Pensive Procrastination

I've kept this stone and English pound in one of my jacket pockets for 7 and 3 years respectively. They have both provided grounding reminders for me throughout the years when I've put my hands into my pockets. The stone, as you might be able to tell, had been polished by water before it was smoothed down further by my fingers. It was soothing to feel the near perfect curve from end to end as I fiddled with it. The pound is weighty, in a nice way, it was a reminder of wonderful time with friends...that I was never alone. The other day when I put that jacket on again and touched the stone I was reminded that it had fallen and broken recently. The smooth curve from end to end is no longer there...it stops abruptly. As I fiddled with it in my pockets watching my boys meander along the side of the road I thought, "There has to be a message here." None came at the time so I tucked the thought away to ponder and pray about later. The next day this thought came as I wa

The other day as we were driving (because really, other than being in/around your house what else is there to do?) and listening to music I got thinking about the power of music to really draw you back into a moment. Perhaps this is just a personal thing, but there are certain songs and certain music that pulls me back like nothing else can. It brings me back to the emotions, thoughts, situations and sometimes I physically feel how it all felt- which is pretty dang powerful. I would say that my family really values music, particularly on my father's side. There are a lot of incredibly talented people in my family so I grew up surrounded by people who immersed themselves in and loved music. Around Christmas Eve I always have this memory come to mind of my cousins all singing in a choir at the church they went to. I wish that I could import the memory into my computer because the memory is so warm and peaceful and content, but for some reason I am struggling to put it all down. Not f

I was sitting outside watching my boys play in the sandbox while I pulled my winter jacket tighter around me and I wondered, "How do other people find the time to think?" I'm not sure what part of my personality creates this predicament for me but I find it hard to think, to really think, when I'm in a room full of people. I can do it if I really try, but it generally takes me closing my eyes and really trying to focus and block out all the "noise". I'm not even sure if it's always been that way, I know that I used to get lost in thought often in classes throughout elementary school and high school. However, I think that, generally, when that happened the classroom was generally quiet and we were supposed to be working on something. These days it's hard to find a quiet moment where I am truly alone with no responsibilities or things that I need to be taking care of. I'm not only talking about the quarantine- I've been wondering about this

There have been a couple of ideas circling around in my head the past few days and I figured I might as well try to work them out on here. In fact, even though these ideas have been more prominent the past week or so they were ideas that were brought to my attention at different times over the past few months. It's funny how something that you found interesting but not particularly applicable at one time suddenly becomes more relevant. I'm feeling a tad nervous to write about this topic as I'm not trying to make a political commentary or pretend that I am a wise theologian. I hope that you can all give me grace. As I had been reading the news lately every once and a while I came across posts about the positives things that were happening around the world (particularly in Wuhan and Italy) because of the social distancing/quarantine. One of the things that stood out again and again was the effect that this was having on the amount of pollution (both noise and air) in the ci

It's times like these that I struggle to know what to write. It seems like so much is happening and there is so much information out there that I don't want to add to it unnecessarily or to some extent uselessly. I kept wondering if what I have to say is really important enough to type out, but I realized that I like hearing other people's thoughts and how they are processing everything that is going on. I keep wanting to hear it, despite the fact that I've already heard and read other people's experiences, because everyone's experience is unique and the ways that they're responding to it and caring for themselves and others is creative and individual. So, who knows, maybe one of you will connect with my experience or will feel less alone in yours. Things are starting to feel more normal around here. They say it takes about 14 days to make a habit, so I guess it makes sense that as we get closer to hitting that two week mark of physical distancing and isol

I had started a post about two weeks ago on the power of "no". I was in the middle of writing it when my youngest woke up early from his nap. I figured I would finish it that weekend while away at my in-laws...which, as you have probably deduced, didn't happen. When we arrived back home on the Sunday it was the beginning of Covid-19 really starting to impact Canadian life and it felt strange to pick up on the Monday as if there wasn't this huge change happening all around us. I kept reopening the post hoping to, in some way, adapt it to the ever-changing world around me. However, as the days continued to move forward the possibility of doing that seemed, well, impossible. So I have decided to start a new post kind of addressing the situation we all find ourselves in and then perhaps I will go back to completing that old post with all it's starts and stops. I'm not even sure where to begin... For a while I found it difficult to even process my thoughts as

I've been wanting to write on this idea all week, but whenever I finally sat down and turned on the computer every thought I had about it left my mind. So, I'm going to try just starting and see where it goes...and also hope that both my kids sleep long enough that I get a chance to finish my thoughts (ha!). Recently my eldest has become obsessed with Frozen...which means I'm asked at least 5 times a day to "play Elsa" or "play let it goooooo, let it gooooOOOO". By this he means for me to play the Frozen music generally "Do You Want to Build a Snowman" or "Let it Go". So, I have found myself immersed often in these two songs...so maybe I've just had a lot of time to overthink the lyrics and read more into them than is there. However, I remember the first time I head Let it Go and I was struck by the symbolism in the song. It may have hit me more strongly because my friend's 6-year-old niece was belting away to it in the back

I was going to work on writing a new short story to share with you all here but I hit a couple of road blocks. The first being that I genuinely am not sure where exactly I want to go with this story. I get the premise but sometimes it feels a little too...anecdotal to me and I get a little stuck. It feels TOO obvious to me the message I'm attempting to share and I feel like that makes it a little bit boring (for lack of a better word). I believe that a story can communicate something basic that we know but don't "know" in a way that makes it really sink in for us. That's why I love short stories. I'm also an image person in terms of understanding something, if I can somehow picture it things make a lot more sense to me. I guess that's to say I'm a very visual learner. However, I do think that sometimes the power of a story can be lost if we feel like we're being talked down to in some sense? I'm actually not sure I fully believe this but it is

The other day I saw this post on Instagram where it was highlighting all the hilarious ways our children might let us know they love us. Most of the descriptions were ones that if someone else did them we probably wouldn't think they were that cute or we would be offended. One of the ones that stuck out to me was "Sits on your lap and closely inspects your face while pointing out all your flaws". At first I laughed because I have definitely experienced this side of children. The blunt and brutally honest side. I don't know how many times I had campers tell me that I had circles under my eyes or that I looked tired. I had campers honestly tell me that I just didn't look very good that day as well. It's a fun world to navigate, though considering the fact that I never wore make-up and rarely showered the fact that I didn't get that many negative comments is a positive to be considered! However, after laughing at this image it got me thinking...maybe there

Guys, it has been one heck of a week! Basically all of us ended up getting sick and now we are quarantined until the kids symptoms disappear. Thankfully everyone seems to be on the mend and spirits are much brighter than they were on the weekend. I have not had much downtime in which I could think or write so I figured I would grab this chance to come on here and say, "Hi"! This is an aside and something I know I should already have learned, however, I have always struggled with where to put the punctuation at the end of a sentence like the one above. Do you put two sets of punctuation, for example "Hi!". OR just one like I did above? I was never particularly good at grammar, as I struggled to grasp all the rules, so I have never really applied them. I can actually remember learning grammar in elementary school and thinking, "I really do NOT get this." Then I never really felt like the basics were taught again so I just learned by trial and error and tho

I'm not sure if I'll actually end up posting this because the fact that it was written on my phone just goes to show the informality of it all. I just had some thoughts swirling around in my head and since I hadn't written today I figured I should just grasp them and see if they go anywhere. If you've ever watched multiple movies with me (that you haven't picked) you're likely to notice a few themes. One of them being that I don't set the bar particularly high, I'm not necessarily looking to watch something that is going to win Oscars. Another theme is that I absolutely love "coming of age" stories or teen drama. On the embarassing side this includes High School Musical (which perhaps is neither a coming of age or a drama...) and on the slightly less ridiculous side it's movies like The Edge of Seventeen, To the Bone and Boyhood. As I was watching another Netflix coming of age/teen romance movie I got to thinking about what it is that I

Originally when I started typing out this post I was going to follow along the same lines as yesterday but as I opened it up again to work on it I thought it might be nice to do something a little lighter and more chill. So I've opened up my tab that has some suggested writing prompts and I'm going to go from there. If I had a huge following of you on here or Instagram I could do one of those polls, "What question number should I answer 1-28?" But alas, I don't have the time, dedication, nor desire to become famous on Instagram so I can do those kinds of polls. So you're just stuck reading whatever tickles my fancy in the world of writing today. The one for today's date is actually really interesting so I think that I will write on it. Partly because it does slightly follow along with what I was writing about yesterday and the day before. The question or prompt is "Describe your ideal friend. Do you live up to this description in your friendships?&q

Since my blog post that I wrote the other day on authenticity I've been thinking more about a couple of ideas that I think I touched on near the end. One of the ideas being that each emotion is never experienced purely on it's own but in symphony with all of our emotions. In counselling this idea is sometimes called parts work. It's the idea that there are parts of us, which can be related to emotions but also about ourselves in general. In relation to emotions this means that while a part of me may be feeling sad, and perhaps largely and overwhelmingly so, there is also a part of me that feels joy or happiness. Perhaps the easiest way to explain this idea is through the word bittersweet. It's a word that many of us know and have felt in our lives. Bittersweet is actually the mixing of emotions, us experiencing more than one emotion at a time in a clearer way, one that most of us can identify without a whole lot of searching or seeking. This might be because it's a

I had originally intended to write a post about stories that changed me, but for some reason I just couldn't seem to write. In fact, I'm still really struggling. That may be an obvious statement considering the fact that I haven't written anything since Monday. I sat down each day with the computer in front of me but found I just couldn't come up with anything. Sometimes a down, melancholy mood is just what I need to write but I've been finding that I'm lacking in energy or... flat...which leads to me not being able to write at all. Originally, I thought that I could just share how I'm doing and what I'm experiencing, however, I didn't want this to become my personal journal just out here in the world of the internet. Also, taken out of context of the other more positive emotions I've been feeling could make how I'm doing seem a bit darker than it is. Thinking about all this has me reflecting on authenticity and openness. I used to have t

Hello Everyone! I decided to take the whole weekend off. I figured that the point of this was truly to challenge myself and get myself back into writing...not to make myself dread writing and hate it. During my undergraduate degree I was originally doing a double major in English and Psychology (two of the most useful majors to have if you want to do something right out of university...*wink*). I found that I began to hate English, a subject that I used to love and find great joy and comfort in studying. I would often save my English homework to do after my other homework so that I would have something to look forward to. I loved looking deeper into a text, looking at symbols and analogies and other things that were "hidden" when you weren't looking closely for deeper understanding. All of a sudden, in my second year of doing a double major, English seemed dull and dead to me...it was like everything felt over-analysed. I couldn't just read something to read it and en

I never expected blogging every day to be so dang hard! That's not true, I knew that writing every day would take time and effort but I did think that I would sit down every time and draw a complete blank. Oddly the boys have been napping pretty well so most days I've had the opportunity to actually get something written. Tomorrow is my youngest's birthday party, so between having a client in the morning and the party right after I'm not sure I will have time to blog- but dangit, I will try! Have you guys ever realized how life changing taking time to breathe can be? When I finished that paragraph above I was still drawing a blank so I decided to slow myself down, pray and breathe. When I first started my counselling degree I was a little bit weary of the whole CBT/deep breathing thing- which is kind of hilarious because the efficacy of both are proven time and again. I felt like I would basically be trying to pull the wool over my own eyes. It felt like internally I

This will be a short blog for a variety of reasons. The first being that my youngest seems to have decided that napping is beneath him, though he could have fooled me with his eye rubbing and hair rubbing he was doing earlier. The hopes are that he will fall asleep without waking up his older brother, but I'm feeling a bit pessimistic so it doesn't feel very likely at this moment. I'm not sure if any other moms out there reading this feel this but I get quite a bit of anxiety when my kids don't nap. Someone that I follow on Instagram (Anna Mathur) recently wrote a book where she addresses this in a chapter. I will buy the book if only to learn a bit more about myself and my anxiety around naps and how the heck to deal with it! I know that part of it is that I'm an introvert and this afternoon nap is the one time of day where I don't have someone constantly asking for my attention or literally attached to me. I had no idea how much I valued my personal space un