Sunday, December 31, 2017

Year In Review: 2017

Where to start? Someone I know described 2017 as "the year in which everyone else's existential angst caught up to my own," which is a pretty good way to sum it all up.  Last Christmas, I wrote that it felt as if we were teetering on some sort of abyss, and that still applies. But it's a year where we got angry. A year of #MeToo. A year of protests. We've had a year to get used to the fact that some terrible things have happened on the world stage. A lot of writing I've seen lately has been positive- it's almost as if we've hit the bottom of the (cess)pool, and now we have to push quickly upward, towards light and fresh air.
Last year I also wrote that the negativity on social media made me despair, so this year I did something about it. In May I stepped away from Facebook, almost entirely, and it felt fantastic. I've been bingeing on it over this Christmas week, but I'll step away again, and what was surprising was how easy it felt after a day or two. I wish I could say the same for my sugar addiction, which is still something I struggle with. I don't weigh myself, but I know I'm heavy right now. I'm also running and hitting the gym, so hey, it's a work in progress. I'm a work in progress. Let's see how things progressed in 2017.

January: I joined thousands of pussy-hatted protesters downtown in hopes that we could start making the world a better, hate-free place. In faint hope, I started cruising the Craigslist ads... and hit the jackpot. I found a gorgeous basement suite just off Commercial Drive, with the nicest landlords in the world. I still pinch myself, every day. I did an online psychology course. Vancouver was snowy, to my everlasting delight.

February: I taught. I did some session work. I saved my money and packed up my bedroom, readying for the big move in March.  It was still snowy. I had a revelation that although teaching was important, performing was still the most important thing in my life. I played music with my friends.

March: Big month! Moving day was on the 6th: two hours later my stuff was in boxes on the floor of my new place. Two days later it was mostly all unpacked. I don't waste time. The biggest incentive for having everything tidy? A week after I moved, I left for a 2-week trip to Saskatoon. It was cold, and I missed my new home, but working with the Persephone Theatre young company was rewarding. I also got to catch up with some old friends.

April: Back from Saskatoon and revelling in my new home, I also dropped straight into rehearsals for a remount of The Out Vigil. It was a delight to connect with such a wonderful show and such great people, and to get to perform in the beautiful Evergreen Cultural Centre. Then I was back to Saskatoon for a week. Underdressed and permanently freezing, I was happy to be able to tack on a quick visit to Kelowna to see my dad. I enjoyed the Okanagan warmth, and my weekend there.

May: One more week in Saskatoon for the opening of Here, by the Persephone Young Company. Very proud of the show I helped create, but I developed stomach pain that made much of my trip uncomfortable at best. Back to Vancouver, to teaching, to band practices.

June: Finished up teaching, and as is becoming tradition, I left for Saskatoon the day after for a three-week contract. It was STILL cold! In fact, I spent much of my time there freezing in the unseasonable chill. It warmed up at last, just in time for our long confinement indoors during tech week. I found this contract a bit challenging at times, but it was still a great chance to reconnect with some amazing people, and spend time in a city that I love.

July: Returned to Vancouver. Taught 2 weeks of summer music camp at Arts Umbrella. Biked, walked, and swam. Went for a month without sugar. Visited the island.  Looked after my landlords' garden and made so much pesto.

August: Heatwave! Vancouver was smoky and hot. I was on holiday. I spent happy hours at the pool. I played at the Maritime Festival with the Crows.  I enjoyed a rare visit from my dad and his girlfriend. I celebrated another trip 'round the sun on this crazy planet.

September: Back to work after one more glorious trip to the island to go tubing down the Cowichan River. Teaching started to feel like something I did, more or less naturally, rather than a strange experiment every day. And of course, just as that happened, a friend encouraged me to audition for a musical... and I got the part! Necessitating a term-long leave of absence from teaching that goes into effect in January of 2018 as I leave to work at Chemainus Theatre on Vancouver Island for 8 weeks. I can't wait.

October: After more than a month of watching him be busier than ever before, my sweetheart had his first solo art show! Almost as amazing as his art was watching all his nearest and dearest friends and family show up to support him at the opening night. #squadgoals, for sure.

November: More teaching. My first solo performance as a singer/musician in a long time. A great gig with my band the following week. This felt like a looonnnnnnng month for some reason. I think because I knew I wasn't coming back to school next term and I was eager for fall term to be done.

December: School concerts- always sweet and touching and chaotic. First recording session with the band. Dreaming of a white Christmas (got just enough snow!). Family time and time with my love, and too much food and not enough visits to the gym. But some, which was a start.

2018 is going to bring some big changes. To me, and the world. I hope they're positive. Love, strength, passion to you all.

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Sore heads and Snow.

Yesterday, I had a large lump taken out of my head by a remarkably unsympathetic surgeon. (Although the words "unsympathetic surgeon" may actually be tautology. I have been a Standardized Patient - role-playing for medical exams- for years, and surgeons almost always have the best brains... and the worst people skills.) Doctor Meanie (not his real name, sadly) offered to do the surgery for what he called "a tray fee" instead of the usual 400 dollars (this wasn't covered by MSP as it was not an essential surgery). But when I went back for the operation yesterday he complained throughout the procedure, and generally made me feel guilty for accepting something that he'd suggested in the first place. I contemplated the wiseness of getting into it with someone who was about to slice into my head and bit my tongue, but it made me feel simultaneously angry, and also like a charity case. 

Anyway, when I sat back up after 15 or 20 minutes, I was surprised to realize that I felt much shakier and crappier than I'd foreseen. I'd been living with this annoying thing behind my ear for over 2 years, and when the opportunity to lose it had arisen I'd quickly accepted... but I hadn't really thought about how losing it would actually feel. What it feels like is as if someone sliced hard into my head, removed something, and then pulled the skin together really tightly and sewed it together roughly. Which is exactly what happened. 

This is a busy week, what with Christmas and all. There are dinners to help cook, gatherings to attend, a couple of gigs, last-minute shopping to do. (Thank the gods that I only have a couple of people to buy for, because I've hardly done any shopping at all.) Today I had a gig at a seniors home, and my dear mother offered to drive me, my harp(!), and my accordion there. Twenty minutes before she arrived to pick me up... snow! We white-knuckled it through the unsalted streets to the gig, where my mother was thanked and applauded more than I was, for getting me there. It transpired that one of their other entertainers had had to cancel, and many family members had also backed out of the Christmas party. I played my motley assortment of Christmas accordion tunes and faked my way through a few harp instrumental numbers, and then we happily accepted their invitation to stay on for a turkey lunch. 

And then, instead of trying to get things done, I took myself and my throbbing head home (actually, my mother took me. Thanks mom!) The Christmas tree is glowing, the rosemary-caramel popcorn I'm eating is a perfectly acceptable dinner substitute, the Christmas blues/soul hits are playing on Spotify, and there is just enough snow outside to make it look wintery. I may regret this idleness in a day or two, when shopping and cooking overwhelm, but for today, it just feels like the most Christmas-y of days so far. Even with (or maybe because of) this sore, stitched head of mine. 
Actual, real SNOW! Not likely to last, though. Sigh. 

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Humbug!

Have you ever tried to force a feeling or a mood and come up... just a bit short? 

The seasonal holidays are upon us; as usual I have bushels of time off (unlike my theatre friends, who often get the 25th off and are back at work for a Boxing Day matinee), but although there are lights twinkling on my house, a tree brushing the ceiling of my apartment, AND QUITE LITERALLY A HARP LYING ON THE CARPET AT MY FEET, I'm not quite feeling that Christmas spirit yet. 

Blame the snow, or lack thereof. Last December it snowed on the 5th and stayed snowy right into March, so I got my long-for White Christmas with a vengeance. Everything about that December felt almost stolen and delightful: the snow blanketing everything felt stolen from a colder country; my little Christmas tree crammed into a corner of my bedroom defiantly (my roommates had just gotten kittens, and had wisely decided against a tree); the last month of stolen relief before that orange buffoon ascended to the White House and destroyed the world... 

This year there are no kittens to attack my tree, and I bought it so early (too early?) that now it doesn't smell all pine-y and fresh when I walk in the door. The weather stays Vancouverishly temperate. Some snow fell in early November(!) and I was delighted, but that was the last time. I cannot for the life of me think of the perfect present for my lovely Jay this year... There are a hundred small reasons and yet I know that it is mostly that I am missing the magic of snow, and I am trying too hard to make up for it, and you just can't force an atmosphere. 

Tonight, my friend Tanya and I went to the Christmas Market together, which is now an annual tradition. We drank overpriced but delicious Gluwein and waited in line so long for perogies that we were actually happy to cough over the twelve (gasp! rage!) dollars each for a small plate of them. Then we waited in line to get into the tent where they sell the really expensive Christmas ornaments... and then suddenly I looked at my phone and realized that it was almost 9pm. Closing time! And we still had to get our photos taken with Santa and ride the carousel! We gave up on the carousel ride and proceeded to the photo booth, where Santa was looking decidedly livelier than last year (we'd thought he might die on us, actually). 

And so, even in the absence of snow, and in the (saint) nick of time, a little Christmas magic after all. I think this sums up this year's Christmas really well: a little bizarre, a little weird, but still with a lot of potential. 
Kudos to Santa for playing along. 

Sunday, December 10, 2017

Eccentric Architecture

In the morning, I dream of water.
In my dream, I am walking down a street and I see an old building, slated for destruction. 
But when I go in, it is a huge, covered swimming pool, and there are people. A cafe. Children playing. There is kind of a combined Italian cafe/pool hall/rec centre vibe. It's both very strange and perfectly normal, in the way of dreams. I meet Lucia there and we have a lovely conversation, much more intimate than we would have in real life. We talk, I think, about things that happened to us a long time ago, but it's blurry like dreams can be, and I just remember a sense of peace. 
I wake up mostly feeling calm and inspired by all the turquoise water and the playing children. When I dream about eccentric architecture I often wake up with a fierce longing to actually experience the place I have just dreamed about, and I feel that now too. To spend a day surrounded by water and food and a good friend. Never mind that in real life that combination of things would be odd, and the person, although lovely, is not a close friend at all. 
My Google search of dream interpretation says that dreaming of swimming pools  "...suggests that you need to acknowledge and understand your feelings. It is time to dive in and deal with those emotions. You need to cleanse yourself and wash away past hurts. Consider the depth of the pool. If you were swimming on the deep end, then it means that those emotions are deeply seated and may be harder to confront.. You will need to work through it, no more matter how difficult. If you are swimming on the shallow end, then it implies that you should be able to easily deal with your feelings."

Interestingly, an old friend reached out to me last night, just before bed. What the f? he asked. You disappeared. 
I did, and his message wakes thoughts and feelings I need to chew over.  
I got off Facebook, because my friends' posts were making me bored, or angry, or despairing, and I wanted to remember what life felt like when my day wasn't being sucked away by the internet, and I enjoyed meeting my friends in person and knowing all their sides, not just silly memes and attention-grabbing posts (both which I was also guilty of, by the way). I got busy: I moved house; I worked in another city a lot; I had band practice and teaching and a boyfriend... In short, I was a bad friend. I thought that cutting back on social media (a move I don't regret in the slightest) would mean that I'd suddenly have dinner parties and coffee dates galore, but in reality my social life is dictated by the things and people that I love the most: my boyfriend, my band, my work. I am lucky in that my job as a musician means spending time with people I adore. Band practice is work, but it's also a social life, which is a large part of why I formed the band in the first place. 
Last night as we ended our recording session (!) for the day, our recording engineer asked us if we had any plans for the evening and the other girl in the band (who is one of my best friends lately) said offhandedly "I'm going to a ball," and we all did a double take. Turns out one of her friends was having a birthday and decided to throw a ball. Just thinking about going to one, let alone throwing one, gives me acute anxiety. I thrive on performing; I can get up in front of people and perform and not even be scared about what might happen, but I cannot imagine trying to gather scores of people in a rented hall and having a celebration. 
I think of the eccentric architecture of my friendships.
My bandmates, who are 3 very different people who somehow form a cohesive whole. We are tight. Even when I go away, they keep going without me, as I'd hoped would happen. When I had my birthday party/picnic this summer, they were pretty much the only people I invited. 
The people I teach with. When my boss asked me if there was anyone at work I felt I could go to if I was having a problem or a bad day, I couldn't think of anyone I wouldn't go to. 
My friend T, who is busy stage managing and living in the 'burbs but who keeps in touch. My Christmas Market date, my guilty-McChicken Meal-bingeing partner in crime. 
My other friend T, who I met in Saskatoon; who lives in Toronto now, and with whom I carry on a surprising and delightful friendship almost exclusively over Instagram Messenger, of all things. 
D, who invites me to yoga and breakfast. 
J, who is my love and my best friend, and whose own friends have enthusiastically accepted me without reservation or exception. 

And I think of rooms that are boarded up, maybe slated for destruction. 
The friends who had families, who got preoccupied with diapers and routines and sudden illnesses and school. Maybe I wasn't always flexible enough to accept that other things were more important to them and maybe they weren't always willing to make firm plans. 
The ones who live far away.
A couple of family members who didn't warm to my partner, and we haven't dealt with it because it's easier to let things drift apart than to hash it out. 

My last Facebook post was also about friendship, now I think about it. These feelings run deep, and they need airing and investigating from time to time or they appear in odd ways, in dreams. The anxiety of living in this uncertain and scary world makes me want to reach out, but also hide in my little bunker. I love my world, but I never want to take my place in it for granted. I shore up the crumbling foundations and board up certain rooms and reopen other ones and find new rooms I never knew existed. Rooms with a view I never expected. And maybe a swimming pool/cafe or two as well...