It’s been two and a half years since I’ve written. My DSLR has been gathering dust. I haven’t been creative in the sense that there’s nothing to show for that time. I’ve been introspective. I’ve spent that time absorbing everything instead of finding ways to step outside myself in a tangible, tactile way that others can see. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve evolved and moved through different versions of myself but its all been an internal metamorphosis. There’s no external proof of these changes. Nothing to chronicle them or provide a record of those journeys. Those memories are mine but can be conjured and relived and played like a montage of key moments on my mind’s movie screen. The past week I’ve been spending a lot of time reading and giving my mind a space to stretch and bend in unfamiliar ways with new information and methods of thinking. I’ve […]
Grief Is The Price We Pay For Love – On Losing A Pet
I’m a cat person I’ve lost a few pets in my life – it is the unfortunate cost of loving an animal. Their lives are much shorter than ours and it is inevitable that we will lose them, yet we commit to loving them despite the heartbreak we’ll endure. It was November of 1998 and I had just moved from my rural hometown to the city. My first apartment by myself. I had left everything that was familiar behind. A fresh start. A new beginning. In only a few weeks, the silence of my solitude was deafening. I needed interaction. I needed a cat. The hardest part is walking away with only one I made a visit to the SHAID Tree Animal Shelter and spent some time in the cat room. I stopped in front of each cage and interacted with the various cats and kittens up for adoption. After about an […]
Kindness costs nothing. So why don’t we extend it more often?
Extending kindness has to be part of your to do list I’ve been making a point of extending kindness to those I encounter this week. This came about because we always seem to be in a hurry wherever we’re all going and very rarely do we make a point to STOP and acknowledge other people we meet along the path. Traffic has been horrendous this week in Halifax due to a big project that will be ongoing for the next year or so to replace one of our lifelines across the harbour – the MacDonald bridge. Everyone has been late for work, tempers are being tried and we all feel very sick of being in our cars on a commute that should take a fraction of the time it has actually been taking. How many times have you sat on a side street trying to turn onto a busy street […]
The Happiness Quotient – Finding Balance Amidst The Chaos
Identifying your true passion in life Passion is defined as “a strong liking or desire for or devotion to some activity, object, or concept”. There are things we encounter in our lives that we are inexplicably drawn to. We seek them because they provide us with an overwhelming sense of fulfillment and joy. We tend to think of a passion as something we do in our “spare time”. Something we wish we could do on a constant basis and get paid to do it. Sadly, we spend many hours of each day doing something we’ve become complacent about and that pays bills but does not bring us that innate sense of pleasure. Eventually, something acts as the catalyst for you to pursue your passion further. After weighing the pros and cons of it all you decide to jump in, feet-first and take the plunge. You take a leap of faith, […]
2012 – A Year In Review
My word for the year Looking back over 365 days of memories and trying to properly pay tribute to all of them is impossible. Thankfully our brains have a neat little organization system in place. Using dates as benchmarks it allows us to pick out the highlights reel of the wonderful and the challenging moments so we can reflect and then refile them in our big filing cabinet of life. Like most, I had my share of visits to each end of the virtual spectrum of emotions. I had moments of jubilation and moments of despair. I experienced joy and I experienced heartache. I laughed and I cried. I was hopeful and I was hopeless. My word for the year The contrast between two opposing forces shows, for the most part, a sense of balance and ironically that was the word I had chosen for myself in 2012 – BALANCE. […]