What I did on my summer va… no, wait.
It’s been more than a little while since I was last here. For those of you who keep track of such things, sorry about that. My list of excuses is long and varied, but suffice it to say that a to-do list at least as long as my absence has been the primary culprit. I’ll try to be a bit more interesting here. For the moment, here are a few highlights – and lowlights – of the last few months: I’m home from SiWC 2011, still deep in the post-conference hangover stage. Everything went better than I could have hoped. We met great new presenters and old friends alike and the atmosphere was amazing. At one point on Sunday afternoon, I stood in the quiet of the second-floor hallway when everyone was happily engaged in workshops and had a lovely quiet moment of satisfaction for a job well done. It was an excellent feeling. This year’s conference was an incredible amount of work thanks to big changes for us administratively and the added stress of sharing the hotel with two ex-presidents – Clinton and W – on our master class day, and, of course, all the security they require. But in the end, everyone got to class and everything went well. There’s nothing quite as exhilarating and exhausting as the conference, especially now that it’s the culmination of a year’s hard work. I need to take some time to reflect on all that came out of it before I can talk too much about it, but it’s what’s taken up many of my waking (and sleeping and should-be-but-can’t-be-sleeping) moments. Thanks to accountability fiends Isabelle and kc and a punishing writing schedule, I finished a complete draft of my novel in August. I’m working through an edit now, polishing what needs to be polished and making an important character more sympathetic, but apart from making it shinier and – hopefully – more attractive than it was when I wrote “the end”, it’s done. It was just as good a feeling writing those two words this time as it was the last. I hope that never changes. This summer included writing, time on holiday with our best friends, and a very quick trip to visit my friend anovelwoman at her cottage with mutual friend kc dyer. It was a most excellent trip, not least because I’d finished my draft and could travel guilt-free, knowing I’d reached my goal. And because anovelwoman has The Best family ever. In sad news, the beginning of the summer was the end of the battle for my friend Leslie, who succumbed to cancer on Canada Day. It was the note of bitter in a summer of sweet, and I think of her often, remembering her every time I drive into New West, see something from Star Wars, or look in the face of either of her young kids. That’s a little bit of how I spent my summer and the beginning of fall… it’s a quick update from someone without the mental capacity to do laundry, let alone write, but it’s a start. How are things with you? Share...
Father’s Day
Busy weekend here, and Father’s Day is almost over. Had a good day with my husband and our daughter beginning with breakfast in bed for him and finishing tonight, just before her bedtime, with the two of them spending some quality time together with the X-Box, and I had a nice phone conversation with my dad earlier. Happy Father’s Day to all the dads I know who take the time to love, spend time with, teach, play with, enjoy, laugh with, and simply BE with their kids. My dad’s the project kind of dad. Our times together when I was a kid involved things like building a boat and a cabin and taking photographs. Now they involve hearing about them more than doing them with him, but he’s still the project guy. For father’s day, here are a couple of old pictures of him from my childhood. Share...
We Are All Canucks
It’s game day in Vancouver. For the first time in the history of the Vancouver Canucks, game 7 of the Stanley Cup final is here, in our building, in our town. 82 regular-season games, four rounds of playoffs comes down to tonight. One game decides the best-of-seven race to the hardest prize to win in professional sports. The city has embraced this team, this playoff run, with tens of thousands of people flooding downtown Vancouver and Surrey to watch the game in public and millions more here and across Canada watching at home and in restaurants and bars. In Canada, hockey is more than a game. It’s the heart of our communities. The old Hockey Night in Canada TV theme music is as familiar to most of us as our own national anthem. Whether you’re a hockey fan in Canada or not, if you live in this country, you know at least a little something about this game. We love our athletes and support them in all their sports, but no medal was more important to Canada at the Vancouver Olympics last year than hockey. This is our sport. And this prize, the Stanley Cup, is our holy grail. It’s what kids play for in street hockey games in between moving the net to the side when someone yells “Car!” It’s what every young hockey player dreams of when he laces up his skates to play. And now our team, which has been an underdog so many times, that has missed the playoffs or dropped out of them early more times than we’d like to remember, is on top. They were the best team in the regular season. They earned home ice advantage for these playoffs. They have what it takes. And tonight, they take their shot at history. Because even though this is our game, our Vancouver Canucks have never hoisted the cup. The hopes and dreams of life-long fans sit on the shoulders of these men, these boys. No pressure. We’ve been to the final twice before, always as the underdog. The last time, in 1994, the team that wouldn’t give up stole the hearts of the city on a fantasy run to the cup thanks to a great group of guys and a goalie – Kirk McLean – who kept them in it. They were never expected to get there, but they did. And we were heartbroken when they lost in game 7. So, I imagine, were they. Tonight is different. The weight of expectation is heavy. Those of us who were with the team the last time, who’ve followed them through their ups and downs, are cautious. We remember. We believe our team can do it, but we’re a little afraid of getting our hearts broken again. We can’t wait until tonight, and yet we’ll be a little glad when it’s over with, whatever happens. Whatever happens tonight, this is the game we dream of, game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals. It’s the pinnacle. We’re here with the team, because, as the slogan goes, we are all Canucks. This game brings us together, millions of strangers of all ages, all ethnicities, all socio-economic groups, all political affiliations focussed on a common goal, and that is something pretty special. I wish our boys the best game of their lives tonight. But I’m a proud fan, no matter how this turns out. Play well, boys. Enjoy the moment. We believe. Share...
In Search of Beauty
I’m on a punishing writing schedule this month. I’ll tell you about that sometime, but not today. Today, and yesterday too, to tell you the truth, the well is dry. The upside of writing hard is getting lots of words on paper. The downside is that if I’m not filling the well while I do it, the words start to make me cringe because they read the way they were written: slow, stilted, eked out to fulfil the goal for the day. Nothing sings. Nothing makes me cry. (I know I’m on the right track if I can make myself laugh or cry re-reading something I’ve written.) I have time to write today. I’ve wasted almost all of it because of that dry well. In an effort not to waste it all, instinct sent me searching for beauty. Beauty comes in lots of different forms, don’t you think? And it has a way of directing a fresh stream towards the well. At first, today, avoiding all things writing, I went looking for beauty in things that are currently on my wish list: a dress I loved but found in the wrong size, plates to match the single Limoges dessert plate I got for $7 at a church sale that makes me happy whenever I use it. No luck with either. It was turning into that sort of a day. But, the sun in shining for a third day in a row here on the west coast, an event so rare this spring it can’t help but inspire a bit of hope. So I kept looking, this time not even sure what it was I was looking for, except that I had this bone-deep craving for it. And as often happens when start looking around and absorbing what’s around us, the things I needed today found me, in the form of words. Thing is, they turned up in places I wouldn’t normally look, because of random circumstances, but in both cases, they expressed something of what I needed to read today to get the words flowing again. First, a friend posted on Facebook, randomly and apropos of nothing, that she didn’t know who’d led her to Seth Godin’s blog, but that she loves it. I followed her link, and scrolled down the page, stopping for no apparent reason on this little post (Thanks, Ei.) And then, again out of the blue, someone I didn’t know followed me on Twitter, so I clicked on her profile and scrolled through a few of her posts to get a feel for who she is. For some reason, I clicked on this link she posted: http://sarahrcallender.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/monogamy/, which was timed perfectly for me, because only yesterday, I felt the lure of the other, better story, the one that comes along at some point in the writing of this one to attempt to seduce you away from all the hard work. So thanks for that post, Sarah Callender and the tweet about it, Therese Walsh. You were just what I needed today. Off to write… Share...
Derek K. Miller
I never met Derek Miller. I spotted the odd tweet by people I follow mentioning his name, especially over the last couple of weeks, but I didn’t know him, never read his blog, had no involvement at all in his life or his battle with cancer. The closest I got to meeting Derek was retweeting a message for the people who wanted to get #weloveDerek trending. Because they love him. Seemed like a good reason to me. Derek died yesterday. And this man I’ve never met, whose family I don’t know but am thinking about today, made me cry with his last blog post. Go read it. But get a tissue first. Share...
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