Remembrance of Easters past

Happy Easter, everyone. Beautiful day today .. reminds me of Easters back on the farm at my grandparents' place. First tulips of the spring (we lived in extreme southern Ontario where flowers bloom three weeks earlier than down the road in Toronto. So while the daffodils are out down here, the tulips are likely coming out in Ruscom).

Childhood memories of Easter all revolve around being able to finally go outside without a coat on with my city cousins. In recent years, one of my strongest memory was Easter morning in the Appalachian mountains ... I decided to haul out the mattress and sleep under the stars so I could watch the sunrise. I awoke to the sound of birds .. one of the best choirs I've heard in my life.

So Happy Easter, Passover or whatever Rite of Spring you celebrate. The Light has returned after the long, dark winter.

The Nature of Progress

For the first time in my life, I decided that I was going to go to the gym on a regular basis.

That was last August. The first few months (until about December) were really, really painful. The minutes dragged by so slowly, my legs complained at me constantly. I ran out of breath. I could run for maybe a minute at a time at a speed of about three and a half miles an hour (which isn't even a fast walk) before I had to drop my speed back. My heart rate maxed out at 140 once I approached a 4 mph ... it was working hard.

Well, today I ran at four and a half miles an hour for five minutes without stopping (hey, I know it's not marathon standard but really good for me). I even got up to 2 minutes at 5 mph. I couldn't get my heartbeat to go over 140 even at that speed .. at 3.5, it barely went over 118 today.

And as I ran and walked I reflected on how much harder I have to work now to get the same result (actually I wasn't so much reflective as pissed off). Somehow it just didn't seem fair. Do I have to keep working so damn hard ALL the time?

But that's what happens. I do more and more, and expect more and more from myself. And how often do I stop and look at what I can do now that I couldn't do last summer, and compliment myself on how great I'm doing?

That's what I am realizing. I will always expect a lot of myself. When I achieve one milestone, I will constantly look ahead to the next one. And that's good .. as long as I remember to appreciate where I am at this moment and allow myself at least a little bit of contentment before taking another gulp of water, mopping the sweat off my forehead and challenge myself to Five and a half miles an hour.

Hello from Ottawa

It's four in the morning
The end of December
I'm writing you now
just to see if you're better ...

Whoops, that poem has already been written. Thanks Leonard.

Doesn't matter ... I just wrote my own. Do you ever have that happen to you .. you wake up at some early hour of the morning and a perfect poem or story is going through your head. And you want to just say go away, I want to sleep. Kind of like a lover who is trying to get your attention and you're in the middle of a good dream.

I got up and wrote it. I'm glad. Except now I can't get back to sleep. Oh well, doesn't matter. Lots of good poems going through my head.

Something about Ottawa does this to me ... for some reason I am at my poetic best when I am up here. I think it's because when I lived here I had lots of time that I could spend on things not directly related to making a living. It was nice not to have to be the primary income earner for a change ...

I'll let you know when the poem is ready for publication.

Living in Two Places

See! Said I would do another update!

For the past month, I have been living in two places. Half the week, from Sunday to Wednesday, I am at my friends Lil and Ronnie's. I'm housesitting for them for a couple more weeks.

Then, from Thursday to Sunday, I am back in my own place here in Hamilton.(The photo above is a winter scene from my balcony of my Hamilton home, looking over to Locke Street)

This kind of lifestyle has its challenges. But every time I do it, I am reminded that I am the kind of person who really likes this way of life. I've done it several times before .. first, when Barry was in Ottawa and I couldn't leave Hamilton yet. Then when he was in Appalachia and I didn't want to entirely leave Canada. Now I'm realizing I really like living like this.

Some of the challenges -- never knowing which place my favourite sweater is living this week. And groceries are a challenge -- inevitably, I end up packing the lettuce, tomatoes and zucchini that won't last until I come back to whatever house I am leaving. So my backpack tends to be heavy. And it always takes me a few hours to acclimatize to whichever place it is I'm at.

The advantages -- I see a lot more of my friends. It makes my Hamilton friends seem more special because I don't get to see them all the time (absence makes the hearts grow fonder). And I get to spend time with my Toronto friends, many of whom I haven't seen in a long, long time.

The change of scenery really shifts my perspective and gets me thinking about change .. too easy to get "settled" and dull in one place. At least it is for me.

I want to keep on living like this. I won't be able to afford to live in too many places. But I do want to have two homes .. one here in Southern Ontario and one in Bear River, Nova Scotia. And fill it in with invitations to housesit for friends in other parts of the country and even the world.

I am really glad that my business (Sound Out Media -- multimedia productions for the internet) can be done any place where there is high speed ..

I have not abandoned this blog ...

If you looked at this blog on a regular basis, you might come to the conclusion that Heading To Central Blissville is an orphan.

No, it's not ... it's just that I have been working on my OTHER blog, which is business-related (therefore money generating related). This particular blog is all about me .. the rest of my life that reflects the real, personal me.

Got to admit, I haven't been taking the time to reflect the personal side of me in recent months. Seems like I did lots and lots of that in the past four years so now time to focus on my more public side ...

If you want to see how the public side of me is evolving (and I know you do), my other blog is www.soundoutmedia.com

Check it out and check back here as I pay more attention to this blog and the other sides of my life!

Happy new year .. and congratulations all on the inauguration of Barack Obama .. I can feel the world turning in a better direction ...

Happy Snow Days!

I know, we haven't had any official snow days yet. But we're off to a good start. We haven't had an early start to the winter like this for at least a few years.

Early Happy Christmas .. now that work is winding down, I am going to be taking more times and write blogs for fun rather than just business ...been a while since I've been here!

Looking South

I'm watching the Democratic National Convention and listening to all the references to the election of 2000.

At that time, we were in the process of moving to the States. In retrospect, I didn't really want to go. Don't know whether it was because I felt comfortable where I was .. in Ottawa, content in my quiet little Canadian existence. Or whether I felt ill winds blowing .. I don't know.

We moved to the mountains of Kentucky right around the time of the election. Barry was already down there when the election happened .. I was still up in the north country packing up our stuff. He was coming back in a week to load up the truck, pack up me and the cats and then be out of here. We were on the phone with each other constantly ... talking about what our new life would look like.

I remember the night of the election .. watching what was happening and feeling more and more like I didn't want to go as the election returns rolled in. And then travelling south down I-81 a week later, thinking .. this place is going crazy. (On top of it all, our car broke down on the highway, leaving us stranded in a hamlet with a gas station, a Burger King and a Best Western for two days while we wondered if we were ever going to get down there. I think I just wanted to turn around and come home).

When we got down there, Barry's co-workers at the Media Arts Centre where he was working said "you sure picked a hell of a time to move down here". And we didn't know the half of it ... the next year, the planes hit the towers, the country prepared for war and I said time to get out of here ...

In some ways I am glad that I spent two years in the States. After all, can we really understand the world without understanding the US of A? No .. but then again, can we really understand the US with all its contradictions, its sense of itself which doesn't match people in other countries' sense of the US? A country that can throw around the word "liberty" and "freedom" yet its actions demonstrate either that they don't know what the words mean .. or that they do and just don't care?

It was time to come home ... I wonder if I'm any wiser from having wrestled with some of the questions about the contradictions I saw. Or whether I'm just confused by it all.