to the Calgary Central Library expecting an uninspiring building full of books and things. Instead, I found somewhere I could have explored for hours. Even the building surprised me, with its shape inspired by a Chinook cloud. I was particularly drawn to the fourth floor, with its Indigenous teachings and books, Canadian and world history, and inviting places to sit and read. Did I mention that this place was huge?

Maybe that is what I am learning about noticing. It isn't about searching for something extraordinary. It is about giving the ordinary enough time to become interesting. Expectation tells us what we think we're going to see. Noticing gives what is actually there a chance to surprise us. 

What Rest Looked Like This Week

When I chose Rest as the focus for the first week of August, I imagined a slower week. I imagined staying late in bed, reading, watching TV, all the things that come to mind when you think of rest. That didn't happen.

Instead, I've spent the week getting ready for Calgary. There have been lists to make, things to pack, appointments to remember, laundry to finish, journal pages to complete, and all the ordinary chores that somehow multiply whenever you're about to leave home.

Then there's the housework. Dishes, sweeping, and all those little jobs I usually put off. I hate housework, but I know I'll appreciate coming home to a clean apartment instead of having to deal with it after a week away.

A few days earlier there was also our road trip back to Buckhorn. It wasn't physically restful, but it settled something in me that I didn't know still needed settling. Sometimes the heart rests before the body does.

In many ways the trip was restful, albeit full of memories. Along with the memories came peace in seeing things from my growing-up years that remain true in spirit, like Sandy Lake and Cody Inn. They are cherished memories, and I think that gives peace of mind and, in its own way, rest.

This week reminded me that rest isn't always measured by how many hours you spend in a chair. Sometimes it's measured by how little you're rushing inside your own head.

There were moments.

Standing by the lazy river and allowing its current to sweep away some of my fatigue. The sound of rushing water eases my mind and lets it rest for a little while.

Spending time with my girls and the important men in their lives. I was spending time with loved ones, and that was another reason the day felt restful.

Getting a stack of photos I thought were long gone, including some really old ones from my Dad's album. Looking through them reminded me just how many wonderful places I've been and experiences I've had. They are cherished memories, and I think that gives peace of mind and, in its own way, rest.

Planning and dreaming about spending four days in Calgary, free to explore anything I want without any of the pressures I feel here at home.

Writing in my journal and sharing scrapbook pages of the memories I've collected, hoping they'll mean something to whoever looks at them after I'm gone, instead of simply checking another task off the list. Though there was some of that too.

None of those moments lasted very long, but each one let me breathe a little easier. They let my mind relax and experience what was going on around me without worry or fear.

I've spent much of this year learning that I don't have to earn rest by exhausting myself first. I'm still not very good at believing it, especially before a trip when there always seems to be one more thing that needs doing. But I'm getting better at noticing the small pauses hidden inside busy days. Maybe that's what rest was this week.

Calgary will have its own adventures, its own discoveries, and probably its own tired evenings. I'm hoping I'll find a few more quiet moments there too.

For now, my version of rest is knowing that the preparations are almost finished. Soon, it will be time to go.

Songs of the Month

I've been trying to write this post for two days, but the words just wouldn't come. This was supposed to be a soundtrack, like those lists people create on Spotify, but there were no songs. At least, not in the way I first imagined.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized July did have a soundtrack. It just wasn't made of music. It was made of birds singing outside my window, cicadas serenading us on the hottest days, conversations that didn't really matter but somehow did, pages turning in my journal, footsteps on my walk to Aquafit, and more than one night when my brain absolutely refused to shut up.

Maybe those are the songs we carry with us anyway.

 
Looking back on a month always makes it seem much neater than it felt while I was living it. July wasn't neat at all. It kept changing direction. Just when I thought I knew what I was doing, something else would catch my attention and carry me somewhere I hadn't expected to go.

Sometimes it was creativity, or what I usually call getting side-tracked. I could lose hours moving things around on a journal page or trying one more idea for the blog simply because I wanted to see if it would work. Other days it was memories. Buckhorn, my hometown, kept calling me back this month and, once I started opening those doors, I found myself remembering things I hadn't thought about in years.

I needed those memories because for a long time I've thought of my childhood as one long sad story. This month reminded me it never was. The difficult memories are still there and always will be, but they no longer stand alone. Somewhere between remembering the bad stuff were blueberry fields, corn roasts, horses on lead reins, finding treasures at the dump, and watching bears from the safety of the car. I'd forgotten there was joy living beside the sorrow.

It was also a month that challenged me both physically and mentally. I spent time in the emergency room with a urinary tract infection, worried more than once about the way fatigue seemed to settle into my bones, and found myself wondering whether depression was quietly trying to make its way back into my life. None of those things were part of the plan, but then again, life rarely asks permission before rewriting the schedule.

Looking back now, those aren't the moments that stayed with me the most.

I remember writing Good Neighbours after witnessing a stranger being treated with cruelty. I remember finally settling into a new look for the blog after trying more templates than I care to admit. I remember giving myself Permission to Play and discovering that curiosity still has a way of leading me somewhere worthwhile.

Without meaning to, July kept circling around the same ideas. Curiosity. Kindness. Memory. Permission. I never set out to write about those things, but they kept appearing until I stopped fighting them and started paying attention.

Maybe that's all any of us are really doing—learning to notice the things that quietly make up a life. The birds outside the window become part of the morning, the walk to the Y becomes time to think, conversations stay with us longer than we expect, and old memories return when they're finally ready to be heard. Even the difficult days have something to say if we're willing to listen.

Now July is coming to an end, and August is waiting just around the corner.

I've already given August its own theme: Rest & Reset. It feels like exactly what I need because my year doesn't begin in January. It begins in October, around my birthday, and that makes August and September something different. They're not really the end of one year or the beginning of another. They're the quiet space in between, where I can catch my breath before I start dreaming about what comes next.

The planner in me knows September will be filled with ideas for the year ahead, and the creative part of me is already peeking around the corner to see what's waiting. But August doesn't have to carry any of that. It can simply be what it needs to be: a chance to rest, to notice, to restore, and to begin again a little more gently than before.

Before I can start planning another year, I need to rest and review. I want to think about what is working and what isn't, what I need instead of what I simply want, and allow things to settle into whatever new shape they are meant to take. Most of all, I want to look honestly at who I was last October and who I have become along the way.

Not every season of life needs to be filled with big moments. Sometimes the quieter seasons are the ones that help us hear ourselves again.

I think that's reason enough to slow down for a while.