Dancing In Irreverence

68: Dance Community

When I first started this blog I thought I was going to have interesting insights into things and that some kind of theme would emerge as my focus, but after 3 years it’s pretty clear that I am just into blabbing about myself.

I would like to blame the pandemic for that because the last couple of years have ended up being very introspective, due to the massive amount of time I spent sitting at home… yet now that we are going out and doing things again, I am so caught up in that that I still only ever write summaries of what I’ve been up to.

In the two months since my last post, our free time has been full of dance and social events. I actually feel like I am being neglectful of all the other things I wanted to do, like fixing up our garage, working on the yard, and all the writing and art projects that I was planning to do. I’m trying not to worry about it too much though, because I’d rather immerse myself in all the things I’ve been missing than get caught up in checking items off a list that I myself made up.

I recently read a book called Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. The title refers to the average person’s life span and while I wouldn’t really categorize it as a time management book, in the self-help sense, it was an interesting read. It basically says that there’s no way we can ever optimize our time and become so efficient with our tasks that we’ll be able to fit in every single thing we want or think we need to get done. It’s just not possible, so instead of trying to fit more and more into a finite amount of time, we should instead focus on spending our time meaningfully instead of measuring our success by productivity and end results only.

In some ways this relates to other books and articles I’ve read and mentioned, like Depth Year and the Focal Points in Renaissance Soul, which provide an outline for spending time on a fewer things in order to immerse yourself in them more fully.

So for now, I am immersing myself in the dance community.

Aside from the usual events, there are two ongoing things that have been taking up a lot of my attention:

Uptown Swing Collective, which I have mentioned before, is the organization that I started with some friends. Our main goals are to bring people together around live jazz and dancing, and build a community that is intergenerational and welcoming to musicians and dancers of all experience levels, as well as people that just want to enjoy themselves from the sidelines.

So far we have had two Jazz Cats Social events, both of which sold out of tickets, and we have some weeknight dance practices lined up for August, as well as our next Social at the end of the month. We are also planning to offer some progressive workshops for beginner and intermediate swing dancers in the fall, and will continue to have monthly live jazz events.

The planning for all of these things has been taking up a lot of my time and most of my brain, but I am enjoying it and I am happy with the great response we’ve had. It is clear that there are a lot of people eager to be part of something that involves human connection and celebration.

The other thing I’ve been focused on is balboa dancing. This has long been my favourite dance and I have always wanted to put more effort into practicing and helping to build a stronger scene, but just as I started organizing some workshops in 2020, everything shut down.

You would think that having an abundance of free time at home during the pandemic (with a dance partner) would have been the perfect opportunity for us to work on our skills, but aside from one weekend worth of virtual workshops (which we greatly enjoyed and vowed to continue practicing the content of) we did not make good use of this time.

Since dancing returned last summer though, we have found a group of kindred spirits who are just as eager as we are for more balboa! We have been meeting for a couple of hours of practice every 2 weeks and it has been wonderful.

On the July long weekend, several of us went down to Seattle for Northwest Balboa Festival, which included 2 days of workshops and 3 nights of dancing. The whole weekend had a great vibe and it was the first big event for most of us after a long drought, which only added to the atmosphere.

We have attended NWBF a couple of times in the past and always enjoyed ourselves, but this was the first time that I felt really comfortable at the evening social dances. I think part of this was due to the incredibly friendly crowd that was there; everyone was so grateful to be back that it was like a big reunion whether we knew each other or not. I’m sure it also helped that I had several more years of experience under my belt this time so I didn’t feel so intimidated by the more experienced dancers.

As we start to head into fall, I am expecting we will have a bit less on our social calendar and I can start to work on some of my other projects… but it’s also very possible that I will come up with a whole list of new things I want to work on.

67: Social Life

I feel like a very busy person lately, but in a good way.

I’m not someone that has to be busy all the time to be happy; in fact, I love downtime and I need it to re-energize. But also, after 2+ years of excessive downtime, I can’t help but want to do all the things that come along these days.

Mostly our activities have revolved around swing dancing. We’ve gone dancing in White Rock, Abbotsford and New West, and we’ve started attending a balboa practice group in Vancouver every couple of weeks, which I’m really excited about. We have also managed to have a few BBQ/ patio visits with friends, when the weather was cooperating, and last week we went to the movies and saw the new Downton Abbey.

We also had our first Jazz Cats Social last weekend, which is the event that I organized with some friends here in New Westminster. It took place on Saturday night and it was a big success by all accounts. We sold out of advance tickets and even ended up selling more than we planned to at the door because people were lining up an hour before doors opened and we didn’t want to turn anyone away.

We had the Josh Roberts Quartet, a 4-piece jazz combo, as the house band and the event was formatted as a jazz jam, which means that musicians can show up with their instruments and sit in with the band for a few songs. Our bandleader organized this aspect of the event and he did an amazing job of providing everyone with a chance to perform, while still making sure the music was suitable for dancers. We had a couple of drummers, a violinist, a clarinettist and a number of singers join in and they were all excellent.

Aside from having live music and dancing, our goal is to build a community of people that enjoy swing jazz and are interested in coming together and meeting people of all ages to socialize and interact. We are trying to bring in young musicians who may not have had the chance to play for dancers, as well as older folks who wouldn’t normally show up at an event if it was aimed exclusively at dancers. The crowd that attended was as varied as we could hope for, with a significant percentage of people coming from outside of the swing dancing community. Until we have had a few more events, it will be hard to say whether or not we can keep this mix of people coming back, but all the feedback we have had so far has been very positive!

This weekend we have 2 ticketed performances to attend, neither of which includes dancing.

Tonight* we are going downtown to the Commodore Ballroom to see Moist. They were one of my favourite bands of the 90’s and the first rock band that I saw in concert (also at the Commodore), which got me hooked on going to live shows. This is where the majority of my money went in the 90’s and 2000’s and I have no regrets about that except that it may have been a contributing factor to my overlooking the swing revival that was also happening at the same time.

Tomorrow we are going to a matinee of Hamilton. This show is part of our Broadway Across Canada 2020 season tickets. Of the 4 shows that were included in the season, we only saw one before everything shut down.

I actually don’t really know much about what Hamilton is, except that it’s something to do with American history and everyone seems to love it. I’ve decided to just go in without any expectations and see what I think.

I am also curious about how much I will enjoy seeing a musical again because I don’t feel like this is something I really missed doing over the past two years so I’m not sure whether I will renew my subscription for the next season.

*The concert was just now postponed until August because the band has been stuck at the Toronto airport since yesterday morning trying to get to Vancouver! Crazy times… I was looking forward to the show, and yet a small part of me is relieved because now I can go to bed early and I don’t have to stand for several hours tonight. I’ve grown accustomed to the homebody lifestyle and as much as I like doing things, I also love an evening in with some crappy TV and a bag of Cheezies.

66: Pearl Jam Tour

It’s been almost 2 months since I’ve posted and that is much longer than usual, so here is my excuse: Time just got away from me! I did sit down to write once or twice but my brain was too full of other things to be able to focus, so now I will tell you about the other things that have been taking over my headspace for the last few months.

Mainly, we just got back last week from our 12 day trip to California! This trip was a long time coming as it was centred on seeing the 5 Pearl Jam concerts that we originally had tickets to for April 2020. The new tour schedule was a bit more drawn out than the previous one, so after 25 months of waiting, this really seemed like a pretty epic vacation to plan.

The morning we left, we got up at 4am to get to the airport super early because of the crazy security line ups. That paid off nicely because we breezed through in no time and then spent a few hours having a nice visit with our friends, Ivana and Karp, who were flying to Denver about the same time as us from the same terminal.

We started our trip in San Diego. I know I went there once when I was a kid but I don’t really have any memories of it (just a vague recollection of SeaWorld) so it was a new place to visit for both of us and it was great. We stayed in the Gaslamp Quarter, which is the hotel and restaurant area near their convention centre, and found it very easy to get everywhere we wanted to go on transit. The weather was lovely and the people were very nice.

The day we arrived was the day of our first Pearl Jam show. I had been holding these shows at a distance during the whole planning process, not letting myself get too excited in case they got cancelled or we ended up not being able to go, and even as we sat in our seats that night waiting for it to start, it still didn’t really feel real.

When the lights went down though, it was all worth the wait! It felt like a homecoming with the whole crowd so enthusiastic for the first arena show in so many years. They played a lot of the big hits, which in the before-times I would have been disappointed in, but after this long wait and not knowing if we would ever get to go to another concert, it was perfect.

On our other days in San Diego we went to Balboa Park, took a bus to La Jolla, ate some excellent Mexican food and even went swing dancing. The whole city was full of purple trees in bloom, which are called Jacaranda, and I wish we had them here too. It was a great place to visit and I would definitely go back.

Next, we took the train to LA. It’s a 3 hour ride along the coast and it was very relaxing and beautiful, and much less stressful than driving. In LA we really had no other option but to rent a car, so that’s what we did. I don’t love LA, but there is a lot to see so it’s easy to pass a few days there.

We went to two Pearl Jam shows at the Forum. It’s a great venue, apart from the location, which is not close to anything and the parking is ridiculous. We lucked out with finding a $20 lot a few blocks away on the first night, and then the second night we actually managed to find a miracle spot on the street that was free! The two shows in LA had much more interesting set lists than San Diego did, and it seemed like the band was starting to get comfortable again. I’m pretty sure I saw Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively walk by my row, but I have no corroborating evidence to prove they attended.

During one of our days in LA, we visited the La Brea Tar Pits, which is such a weird phenomenon. It’s exactly what it sounds like, tar pits bubbling up out of the ground right in the middle of the city. We actually walked there from our hotel in about 15 minutes and looked at fossilized mammoth bones.

We also met up with a former colleague of mine and wandered around Hollywood Forever Cemetery. We had been there before but in the meantime, Chris Cornell had passed away and we wanted to visit his grave.

On our last day in LA, we drove over an hour to Irvine to go dancing at Atomic Ballroom. They have recently started a Sunday afternoon Balboa event called Bobby McGee’s and we wanted to check it out. It wasn’t a large event, but we both got to dance with some famous balboa dancers, so that was pretty cool.

From LA, we took another train to Oakland. That’s a full day ride, though the first half is mostly along the coast, so it’s very scenic. Shockingly, the train did not have wifi! That was a bit of a pain as we were planning to use all that downtime to catch up on some emails and things, but after a week of non-stop action, we still enjoyed having an idle day.

In Oakland, our AirBnB hosts picked us up from the train station, which was very nice of them. We had 4 days to spend here, and we’ve visited San Francisco several times before, so we hadn’t really made any plans for this portion.

We spent our first morning doing laundry, and then we took the BART into the city and hiked up to Coit Tower, because we like to visit there every time we’re in San Francisco. We love the weird little houses and gardens perched on the steep side of Telegraph Hill.

On our other days, we wandered around Berkeley, which is a very pretty campus with all kinds of different buildings spread out in a park-like setting, took the ferry to Sausalito and walked through Golden Gate Park. We had pizza in North Beach, which we remembered fondly from a previous trip, but in the meantime we’ve found such a great pizza place at home that it was a bit of a let-down.

The last two Pearl Jam shows of our trip really brought home how precarious this whole situation was. On the first night, we could see right away that Matt, the drummer, was not on the drum kit. After 3 songs, I was pretty sure I knew what was going on, and Eddie confirmed that Matt had tested positive for COVID and was not able to play. Luckily they currently have a touring member of the band, Josh Klinghoffer, who can play drums (among many other things) and they had him and another old friend, Richard Stuverud who is a music teacher at Berkeley, share the drumming duties. They also found a fan in the audience that could play, and they let him come up for the last song, which was pretty cool.

It was a crazy show to be at. The band seemed a bit tense at first, but the audience was super supportive and encouraging of the ‘new’ drummers and it turned out to be a really fun show. The second night, it was a similar situation. I checked several times that day for a cancellation notice, but amazingly they did it again and we actually saw all 5 shows we had planned.

We felt very lucky and grateful that we were able to do this whole trip without any major snags. It was definitely more stressful to plan the trip, not knowing if it would actually happen and ensuring all the reservations were refundable or flexible, but the actual trip itself was very enjoyable and it was nice to have almost 2 full weeks away after not travelling for such a long time.

When we got back, I jumped right back into planning the other thing that has been taking up all my brain energy for the last couple of months. I won’t go into detail now because this post is already way too long, but I will post a link to our website if you’d like to check out the Uptown Swing Collective. We are having a live jazz jam and social dance on June 11 in New Westminster. Please come, it’s going to be super fun!

65: Getting Back Out There

The past month has seemed almost… normal? I know I am likely setting myself up for disappointment if I expect it to be smooth sailing from here on out, so my plan is to just enjoy everything I can while it’s available to me.

White Rock Traditional Jazz opened back up again this month and we’ve gone dancing there 3 weeks in a row. Prior to the pandemic there would usually be just a handful of swing dancers mixed in with the older folks, but that seems to have changed. The first week back, we had 17 swing dancers! Everyone has been great at integrating into the scene and the regulars seem very happy to have some new faces around.

Dancing to live music again has been so reinvigorating, and as a first foray back into social dancing, it has been especially enjoyable.

We also recently did a daytrip to Victoria for a solo jazz workshop. It was our first in-person dance class in over two years, and the instructors were our former neighbours who had last taught at the Balboa Saturday workshop I ran just before all hell broke loose.

They were not at all rusty because they are the only people I know who practice dancing every single day. I, however, felt very rusty. By the end of the workshop I was pretty exhausted, but it was fun to get back into things in a group setting. Plus, we also got to visit with our Victoria friends, which is always nice.

Then last week, Pearl Jam finally announced their new tour dates, rescheduled from April 2020. This is the info I have been eagerly awaiting for many months so that I could start working out our vacation plans.

When they first announced the dates, I was trying to figure out how to squeeze in as many of the 5 shows we had tickets to as I could and still be able to go to Ireland for 2 weeks at the end of May, but it was just too much. We decided to postpone the Ireland trip to another time and prioritize Pearl Jam.

At first, I thought I could decide which shows were most important to me, and maybe sacrifice one or two of them to save some vacation time and money, but it turns out I can’t.

In Oakland we have the best seats, so I don’t want to miss those shows.

In LA, it’s the best venue, so I don’t want to miss those shows.

And San Diego will be the first concert of the tour, after such a long wait, I definitely don’t want to miss that show.

This means we’ll be going to California for 2 weeks in May. We have a few days in between each of the concert cities, and we’re still working out the details on what we’ll do, but hopefully we’ll be able to hit a few local social dances along the way. Most things have not started up again yet, but I feel like they will be back in action over the next month or so and then we can sort out the details.

Here and now, there is also a bunch of exciting stuff happening. I just spent the better part of an hour waiting in line for donuts (and not for the first time this week), which doesn’t sound exciting, but breakfast tomorrow certainly will be.

I’m sure I mentioned Yum Donuts during the earlier part of the pandemic; I was ordering from them and picking up at their house some weekends. Now they have a storefront less than a block from my house. The whole neighbourhood is coming out to buy donuts. Doesn’t anyone work around here? I thought there would be no line up on a weekday.

This weekend is jam-packed with action too. Tonight we’re going to the first big swing dancing event of the new roaring twenties that’s happening in Vancouver. Two live bands!

Tomorrow afternoon we’re going to a musical at the Anvil Centre here in New West called Hey Viola! I just heard about it today but it sounded really good so I decided we should go. Here is the blurb from the website:

Hey Viola!, a musical exploration of Canadian Civil Rights hero, Viola Desmond. But who is Viola Desmond…? Other than the newest face on Canada’s ten-dollar bill. She is best known for her courage in refusing to leave the whites-only section of Nova Scotia’s Roseland cinema in 1946, a decision that made history, but she was also a feminist and beauty product icon. What was the fire within this successful black Canadian businesswoman that gave her the courage and confidence to stand up to systemic racial injustices in Canada?

And then on Sunday, of course, back to White Rock Jazz, which will be handy for working off those donuts.

64: Roaring Twenties

Is this it? Are the roaring twenties finally starting? I feel excited.

This week, for the first time in over 2 years, Michel and I took a trip to Seattle. Pre-pandemic, we used to go there several times a year for concerts and dance events. We definitely took it for granted how simple it was to hop across the border and drive down there for a day or two, and I’m going to try not to let that complacency happen again.

For this trip, I lost many nights of sleep and spent way too many hours over-preparing for all the possible things that could go wrong. The travel restrictions meant that we had to get COVID tests in the US when we got there in order to be allowed back home at the end of the trip. A positive test result would mean one or both of us staying in the US for 11 days – even though if we had tested positive in that timeframe we most certainly would have been positive when we left home. It makes no sense, but that’s the rule, so go on a 2 day trip but pack for 11 days and bring all your hobbies.

As it turned out, everything went very smoothly and it was a great trip. Was it worth all the stress leading up to it? Yes, definitely.

Going into the States, the border line up was super short and the border guard was very friendly and chatty, which is not usual, in my experience. We stopped in Lynnwood on our way in to get our pre-scheduled COVID tests at the CVS drive-thru, went to Trader Joe’s to stock up on snacks, and then rolled into Seattle to our home away from home, the Moore Hotel.

Until we were actually in our room, I don’t think I quite believed this trip was really going to happen. I had bought tickets to see Eddie Vedder and the Earthlings during a brief window of hope, right before Omicron shut everything down again, and since that time had been worrying as they increased all the restrictions and changed all the rules… and then things started to improve… but then, the week before our concerts, the whole band got COVID and had to reschedule some of the tour stops… Somehow though, the Seattle dates remained in place.

The last concert I went to before the pandemic also happened to be in Seattle; we saw Glen Hansard at the Moore Theatre and I wrote about it here. So this week, after 881 days, it was a momentous occasion to be back at a live show, surrounded by people again. Also, seeing Glen Hansard again, as he was the opening act, and also an Earthling.

I really wasn’t sure how I would feel when I actually got there, because I haven’t been anywhere crowded in 2 years. It was a little weird, I suppose, but I didn’t feel uncomfortable. Masks were required and most people (actually way more of them than I expected) were very good about following the rules. We were even given free masks with Eddie’s logo on them, which we’re keeping as souvenirs, or until the next pandemic maybe.

Everyone we met, from the people in line for merchandise in the afternoon to all the people in the seats around us, both nights, were super friendly and chatty. I think everyone was feeling a sense of community after such a rough couple of years.

Both of the shows were great. The band only has one album worth of material, so they also covered some songs by other artists, a few Pearl Jam songs and some originals that were written for a recent movie soundtrack. We also got to see Eddie’s daughter sing a couple of times, and of course, listened to Eddie ramble a little, which I always love. Overall it was very satisfying and it just made me even more eager to see Pearl Jam when they reschedule their tour dates.

Now I am home and de-stressed, not stuck in a hotel quarantining in Bellingham, and I feel like I have so many things to look forward to. Dr. Bonnie recently removed some of our restrictions, including the almost 2 year-long ban on dancing, and it really feels like we could be on our way out of this pandemic.

And if we’re not, at least we get to dance in the meantime! My brain is exploding with all the possibilities.

While most of the regular dances are still in the process of getting started again, I expect there will also be a lot of new events popping up and a huge resurgence of interest in social dancing. The absence of face-to-face interaction, social gatherings and physical contact over the past few years has left people desperate for community and fun activities, and swing dancing definitely fills that void.

So please, let the roaring twenties begin!

63: Value Circles

About a year ago, I read a book called Smart Couples Finish Rich, and while it wasn’t amazing, it did have a few good takeaways that made it worth reading. I have long forgotten most of the specifics, but it was essentially about making financial plans as a team and understanding why you were doing the things you are doing and what you are trying to achieve by doing them.

The reason I bring this book up now is that it had an exercise called Value Circles that is meant to help you come up with purpose-focused plans and goals for the next 12 months, which we did. Now it’s been about a year, so I thought it would be a good time to review how that’s going.

The basics of the exercise are:

Come up with a list of the 5 core values that are most important to you. (Some examples would be security, freedom, happiness, peace of mind, fun, excitement, power, family, friends, making a difference, spirituality, independence, growth, creativity, adventure, fulfillment, confidence, balance, love, health…)
Use those values to help determine what you want to spend your time and energy on for the next 12 months.

For my Value Circle, I chose Freedom, Creativity, Fun, Health and Community. Being in the midst of a global pandemic at the time of doing this exercise, I chose not to come up with very specific goals and plans. Instead, I jotted down some points about what those things meant to me and what I was doing to focus more time and energy on them.

Freedom

Finish house deficiencies
Create a bug-out house
4 day work week

To me, freedom means I have enough time available to pursue my own interests and not feel like there are other things I should be doing instead.

The house deficiency list is essentially complete now. Of course, there will always be new things to fix or update, which I am fine with, and theoretically we will take care of them as they come up in our Bug-Out House schedule.

If you don’t know what a Bug-Out House is, I think it’s because I made that term up myself. The goal is to regularly go through every room in our house and assess the stuff we own, getting rid of anything we don’t use or need, and doing any minor repairs and things that need doing. Theoretically, this makes it easy for us to spontaneously decide to sell our house and live in the woods somewhere, or whatever. Not really planning to do that, but I like to have the option anyway.

My 4 day work week is probably the greatest decision I ever made in my life and I will never go back to working 5 days, if I haven’t mentioned that lately.

Creativity

Pottery class
Time for writing & making art projects
Garage into studio

This goes hand- in-hand with freedom because having the time available to focus on pursuing creative interests is so important. Any time I’ve felt stuck and frustrated about how my time didn’t feel like my own, it was because what I really wanted to be doing was working on personal projects.

I am no longer taking a pottery class, but I have been doing a sketchbook exploration course that I am really enjoying, and I am consciously devoting more time to making art than I have in the last, say, 15 or 20 years.

Turning our garage into a studio space is a further extension of this because it gives me a dedicated space to focus on these pursuits. We made a good start on this project last year and intend to do a lot more on it this year. We might even finish it, but I’m not making any promises.

Fun

Having ample time to use for my own interests and activities
Not spending on ‘stuff’ so that I have money for experiences

I think the next time I do a Value Circle, I might not include this one because it is pretty well encompassed by Creativity and Freedom already.

That being said, I do think having fun is very important and this is the value that most relates to going dancing and enjoying experiences like live music, which are some of my favourite things. I think they could probably just as easily fit in under other categories though.

Health

Habit stacking for yoga, walking and future HIIT circuit
Get back to Eat To Live diet

I want to lead a healthy lifestyle and be in good shape to be able to enjoy all the things I want to do. This includes feeling mentally healthy and also making choices that are good for the environment as well as for me as an individual.

As for the specifics on this list, I haven’t done very well. This pandemic has definitely had a negative effect on my physical activity because I mostly stay home and my main form of exercise (social dancing) is not happening.

We did recently get back on the Nutritionarian Diet though, to try to clean up our act after a year (or two) of too many snacks and treats. So for the next few weeks or months, we are eating a ton of veggies mostly, and cutting out all animal products and processed foods. I do not intend to live the rest of my life without pastries, but going forward, I’ll be aiming for overall healthier eating to balance out the indulgences.

Community

Swing dancing and Secret Balboa Club
Involvement in jazz & New West

This pandemic has definitely made a lot of us think about how important the community part of our dance scene is, and while not much is happening event-wise, there have been a lot of conversations about what we want to see in the future.

During a brief window of optimism about the pandemic ending (this was last summer, so we all know how that turned out) I met up with some of my dance friends to brainstorm about what kind of community we wanted to be a part of. This led to applying for a grant with the City of New West to hold some events that would involve live jazz, local and emerging musicians, and dancing. We were approved for funding for 4 events, whenever dancing is allowed again. There are still a lot of unknowns, but it feels good to know that I am going to be contributing to a community-building project sometime in the future, and I’m excited to get started on it.

Overall, I enjoyed doing this exercise and I would recommend giving it a try. I think it’s a good assessment tool to evaluate if the life you’re living aligns with what’s important to you, and useful for providing direction if you find out that you’re all out whack.

62: Best Books of 2021 (Part 2)

This year I actually somehow read more books than I did last year, which was surprising. There were quite a few that didn’t leave much of an impression, but so many that were excellent that I had to make two posts. If you missed the first one, it can be found here.

These are the best books I read in the latter part of this year:

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

I was on the library waitlist for this book for months and then when I finally got it, time got away from me and I ended up feeling rushed to finish it before it was due back, but despite all that, I really enjoyed it.

I don’t really know how to summarize this book better than its long title already has, so I will just say that it appealed to me on a lot of different levels. I have been getting more interested in plants lately, due to gardening and the little I have started to learn about permaculture, and I have been thinking a lot about climate change and how hard on nature our way of living is, and wondering how we can possibly get ourselves out of the mess we’ve made… All these things and a lot more are woven into the chapters of this book and overall it is very inspiring and beautiful. It doesn’t shy away from the damage we’ve caused or the ways we’ve gone wrong, but it did make me feel hopeful that we can do better.

The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this book but I saw it recommended a few times in various online groups I’m in, so I thought I’d give it a try and it was better than I’d expected. It’s very short and easy to read, and quite a few chapters focused on things I was already familiar with, but a lot of them had interesting insights that I had never thought of.

One that stands out is the chapter called “The Man in the Car Paradox”. Basically, it points out that when you see someone in a fancy car, you never think “Wow that guy is cool”, instead you skip immediately to thinking “Wow, if I had that car, people would think I was cool.” It’s a reminder that if you’re trying to get respect and admiration, it’s better to try to do it by being kind and empathetic and humble rather than dropping a load of money on fancy things. (I paraphrase, but you get what I’m saying.)

I actually started reading this book while I was finishing up Braiding Sweetgrass, and while they seem like they wouldn’t be a very likely combination, they did kind of complement each other in ways.

The Overstory by Richard Powers

This is an epic novel that weaves together the stories of quite a few different characters and spans over generations. The theme that runs through all the stories is trees – some of the characters become environmental activists that try to stop clear cutting, one of the characters is a scientist who researches trees, one is a video game designer trying to somehow recreate the wonder of nature in his games.

It’s a diverse cast of characters and the stories don’t all come together in the end like you might expect, but it is very engaging and makes you think about the majesty of nature and how insignificant we all are in the grand scheme of things. I think it’s good to be reminded of that once in a while.

The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck: How to Stop Spending Time You Don’t Have with People You Don’t Like Doing Things You Don’t Want to Do by Sarah Knight

I think I’m already doing a pretty decent job of this, but I had heard good things about this book so I thought I would give it a read anyway. No regrets! The author describes her book as a “practical parody” (of Marie Kondo’s book, the Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up) and it is laugh out loud funny, but also, for those people that are finding themselves spending time they don’t have with people they don’t like doing things they don’t want to do, full of good advice. And it’s a short, quick read.

It may sound quite negative from the title, but the main reason to figure out what you don’t give a fuck about is so that you have fucks left in your fuck budget for the things you do give a fuck about, which is actually a positive.

Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty

I’ve read all of Liane Moriarty’s books and they are always good, but this one I found particularly enjoyable. It’s a story about a family with 4 adult children whose 70-year-old mother goes missing.

The narrative goes back and forth between the present day and the previous year, when a strange event impacted the family, and as it moves along the timeline of the past advances forward to the present day as everything comes together.

It is a good page-turner mystery, but what I liked the most was the complex relationships between all the family members and the way they interact. It was funny and insightful and it keeps you guessing until the end.

The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis by Christiana Figueres & Tom Rivett-Carnac

Everyone should read this book. It starts off pretty dishearteningly, by describing the future we’re currently on the path towards, but then it gives an alternative future that we could create, if we start making changes now. Only the first chapter is really depressing, then it’s inspiring and thought-provoking.

The intent of the book is to illustrate that we do have the chance to turn things around and save ourselves, if we make big changes and do it soon. It’s a reality check, for sure.

It was written before the pandemic, which is interesting because it talks about some of the dangers we face, such as misinformation, which would slow down potential changes by dividing us, and about how momentum builds until an unknown tipping point and then change can happen really quickly. We have seen these things happening around the world on a massive scale over the past couple of years, providing real life examples that what they’re saying is correct.

The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary

This one is about two people that work opposite schedules and make an agreement to share a flat and the bed in the flat, without ever meeting. Of course, they end up meeting! The premise is kind of goofy but the characters are quirky and fun and the writing is entertaining.

It’s not all silliness though; one of the characters is dealing with the trauma of an abusive relationship she just left, while the other is working on helping his wrongly convicted brother with his upcoming court appeal, so I wouldn’t say it’s only light-hearted fluff. It has serious aspects as well as humourous, and (spoiler alert) a happy ending.

61: Things Bought in 2021

For the 3^rd year in a row, I have tracked all the things I bought for myself. (You can catch up on the last 2 years here and here, if you want.) It started as a personal goal about reducing the amount of stuff in my life and focusing my spending on the things that I value the most: experiences and creative activities, mainly.

I actually quite enjoy tracking the purchases I make throughout the year too. The very idea that I know I have to (by my own rules) put all the things on my list and post about them later is sometimes enough to keep me from buying what I don’t really need in the first place.

My self-imposed rules are that only physical items count, and I don’t include supplies that I use for activities, such as yarn for knitting, or consumable things like face cream, or gifts.

Here’s what I bought this year:

Magazines – I bought a handful of magazines for various reasons, and I don’t think I’ve read all the way through any of them. I still intend to, but the fact that I had to put it on my ‘to do’ list probably says that I shouldn’t bother buying any magazines next year.
Ceramic log – This item is a little decorative thing I bought from my former pottery teacher. She was selling a bunch of her work and I wanted to have something to commemorate my brief foray into pottery with her. It’s pretty much been sitting abandoned on a shelf since I brought it home though, so it might get shared away at some point.

T-shirt – Merchandise from a program called Nations Skate Youth that I wanted to support; it’s also a great shirt and I wear it a lot. Who doesn’t need another black t-shirt? Typically I would add a concert T-shirt or two every year, but that hasn’t happened so …
Headbands – I thought my new do was going to include wearing a headband, but I was wrong. I bought 3 from a Canadian maker on Etsy and though I don’t use them as I had planned, I do require a headband to hold my hair back when I’m washing my face. They should last forever, since I use one for about 2 minutes each day, and I have 3 of them.
Books – I bought a total of 3 books this year; 2 of them from a local independent bookstore that I wanted to support, and 1 used book I bought online. I searched every library database for the last one and it wasn’t available anywhere so I finally just decided to order it.
Interchangeable needles – For the past 10 or 15 years I have been knitting everything on a set of interchangeable knitting needles and one of the sizes finally needed to be replaced because the connector was wearing out, so I bought a few other extra replacement parts at the same time. I should be good for about 20 more years now.
Eddie Vedder CD – This was a pre-order so I won’t even have the album until next year, but I’m putting it in this year’s post. I’m sure it will be worth it.

That is very boring list!

And yet, I don’t really feel like it was a hardship of any kind to limit myself to buying just those items. I don’t even really feel like I was limiting myself, I was just considering all purchases very carefully and only buying the things I really had to have, for whatever reason.

And even after all that, if I was to go back and do it all over again, I’d probably only buy about half of the things.

For the first time this year, I also tried to keep track of the things we bought for our household. I might have missed a few because I haven’t historically paid as much attention to these items, but the things on the list are all pretty reasonable and practical, nothing too extravagant.

We have realized that just about anything we need is going to be available in our share group if we either wait a while, or outright ask if anyone has it. And it feels so much better to be making use of something that’s already out there wasting space in someone’s house rather than buying new, plus it doesn’t cost any money.

I am quite sure that within the boundaries of our little city there is more than enough of everything that anyone could ever need, it just needs a bit of redistributing. There are a few thousand of us working on it now, so we should be in pretty good shape soon!

60: Birthday Post

This is my birthday post! I’m going to be 42 on Monday. That being the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, I feel like I should make this year count.

The past year has felt like a bit of a black hole, but looking back on my previous birthday post, it does appear that I’ve accomplished the things I had planned to do:

Finish upstairs renos – I feel like I mention this in every post, but we are super close to finished now.

Take Indigenous Canada course – Was that only a year ago? I started this course in January and completed it in April. It was very good. Since then I have also read a number of books by Indigenous authors to try to broaden my horizons: Braiding Sweetgrass, 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act, The Inconvenient Indian, and in fiction, the Trickster trilogy and the Marrow Thieves.

Make garage into studio – This isn’t close to finished, but we did put on a new roof and add skylights, which I think were the most daunting parts, so I feel pretty happy with what we’ve done so far.

Artist’s Way 13-week exercises – I am currently on Week 10, so I will be finished before the end of the year. I am not doing as thorough a job as I could be, but I am okay with that and can always go back and dig deeper if I ever feel the urge.

In addition to these specific items I’d listed, I also managed to re-connect with quite a few people during the spring and summer on our back patio and to get in some fun, outdoor dancing at the Kits Showboat, which was a definite improvement over the previous year. I think I also have a better appreciation for spending quality time with people I like.

So I guess 2021 wasn’t a complete write-off, but it still kind of seems like it didn’t really happen.

These are some fun new cushions I picked out as my birthday present from my mom.

Now, how am I planning to make 42 count? I think this year is going to be less about ticking off a bunch of items on a list (though admittedly, I do have a long list of tickable items that I want to complete too) and more about being in the moment and doing the things I enjoy, whether that’s alone or as part of a community.

This shift did not happen suddenly, though it has probably been affected by living through a couple of years of non-stop world-altering events, social upheaval and climate disaster.

I had already been grappling with what the best use of my time is for the last few years; that’s what got me started with this blog in the first place. One thing I have found really interesting is looking back at my reading list for each year; it paints a pretty accurate picture of what my mindset was during each time period:

2016 – Every book I read was fiction, which makes sense because this was the year I made the decision to do more reading for enjoyment. (This is also when I started tracking what I was reading, so it’s the first year I can look back on.)

2017 – About a quarter of the books I read this year were non-fiction and all of those were either about early retirement or simplifying. This is the year I left a 5 day a week job with a terrible commute that was sucking my life energy away, and I’m sure these books helped me make that move.

2018 – Again, most of the non-fiction books I read were related to early retirement, with a heavy emphasis on side hustle. This was the year I started working 4 days a week, but it was a job that was particularly dissatisfying and I was still looking for a way out.

2019 – I read a more diverse selection this year with an overall theme of lifestyle design. I had found a more satisfying job, so I was less focused on leaving the working world completely and more into pursuing my creative interests in my free time, rather than trying to turn them into money-making businesses.

2020 – What a year. I read way more books than usual this year, but most of the extras were fiction. Perhaps I was looking for an escape from reality? The non-fiction was mainly lifestyle design and a couple of books on habit-building because I had a lot of time on my hands and I didn’t want to squander it.

2021 – This year’s list leaned heavily towards educating myself on social justice issues and being a better ally, but there were also quite a few books about opting out of various aspects of society. It’s obvious to me that things need to change, but I haven’t decided whether I will become an activist or just go live in the woods as a hermit while everything burns to the ground and/or floods.

While I figure that out, my big plans for 42 are:

Spend more time making/creating/practicing the things I enjoy
Help build a community of dancers and jazz enthusiasts
Start turning my yard into a permaculture food forest

I think all of these things can actually have a positive impact beyond my own little life, or I hope they will anyway. (I recently read The Future We Choose* and I’m working on maintaining stubborn optimism amid the chaos.)

*You should read it too! Everyone should read it!

59: October Update

I can’t believe it’s almost Hallowe’en.

The past month has included a number of ‘normal’ activities, though I wouldn’t say it feels like things are back to normal, in general.

On the abnormal (but good!) side, we’ve ticked off a few longstanding items on our house deficiency list. We put in the headers above the kitchen cabinets, and the trim around the bathroom linen cabinet.

I found two things surprising about getting these items done: First, they each took less than a day to complete. We’d been stalling forever on doing them because they seemed like huge hurdles to get past, but they really weren’t that bad. Second, while it was satisfying to get them done and checked off the list, they actually don’t make a huge difference. I am hoping it will be another story when all the pieces are done. Fingers crossed, anyway.

We had our weekend getaway to Victoria a few weeks back. Luckily this was before it started raining every weekend; we had beautiful sunshine for the whole trip. We ate in restaurants, visited with friends, family and former neighbours, explored the city, did a ghost tour and saw baby goats. Overall it was a very good weekend. The busiest we’ve had in almost 2 years, and all fun stuff.

While we ate a lot of good food and saw interesting things, I would say the best part was just having the chance to catch up with people we haven’t seen in a long time.

Here are the two pictures I took over the entire weekend:

Grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup at the Crow & Gate Pub
(background: Michel’s pub burger)

Apples Charlotte French toast at the Blue Fox Cafe

On Thanksgiving weekend, we had dinner at my mom’s. This was the first family dinner we’ve had with my mom and my sister and her family, indoors, since the pandemic started. My mom used to regularly host large family dinners with one whole side of the family in attendance, but we realized that the last one had come and gone without our knowing it was the last one. By the time large gatherings are back, my mom will most likely be in her new, much smaller house.

That night after dinner we made the trip out to Abbotsford to attend Suburban Swing. It was our first indoor dancing experience since March of 2020. We opted to wear our masks the whole time, even though it was a vaccinated only event, and I can’t speak for Michel, but I didn’t find that it cramped my style at all.

The event felt quite safe and while there weren’t as many people there as there would have been previously, it was enough people to keep it interesting and fun. It was great to be on a nice smooth, wood floor again and dance with some of my favourites. We would definitely go back, but being on a Sunday night and so far away, we only consider it when we have Monday off, so it might be a while.

As much as I’ve been trying not to let myself get excited about our potential trip to Ireland next spring, we ended up booking flights. Aeroplan had an end of September deadline for bookings that included one free cancellation or change, so we thought we might as well jump on it while there’s no risk involved.

Our years of saving points are paying off with this trip – our total cost is $150 for the flights and we’re coming home direct, in fancy pods. I’m not a big fan of flying but that makes it a lot more palatable.

And then, once the flights were booked it got pretty difficult not to start looking into what we wanted to do while we were there… so now I have a couple of hotels booked too and some ideas for our itinerary. All have full cancellation options though, so again, no risk – except that of being disappointed.

Now here we are almost at the end of October. Where has 2021 gone?

Since my last post, I’ve made quite good progress on the sweater I’m knitting. I would guess it’s about 75% complete now.

I’m still working through The Artist’s Way. I have been pretty half-hearted in my effort to do the exercises, and I’ve started slacking off on my Morning Pages as well. I am still planning to complete the book, even if I am just reading each week’s chapter. I am enjoying the reading part and even some of the writing exercises, but I’m not very motivated to put in a lot of time and effort right now.

And lastly, because it was so strange, I will tell you about the dream I had last night: We had a bear in the house. It was a bit of a problem because we didn’t know how to get it out, but the bigger problem was that there were two gorillas outside the front window and they were making the bear very agitated. At one point it took a run at the glass, which cracked but didn’t break. I was having a hard time finding the non-emergency police number (in the light of day I feel like this maybe would have qualified for a 911 call, but apparently it didn’t seem so in the dream) or the Animal Services number on my phone.

I don’t remember being particularly scared, just concerned about the potential conflict if the bear and gorillas managed to get to each other. Someone please interpret this for me.