Dancing In Irreverence

28: Focal Points Follow-Up

Now that January is almost over and the excitement of a new year full of new goals and plans is wearing off, I think it’s a good time to check back on my Fall Focal Points. I did this in October when I was just starting out, which was about 3 months ago now, so I think it’s a good time for a progress report.

At the time I chose my focal points, I also plotted out a typical week and wrote in when I thought I would spend my time on each of the different pursuits. That part has not happened at all. I haven’t even actually tried to implement that part; I really only make an effort to use my free time productively on Mondays.

In my original ‘schedule’, I was going to spend early mornings working on my design idea, evenings working on either swing dancing or writing, and weekends working on stained glass. What I actually do is spend early mornings surfing the internet, and evenings watching TV. The weekends vary, but I think we’re still getting used to having free time and while we often acknowledge how great it is to be able to do whatever we want, we haven’t quite made it to the ‘doing’ part yet.

The reasons for my not being productive during these times are partly related to environment (not having an appropriate space to work) and partly just plain old self-motivation. Once I’ve gotten into a project, I find it easier to make the time because I have some momentum behind me. Right now I’m stuck in preparatory mode on a few of them and I need to force myself to keep taking small steps in the right direction.

Writing:

Of my 4 focal points, this is the one that I have kept up with the best. I think the reason is because it is the one I tend to focus on on Mondays. I don’t really write at any other time during the week because I can’t concentrate unless I am alone; I need quiet and I hate being interrupted.

Starting next week, Michel will be going on afternoon shift temporarily, which means I will have evenings to myself at home. I am planning to try to get a lot of writing done during that time, to see if I can. If I end up spending all my evenings watching teen movies and knitting, then I’ll have to reassess what the issue is.

There have been a few slight changes in direction, which I mentioned in my Depth Year post. I have started working on a young adult novel. I’m enjoying the exercise, but because I’ve only been writing on Mondays, I haven’t really gotten into a groove with it.

I’ve taken my blog from weekly down to once or twice a month to make room for working on the novel, so I’m hoping that will help.

Over the holidays, I wrote a few comic captions for Shiftyville, but other than that, I haven’t done anything on my collaborative projects.

The Thompsons loved nothing more than driving up to the Lookout on a clear night and airing their grievances into the valley. (Drawing by Ivana Pauletig, caption by me.)

Swing Dancing:

The biggest setback with this focal point is that my intention was to do more (or any!) practicing outside of social dancing, but we really don’t have a space to practice in.

So, instead, I’ve organized Balboa Saturday, a 4 hour workshop taking place in February. Somehow it was easier for me to co-ordinate with instructors, rent a hall and sound equipment, promote an event and keep track of registration and expenses, rather than force myself to do any unstructured practicing.

This is not something I had ever expected to do, but I am really excited about it. I would love to play a part in building a Balboa community in our area. I know there is a lot of interest, but there hasn’t been much opportunity for people to take classes beyond an introductory level.

Based on the amount of attention the upcoming event has received so far, I expect to continue holding workshops on an ongoing basis as long as there are people that want to take them. I will be attending the workshops too, so while this leap into organizing wasn’t part of my original plan, it does mean I will be working on my own dancing.

Stained Glass:

Yesterday we spent a few hours in the leftover half of our basement, organizing the aftermath of years of renovations. It’s going to take some time to get everything sorted out and appropriately dealt with, but when it’s done, I will have a space to work on stained glass. It won’t be a pretty space, but it will work until I can fix up our garage into my dream studio.

And now that winter is coming to an end, I am also realizing that I could set myself up on the back deck and work out there when the weather is right.

In the meantime, I am planning to design a few small pieces to use as practice before I tackle the larger project of our front door. I’m looking forward to getting back into it.

Design Project:

This project has been stalled out for months.

My idea is to start a side business providing space planning, mostly aimed at people who are renovating their house to add an income suite. It’s pretty specific, so my main problem is figuring out how to find the right audience. It doesn’t really have much overhead or ongoing maintenance, so it’s been hard to push myself on getting it out there.

I now have another (completely different) idea for a side business, but I don’t want to pursue it while this one is in limbo. I have given myself until the end of May to make something happen before I abandon it. It’s not that I don’t still think it’s a good idea, it’s just that I have been sitting on it a long time and it’s not worth holding onto if I don’t make something happen.

Depth Year

All of these Focal Points are also part of my Depth Year goal, and so far I’m happy with how it’s going. If anything, I am finding it really interesting to see how my ideas and plans in each of these areas evolve over time and take off in unexpected directions. I am sure this is just how life is, but until recently I have never really paid attention to the journey so I am finding it quite fascinating. That sounds pretty self-indulgent, but I don’t care.

27: Snow Day!

It’s a rare snow day for me today! Very exciting. I love it when it snows, especially when the whole city shuts down. (This actually happens every time, and I am good with that.)

It also means that I didn’t really have a plan for this post, so we’ll see how it goes.

I had half-heartedly intended to write something this past Monday, but my bigger concern was a pending Pearl Jam announcement. With 20+ years of fandom under my belt, I was aware that the whole day would likely be a write-off, and it was.

On Monday morning, Pearl Jam announced the release of a new album, coming this March, called Gigaton. They also announced the first leg of a North American tour, which will get me to my 40 show goal well before I turn 41. Being a frequent visitor to the Pearl Jam Forum, I had been keeping up to date with all tour rumours and leaks, so before the announcement was made I already knew which shows I was going to go to, and had basically planned my whole trip. Once the ‘official’ announcement came out, I started booking everything.

This is what the plan is:

We’re going to hit all the California shows, which are San Diego, LA (x2) and Oakland (x2). San Diego is the only one of those cities that I haven’t already seen Pearl Jam in, and I also haven’t been there since I was a kid. We’ll spend the weekend in San Diego before the show, and from what I have found, they have a good swing dancing scene and lots of live music to check out. I am looking forward to that first part of the trip the most.

Next stop will be LA. The two shows are at the Forum, where we went last January for a Chris Cornell tribute concert. It is a great venue with excellent views and really good sound. The location is in a pretty sketchy area, but I’ve booked a hotel in nearby Manhattan Beach and we’ll have a rental car so we can get to whatever we want to see during the day.

Our night off in LA is the wrong day of the week for the nearest social dance, but there is one about 40 minutes away if we’re feeling super motivated. I have a feeling that at that point, we might just want a quiet evening relaxing.

After LA, we’ll head to San Francisco. We’ve seen Pearl Jam in and around San Francisco almost as many times as at home. Those two Oakland shows are the last of the tour, which is always fun. We’re staying near the BART because we won’t have a car at that point, but San Francisco is easy to get around and there’s a lot to see.

In between booking flights and accommodations, I spent Monday perusing the Pearl Jam message board and facebook groups as everyone freaked out. The one thing I still haven’t seen any mention of is how ironic it is that we’re all planning flights and huge trips to see a band that is releasing a new album that seems to be focused on bringing attention to climate change.

Gigaton (the name of the album) is what scientists use to measure the loss of ice from Earth’s largest ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. This weight is equivalent to over 100 million elephants or 6 million blue whales.

The cover art is a photo called Ice Waterfall, by a Canadian photographer named Paul Nicklen. Nicklen is also the co-founder of an ocean conservation non-profit called SeaLegacy. The image shows a Norwegian ice cap gushing meltwater, highlighting the quickly rising temperatures in the Arctic.

I have no doubt that Pearl Jam will be donating some of their profits from the album and tour to this group and/or other similar causes.

For my part, I opted to offset the carbon emissions from our flights. I will probably do the same for the miles we drive on the trip, but I haven’t looked into it yet. For the flights, which I bought using Aeroplan points, it was as easy as clicking a check box during the booking process.

The only outstanding item for this trip right now is concert tickets. My fanclub request has been submitted and the odds are looking good to get into all 5 shows, it’s just a matter of waiting for the ticket allotments over the next few days.

The fan club ticketing system for this tour is a bit different than previous ones, but in a good way. There seem to be more fan club tickets available and more flexibility in ordering them. It sure beats the old days of having to block out a whole day to sit at your computer and desperately try to get through the buying process while the website crashed all over the place. (Admittedly, that was fun in its own way, but this is much less stressful.)

Since I wasted all of Monday goofing off, I should try to make better use of today’s bonus day. So far so good with a blog post, but I’ll try not to let it go to my head and cause me to slack off for the rest of the day. I hope everyone else is enjoying the winter wonderland today too.

Week 26: A Year of Not Buying Things

I like to make goals for myself each year. I try to have some that are career-related, some that are health-related or self-improvement type things, some just personal goals. It varies year to year depending on where I’m at.

For 2019, I had a goal to “Buy no more things” and this post is about how it went, now that the year is just about over. I didn’t make myself a specific list of rules, but I had a pretty clear idea of what counted as a ‘thing’ and what didn’t.

Here are the general guidelines:

Only personal spending was included. (We spent thousands and thousands of dollars on building supplies this year, but it was all from our renovation fund that we’d saved as part of our household budget and I am not counting any of that.)
Basic necessities were not included. (Stuff like shampoo and toothpaste, which also comes in under the household budget category anyway.)
Experiences were not included. (Concerts, dance events, meals out with friends…)
Gifts were not included. (I don’t tend to go too crazy in this category anyway, but if I bought something for a birthday or Christmas present, I didn’t count it.)

The idea of this goal wasn’t exactly to not spend any money, because I did spend money on all kinds of things. I was mostly trying to see how little stuff I needed to add into my life. I knew I probably wouldn’t get through an entire year without buying anything, but I’m not a big shopper anyway, so I was curious to see how well I would do.

Here are all the things I bought this year:

Souvenir T-shirt – This was in January, so I felt like a bit of a failure right off the bat, but it was our first time at the California Balboa Classic and I wanted a keepsake. In retrospect, I think I could have done without it.
Clinique face wash (x2) – I decided to count this because it’s a specialty item. It’s debatable whether it’s a ‘thing’ because it gets used up, but if I was into beauty supplies, I don’t think I could get away with not counting make-up and fancy hair products as I don’t think they are basic necessities.
Puzzle book – I bought this as a reward to myself for getting our basement suite done. It was symbolic of all the free time I would have on my hands going forward. I had fond memories of doing logic problems, etc. as a kid and thought it would be fun to do them again. As it turns out, I’m pretty much over it. Wouldn’t buy again.
Used Clothes – I bought a skirt, a top and a pair of pajamas from Value Village for the themed dances at a swing event last spring. I have only ever worn each of them the one time, and I probably could have gotten away with wearing things I already owned so, again, if I could do over, I probably wouldn’t bother.
Bras and Underwear – I managed to last until about October, but finally caved and bought some new underthings. This was purely out of necessity (brought about mostly by not taking proper care of my things and not following washing instructions.)
Dance shoes – This was a bit of a splurge but totally worth it. The shoes I bought are better quality than the ones I was wearing before (which are now discontinued) and should last me a few years. 100% happy with this purchase.
Socks – The new dance shoes necessitated some new low profile socks. I bought a pack of them online because I didn’t want to go into the mall when I really should have just bit the bullet and gone. I’m not very happy with my choice, but I will make do.
Giant Sweater – Around Halloween, we hit up Value Village for some stuff for Michel’s costume and I saw a huge hand-knit sweater for $9.95. I liked the colours and couldn’t pass up the deal of getting that much yarn for such a steal, so I bought it with the intention of unravelling it to make something with. It is now unravelled (which was a tedious and frustrating task) and waiting for its new life. I can’t say at this point if it was worth it or not, but it definitely provides a lot of yarn for a project or two in 2020, and that will save me from having to make at least one purchase next year.
Gloves – I bought a new pair of stretchy gloves in Tofino during my birthday week extravaganza. No regrets there. They are super cute and I have worn them every day since, and enjoyed every minute of it.
Day planner refill for 2020 – I have used the same style of day planner for many years and it is the definition of something that ‘sparks joy’ for me. I will probably buy one every year for the rest of my life, if I can.

* * *

The most surprising thing about this experiment, to me, was that from the beginning of the year to the end, I didn’t really run out of willpower or start to give up. It didn’t get harder as time went by; I think it actually got easier. It just became a habit to not bother browsing or looking up items I was casually interested in.

Having this goal in mind definitely made me consider things much more carefully. If there was something that I thought I really wanted but was going to put off buying this year, I wrote it down in my trusty day planner so that I could either buy it next year, or ask for it for Christmas or my birthday. A couple of those things I did get as gifts, and there are still a few things on the list that I want. None of them feel very urgent though. There were also a few things on the list that I ended up crossing off after a few months when I realized I didn’t really want them that badly.

Overall, I don’t feel like I deprived myself of anything this year, and looking back at what I did buy, if I had to do it all over again, I would only buy about half of it. Also, I can’t think of a single thing that I passed on and now wish I’d bought.

As for the experiment, I would definitely do it again, and I am planning to stick with it for 2020. I don’t really know what I learned about myself from this, except that there are very few things I actually need to add to my life. Spending my money and time on experiences holds much more value for me.

* * *

Unrelated Endnote:

This post marks 6 months of weekly blogging, which I feel is a success in regards to my original goal. I have proven to myself that I can write on a consistent basis, and I’ve enjoyed doing it, but I have other projects that I want to focus more time on going forward. I am finding that my weekly post is taking up too much of my one free day each week, so I am planning to post once or twice a month from now on.

Thanks to everyone that has been reading and encouraging me! I really appreciate it.

Happy New Year!

Julie

Week 25: Twelve Days of Vacation

Here we are at the penultimate post of the year, and I really didn’t have a plan for this week. I am now on vacation until the new year, and while I would normally be off today anyway, it still feels glorious.

I’m not going to go into great detail about what I’m going to do on each day because that would be super boring. Also, I have been trying to keep as much free, unstructured time available as possible, so it’s pretty up in the air right now, but here are a few things that I definitely want to fit into my vacation:

Vancouver Art Gallery

Currently, there is a Cindy Sherman show on at the VAG and I want to see it before it is gone, so that’s what I’m doing today. My long-time friend and artistic collaborator, Ivana, is off work too, so it’s the perfect chance for us to be cultural and catch up on things. We scheduled it for the first possible date we could.

Ivana and I have known each other since high school. We hung out in the same group of friends for all those years, and were in most of the same art classes together. After that, we both went to Emily Carr, and though we were in different programs, we saw each other often and also both worked at my mom’s store, Knotty Toys, during that time. We’ve been away from Granville Island for 17 years now, but we’ve always kept in touch, and over the last few years have worked together on our collaborative comics and some other things.

Shiftyville Comics is sporadic, but fun. We’ve participated in the #the100daysproject on Instagram the past few years and this year we got sidetracked due to work commitments, so we’re attempting to finish our last 21 comics over the next week or so. We’ll see how that goes!

Writing

I would love to have 12 days off to just sit at home by myself and work on various writing projects, but Christmas vacation is not conducive to that. I think I have a maximum of two days in a row available at any given time on this break, so I will just have to make do.

Over the past couple of months I have started working on a YA novel, while also reading a book about writing for that genre. I’m finished reading the book now, so I have a lot of things to keep in mind as I write, but I’m enjoying the challenge and the process. That being said, I haven’t touched it in a few weeks and I don’t want to lose steam, so I definitely need to put some time to it over the holidays.

My other writing projects are this blog, which only has one more post to go for the year, and Shiftyville Comics. Neither of them really takes up a ton of time though.

Year-End Review

This is one of my nerdy passions and it includes reviewing our household budget and making adjustments for 2020, finishing up what I call “Q4 Tasks” and this year, doing a review of my personal spending.

When I say “household budget”, I don’t mean I set out how much we are allowed to spend in each category; it is more just tracking how much our expenses have been so that we are sure to have enough money to cover them, but don’t have extra money in the bank with no job. Any money that isn’t allotted to something is going into savings. (Don’t worry, we do have amounts allotted to frivolous things too.)

I have been tracking our household expenses since we first moved in together 15+ years ago, but it is only recently that we have actually started a Savings category. Before that, we put what we needed into our household account (plus a little to RRSPs) and any leftover money was frittered away on who knows what. That is a guaranteed way to make sure you need to work for the rest of your life, so time’s up on that method.

Q4 Tasks are all the things I wrote in my day planner over the last few months and never got around to doing. Mostly unimportant stuff, like listening to a particular podcast episode, or making an update on my website, but things that I still intend to do. I would like to get them all checked off and be able to start 2020 fresh, because there are always more things to add to the list.

This year I am most excited about doing a review of my personal spending because I had a goal of not buying any “things” in 2019. I didn’t 100% succeed, but I think I did pretty well and I want to write my final blog post of the year about the experience. I went through my spending up to October a little while back, so I just need to look at the last 3 months to get the whole picture.

Knitting

My mom got me a gift certificate for the yarn store for my birthday and I used it to buy some fancy yarn for a scarf, and some nice thick wool for a cardigan.

The scarf pattern is called Autopilot, and as the name suggests, it’s an easy one to do while watching TV. That project should be complete tonight and I am excited to start working on the sweater. I even have a knitting date set up with a friend for after Christmas. To me, spending the day knitting is a winter vacation luxury that shouldn’t be passed up.

Dancing

Yesterday, we went to Crescent Beach Legion for the White Rock Traditional Jazz Society’s Christmas party. It was as good as expected, but unfortunately, I think that is the only live jazz event on our schedule for this break.

My mom and her friend, Dianne, joined us for their first time at the WRTJS, and I think they were sufficiently impressed that they will come back again in the future. Michel and I also got a chance to practice our Slow Balboa for one song, and it went reasonably well. Plus, being the Christmas party, there were little sandwiches!

We do have a handful of other dances coming up during the holidays, all within a few minutes of our house. They may end up being spent socializing more than dancing, depending on people’s energy levels, but that’s fun too.

Flex Time

This is the most important thing to me. It’s not a particular item I want to fit in, it’s just having the option to spend my time as I please. I won’t be setting my alarm clock, and my only deadlines are making some food to bring to a couple of dinner parties, getting presents wrapped (and let’s be honest, at the level of detail I go to, that will take about 15 minutes total) and returning a library book. Seems pretty doable.

Week 24: Slow Balboa

As we head towards the end of the year, every weekend is packed with multiple options for socializing and celebrating. It’s fun in some ways, but I do value my downtime too, so it starts to feel a bit overwhelming to look at my calendar and see so many commitments.

This year, we decided it would be a good idea to schedule ourselves for a full weekend of dance workshops in Seattle less than two weeks before Christmas. As it got closer, this started to seem like it might have been a mistake, but it turned out to be an excellent decision.

We headed out early Saturday morning, joined by a couple of our dance friends along the way. The first class of the day started at 12:30pm, so we had plenty of time to get ourselves to Seattle without stressing out. The weather was on and off rain, which isn’t ideal, but could have been a lot worse at this time of year.

The workshops we were signed up for were to learn Slow Balboa. I know I have mentioned Balboa a few times in other posts. It’s probably my favourite type of dancing. Typically it is done to very fast music, but there is a variation called Slow Balboa that is done to very slow music and that is what we wanted to learn. Michel and I had taken a short crash course in Slow Bal about a year ago. We didn’t get much out of it because it was at the end of a weekend of classes and it was just too much to take in at that point, especially in a condensed ‘taster class’ format.

This weekend was solely focused on Slow Bal and we had 7 hours of classes to wrap our minds around it, which seemed more reasonable. The classes were taught by Jenn Lee, who is from Seattle, and Jacob Wigger, who was visiting from LA. We had taken quite a few classes from each of them, both together and separately, in the past, and knew the workshops would be enjoyable.

For reference, this is them doing Slow Balboa: https://youtu.be/lmWZLOeREuA

It looks dreamy, doesn’t it? Well, I can tell you from experience, it is. I could not recommend a better dance to throw yourself into during the holiday rush. We spent 4 hours on Saturday afternoon learning the basics, and a few moves. (I honestly can’t remember the content at the moment, so luckily we have our video recap to look back at.)

Our little travelling group was all new to Slow Balboa, even though we all had quite a bit of “regular” Balboa experience, and we were all super happy with the classes that day. We learned a ton, but it felt like we spent the afternoon listening to relaxing music and hugging people, which is basically what we did spend the afternoon doing. That being said, it was also pretty exhausting, in a good way.

We had booked a hotel in Bellevue to be close to the party that night, so after the workshops ended, we headed out of town to check in, and then googled the area to find ourselves some dinner.

We decided on a ramen restaurant that was about a 20 minute walk away. Unknowingly we were heading right into Snowflake Lane, less than an hour before the nightly parade. It was extremely festive, with the streets decked out with lights for blocks and families gathered along the curb to get a spot for the show. It definitely made the walk much more enjoyable and interesting, and distracted us from the rain and cold a bit.

When we got to the restaurant there was a bit of a wait, but it was worth it. We had Natsuko, who is a ramen expert, and Cale, who had never tried ramen, and me and Michel. Michel and I are not experts, but we do eat ramen regularly and have our preferences. Everyone was very happy with their meal, even though we missed the parade.

At this point it was after 8pm, so we had just enough time to get ready for the evening’s Balboa House Party at Jenn’s in nearby Kirkland. About a year ago, Michel and I had come to Seattle for Balboa workshops with Jenn and Jacob, but we had not attended the house party. We realized on Sunday morning that that had been a huge mistake, as we’d missed an evening of dancing to live jazz by some of our favourite local musicians. This year we would not leave with any regrets.

The party was very enjoyable. It was like any other party, a bunch of people hanging around the kitchen, eating, drinking and chatting, except that there was a 6 piece jazz band in the living room and the dining room was the dance floor. So like a regular house party, but way better.

My feet were killing me from wearing heels all day, so I elected to stay in socks. It made dancing extra slippery, but I had quite a few good dances, many with leads who were wearing shoes, and there were no great catastrophes.

Generally, I don’t love going to parties and socializing with a lot of different people at high volume, but this was small enough, and I knew enough people that I had a nice time and didn’t have to resort to hanging out with the pets. (Which is good, because Jenn’s dog was not at home that evening anyway.)

On Sunday the classes didn’t start until 12:30pm so we had lots of time to sleep in, enjoy our free breakfast at the hotel (which was surprisingly decent) and then go out to a nearby donut shop for second breakfast before checking out.

Sunday’s classes included more moves than basics, and while they were enjoyable, I did prefer Saturday’s content. It was mostly due to being tired and having a full brain from the day before, I’m sure.

Our drive home was pretty quiet because we were all exhausted, but we all thought it was a very well-spent weekend. Now we have the task of keeping Slow Balboa alive locally with only 4 of us to do it. I guess I’ll add that to my Depth Year plans, now that I’ve sneaked a new dance style in right before the cut off.

Week 23: Best Books of 2019

As I mentioned last week, I read a lot. So far this year I’ve finished 44 books, plus I’m midway through 2 more right now. I have always loved reading but it fell out of my routine while I was in school, so a few years ago I made a conscious effort to bring it back.

Since then, I’ve set aside an hour before bed every weeknight, and I read during my commute (while I’m waiting for and riding the bus), and sometimes in the evenings too. This has enhanced my life greatly.

These are all the books I’ve given 5 star ratings to this year. They’re not necessarily in order from best to least-best and this is mainly because my memory for books, once I’ve finished them, is terrible. Sometimes certain things stand out, but often, even a book I LOVED can completely disappear from my mind within weeks of finishing it. Needless to say, these will not be overly detailed reviews. They’re more like brief recommendations.

Beartown by Frederik Backman

I originally only read this book because it was showing up on a lot of “Best of” lists, not because it sounded interesting. It’s about a hockey town, which isn’t really something I would expect to connect with, but the author does such a great job of drawing you into the lives of the individual characters that it almost doesn’t matter what the book is about. While hockey is a big part of the story, you don’t have to care about sports to enjoy reading it.

There’s a lot of tragedy and heartbreak in this book, but it’s not depressing to read because it also has a lot of hope and humanity.

Britt-Marie Was Here by Frederik Backman

Same author, but completely different from Beartown. This book is much quirkier and is laugh out loud funny. Backman seems to have two distinct styles of writing and I enjoy them both. I would definitely classify this book as a comedy, but it still draws you into the characters’ lives and gets you emotionally invested in them.

Over the last couple of years I’ve read most of Frederik Backman’s books and it never fails to amaze me that they were written in Swedish and then translated to English. The writing is so good, and not just because the overall stories are good; it’s his use of words and phrasing that are so perfect that I can’t help but wonder how much the translation* differs from the original writing. I guess the only way to know for sure is to learn Swedish.

*Beartown was translated by Neil Smith and Britt-Marie Was Here was translated by Henning Koch, so it’s not like he just has one really amazing translator that takes his stories and turns them into masterpieces.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

I was actually really surprised at how much I enjoyed this book. I have not had a lot of success reading ‘classics’, but a few people I know consider this one of their favourites, so I thought it was worth a try. It turns out it wasn’t boring at all!

The language definitely takes some getting used to, and there were times I had to read and re-read sections to understand what was being said, but overall I found it entertaining and humourous. I would read more Jane Austen, for sure.

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

This is a Young Adult novel about a girl starting university and feeling like she doesn’t belong there, but gradually connecting with people and making a place for herself as time goes by.

I love awkward coming-of-age teen movies, and this is the book equivalent.

I was totally absorbed and enjoyed the characters and writing. It was funny and sweet, and my only problem with this book was that I felt like the pop culture references made too much sense to me as a 40-year-old. Shouldn’t they speak to someone half my age instead?

The Renaissance Soul: How to Make Your Passions Your Life – A Creative and Practical Guide by Margaret Lobenstein

I found this book really helpful in providing me with some direction for how I could organize my time to get the most out of all my competing interests. I talked about it a bit in my post about Focal Points. If you have this same conundrum, I would recommend reading it; if you don’t, then it’s not for you.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

I read this after watching the TV series and still found it totally enjoyable. Also, there is a sequel that just came out and I didn’t want to read that without having first read the original. It’s amazing that this book was written 35 years ago because it is so scarily relevant today.

Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos

This is part of a 3 book series which I accidentally read in completely backwards order and still enjoyed a lot. This author writes people really well and it’s easy to get caught up in the lives of the characters. I don’t really remember any of the details about it off the top of my head, but it was entertaining at the time.

The Precious One by Marisa de los Santos

Another one by the same author as above, not part of the same series though. Again, totally enjoyable, but I can’t remember much about it. Good solid fluff.

The Magic Words by Cheryl Klein

This is the first book I’ve read on writing for young adults and children and it was super informative and interesting. I really liked the format and the way each topic was broken down into points because it made it easy for taking notes. Most of the content is not really applicable to me at this stage, but I do intend to go through it again later, when it is.

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

This story is about two sisters in France during the Nazi occupation. One of them joins the Resistance while the other stays at home and tries to keep her family alive. It’s fictional, but based on a lot of research and true stories. It’s really interesting in that it provides a look at WWII from the perspective of women.

The Murder Stone by Louise Penny

This is part of the Inspector Gamache series, which is my go-to series when I want something light and entertaining. You don’t really have to read these books in order, but there are some background subplots that continue from book to book, so it helps with that part if you don’t jump around too much.

They’re pretty typical murder mystery fodder, except that they’re Canadian, which is nice for a change. I can’t remember why this one got 5 stars when I’ve given most of the other ones 4. I guess it was especially gripping.

Week 22: Depth Year

A few weeks ago I came across an article on Raptitude that I found very interesting. You can read it here, but the basic idea is presented in the first few sentences:

“After you’re established in your career, and you have some neat stuff in your house, you take a whole year in which you don’t start anything new or acquire any new possessions you don’t need.
No new hobbies, equipment, games, or books are allowed during this year. Instead, you have to find the value in what you already own or what you’ve already started.
You improve skills rather than learning new ones. You consume media you’ve already stockpiled instead of acquiring more.”

If you’ve been following my blog, you can probably see right away how this idea would appeal to me. Not acquiring unnecessary new possessions is something I’ve been working on for this past year and was already planning to do again next year.

The other part of this idea, which may not be as clear from those few sentences I shared, is that you spend the year focusing on things you’ve already started, instead of starting new hobbies and following new interests that pop up along the way. This is also in line with my plans, as it relates to the idea of Focal Points, but it also provides an overall framework for how to determine what to spend time on.

I like the idea of having a set of guidelines that I can refer to, as a way of checking in on my progress and determining if I’m on track or not. So that’s what I’m going to make today.

Starting with my four Focal Points:

Writing

I don’t think it will present much of a problem to continue on with this hobby and not buy any new possessions. The way this challenge relates to writing is that it will push me to continue working on projects that I have already started, instead of starting new ones. I think I actually have enough on the go to easily keep me occupied for an entire year.

I’ve started working on writing a young adult novel, which is a genre I really love and I think will be a fun challenge. Due to the amount of writing involved though, I can definitely see that it could be something that might be hard to complete, so including it in my Depth Year challenge should make me more accountable to actually completing a first draft.

I’m also going to continue writing this blog, though likely I will take it down a notch from weekly posts to once or twice a month. I am already finding that there is a time that works best for me to write and I am using up so much of it on the blog that I don’t have enough left to get anything significant done on the novel.

I also have my Shiftyville comics, which have been on hiatus, but I will work on those whenever the opportunity arises.

Dancing

This is a tricky one. Again, I can probably get by quite easily not buying any new possessions related to dancing, but my interpretation of ‘go deeper, not wider’ indicates that the year would be spent working on things that I’ve already learned, instead of branching out to new stuff. That would mean not taking any workshop.

Or, I can go with the broader interpretation, which is that dancing is already an established hobby and anything I do towards improving my skills is just fine. I feel like that’s cheating though, when I have so much material available to me already. This one might involve a family meeting.

We’re already signed up for some blues workshops in February, and we’ll be doing another weekend of swing workshops in April, so there’s no way we’re going to be sticking to only practicing things we’ve already learned.

Since I’m making my own guidelines, my plan is to keep new material to a minimum, and to make an effort to go back through old material and actually practice the things we’ve learned. Not much different than what I already had in mind for my Focal Points, really.

Stained Glass

I don’t even know if I will get to this one this year, mainly because I don’t have a suitable workspace at the moment. That being said, if I do get a chance to pick up this hobby again, it would be completely impossible to do it without making any purchases. I still have all my old equipment, but I don’t have any glass on hand at all.

I actually think this is a huge omission in the original article. The only mention of any form of visual art is watercolour painting and he indicates he could become an accomplished painter in a year with his set of paints. No mention of paper, brushes, or the fact that he’s probably going to run out of his favourite colour long before the year is up.

Most, if not all, visual art forms require supplies that are going to be used up in the process of making art, so I am going to say that supplies don’t count as possessions. They’re consumable, and necessary, so for my purposes, they’re going to be allowed.

Interior Design

I’ve alluded here and there to a side project I’ve been working on. I plan to continue working on it, at least for the first half of the year. I’ve been dragging my feet a bit on this one, so I am going to try to push myself to move forward and see a few things through, and then I will reassess if I want to continue on or drop it.

For all 4 Focal Points, I think the idea of a Depth Year works really well. In most cases, it provides a bit more direction for how I should best use my time, which is helpful.

Beyond those 4 themes, there are a couple of other topics that I’m going to include because they are related to how I spend my time and money.

Renovations

We’ve been working on our house since we moved in almost 10 years ago. At this point, the major stuff is done, but we have a lot of unfinished projects that have been sitting dormant for varying amounts of time. We also have a good stash of building supplies sitting in the basement that we need to either use up, or get rid of.

I know if we set our minds to it, we can definitely get all these bits and pieces completed, so I think a Depth Year is a good way to make it happen. I have vague memories of finishing up all the projects at our townhouse, about 5 minutes before we put it on the market. It was extremely satisfying, and I remember wondering why we hadn’t done it earlier so we could actually enjoy it for ourselves.

This will, of course, involve buying some things, but they will be in the category of supplies and not possessions. No plans to buy any new furniture or anything like that. Part of getting our house finished also includes more purging of unnecessary possessions, which has been an ongoing process over the past couple of years.

I also want to do a lot of work on our backyard, which has been in a state of neglect for almost 10 years (which, not coincidentally, is how long we’ve lived here). Aside from replacing the rotting railings on our deck, I want to do the majority of the improvements to the yard using salvaged and/or shared items. We did our front yard this way and it was super satisfying. This is an open-ended project and there is a lot of room for creativity; I think it will be pretty enjoyable to work on something so much more flexible than most of our other house projects.

Reading

I read a lot. Over the past few years I have averaged somewhere around 40 – 45 books per year. The article is very clear about not buying new books, which is no problem because I am reading only library books anyway, but it’s also pretty specific about reading or re-reading books you already have on hand. My problem with that is that I don’t have enough on hand to keep me going for the whole year.

So here’s my plan: I will read the books I have on hand that I haven’t read, but have been meaning to. I will also re-read the favourites I own, and maybe even re-read a few that I don’t own by borrowing them from the library. That probably covers about half a year worth of reading material.

For the other half, I will try to read the books that have been on my ‘want to read’ list for the longest amount of time* plus I am making an exception for YA fiction. Because I’m working on writing in this genre, I’m going to allow myself to continue reading new YA fiction as much as I want and I’m calling it research. My challenge, my rules.

This all seems quite reasonable and doable to me at the moment, but I will be sure to follow up with my progress throughout 2020. It will be interesting (for me, at least) to see how my perspective changes on each topic as time goes by and I find out how easy or difficult it is to adhere to the guidelines I made.

*I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned it, but I have a terrible memory for what I’ve read or watched. I am dedicated to my Goodreads account, which I use to keep track of what I have read and what I want to read and it is the best tool ever. If you’re on Goodreads, let’s be friends!

Week 21: Reflections at 40

Birthday week complete! I’m writing this from the other side of 40, and things are about the same as they were last week, but for one: I feel like I’ve now paid my dues and I no longer have to care what anyone thinks. Admittedly, this was not a sudden change; I’m really just using 40 as a convenient reference point.

I know I’m not the first person to feel like this, whether due to a birthday or some kind of epiphany, but while I’m on the topic, if you need some inspiration in this direction, here are a couple of good ones:

I always liked the poem, Warning, which you probably already know. The first lines are:

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.

It goes on to talk about all the things the author will do as an old woman that she can’t get away with right now. I have no plans to start spitting in public, or being obnoxious to sales clerks, but I like the general idea of the poem.

I think actually a better inspirational figure would be Maude, from the movie Harold and Maude. I watched that movie for the first time about 20 years ago and it has stuck with me. It’s definitely worth a trip to the library to borrow, if you can’t find it online somewhere.

I’ve been thinking about my life in ‘eras’ over the last week or so, partly because I was brainstorming about what to write for my 40^th birthday blog post, and partly because I’ve been reading a book about writing fiction. It goes over all the main elements, like character development, plot, etc. so I’m in the mindset of organizing stories and timelines right now.

So this post is going to be reflections on the decades of my life and how they contributed to where I’m at now. (I’ll be fudging some timelines slightly, to keep things orderly, so no need to correct me if you see something is a little off – trust me, it doesn’t matter.)

Background (0 – 19)

I’m lumping the whole first 20 years of my life together because I am considering this era as my background story. Nothing particularly traumatic happened while I was growing up, lucky me, so while it’s all important to who I am today, it was an ongoing learning process and I’m not going to go into detail about any particular events.

Exploration (20 – 29)

During my 20s, a lot of change happened: I went to art school, moved out of my parents’ house, started working full time, bought a townhouse, got married, and then started going to school for Interior Design.

At the time, I had no idea how much of an impact going to art school would have on my life. Being there, it mostly just seemed fun; I got to work on interesting projects and meet lots of great people. We used to joke that BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) stood for “Bachelor of Fuck All” because it was so useless in the real world. It’s only been the last few years that I have started to notice how important that whole experience was to my outlook.

This may be similar for any kind of liberal arts education, but I only have my experience to go from. The opportunity to be surrounded by people that are constantly challenging you to think critically about mainstream culture is so valuable. Being a kid straight out of high school, I didn’t realize this wasn’t necessarily typical for everyone, but I now think it should be.

The alternative, I imagine, is getting an education solely for the purpose of obtaining a high-paying job and launching a successful career. Financially, that’s probably a great idea, but I wonder if you end up buying into “normal” a bit too readily and don’t have a chance to realize there are some questionable aspects of society that you’ve unwittingly accepted. I’m sure, like everything, it’s a personal journey, but I’m glad I had the experience that I did because it provided a great basis for looking at the world critically and understanding that you don’t need to follow a standard set of guidelines to have a good life.

Despite that, the majority of the events that happened during my 20s were things that I/we decided to do either because they seemed like the next logical step in life, or an opportunity was presented that seemed like a good idea. There wasn’t a clear plan for where these decisions would take me/us, and I think that’s fine because we didn’t know what we wanted anyway.

Finding Direction (30 – 39)

In my 30s, I started working in my career as an Interior Designer, we bought our ‘forever’ home, did a lot of renovations, and started swing dancing. All of these things were done intentionally.

Not to say that we did everything with a clear plan at this point, just that I/we were getting a better idea of the direction we wanted to head in, and we started doing things accordingly.

With our house, we knew we wanted to stay here long term, so any updates we made were for us. It felt very freeing, and still does.

In the townhouse, every change we made was with resale in mind, so we were careful about keeping the colours and finishes bland and easy-to-accept. Now, if I want to have a lime green kitchen, then I do. Adulthood at its finest – living in a purple house with an orange front door, and having a giant print of myself and Mike McCready in the living room.

Swing dancing, as I’ve mentioned in a previous post or two, has become a huge part of our lives. While we did intentionally seek it out as a pastime, we really had no idea of the extent it would become integrated into our social lives, our vacations, our musical tastes… Obviously this didn’t happen without our wanting it to, so I guess it was intentional, just not pre-planned.

At this point, it’s hard to imagine what we would be doing without dance, but it has definitely enhanced our lives greatly and expanded our sense of community. And it doesn’t hurt to have a healthy, inexpensive hobby ready to go whenever you’re looking for something to do.

Making It Happen (40+)

I can’t predict what the future holds, but I do know a lot more now about how I want to spend my time and what makes me happy, so I intend to do my best to continue moving in that direction. I’ve already gone into this a bit in my posts about Life Energy Valuation and Fall Focal Points, and no doubt it will continue to pop up in others.

I am also finding that the more time I spend working on my various interests, the more I am able to find direction within each area that I want to focus on. I have some specific ideas about how I want to approach that over the next year, but I will leave that for next week.

Week 20: Birthday Week

It’s my birthday this Friday so, obviously, I took the whole week off. I would highly recommend it, if you have the option to do so.

I think last year was the first time I took a birthday week, and it was mostly a lucky coincidence that I was able to do it. I was transitioning between my old job and my new one, so it made sense to build in a few days of freedom.

I already feel like my time off has been well-spent and it’s only Monday morning.

On Saturday, we went to Pat’s Pub in Vancouver for a special jazz show. The Jen Hodge All-Stars were doing a tribute to Jelly Roll Morton and the band line-up was killer. The reason for this show is that Jelly Roll Morton, the self-proclaimed ‘inventor of jazz’ actually lived in Vancouver, at the Patricia Hotel (where the pub is) 100 years ago.

We got there early because, while we can predict that swing dancers will arrive late, we didn’t know how early the jazz listeners would arrive. The answer is, much earlier than us. We got there half an hour before the show was to start and snagged a tiny little bar table in the back corner of the main room. It was pretty much the only spot left in the same room as the stage.

It was cool to go to a show where a great jazz legend had actually played, but it’s not a fantastic venue for dancing or even watching. There are giant columns that partially block the view of the stage from every angle and the dance space is very unofficial and tight.

Despite all that, it was a really fun time. The music was fantastic, and lots of dancers showed up. We did more listening and chatting than actual dancing, but the room had a really good vibe and it was definitely the best way you could spend a rainy Saturday afternoon in November.

The most band you can see between two posts.

On Sunday, the same band was playing a show at the Crescent Beach Legion, which is one of our favourite places to dance. We regularly go to White Rock Jazz on Sundays, so we knew what to expect. We grabbed our regular table, brought our own snacks and changed into our dancing shoes.

The Legion doesn’t have the same jazzy atmosphere as the pub did, but the dance floor is really nice and dancing is expected. There are no waitresses buzzing through giving you dirty looks, and no one in the audience expects a view of the band that doesn’t include dancers in their way.

It’s hard to believe actually, the show we got for only $10. It’s unheard of. Almost every time I go to the Legion for jazz, at some point it occurs to me how lucky we are to be able to experience this.

The White Rock Traditional Jazz Society has been putting on weekly shows for many years, and as a non-profit, they use the membership fees to support a Youth Jazz program. This program has helped many of the jazz musicians that we see play regularly and I’m sure it’s gone a long way in keeping traditional jazz music alive locally. I would highly recommend becoming a member, even if you can only attend a show or two each year.

Because of the great band line-up, and the fact that Jen Hodge, the bandleader, is moving to New York this week, there were more swing dancers than usual. The legion always has tons of dancers, but swing dancers are few. Yesterday we had a table of 8 or 9 people, double our usual size.

The band was possibly even better than the day before, and the dancing for sure was much better. Then, we won the 50/50! Now our jazz is covered for the next month or so.

On our way home, Michel and I stopped for dinner at our favourite sushi place in New Westminster, Ki Sushi. It was excellent as always, with the bonus of the couple in the booth next to us having a first date that included quite a lot of interview-style conversation. I learned a lot.

I do not know if it is customary to detail all of your sexual preferences right up front, but I suppose that would be helpful to make sure everyone is on the same page from the get-go. We missed the start of the date, so I don’t know if the guy was new to the area, but I can only assume that is the case. She was trying to teach him how to use chopsticks and it seems highly unlikely that he would need this help if he had lived here for any length of time. Possibly he was pretending not to know as some kind of ploy.

Now, it’s Monday morning and I’m looking at two days of free time all to myself. I have so many things I want to work on that it doesn’t seem like enough, but that is my own doing because on Wednesday we are heading to Tofino for a couple of nights.

I have never been to Tofino, that I can remember. I know there are pictures of me at Long Beach with my family when I was about 3 or 4, but I think that is the last time I was there.

We are staying at the Wickannish Inn, which has been on my bucket list for many years. I hope it lives up to my expectations because even the weeknight, off-season rate is far beyond my comfort level. This is my 40^th birthday though, so we’re splurging.

For Michel’s 40^th, we were new to swing dancing so we decided to rent a hall and a DJ and do a dance lesson and swing dance to get all our family and friends out to try. They all did, but I am pretty sure not a single one of them ever went to another swing dance after that. That was 5 years ago and now we have completely lost interest in trying to get people out dancing. So, instead, we’re spending the same amount of money on a little getaway.

I’ve never really been one to want a big party anyway, so this suits me very well. My actual birthday is on Friday though, so I am inviting the whole world to our usual Friday night dance at Royal City Swing. Hopefully a few will come out, but either way, it’s not costing me anything. (Actually, Michel is DJing, so we’ll come out ahead!)

The following weekend, I have a little get-together with my closer friends on Saturday night, and then Sunday dinner at my mom’s. That still leaves me with my regular Monday to blog and do whatever else I want, so that is pretty great. I am looking forward to all of it!

Week 19: Reflections on Public Transit

I have been a regular transit-user for most of my life, so with a bus strike on the horizon, I thought it would make for a timely topic for this week’s post. I haven’t really been keeping very close tabs on the details of where things are at, but it will definitely affect me if bus drivers walk off the job.

The last big bus strike that took place here was in 2001 and it lasted 123 days, or about 4 months. At that time, as a student commuting between Burnaby and Granville Island almost daily for both school and work, I don’t actually recall it being that big of a deal. I’m sure for many people it was a disaster, but I was lucky to be able to continue to use the Skytrain for the majority of my route. According to Google Maps the strike would have added about an hour of walking each way, in place of the buses I normally took.

My only specific memory related to that time is that my Granny and her friend had a subscription to a VSO program called Tea and Symphony (or something along those lines) that was during the afternoon every couple of months or so. They usually took the bus in from White Rock, but due to the strike, they couldn’t make it.

My Granny offered the tickets to me to go with one of my friends, which I did. I have no idea what the show itself was, but I do distinctly remember standing in the lobby during the “tea” part with my friend, Ivana, and being the only people under the age of 75 in the room.

If the bus drivers walk off the job now, it will affect my commute as an inconvenience more than an emergency situation. I typically take the bus to work. It’s only about a 10 minute ride, but it replaces either a 45 minute walk along an industrial road, or getting in the car and driving. The drive would be under 10 minutes, so that’s probably the option I’ll take. If it was a different time of year, walking would be a reasonable alternative, but I can’t see myself leaving home in the dark and, most likely, the rain to spend an hour (normal walk plus the bus part) getting to work. I know myself better than that.

The majority of the other people on my bus are going to have a tougher time, I think. For my previous job I took this same bus and went much farther along the route. If you don’t have a car, there is no other option for getting to work out that way.

I’ve only skimmed a few articles and headlines, but I feel pretty confident saying I support the bus drivers. They have the worst job and I would never want it. The least they should get is enough time to stop and pee in between trips.

My bus is late half the time due to road work and traffic issues, and whenever this is the case my bus driver franticly waves us all through without tapping in, to save time. I can’t say I’ve heard anyone complaining to her or blaming her for being late, but it’s clearly stressing her out.

This particular bus goes to Port Coquitlam, so if the bus is late, we just have to wait. There’s no other option to get out there. This is one area that could use better transit options.

I would love to see the Skytrain extended into more areas, but I know that’s costly. In the meantime, ridership is expanding and I think the bus drivers definitely deserve to have their situation reviewed to reflect the current environment.

When I was a kid, the original Skytrain line was built for Expo 86. I grew up in Vancouver, just a few minutes’ walk from what is now Joyce-Collingwood Station. After it was built, you could look out our living room window and see straight to the Skytrain.

Since then they’ve built up the area with high rises around the station, but back in the day, it was just single-family homes, with low warehouses along the trainline. In the summer, if we had our window open, you could actually hear the chimes of the skytrain doors closing when it was quiet out. (I don’t think it ever gets that quiet there now.)

When we moved to Burnaby, I was still in high school and chose not to change schools, so from then on I took a bus and the train every day. After I graduated, I started at Emily Carr on Granville Island, and my commute became a bus, the train and then another bus, each way. I don’t remember ever thinking this seemed to be much of a hardship.

I have noticed over the years that the more frequently you use transit, the less hassle it feels like. For me, anyway. Once I stop using it for a while, it starts to seem like a big deal to get on the train to go downtown, whereas at other times in my life, I think nothing of it. Driving, on the other hand, seems to be more annoying the more I do it.

In my adult life, we have always been a single car household. This also has never really been much of an inconvenience to us. We have always been (purposefully) well-situated in regards to Skytrain stations, so it’s been easy to make it work.

At the beginning of my career in Interior Design, I took the train to downtown Vancouver daily. The system isn’t perfect, but I can really only think of a handful of times that there were major issues or delays. It’s an easy and efficient way to get where you need to go, and during the time you’re getting there you can read, listen to music, sleep (if you’re lucky enough to get a seat) or distract yourself with your phone.

Of course, I do have a list of transit pet peeves that I curated during the years of taking the train every day. The whole list could actually be summed up with one item, which is: People who are oblivious of their surroundings.

The specific instances where this makes me crazy are as follows:

People who don’t walk left and stand right on the escalator; how can they not notice the backup they’re causing? Doesn’t it seem weird to them that the whole way up in front of them is clear and everyone is jammed onto one side?
People who get out of their seat too early on a crowded train; there’s nowhere to move so no one can take your empty seat yet, you’re just adding to the crush of people for no reason; it will thin out when the doors open, just stay put!
People who listen to their headphones so loud that everyone else has to as well (I admit, I probably did this as a teenager when I was taking transit to school and that is because I was oblivious to other people)
People who wear perfume. This is not just a transit pet peeve, I think perfume and cologne should be banned everywhere.

On a related note, only in that it’s more complaining, I find it very weird when people tell me they’ve never taken the Skytrain. They always say it as if they’re proud of themselves for some reason. They should be using the same tone they would if they were admitting that they’ve never used the internet.

I get the impression that they think taking the train is beneath them; that it’s only for poor people who can’t afford to waste a lot of money on gas and parking.* Prince Charles and Princess Diana took the train in 1986, so I think you should give it a chance too.

*I admit, sometimes I choose to drive when transit would work just fine, but I will tell you straight up that the decision is usually based on laziness and/or convenience. I do weigh the options for each individual situation though.

I hope that the transit workers can come to an agreement soon, without a lot of disruption to buses. The most important reason for this, to me, is that I don’t want everyone to get back in their cars. As I mentioned earlier, the less you take transit, the more hassle it seems like it will be to start doing so again. We are really at a point where we need to re-evaluate how much we drive and this could be a big setback for getting cars off the road.

On the other hand, it might just get more people to realize how much they hate driving. With extra cars on the road, it’s going to be worse for everyone, so hopefully it will cause a few epiphanies. I am pretty sure my life would be a lot different right now if I hadn’t been pushed to the breaking point by a hideous commute. I actually feel that it was the catalyst for so many changes that I’ve made in my life over the last two years and I’m super grateful for that. Fingers crossed that it helps a bunch of other people in the same way.