No Idea

"I looked back, but I didn't move backward."   There are times I look back at my life and go what the hell? We are what we were raised to be even when we fight against the things we went through ourselves. We either emulate what we knew growing up or we do everything in our power to go in the opposite direction. Either way we are shaped by it. We carry pieces of it with us whether we want to or not. For myself there are memories I keep and others I avoid as much as possible, but lately some things from my younger years have been making their way back into my thoughts. Certain decisions I made in my twenties have come back around and I have found myself responding to them differently than I did then. Some of that is simply lessons learned. Some of it is pain given and received without closure. Either way I have been looking back more than usual. Part of that happened because my family and I have started looking seriously at leaving Peterborough and moving somewhere health...

I'm somewhere in the middle of catching up with myself. The last few days have felt busy and full. I am home again now, but I don't feel fully settled yet. Some things are still moving through me while other things have stayed the same. Things are shifting, but not fully. I noticed how much can happen in a few ordinary days. I am still me. I still need rest. I still come back to familiar routines. But something feels a little different too. Maybe that was the theme of the weekend without me realizing it at the time. Everything felt a little in-between. I was happy to get away, but happy to come home too. I was tired, excited, overwhelmed and interested all at once. Of all the things I've gone through this month, one thing I'm certain of is that I like my home. Messy as it gets sometimes, I am always glad to get back here. Home feels familiar in a way that few other places do. It feels settled, even when I don't. This weekend in the GTA with E and GD#1 was busy. We s...

  Not what I planned. But I didn’t turn back. I’ve been thinking about this whole “small adventures” idea, and I don’t think it looks the way people expect it to. It’s not big outings or full days planned out. Most of the time, it’s me standing in my kitchen trying to decide if I’m actually going to leave the house or not. This week, I did. The plan was to go to the Wednesday Farmers Market. Easy enough. Fifteen-minute walk, nothing complicated. I talked myself into it, got out the door, walked all the way down there… and it turns out there is no Wednesday market anymore. I just stood there for a minute thinking, well… now what.   That would have been a perfectly good excuse to turn around and go home, and I was tempted. But I’d already done the hard part—the getting out the door part—so I kept going. I crossed the bridge into East City, stopped at Tim’s for a few minutes to rest, and then carried on to the spa where GD#1 works to check out those shower steamers she me...

 Doing what I can. Letting that be enough. As this month begins, I am doing well. I go to the YMCA once a week. I walk every day—no less than 2,000 steps—which, if you know me at all, you’ll understand is a big step forward. I’ve gone from 250 steps at the end of December to 2,000 now. My weight is finally below the 200 lb mark, coming in as low as 196 lb, but mostly around 198 lb. By the end of April, I hope to bring that to a steady 190.   How I’m going to get there is fairly simple. My plan is threefold: Continue my weekly Aquafit class and add some chair yoga at home Take a daily walk—sometimes as an adventure, sometimes just to enjoy the sun Prep and eat only what I prepare (no takeout), including a weekly trip to the local farmers’ market I’ve created a system for food prep, a realistic budget, and a journaling structure that allows me to be both practical and artistic. That part feels steady now. So this month, I’m turning my attention outward—mainly toward my ...

This is the last post for March, and spring has started to show up in small ways. I saw a robin at the beginning of the month. This week, the geese came back. Now I’m waiting for the buds and the dandelions.   It doesn’t happen all at once. And I think that’s what this month has been like for me too. When I started this series, I didn’t expect it to be this hard—or this revealing. I thought I would see progress clearly, something I could point to and name. But what I’m noticing instead is quieter than that. The days don’t feel quite as heavy. There are moments where my energy lifts just enough for me to notice it. Not a big change. Just something beginning. This month didn’t go the way I planned. I thought I could handle more—two Aquafit classes, a couple of studio classes—but it didn’t take long to realize I wasn’t there yet. One week of that was enough to put me out of commission for the next. So I adjusted. By the end of February and into March, I was down to one class a week. N...