Dancing In Irreverence

48: No Unnecessary Things

At the end of 2019, I wrote a post about my experience attempting to “buy no more things” during the year. If you want to read it, it’s here.

For 2020, I decided to continue tracking the things I bought and review them at the end of the year. I changed the description of my goal to “buy no unnecessary things”. I kept pretty much the same rules as last year, counting only personal spending, and not counting consumable items or gifts. I also didn’t count supplies for any art/craft projects I worked on because they get used up in the process of making. (That was a decision I made in my Depth Year post.)

Again, it wasn’t that I was trying not to spend any money; it was about really thinking about what items I needed to add into my life.

Of course, at the beginning of the year I had no idea what was to come, and how different this year would be from other years, but as it turned out, the pandemic didn’t really make much of a difference in this aspect of my life.

My experience spending took a dramatic shift from being focused on live music and dancing to buying supplies for making things, but the number of physical items I bought stayed almost exactly the same as last year.

Here are all the unnecessary things I bought this year:

Gigaton CD – New Pearl Jam album. I almost counted this as necessary but I bought the physical CD because I wanted the Ten Club special edition, instead of just buying the digital album, so I couldn’t justify it. When I bought this, it was in anticipation of hearing them play all the new songs live in April and I was excited to learn all the words and sing along at the top of my lungs in California… but we all know how that turned out. Still a good album and I would have bought it whether or not a tour was happening.
Jump rope – An optimistic attempt at home fitness while I was laid off. I have barely used it at all, but I remain hopeful that when my garage studio is finished it will be part of my HIIT circuit and (fingers crossed) used on a regular basis, numerous times each week.
A Little Bag of Books – Isolation Issues – I bought this from the Regional Assembly of Text because I love the work that Becky and Brandy do and I have always admired them for being able to finish art school, open up a shop and succeed! They’re amazing and I wanted to support their business during tough times. If you haven’t checked them out, do it.

Upper Cut Bag – I got this for a great price because a boxing gym by my house had to close down due to the pandemic. It’s something that I was going to buy for my garage studio anyway; I just got it a bit early because a good opportunity came up. I am glad I had the chance to bring it home in a wheelbarrow and give money to a local cause instead of buying from a big American company and paying shipping and duty.
Birdhouse – From Raging Bowl Pottery, another artist I very much admire and wanted to support. I went to art school with some amazing people. Now that my home office is set up at the back of the house, my window looks right out at this birdhouse and I can enjoy it every day.

Souvenir sweatshirt for Virtual Camp Hollywood – I thought it would be kind of cool to commemorate this strange year without dance events, and I wanted to help support Camp Hollywood, so I bought a sweatshirt. After currency conversion and shipping, it turned out to be far more expensive than is reasonable, but since I received it (after it shipped from New Jersey to Sweden to Canada – the route all international orders take, apparently) I have worn it about 33% of the time that I am dressed (plus sometimes with my pajamas), so it turned out to be totally worth it. I love this sweatshirt.
Ceramic mushrooms – 100% impulse buy while on our mini-vacation to Vancouver Island. They caught my eye at Coombs Market because of my newfound interests in gardening and pottery. They’re in my garden now, but I kind of regret buying them. They look much tackier out in the real world than they did on the shelf and I’ve made my own ceramic mushrooms since that I like way more.
Artist’s Way (used) book – I mentioned this book in my last post about my goals for next year. I originally got a copy out of the library, but to do the exercises I need it for 13 weeks, so I found a used one on Marketplace. It was $4.
3 Ikea picture frames – I’d been meaning to frame a few of the etchings I made back around Y2K and after I got my new workspace set up in our kitchen nook, I finally made it happen. I was warned not to bother with Ikea frames because they’ve changed to using acrylic instead of real glass, but being cheap, I didn’t listen. Now I have regrets, but the frames themselves are OK and I am happy with the mats I got, so I will probably just replace the glass at some point. I do enjoy looking up at the prints from my desk.

* * *

Since I just itemized all the unnecessary things, I am also going to include the things I deemed as necessary because I still wrote them down. It’s all just a matter of personal opinion anyway:

New phone and case (Nothing fancy and not an upgrade for the sake of an upgrade – my old phone stopped working during the beginning of isolation back in March and it was an overly arduous and lengthy process to get a new one; I really would rather have just avoided the whole thing)
Wrist brace (Also during the first bit of the pandemic, I think my isolation knitting got to be a bit much)
2021 Day Planner (I counted my 2020 day planner on last year’s list, but I will never not buy one; it’s how I keep my life on track, even when I rarely leave the house)

* * *

One final note on eyeliner because it makes me laugh every time I look at it:

At the end of 2019, I had this little nub of eyeliner pencil left and I was thinking to myself “I made it through the year without having to add this to my list!”* Well, who would have thought it would also last all the way through 2020? As it turns out, being laid off for half a year, never going dancing and really not caring about how I look for the most part has resulted in a record-breakingly low year of eyeliner usage. I truly hope that it gets used up next year.

*In 2019, I included specialty personal products as things, but I don’t count them anymore because they’re consumable.

47: Next Year

At this time last year I was in Tofino as part of my weeklong 40^th birthday extravaganza, and 4 years ago today I saw Temple of the Dog at a little venue in Seattle. This year, I’m planning to walk over to the bakery across the street and see if I can get a day old cake for half price.

Anyway, I’m not really bothered by the lack of festivities this year. I’ve settled into my homebody life quite comfortably, so as long as there are sufficient baked goods, I’m happy enough.

I am starting to think ahead to next year though, not to my birthday, just to the year 2021 as a whole. And not because of ‘2020’ and how I can’t wait for it to be over – I find all those posts on that topic quite annoying actually, because a calendar year is just a set of days we made up for ourselves so I’m not expecting a switch to flip on New Year’s Day and suddenly everything will be different.

Every year I come up with a list of goals and plans for the coming year. This year was supposed to be a Depth Year, among other things. Despite having all the time in the world on my hands (or maybe because of it), I wouldn’t really call that goal a success. (I did one Depth Year update here.) The only thing I really followed through on was my stained glass project, which I hope to have installed by the end of the year.

I think I did make excellent use of my time though, just not doing what I had intended, which is fine. I also had other goals, like ‘buy no unnecessary things’ which I did quite well with, but more about that in a month or so.

The reason I like to make a list of goals for each year is it gives me something to work on, and even if I’m less than successful, I am usually still keeping these ideas in mind and sometimes that is enough for the time being.

So here are some of my intentions for next year, we’ll just have to wait and see how it goes:

Finish upstairs renos – How many times have we said we’d do this? It’s even in our plans for the Christmas break, but I’m not expecting we’ll finish during that time so it’s staying on the list. Hopefully this is the last year for this goal. I’ve made an itemized deficiency list that, on paper, looks like it should be easy to work through by spending a few hours here and there. Being able to check off every little task should help.

Take Indigenous Canada course – This is an online, free course that has been made ‘famous’ by Dan Levy (of Schitt’s Creek glory) who took the course and has been promoting it online. I’ve lived here my whole life and I know very little about how we got to where we are today, so I’m going to try to learn.

Make garage into studio – Very excited about this one. I’m hoping to get started in the spring with step 1, which is emptying out the debris and junk and then I’m excited for step 3, which is having a nice quiet place to work on art and, theoretically, exercise. (I got a sweet deal on an upper cut bag from a gym that had to close during the pandemic, so I now have most of the equipment, just not the space, to set up my own HIIT circuit.)

Artist’s Way 13-week exercises – This is the year that I’m going to ‘unlock my creativity’ or something. I got this book out of the library a while ago and only read the introduction, but it piqued my interest. Since it’s a 13-week long commitment, I started looking for a copy of the book for my own and found one on Marketplace for $4. It was in downtown Vancouver, so a helpful friend of mine picked it up for me and is holding on to it until I can get it from him. (Perhaps he is unlocking his creativity right now! I should ask.)

All of the things I’ve listed would have fit in well to a year of being in lockdown, so if everything does turn around in 2021, that will likely throw a wrench in my plans because it will be hard to fit in any of these things around all the dancing and live jazz. I wouldn’t complain though.

46: Best Books of 2020

With 2 months still to go in this year, I’ve already read 51 books! I’m pretty sure that’s a record for me, but with the amount of time I’ve spent at home, it makes sense. I’m glad I’m not keeping track of how much TV I’ve watched though.

I meticulously record the books I’ve read (and want to read) using Goodreads, which I find extremely helpful because as much as I enjoy reading while I’m doing it, once I’ve finished a book it is almost immediately erased from my mind. There are exceptions, of course, but even looking back at what I’ve read within the last few months, some of the books barely ring a bell and that’s fine with me. I’m hoping that it’s a sign my mind is prioritizing more important stuff to remember.

This week’s post is a list of the books that I gave 5 stars to. At the moment, that’s just 6 books, but if there are any more before the end of the year, I’ll add them and post an update. Aside from these 6, I gave 4 star ratings to about 70% of the books I read, so this is hardly an account of all the good ones, just the few that really stood out. In case you’re curious, this is roughly how I rate books:

5 stars – Loved it!

4 stars – Enjoyed it and would recommend it

3 stars – Meh, either I found it a bit of a slog or had issues with some aspect of it, but it was decent enough to finish

2 stars – Didn’t like it, but for some reason decided to finish it anyway

1 star – I have never used this rating; if it’s this bad then I just don’t finish it because life’s too short for shitty books

Didn’t Finish – I made this its own category so I don’t forget the books that sucked and accidentally attempt them again

So, in the order I read them:

Greenwood by Michael Christie

This is a Canadian book that follows the story of one family from 2034 back to 1934, with trees and forestry as the theme throughout. It revolves around the issues of conservation and how we use our resources, as well as the way these things were treated in the past and how they might be affected in the future. It’s really well done, and not boring, like I just made it sound.

A lot of it takes place in and around Vancouver, which I always enjoy – it kind of gives you that feeling of being special when you can recognize the locations and things being talked about because you know them personally, like when you catch a glimpse of a building you walk by all the time on some show that supposedly takes place in Seattle or San Francisco.

Summer of ’69 by Elin Hilderbrand

Elin Hilderbrand writes nice, light books that I would classify as ‘summer reads’. They have a bunch of interesting characters, romance and a bit of mystery. All the ones I’ve read have been very enjoyable. This one stood out a bit from the rest just because it wove in a lot of actual events and the political climate from the summer of 1969 and I enjoy the intersection of real history with fiction.

Side note: Today I’m going to pick up her latest book from the library, which I cleverly put on hold while it was still on order.

Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender

This year I’ve been making an effort to read more books from the point of view of non-white writers and authors from marginalized groups. This book is a YA (young adult) novel about Felix, who is a transgendered black teenager living in New York and struggling with all the usual teenager stuff, as well as trying to figure out his own identity and dealing with an anonymous social media bully who is harassing him.

It sounds heavy, but it was very enjoyable and well-written and the characters are very engaging.

How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny

This is another Chief Inspector Gamache mystery (I had one on last year’s list too). I’m on book 12 of 16 currently and while some aspects of these books have become a little tiresome, they are always enjoyable overall. This one was particularly good because it concluded some ongoing plots lines that had been running through the series and finally provided a bit of closure.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

This is another YA novel (I read quite a few of them this year.) It was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and follows a girl who lives between two worlds: the fancy, mostly white prep school that she attends and the poor, mostly black neighbourhood she lives in, where she witnesses her best friend getting shot and killed by a police officer.

Again, this one sounds pretty heavy, and lots of parts are, but it is also hopeful and inspiring.

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear

I’m glad this one was good because I waited for months for it to be available. I had it on my library request list back in March when everything shut down and then they extended all the due dates until the end of August. I thought I would never get to read it.

I really enjoyed this book because it gave a lot of good, actionable methods for incorporating new habits into your routine and removing bad ones. It’s all about making small changes that, over time, will have a large impact on the way you live your life. It was interesting to read and makes it seem so darn logical that you can’t help but expect to be successful.

45: Project Overload

Ah, a nice rainy day to start my extra-long weekend! It kind of feels like this is the real start of fall now. Usually this is the time of year when I’m excited to get started on a bunch of things, but since this year was such an anomaly I am in the position of needing to finish some projects up so that I can actually enjoy beginning some new ones. I have a big checklist of items I want to complete this month.

I spent a few hours this morning soldering my big stained glass project that I’ve been working on. I’m in the home stretch now and I should be able to get the glass panel done this weekend. After that I will still have a few hurdles to get past to make it into a sealed unit and install it in the door. I need to do some research to figure out how much of that I will be doing for myself. It’s unlikely this will all be complete this month, but if I can at least have a solid plan for how it will all go down, I will be happy.

I also have 2 small stained glass panels that I made with my leftover materials while I was waiting for the glass I needed to finish my main piece. They just need to be framed and they’re all done, but I have been putting that part off because it’s not fun. These, I should be able to finish this weekend; it literally will take me an hour at the most, I just need to do it.

I painted our dining nook, which is now my office, a few weeks ago and it looks much better, but as usual, I still need to paint all the trim. The new colour is so nice that I decided I’m going to repaint the rest of the kitchen the same, so I want to do as much as I can with the paint I have left. It already looks partially done, so I might as well make the finished part larger. This month.

I also have a bunch of my black and white etchings and lithographs from when I was in art school that I want to hang in there. Framing them has been on my to-do list since about 2010, but now that I’m bundling it in with ‘finish office nook’, it has a deadline.

That isn’t everything on my list for this month, but you get the idea.

I also have a lot of things that I am happy to continue working on into the fall and through the winter:

I’m in my second round of pottery classes. The finished pieces are starting to stack up already and I don’t think I’ve even brought everything home that I made in the first 6 weeks. My work has increased in size, which is a step in the right direction, but my skills have a long way to go before I will be at the point where I am actually making something with specific intention. Right now the finished product just looks like whatever it looks like, not like something I planned to make.

I bought some macramé cord and I have a couple of library book on hand for reference so I can try making a hanging planter, but I haven’t actually given it a shot yet. I feel that my years of experience making friendship bracelets as a pre-teen should serve me well here. That’s what I’m hoping, anyway.

Over the summer I had a socially distanced visit with a friend from dance who was wearing a super cute sweater. I decided right then and there that I was going to try to knit a replica of it. Luckily she knew exactly where it came from and it was still available online with lots of good photos to reference. I found a similar pattern and have altered the details to copy the design features of the goal sweater. I started working on it this week, but it will be a while before I know if it’s going to turn out how I’m imagining. Overall it’s a simple knit, so I can work on it while I watch TV without losing track of what’s going on.

A couple of posts back I mentioned that I had read the book, The Power of Habit. Well, since then I have also read Designing Your Life, Company of One and Atomic Habits. I’m on a bit of a self-improvement binge, I guess.

They were all super interesting and had their own specific viewpoints, but for me, the main takeaway from all of them is that you can always examine your life and work on trying to improve the areas that aren’t optimal, and even small changes can eventually have a big impact.

The reason I mention this now is because some of the other ‘projects’ I’m working on are ways of tweaking my routine and integrating habits I want to have into my life so that I’m free to focus more time on all of the interesting things. It’s a bit early to say how it’s going, but I think any attempt to consciously look at the way you’re doing things and decide if that’s the way you want to keep doing them is good. Like Ferris Bueller said,

44: Weekend Getaway

Last weekend we were supposed to be back in Penticton for the Pentastic Jazz Festival but, of course, it was cancelled this year. I was trying to remember when the last time we went away was and I guess it must have been for my 40^th birthday last November. 10 months ago!

Needless to say, it’s been a weird year and we wanted a little change of scenery while the weather was still nice, so we booked a few nights at Qualicum Beach and it was lovely.

We took our first COVID-era ferry ride to get to the island on Friday. I hadn’t made a reservation because in my head, a Friday after Labour Day wouldn’t be busy enough to bother, but in the day or two leading up to our departure I was starting to have regrets. We ended up leaving in a bit of a panic early Friday morning so that even if there was a wait we wouldn’t arrive too late in the day and then landed ourselves on the 8:45 am sailing.

In our haste to get out the door, Michel didn’t grab his mask, so he was confined to the car. Luckily he has a bladder the size of a camel, so no big deal. I did venture up to the passenger deck to check things out and I have to say, it was much better than usual. It looked like more than half the passengers were still down in their cars because even with every second row blocked off, as well as other groups of seats near main thoroughfares, there was still seating available. It was very quiet and calm.

Perhaps, and this is just a theory I came up with right this minute, putting masks on people encourages them to shut up, like when you wrap a cat in a blanket.

Qualicum Beach is about 45 minutes from Departure Bay terminal, which I think is just perfect. I have been there many times in my life, though I don’t know if I’ve actually stayed there before. I have camped at Little Qualicum Falls quite a few times and passed through on my way to Courtenay.

For this trip, we stayed at a little resort/motel right on the beach. It was nothing fancy, but it was peaceful and convenient.

On our first evening we drove into town to pick up some sushi for dinner. We had a half hour to kill while we waited for our order, so we wandered the streets of downtown (I don’t know if they call it that) Qualicum Beach. It is so cute.

Sushi Hama was in a cluster of shops called Chilham Village that is like a movie set; the exterior looks like a row of miniature English Tudor style shops and they’re arranged around a little courtyard. (And the food was delicious.)

We definitely discussed the idea of moving there if in a few years it didn’t look like social dancing was ever coming back. (I hope this is not a possible outcome of the pandemic, but you have to think about the options.)

Over the few days we were there, we drove to both Little Qualicum Falls and Englishman River Falls to hike the trails and check out the sites. The wildfire smoke from down south had started to roll in by Saturday, but in the forest it was less noticeable.

On Saturday night we made the trek back down to Nanaimo to meet up with our friends, Catie and Dave. Normally, we would be spending this whole weekend with them, dancing to live music and doing other jazzy things, but this year we had to make do with dinner.

We met halfway between their place and ours, at Gate and Crow English Pub. We spent a good 3 hours catching up and enjoying an excellent meal. While the pub was following all the new COVID guidelines, it still felt like a bit of a return to normal.

Then we drove an hour back to our motel through an eerie haze of wildfire smoke, but it was getting dark out, so you could kind of pretend it was just foggy.

Sunday night my phone started blowing up with messages about a huge fire in New Westminster at Pier Park. We watched the live footage from our motel, which was very dramatic and pretty depressing. I didn’t sleep very well that night. (Luckily, it turned out that the damage wasn’t as bad as it appeared and it was just the older part of the pier destroyed, not the excellent new park that we love so much.)

Overall, it was a nice mini-vacation and we’re lucky we live somewhere that has so many great options nearby. We usually don’t go on vacations without there being an event (or numerous events) we’ve scheduled our plans around. I guess now that there aren’t ‘events’, we’ll get a chance to check out more of these places, which is not so bad.

Now, I’m ready to settle in for the fall, which is my favourite season. Bring on the rain.

43: Back to Work

I officially go back to work tomorrow, so this week’s post is a round-up of all the things that I actually accomplished over the last (almost) 6 months, during my early retirement trial run. I am satisfied with what I managed to get done and overall pretty happy with how I used my time.

I would also like to note that while I purposely focus my blog on my creative endeavours and my process of Life Energy Valuation, I recognize that not everyone is in a position to be able to enjoy this kind of freedom during a global pandemic, or any other time. I am very fortunate to live where I do and have the privilege to spend my time at home in relative safety and security.

(in alphabetical order)

Art

It took me a while to get going at the start, but I eventually got myself set up to work on stained glass, after a decade or so hiatus. The panel for our front door – which has been on my to-do list for years – is almost done (and the only reason it isn’t already complete is because I’m being picky and waiting for a couple of colours of glass that have been backordered for quite a while.) Plus I’ve made a couple of smaller panels that just need to be framed, and then I am going to try to sell them to make up the materials costs on the front door panel.

Front Door Stained Glass Panel 75% complete

I’m also currently taking a pottery class. I’ve always wanted to try wheel throwing, so I used my ‘experience’ voucher that was my Christmas present from Michel to take a 6 week course. My goal was to come out of the course with 3 pots for planters, and then make macramé hangers for them. (I borrowed some macramé books from the library and have ordered some supplies, so I should be ready to start the next step by the time I bring my pots home.)

Baking

At the beginning of the pandemic, I had at least 40 bananas in the freezer. I’d been putting the overripe ones in there every week, intending to make banana bread, but I never did and it was getting out of hand. Realistically, I thought I would probably end up throwing them out at some point, but in the meantime I could just lie to myself and say I would use them eventually.

Nobody could be more surprised than me that I have just about used them all up! I don’t have an exact count of where I started, or how many times I made banana bread, but I was using 4 per loaf and I even put a few new ones in the freezer during that time and am still down to just 2 frozen bananas right now.

CEUs

This is super boring, but I need to do 10 Continuing Education Units (CEUs) every year in order to keep my professional designation. Normally, I would get some of them by attending trade shows or seminars where I could see some friends, eat delicious free food and get cool swag like fancy water bottles and umbrellas that have the name of a lighting company branded on them.

Obviously not happening this year, so I thought it would be smart to do one online credit per week when I first got laid off so that I wouldn’t have a bunch of catching up to do later. Now I’m ahead of the game and don’t have to worry about them for the rest of the year. It was fairly painless, since they’re each only an hour long and I had an abundance of time on my hands.

House Stuff

While most of our almost-done renos haven’t progressed, I did complete a significant amount of work on the front yard. We also made good headway on the backyard, and put up new railings and a roof on our back deck. Overall, I would say the yard is about 2 years ahead of where it would be if we were still participating in all our usual social activities on weekends.

Of course, now that it’s looking like we’re going to have plenty of free time all through the fall and winter, we’re going to have to force ourselves to get all the inside projects done. We really have no excuse not to.

The one indoor project I did complete was painting the living room, which is another thing that has been on my list for years. Now all the rooms are in a similar state of almost-done, they just need the bits and pieces pulled together (floor transitions, trim, etc.) Ugh. I’m not looking forward to doing the work, but I know it will be extremely satisfying to live in a finished space. (I remember the feeling from that one month we lived in our townhouse between finishing all our projects and moving out, and it was wonderful.)

Reading

I read 31 books! I know because I meticulously track my reading on Goodreads. Reading has definitely been an indulgence during this time. No matter how much other stuff I did during the day, by around 2:30 or 3:00 in the afternoon, I usually ended up sitting down with a book and reading for a couple of hours.

I’ve done a few reviews already, but I’ll be sure to do another one at the end of the year, so I can share all the best books I’ve read. Not that quantity equals quality – I did read my fair share of mediocre fluff over the past few months, but there were some pretty good ones in there too.

Writing

I didn’t do the writing I thought I would, but I successfully completed a full 100 Days Project of comics. This is the first time I’ve done the project solo. It was reasonably fun, but not as fun as when I collaborate with Ivana on Shiftyville comics.

I also managed to do at least one or two blog posts each month. They may or may not have been more boring than usual, but I did them!

Yoga

I tried to keep a somewhat regular routine of doing Youtube yoga classes every week. Over the 5.5 months I was home, I did 42 classes, so I think that is pretty good.

This was something I really wasn’t sure if I’d be motivated to keep up with, but I quite enjoyed it and I’m planning to continue doing it when I start working again. I haven’t figured out how to best fit it into the day yet, but after reading the Power of Habit, I am interested in trying to make it part of my routine.

I’m actually a bit excited to start a new routine. My previous work week was a big improvement over the ones before, but now that I have the opportunity to work from home most of the time, I want to try to tweak it even further. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

42: Trial Retirement

I’ve been mostly unemployed for about 5 months now. I’m amazed that it’s been that long actually, though I’m not really sure whether it feels like it’s been more or less time than that.

Lately, I haven’t been as intent on making good use of every minute like I was trying to at first, but I am still really enjoying this break. I will be going back to full time* in a few weeks, which is probably a good thing, lest I get too comfortable in my new lifestyle. It has really been an interesting experience to be able to test out my early retirement plans for a short time and see if they’re all I thought they’d be.

The short answer to that is: Yes. I would be happy to do this forever if I could. I have learned a lot though, and I plan to use this information to refine my plans and work on a few things over the next few years so that it will be even better when I’m really ready to retire.

Here are a few items that need work:

Exercise – I am still optimist that the future will one day include social dancing again. This will go a long way in getting me moving, but when I have the extra time available, I would also like to have a regular fitness plan that I keep up with.

During this break I’ve been doing yoga in the living room a couple of times each week, but in the future when both of us are home, I can’t see myself using our shared space for fitness. I would like to also start doing a boxing and kickboxing circuit again, which will need a dedicated set up. In my dream-scenario, this will take place in our garage, which I want to convert into a studio space. (This would also give us a place to practice dance.)

Studio space – Having my own space to go to on a daily basis is something that I think is going to be really important, and not just for fitness purposes. Currently I am home alone during the week, and that is when I do most of my creative projects: writing, stained glass, design work, etc. I need to be on my own to do these things; I can’t focus if there is anyone else around.

During the weekends when Michel is home, my days look completely different; I tend to work on more house-related things like the garden and renovation-type projects. We also cook, watch TV together or go out, and I don’t really do any of those things when I’m alone.

I would like to be able to continue having this type of variety in my life, so I need to have a separate space to maintain my creative pursuits. I am also really excited about the actual physical process of fixing up our garage to make it into what I want.

Routine – I feel like I’ve been making pretty good use of my time, and I’m happy with the balance I’ve achieved with doing my own projects, keeping the household chores under control, and also just enjoying myself, but there is definitely room for improvement.

Aside from adding in more exercise, I would also like to decrease the amount of time I spent mindlessly scrolling on social media. I know I just do it out of habit and because it’s an easy distraction when I’m not quite sure what to do next, or I want a break from what I’m working on.

Luckily for me, my library request for The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business became available last week. I ploughed through it in a couple of afternoons and it was super interesting. It also made me excited to do some experimenting in my own life with working on developing new habits and changing old habits. I would highly recommend reading it, even if just for entertainment.

Going back to work, I plan to continue on in much the same way as I have been, except that I will be devoting more hours to interior design work rather than a variety of projects. And I am fine with that because I have a feeling that most of the things that make me wish I didn’t have to work for a living will be substantially resolved by being able to work from home. Only time will tell, but I’m very hopeful.

Out in the rest of the world, it seems like quite a lot of people are also doing some reassessing during this pandemic, realizing that the way they were living their lives isn’t really what they want. I am excited to see how this plays out over time, as more people make changes to their work/life balance and priorities.

Since I had already spent the last few years reassessing everything, I am grateful that I got the rare opportunity to put my plans in action, if only temporarily.

*My old schedule was Tuesday to Friday, 8:30am to 4:30pm; my new schedule will be less static because I am going to continue working from home, but I will be keeping the same number of hours as I was previously.

41: COVID-era Live Jazz

The hardest part about trying to post at least once or twice a month is that I have to keep track of time. I have been pretty good at remembering what day of the week it is because I still have weekends – that’s when Michel’s home, but the time just flies by and I before I know it, I haven’t posted in almost 3 weeks.

The other problem is that I don’t really have anything to talk about, aside from ‘world affairs’, which are so overwhelmingly crazy and mind-boggling right now that they’re the last thing I want to write about.

Luckily, I still keep a day planner, and looking back I see that we actually did do something a few weeks ago!

At the end of June, we made reservations to see the Bonnie Northgraves Trio play at the Water Street Café in Gastown. It was the first time since March that we’d 1) eaten in a restaurant, 2) enjoyed live music and 3) dressed up.

Before this, we’d never been to the Water Street Café. We don’t venture into Vancouver for dinner very often, unless it coincides with a dance event, and we normally go to bed too early for the regular jazz stuff that happens in Gastown because it’s always on a weeknight.

I was a little apprehensive about the idea of eating in a restaurant again. Just the day before we bought our tickets I was actually saying to Michel that I couldn’t understand why anyone would be so eager to do that again. I was perfectly happy with take-out. We were still enjoying food from the same places we loved, just in the comfort of our own home and while we watched old episodes of 30 Rock instead of eavesdropped on other diners.

As soon as live jazz was added into the equation though, my story totally changed.

The last thing we did before everything shut down was spend the afternoon at White Rock Jazz, watching none other than Bonnie Northgraves. Even while we were there, there was the feeling of doom in the air, everyone knowing that it was the last chance we would have for a long time to enjoy something like that.

The Water Street Café felt very safe though. We entered at street level, and you could see the whole main floor of the restaurant – it has very high ceilings and lots of windows, the doors were open and it felt very airy and clean. The tables were very spaced out and all the servers were wearing masks.

We gave our names and they took us upstairs to the 2^nd floor where they have their live music. We were the first guests to arrive, so we got the front and centre table. The band was already there, having a pre-show drink and snack, and they are all musicians we’ve seen around town many times in different combinations. It was nice to see some familiar dance-related faces, in person, again.

Like the main floor, upstairs was nicely spread out. Our table even had plexi-glass dividers installed on either side, separating us from the closest tables. We arrived an hour before the band was on, and ordered dinner. I had Spaghetti Aglio E Olio and Michel had, if I recall correctly, Gnocci Bolognese. Both were delicious.

There ended up being a total of 16 people watching the show. As it turned out, we knew 6 of the others in the audience, so we had a chance to do a little face to face (from 6 ft apart) catching up with some people we don’t see regularly, which was nice.

The band was spaced out across the front of the room. Bonnie was on vocals and trumpet, Wynston Minckler was on bass and Dean Thiessen was on piano. The music, of course, was great and we enjoyed the chance to see live music again… BUT once you’ve gotten used to being able to dance to live jazz, it is very difficult to fully enjoy a show like that while sitting at a table.

The setlist wasn’t aimed at pleasing dancers, which made it a little easier, but there were definitely a lot of songs that it would have been so fun to dance to. Sigh.

Overall, I suppose it felt like as normal a night out as could be expected. It was an interesting change of pace to get out in the world and see other people in an indoor setting, but it sure didn’t feel like the old days.

If anyone is interested in trying it out themselves, Bonnie is playing there again later this month: https://www.facebook.com/events/281440862942964/

40: Home Sweet Home

Last week, Facebook reminded me that it was 10 years ago that we moved into our house. 10 years! Like this pandemic, it feels like it’s been forever, yet also like no time has passed at all.

Before we lived here, we owned a townhouse, also in New West. When it sold for over asking, we were super excited. It was a short lived thrill though, because we quickly realized that we were in an extremely hot housing market and houses were also going for way over asking.

The first place we put an offer on, for full asking price, went for $60K more than our offer, and then was promptly torn down. This did not bode well for our prospects.

I won’t detail the whole experience, but we spent almost a year house hunting. During that time, we bid on somewhere between 5 and 10 different houses, and ultimately ended up here, in a neighbourhood we initially hadn’t even been considering. While all of the houses we put offers on seemed like ‘the one’ at the time (and now I can’t even remember them all), I’m confident we ended up in the right place.

In looking for a home, we were of the mindset that this would be our forever home. We were very focused on being in a location that was easily accessible by transit, walking distance to as much as possible, and in a house that would fit all our needs for the long term.

For me, as an interior design student at the time, I wanted to be able to renovate and update the house in whatever way I liked, without worrying about how it would affect the resale value.

When we lived in our townhouse, we knew we would only be there for about 5 years, so everything we did was done with future buyers in mind. We still made updates that we liked, but they were all very neutrally likable so they would appeal to a broad audience. Very boring, but a good, baby step in home renovation.

As with all the houses in our price range, this one did need a lot of work. It was built in 1927, it had good bones and wasn’t in danger of falling down, but over the years we have updated all the electrical, most of the plumbing, added insulation everywhere, replaced furnace and ducting, got a new roof, renovated the kitchen and bathroom, and put in a basement suite. It seems like a lot when you look at the list, but meted out over many years, it was manageable.

I shouldn’t say that in past tense, actually, because we haven’t completely finished most of the DIY stuff, like the kitchen and bathroom updates. We’re still missing quite a lot of trim and a few light fixtures, but overall, it’s come a long way. I feel like we’re finally in the home stretch now.

In the last few months, as I’ve mentioned before, we’ve started putting more time into the yard. I never really minded being the ugly house on the block, before we got to working on the outside, but it’s definitely nice to get compliments on the work we’ve done from people walking by.

Aside from the actual house itself, I am so glad we started looking in the area we ended up in. It wasn’t on our radar at first, due to lack of amenities, but during the prolonged search (which turned out to be a positive) we realized the potential of this neighbourhood due to upcoming projects in the area. Luckily for us, this was before the market caught on and it was still the ‘cheap area’ to buy in.

Now, we are walking distance to most of our needs, we have numerous friends within a few blocks of us, and in non-COVID times, we’re only a few blocks away from swing dancing.

When I used to think ahead to the future that included all our renovations being complete, I felt kind of sad. What would we do then? But now that we’re getting somewhat closer to that, I can think of a million things to spend my time on. Mostly it looks a lot like my current daily life actually.

It’s amazing how much has changed in our lives over the last 10 years, but also how much hasn’t.

If I still have a blog in another 10 years, I’d like to think that my updates will include a paid-off mortgage and a backyard studio where I spend most of my time working on projects and creative pursuits. With the craziness of the last few months, it’s hard to imagine where we’ll be in another 6 months, let alone a decade, but fingers crossed!

39: Depth Year Update

If there’s one thing I can say about COVID-19, it’s that it has forced me to progress on some of my Depth Year goals. Not quite halfway through the year but I thought it would be a good time for an update.

Obviously, there’s a lot bigger and more important stuff happening in the world right now than my reading list, but I am not going to add my comments on that. I have been trying to do my part to support anti-racism by reading and watching and donating. I am working to educate myself, and I am optimistic that vast changes are on the horizon as others do the same.

You can find my original Depth Year post here. I’ll go topic by topic again:

Writing

This one has taken a back seat lately. I have been doing reasonably well with regular blog posts and I’m in the middle of The 100 Days Project currently, but I haven’t worked on any other writing much in the last couple of months.

When I first started staying home, writing seemed to be the easiest thing to work on, but lately I have been having trouble motivating myself. I think that my interests tend to move from project to project, so as long as I’m working on something, I’m not too worried about other things falling off the map.

Dancing

I don’t want to talk about it.

Obviously, this should be the ideal time to dig in and work on technique, but it’s just not happening. See my post, A Year Without Dancing, for more info.

Stained Glass

This practice, which I wasn’t sure if I would fit in this year at all, has actually come a long way. I have spent many hours over the last few weeks working on the glass panel for our front door, a project that has been on my ‘to-do’ list for years and years.

Since I got past the hurdle of setting up a work space and re-acquainting myself with my tools, it has been pretty enjoyable. I think it’s still too early to say whether this will be something I continue doing once my project is complete, but for now, it’s great.

I find it meditative to spend a few hours working on glass and listening to music. It gives me the freedom to let my mind wander while my hands focus on creating.

Interior Design

I think I mentioned in a previous post that I’ve decided to drop the idea I was working on for a side hustle. The only Interior Design I’ve been doing has been a few hours a week for my day job, and I am fine with that.

Renovations

While we haven’t really made any progress on finishing up the bits and pieces inside, we’ve made great strides out in the yard. Having no place to go on the weekends and no travel plans coming up, most of our time is being spent in the yard, whenever the weather is decent.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve got the front yard (the only area I’d started on in previous years) in great shape, we’ve replaced all the railings and added a roof over the deck, and now we’re getting started on the side and back yards.

We had to purchase new materials for the deck, but for the yard we’re mainly using salvaged and free items. Tonight I’m picking up 3 variegated sedges and some raspberry plants from someone a few blocks away.

Reading

So far this year, I’ve re-read 5 of my past favourites, with mixed results:

Fountainhead by Ayn Rand – This one is a doozy! It really set me back on my Reading Challenge progress, but I’ve gained a lot of ground since I finished it. (And I did put it down a few times so I could break things up a bit with fluffy, YA romance novels and such.)

Did I enjoy it? Yes. It was a bit of a slog at some points though; the characters don’t talk so much as lecture and it gets a bit tiresome. It was also a lot more black and white than I remembered. It’s an interesting viewpoint and well written, though I don’t agree with the philosophy it was promoting.

I still have Atlas Shrugged on my list too, but I’m waiting until I’ve read enough to meet my Reading Challenge for the year before I pick that one up.

Emily of New Moon series (3 books) by LM Montgomery – This was a favourite of mine when I was in elementary school. I seem to recall it being very romantic and inspirational.

Not so much now. I don’t know if I felt differently because I’ve grown up, or if the era of the book is to blame, but there was just so much miscommunication and conflict due to people not saying what they really thought. It was frustrating to read. They are still good books, just not as great as they were when I was in grade 5.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson – First of all, it blows my mind that this is non-fiction. It was as good as I remembered it, if not better. The story is crazy and I can’t believe he can even function well enough to write, which makes it that much more amazing how brilliantly he puts things into words. (If the whole thing is actually completely made up, I’m no less impressed.)

Overall, I’m happy with my progress, but I’m also curious how things might have gone differently in a ‘typical’ year. There would have been more dancing, for sure.