This was 2014!

Even though I'm on an indefinite hiatus from this blog, I thought this year, of all years, I had to do an end of year post. 

Sure, the same sort of things happened this year that have happened in my previous end of year posts: We travelled (kind of), had visitors, Such Music grew and gained listeners and I have come SO DAMN CLOSE to finishing the final tweaks on this draft that I can taste the submission process (and it tastes like 2015!!).  

But truly, this was a year that announced itself like the earthquake that rocked our apartment 15 hours before I gave birth (while in labour!).  

It was a year that will forever be a marker of my life.

Since my white, three-holed Keds, braids and striped cotton dresses I've carried two dreams with me always.

This year one came true.

Oh for this was the year my body lived and breathed and gave and gave and gave anew.  

This was a year I discovered that the last, tiny tip of strength within you is really a mountain about to burst through.

   

This is the year I've been given the honour to watch grow...

and grow...

and grow...

and grow for the rest of my life.

This was the year I saw another side of the great love inside someone get bigger and continue to become more and more and more.

People told me I wouldn't be prepared for the sleep deprivation, for the utter giving up of your life in trade for becoming carer of another's. People warned me I could loose myself.  But in truth, Easton opened me — and so much more of myself climbed out.  

None of this means I haven't been brought to my knees over and over and over this year.  The truth is motherhood is nothing if not humbling and it is nothing if not devotion, if not love.  And oh was this a year of love, of greatness.  This year and all...   

Pause...

And then six months blew by.....

If there are any of you out there wondering if I've quite this blog...well, to tell you the truth, I'm not sure?

I want to say no, of course no!  But I also don't want to lie.

I'm finding a rhythm for the first time in six months and there are a few other ingredients I have to add back into the mix before I can commit to this blog again.  After that, if things are going well, I'll be back.  I HOPE to be back.  If you're still around, awesome!  If not, I totally get it! I realize this blog may not be interesting to most people, but it was an outlet for me, and at the very least another way for my friends and family back in good, old TO to get a better feel for my life out here.

But for now, I have to go where my heart is leading and get done what I need to get done....

Thank you to every person who ever read this blog, even once, even for half a post, even for a sentence.

I am FILLED with gratitude!

I am blessed beyond my fondest dreams!  

The greatest love of all

Before I gave birth every one told me that your labor never goes as expected.  I doubted my own instinct a lot when I was pregnant. For this very reason on of my greatest lessons I've learned (now that Easton is almost four weeks old) is that sometimes things can go the way you want them to. Sometimes the dreams you've been having come to fruition and all that you knew in your heart to be true is.

For this there is only gratitude, so immense, so powerful and so great it us unlike any I have felt before.  So I say, as always, thank you. Thank you for my body - for how it serves me, for how it serves the little one that came from it. Thank you for this new love in my life, for every challenge, for every lesson learned, for every moment I get to know my baby boy better and understand his needs, how to soothe him and care for him. Thank you for moments to myself! Thank you for the support of many so that my darling boy and I can thrive. Thank you for the man that has been loving and caring for me for 13 years and who now cares for US on a whole other level. To have him in our lives, we are blessed beyond our fondest dreams!  

I have never been more in awe of myself, realized the confidence I have and what I am capable of. I have never been more in love with life and it's process and it's magic. Sure, I'm having a great moment right now.  I don't feel like crying and have gotten (some) sleep - which is not always nor will very often be the case.  So I am taking this moment to say thank you, to every thing and every one that is out there. My family of three is connected to you in pure love.  Thank you, thank you, thank you for the birth of my healthy baby and the love that is growing, growing, growing. This is the year, the greatest year on record...so far!

Off to a Great Start!

Well, it's finally happened.  I've crossed over to the other side....

This is Tom and I with Victoria, our new car.  We got it so I'd have my own car to drive around L.A, now that walking 3.5 miles/day at least is starting to tire me out too much in this pregnant body.  I will still walk!  Oh yes!  I refuse to surrender to the LA culture of driving ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE when there's nothing but sunshine can clear skies.  But on the flip-side, it's bloody hard to get anywhere in LA without a car.  I've managed to do pretty well for my first two years here, when most Angelinos look at me sideways when I tell them I don't have my own car.  But the thought of being a tad bit isolated with a newborn and the difficulty of getting to doctor appointments or Mommy and Baby meetings etc. helped Tom and I decide it was time.  And for one woman who has always disliked driving, I have to say I LOVE THIS CAR!  It doesn't mean I'm totally comfortable navigating the highways of LA.  It's nuts here people!  But oh, dear Toronto friends, if you could see how far I've come! I'm so, so grateful that Tom and I can afford our beautiful Victoria and that I really do love driving this sweet, smooth girl.  She's helping me get over much of my driver's anxiety and that is a blessing!  Big Gratitude!

In the meantime, while I haven't been driving, doing my other freelance work, or teaching yoga, — and I've been doing a lot more of that lately which is awesome and helping to pay for the aforementioned vehicle — I've been working on this:

I've been slashing, and making notes and looking for places to cut, because this draft is a tad on the long side.  But I'm making huge progress!  Thanks in part to the help of my author aunt.  And in a few months this bad boy will be out of my hands and sent out...Before baby comes I'll be at the next stage with this manuscript - the submission stage!  Oh my goodness, I don't want to think about how many years it's taken me to get here, but the time is nigh, my friends.  Oh yes, it is coming very soon. I feel grateful that I've stuck through it.  Just to get to this stage after being a young early twenty-something girl and dreaming of getting here, I have!  And it's because of the support from my family and my love, it's because of my own perseverance. Even if nothing more comes from this I have to give myself credit for getting this far.  There's a lot of people that don't. 

And while I'm not editing away...Tom and I are working on this:

It's our official "Before Baby Peters" list.  That's right!  We have a list — with only 12 weeks or so to go until baby arrives.  Bah!  I know our lives will be changed forever pretty soon and I've never been more excited, more grateful for a life change (though trust me already-parents, I'm not expecting this to be easy in any way, shape or form).

At 30 weeks I have to say I'm really starting to feel the spirit of this baby inside me.  Not in gender terms but in a whole other way — just a presence that I feel wrapped up in, in awe of and so utterly grateful for.  Every time the baby moves in my belly I'm filled with great laughter. I can't thank God, the Universe, Spirit, enough!

And on a side note...it's my Mom's birthday today.  Happy Birthday Mom!  You all know how important she is to me.  And if you don't, read this. 

  

This was 2013!

Our second year in LA has been a BIG one.  I wrote a new novel from start to finish, then polished off another one. I became a certified RYT 200-hour yoga teacher, assisted a second round of teacher training and completed an 85-hour specialty certification in prenatal yoga.  And I also started teaching yoga!  Me!  The girl who cried in 2012 when she had to teach a sun salutation to a group of teacher trainees because she was terrified of speaking in public — and now I have two classes a week of my very own!  I never expected I would get to this point teaching yoga and how much I would love teaching.  I never thought I could write a novel in three months either, but I did that this year too!

Tom and I also had six sets of visitors in 2013.  I went back to Toronto twice, went to Hawaii with my little sis, made a trip to NYC with my Mom and my aunt, Tom and I visited our little niece and family in Vancouver and then we partied in Calgary for his best friend's wedding. We also took multiple trips to Palm Springs — with my aunt and her family and with friends — and then we had a little getaway of our own in San Clemente.  This was also the year Toomas 4Everest Peters launched his digital record label, Such Music — and the label had a stellar first year!  Then the weekend after he launched the label he broke his neck on an ocean wave in Malibu.  While he was healing I broke my toe.  We spent 12 weeks together in our apartment while he healed, learning to be humble and above all reach for a whole new level of gratitude.  Every day we are grateful that he made a full recovery (along with my little toe).   But you know, there's a lot a young married couple can get up to when they're stuck in their apartment together, even with broken bones...

It turns out 2013 was also the year we embarked on a journey, of receiving one of life's greatest gifts!! 

And so these were the events of 2013, but in truth, this was the year...

...we saw for ourselves how quickly life sprouts up and on and how joy spreads with it

This was the year of knowing you will always find your way back to the people you love

...and that together you can visit the places of your dreams.

 This was the year of discovering that you can set goals and you can surpass them

and that life will always find a way to help you express what's in your heart.

This was the year my eyes opened wider to the evolution of spirit within each of us, the beauty that resides within us all. 

I realized like never before that we are here to go for it.  We are here to express. We are here to share what we love and always, always, always, create from the truest parts of ourselves.

We are here to remember the cliche that life's greatest loves can be born out of life's greatest heartaches (or something like that ;)

especially if you're able to laugh your way through.

 Because the truth is this won't be the last time you'll need to reach for a higher place.  The truth is that the thing you never thought you'd get through is over now, or it's on its way to being over, because it all ends sometime.  It all changes.  So if it's at all possible, keep in mind and take heart that there are joyous occasions around the corner.  There is love like you have never known.

This was a year of love, this was a year of greatness, this year and all...

Life surging on and overflowing

Thank you for the crispy bits of roasted potatoes.  Thank you for information falling into my lap just when I need it and better yet before I realized I did.  Thank you for time — to connect, to relax, to breathe and move and to discover.  Thank you for the moments I remember to recognize my freedom. Because I know that freedom is like life, ever changing, and it might not always exist in the same way, so thank you for how it exists in my life right now. And thank you for boot weather.  Thank you for live music and community and teachers who hold the space.  Thank you for my person, the support he slips under my soles so I can feel myself growing.  Because I know I'm growing, it's just that sometimes it feels more like sinking and so I'm grateful for him because he reminds me that backwards steps can be forward steps.  Thank you for all the pieces of the universe that we don't understand.  Thank you for surprises.  Thank you for open hearts and surrendered spirits. Thank you for life surging on and overflowing.  Thank you for this moment, right now, right here.       

Something out of nothing

I finally got around to watching this TED Talk by Amy Tan about where creativity lies.  She makes some great points about the serendipitous nature of creativity that really resonated with me so I thought I would share.  If you have 20 minutes and are so inclined:

Life is good right now.  In fact, life is great.  I feel awesome, am back in a schedule doing so many things I love: writing lots, teaching yoga, practicing yoga, hanging out with friends and my best friend and life-mate, good old Mr. Peters.  I'm just really grateful to be right here.

I'm feeling really good about the revisions I'm going through in this next draft of my book and confident that I'll be done with this draft very soon.  Then...(duh, duh, duh) it will truly be time to send it out!  It's taken me a LONG TIME to get even close to this stage (much longer than most writers I think, from what I read in the blogosphere), but I haven't given up!  It's been a good 10 years since I committed to the idea of writing stuff for people to read and I'm really thrilled I've kept at it.

Yesterday I was in a bathroom and I cam across this:

Thoreau's quote made me smile because, after all this time, I can't believe that's still the direction I'm going in. I've had a lot of help and a lot of love from people to keep me on track, but reading this I'm reminded that patience really pays off.  I haven't realized a lot of my dreams yet, but because I'm going in their direction I feel like I'm living them.  And when I'm out of my head and in my body, when I'm breathing in the present moment, I realize that if you're living any stage of your dream, in some facet you're already there.

So, my dear ones, GO CONFIDENTLY! You may just end up realizing the life you've imagined for yourself is happening right now.

Mom and some Torah wisdom

I am officially on staff teaching prenatal yoga at Yoga Noho!  I teach Mondays and Saturdays at 10 a.m! The Monday class I am currently subbing for a friend on mat leave but the Saturday class I'm taking over and am so excited about this!  It's my first official class! Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude!

For the last 10 days my mom and aunt Lisa were here visiting in LA.  They just left on Saturday.  We had an awesome time but saying goodbye is always hard. I'm going back to Toronto for the holidays though so I'm comforted in knowing it won't be too long until I see them again.

One thing I've learned is that not every daughter has a great relationship with their mother.  I have to say I always have.  Even when I was a teenager and my mom was chasing me down the street in her housecoat in the middle of the night when I tried to sneak out.  Or anytime we've had yelling matches (my mother likes to use her voice) I've always still loved her so fiercely and been aware of that.  After my husband, she is the first person I speak to when I have a problem.  She is the first person I want to call when I have joyous news to share.  And most of the time I just need to connect with her — through Facetime, in person, on the phone — just because.  I know in my heart that our spirits are connected, that we've been loving each other for way longer than just this life.  And I am so, so grateful.  I am thankful for what she's taught me.  I am thankful for how she's always encouraged me not to give up on my dreams, even if they haven't been making me any money, even if the realization of my dreams is a long shot.  All I wish for her is health and happiness and a long life.  Selfishly, I want to share as much of mine as possible with her, loving her, expressing my gratitude for her and just being together.  Love you Mom!  The picture below is us before we sat as audience members of The Talk TV show.  We had a blast.

Now I thought I would leave you with just a nugget of wisdom from my Jewish roots.  I came across this carved box in a gift shop in Burbank when my Mom was visiting and the words just hit home.  For those of you who have been reading my blog, even though my posting has been so sporadic for the latter half of this year, this one's for you.  And for the rest of you, it's also yours for the taking.

In which it would appear that I've given up

It's quite the contrary actually.  True, I haven't really been blogging about my writing pursuits, or blogging at all, but it doesn't mean I haven't still been working towards my goals.

Okay so when I started this blog almost two years ago (yikes!), I said I'd finish all three books of my trilogy in one year.  So I'm a little behind, but not much.  I've finished two out of three books and have a pretty good outline of the third.  That's not bad, right?

What have I been doing (writing wise) in the meantime?  I've been polishing off Book One and getting ready to send the sucker out!  I have a timeline for this that I'm sticking to, because really, at this point, I feel I have no other choice.

The good news? I can feel with all my revisions, and with the help of my very talented author aunt Carolyn Abraham, that Book One is getting better with each day.  I'm getting excited thinking about the prospect of other people reading this and getting their feedback.

The bad news?  Well, there isn't any really.  I'm just trucking away, and in the meantime, I've been doing LOADS of other things this summer.

After Tom's broken neck incident, and my broken toe incident, we took some time to heal.  Then we had visitors!  Tom's parents just left after a great visit. We also had a beautiful beach weekend with them in San Clemente.  This was our beach.

 Now I've got just a few weeks of quiet until my mom and aunt come to visit for 10 days, which I can't wait for!  I love LA, but I miss home, especially during fall.  Autumn is my favorite season and in LA we only get a slight Autumn.  There's nothing like that brisk fresh air and the falling leaves that makes you excited for change...even when it is the coming winter.

I've been teaching a bit of prenatal yoga as well lately after just finishing my prenatal teacher training at Silver Lake Yoga, which was so awesome.  I met such a great group of girls and learned so much.  There's more of a demand for prenatal yoga because it's specialized so getting a sub job here and there has been easier.  Plus I love pregnant mamas.  Who better to connect with and teach than fabulous women, growing fabulous humans inside them?

You know I can't believe this has been my life in LA for almost two years...writing, yoga, Tom and a little bit of freelance work on the side.  I'm not going to lie and tell you that I'm not feeling an itch for the next stage though.

By next stage I mean, a new phase of my life where I can bring in a little bit more money, hopefully from writing, or with doing something I love.  I'm not the kind of girl to put all my eggs in one basket and I know life has a very special way of working itself out, that I may not understand as its doing the working.  So I have faith.  I put my trust in the process.  And in the meantime I work from my heart.

When it becomes clear to me that I need to take action in one way or another, I will.  Until that time, I'm on the path.  And I'm staying open.

One love

Thank you for food!! Thank you for all the ways my body serves me everyday, through health, through mobility, through feelings of both pleasure and pain. Thank you for air conditioning! Thank you for the money to pay my electric bill! Thank you for a man who takes such good care of me. Thank you for the love of my family and how I feel this love everyday despite being so far away from them.  Thank you for the way yoga feels in my body. Thank you for quiet moments.  Thank you for dance party's in the shower. Thank you for long weekends and Fridays and popsicles and laughing out loud. Thank you for the moments when I see how life tumbles on and on and I am here because of the women (and men) that came before me. Thank you to everyone of you out there who doesn't see the differences between us but the similarities, and even more than that... Thank you to you who sees that we not only share our planet, our food, our air, our triumphs and our tragedies but that WE SHARE EVERYTHING. Thank you to you who sees that we are not only connected, but that we are one. 

Out of a valley

So there may be a few of you out there that still happen by this blog. Or maybe not? Either way here I am again. I always swore I'd never be one of those bloggers that just disappears and now I've gone and done it.  This isn't even my first hiatus!

Sure, life's been crazy.  Sure, we've been thrown a few curve balls, but I feel in my gut that the valley Tom and I were navigating through this summer is finally starting to build it's way up to a peak.

Three weeks ago yesterday Tom and I found ourselves back at the hospital.

This is us.  And for the record I wouldn't usually post a picture of myself where I looked this horrible but I thought it would be nice to give you an idea of what we looked like as Tom wheeled me around the hospital in his neck brace.

It wasn't a serious injury (thank goodness).  I was walking to the sofa from the kitchen with a jar of tzatziki in my hand about to have dinner in front of the TV when I stubbed my toe on an ottoman.  I knew right away I had broken it.  Both Tom and I did.  The sound of bone breaking is easy to pinpoint.
Plus all of a sudden my left foot looked like it was giving a Vulcan greeting.

So there you have it.  Since then I've been hobbling down the streets of LA with my dear husband in a neck brace.  At the hospital everyone thought we'd been in accident together.  Oh no.  That would just make too much sense (and really I thank my lucky stars we weren't in an accident together).  Honestly I couldn't stop laughing the entire time we were at the hospital (except when they had to stick needles in my foot to freeze the toe so they could set it back in place — OUCH!!).

Luckily enough though my toe has been healing quickly and in a week or two I should be able to get back to regular activity (yoga has been difficult as you can imagine).

Best of all, Tom just returned back from the doctor and the Doc has said that Tom should be out of the neck brace and back to work by the end of the month!  So there is an end in sight!

It's been a trying time.  I think mentally there were some moments when either Tom or I felt like we were loosing it.  But what saved us was laughter (when we could find it) and enjoying our time cooped up together in our LA apartment without any family to visit or very little friends.

In all this time I have been rewriting my first book.  And it's been going well.  Then, my dear, talented-author- aunt, Carolyn Abraham came out here with her kids for a holiday so we've been hanging with them the past week or so and it's been great to catch up with them and hang out while we get through this last stretch of healing.

Carolyn has also been going over her notes with me on the draft that she read and I've been getting LOTS of great feedback and I couldn't be happier.

So you see...even through a broken neck and a broken toe, being miles away from most of our loved ones and still trying to carve out a dream or two for ourselves, it hasn't been all bad.

I'm so grateful for the lessons this last little while has taught us and it's because of what we've been through that I am now looking to the future with so much optimism, so much excitement, so much gratitude and most of all with pure love — for the way the universe works, for the people in it and for this grand old journey we call life.

Sending big love.  Big, big love to you all. xoxo 

Dear Frost

Sometimes I think about all the things I could have done before now, the choices I could have made, the paths I could have taken.

I don't mean that I have regrets.  It's just easy to imagine that if I'd made certain choices it would have led me to certain things and then I would feel more certain about my life.

I guess what I mean is that sometimes it seems to me I could have chosen a profession — you know one where you go to school and then you go to school some more and then after that you begin work in a specific field that corresponds.  Who knows, perhaps one day I'll be going down that path?

But right now, I'm taking a road less travelled.  My Facebook feed is full of friends buying houses, taking vacations, reporting on their day jobs and posting pictures of their kids.

Those are all glorious things.  They're things I want for myself one day.  But I don't just want that.  And I'm wondering here, at almost 32, if perhaps one day this road I've taken will have made all the difference?  And I'm curious about what that difference could be?  

Such Music

So this post is long overdue but still totally necessary.

My family and friends (aka blog readers) are now well aware of Such Music but still I can't have this blog and not properly introduce Such Music on here.

As anyone who is friends with Tom and I knows, we're drum and bass fans.  Well, me, yes, I'm a fan.  For my dear Toomas 4Everest Peters, it's much deeper than that.

When Tom and I were first dating, he'd pick me up in his two-door '88 Oldsmobile. Then he'd pop in a drum and bass cassette tape (that's right!) and with a pack of cigarettes in my lap, the window open and one probably already sparked (I relished ciggys in those days) we'd drive around without a destination, listen to drum and bass and talk about the things we dreamed for ourselves.

That was twelve years ago.  Little did we know at that time that we'd be dating past that summer of 2001 or that we'd be married nine years later.  Little did we know soon he'd be moving to Vancouver to live with me at the shining age of 23.  We didn't know we'd spend two year together there, then shack up with my parents for two years, move to Toronto for four and then make the big move out to Los Angeles.

But the one thing I think we did know, regardless of where we would be or even if we would still be together, is that we weren't going to give up on the dreams we shared with each other.

I know how cliché that sounds, but clichés get their rap from truth and that's what our feelings and ideas were back in those days.  And 12 years later I've got a novel I'm almost ready to send out and Tom has launched Such Music.

Such Music is a digital record label, for the meantime focusing on drum and bass.  With one release already out, featuring an amazing and very famous U.K. artist Utah Jazz, and another release dropping July 8, every time I look at the logo, hear a track, cruise the website, my mind often goes right back to Tom and I driving nowhere in that Oldsmobile (affectionately called the TomCat).  Then I think about how we've never expected anything out of the work we're dedicated to.  We keep it up because we feel we have to.  Sure, we dream about being able to make a living doing what we love, but I'm confident that if we never do, it won't stop us from continuing.  It hasn't stopped us in twelve years.

During one of our very early conversations Tom mentioned the idea of starting a record label.  It was off the cuff and for years afterwards we never really brought it up.  He was more into just producing his music and we didn't give it much thought.  Then one thing led to another and here we are.  Tom's been working two jobs (his day job during the day and Such Music at night).  He's been crafting a label that really has heart.

My dream is, overtime, Such Music's listeners will hear that heart. It's hard to miss really, so big and bright, bold and filled with bass!

Tom I'm so proud of you, so grateful that I get to spend my life with a man who sticks to his guns and I know as the years dance on I will always continually be amazed by what you accomplish.

So folks, check out Such Music.  Check out the interview in Knowledge Magazine explaining more about the label, like the FB page, follow Such Music on Twitter and come along for the ride!

  

Gratitude and giving back!

It's been a while since I've done this and I'm feeling it's way overdue.  Let's shout out to the interweb how grateful we are, shall we?

Thank you for the awakened knowing in my spirit that I think more so I might feel less. Thank you for the path of the breath, how it leads me out of my head and back into my heart so I might feel all of what I need to — weather that is pain, or joy or fear or freedom.

Thank you for second chances.  Thank you for a return back to one of my first loves — writing.  Thank you for any optimism at all as far as my work is concerned.  Thank you for the lesson that blind expectation will lead to disappointment and that the words "what if" and "maybe" hold more power in them than "I know" and "absolutely."  There is so much more that can grow from a place of uncertainty.

Thank you for a sky full of grey clouds (when it's sunshine all the time it's possible to enjoy the grey!).

Thank you for truffle salt and sisters and e-books and patience and growth and video games and yoga to live music and transition and maxi dresses and sunflowers and jean jackets and people who are honest and kind, supportive and hilarious!

Most of all thank you for people who are generous.  Namely my family and friends.  Tomorrow I'm practicing yoga for 12 hours in honour of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.  It's the culmination of a month of fundraising for this amazing hospital that never turns away a family based on their ability to pay.  That part means a lot to me coming from Canada.  Health Care has been one of the stickiest things for me to navigate since moving to the U.S.

We just got a letter from our insurance company detailing how much Tom's six-hours in emergency, plus a CT scan and MRI cost.  We have great insurance (which I am supremely grateful for) so we had to pay just a tiny portion of the overall cost.  In numbers, that means we're paying $100 of almost $10,000!!  Can you imagine?  Imagine anyone in an emergency situation who doesn't have health insurance, or who has bad insurance?  Not trying to get into a Michael Moore rant at the end of this blog post, but what I'm trying to say in a long and drawn out way is that imagine you have a child in the United States who is battling cancer.  Imagine you can't afford treatment (one day of chemo can cost $7,000).

That's why it's so, so, so important to give to hospitals in the United States who support all families, all children, battling cancer or other diseases.  That's why it's so important to give when you can.

I am so grateful that my very first fundraising venture (well, since I was 9) has shown me the generosity of others, even those you hadn't expected it from.

My fundraising efforts for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital ends tomorrow.  Today you can donate.  There's still time!  Click here.     

Sorry for the bluff

Has it been a month?  Why, yes it has.  I think I said I would be blogging more, but alas, life is making my regular routine rather difficult at present.

Let's see, what's happened since my last post? Tom launched his drum and bass record label, Such Music. My beloved yoga studio closed and a new one opened up in its place. My sister came to visit. We went to Hawaii together (me for work, her tagging along). We came back. Tom played his first DJ gig in LA the same week as Such Music's first release, and then he broke his neck.

Yes, you read that right.  It sounds worse than it is but breaking his neck is the truth of the matter.

The day after Tom's first drum and bass Dj gig at RESPECT Thursdays in Hollywood, my sister and I, Tom and our friend and very talented producer/dj visiting from the U.K, Luke Wilson (aka Utah Jazz) went to Malibu for the day.

It was Tom's first day off in a long while.  Before that he'd been working two jobs: his day-job all day and then working on Such Music all night.  This trip to Malibu marked the beginning of a four-day weekend for him and he was so stoked.  And I was so excited for him because he really deserved a break.  Then he hit the waves with a boogie-board (they were HUGE waves) and it wasn't more than forty-minutes later he was being rushed to Emergency in an ambulance.

Those hands in the earth of my life I blogged about earlier, well it appears they've dug deeper and thrown up more dirt.

Regardless of that I am grateful.  Tom could have ended up much worse off than leaving the hospital in a neck brace he'll have to wear for at least another six weeks.  I don't want to think about what that worse off could have been.

I've just now started to catch up to my life.  Before I left for Hawaii I had been subbing a lot of yoga classes, which is another story altogether, maybe cut-off mid-sentence (at least for now).  I hope to blog about that more down the road...

Nonetheless, all of the above took time away from this blog.  It doesn't mean I haven't wanted to write.  And though I'm not really too sure who exactly is interested in all of this, despite my lack of blogginess, I would still like to keep going.

If you're reading this, I really appreciate you taking the time and I send you my love. xo

Throw up the dirt

Perhaps the title of this post seems rather strange, but I was talking to a friend earlier today and explaining how I feel like someone has stuck their huge hands into the earth of my life and thrown all the soil up into the air.  Now I'm just waiting for all of it to fall back to the ground.

Gosh there's so much I want to write about — so much on my heart, but since my blogging has been so sporadic these past few months I thought perhaps just writing about writing would be a good place to start.

I read the draft of the novel I finished last July. The time away from it has been invaluable.  Because of it, I was able to see so many things that I wasn't able to before.  I wouldn't say I was able to read it just as any third-party reader, but I was removed enough that I could SEE IT.  I could see the story underneath the places where I was getting in the way.

Maybe to some seeing all those obstructions would be discouraging — but I feel relieved.  Why? Because now I have an idea of what I need to do to make it better.

And more than anything, more than absolutely anything, I want this book to be the best that it can be.

Sure, perhaps it will never make it into the world and find readers all its own, but at least I will have done it the honour of chipping away at its dirt.  Then hopefully it can be what its truly meant to be, and I can take the lessons and begin all over again.

It's been a long time — shouldn't have left you

Oh it has been far too long!  So long that as I came back to write this blog, Aaliyah and Timberland's "Try Again" popped into my head almost instantly.  So sorry for leaving all you beauties for so long — especially without a dope beat to step to (press play on the video if that sounds like crazy talk to you).

So much has gone on in this short little time I was away.  I have so very many things to blog about:

The debut of my aunt, mentor and friend, Carolyn Abraham's, book The Juggler's Children.

I started teaching yoga.  Yes!  Actually teaching.  If you remember this post from way back when I could barely give a breath instruction in public, you will be as astonished as I am.

I also went to NYC! I saw the musical version of one of my all time favourite movies — The Newsies!! And I hung out with my dear mother and aunt and it was, well, just a dream.

Other HUGE news is that the love of my life, Toomas 4Everest Peters, is gearing up for the first release on his brand spanking new digital record label, Such Music!  That's right!  Can't wait to debut the website on my blog and let you know more about this amazing venture I'm also a part of.

And lastly, I'm getting back to do some revisions on Book One of my novel.  I'm plan on doing read throughs and notes in the next two weeks.  Then it will be on to Hawaii!!

I will definitely be blogging about all these things and more to come.

But for now, I just wanted to say hello.  Send you love (so, so much of it) and gratitude for just being your awesome self.

It's another beautiful day in LA, folks. The future is bright.  The present, oh the present, is perfect as it is.

I did it! And with time to spare?

So this is the bottle of champagne my insanely amazing husband popped last night (and beside it a gift my insanely amazing husband bought me one time when I was sad).  Why the champagne?

 Around 11:30 PST on April 1, I finished a novel.  What?  No, this isn't an April Fool's joke.  I actually finished a novel, from start to finish, in three months!

This is a huge accomplishment for me.  I've written two novels before this one.  The first (which will never see the light of day) took me a year to write.  The second, (Book 1 in the series I'm now writing) took about 10 months to write the first draft.  And then I spent another five years (yes you read that right) rewriting that first draft.

Okay, so I had a full time-job then and I lived close to my large family and decent sized group of friends, which meant the distractions were endless and the time was more limited, but still.

THREE MONTHS!?!?  Honestly I didn't think I was capable of doing it.  Now through the ROW80 writing challenge I participated in, from January to the end of March, I realize with just hitting a smallish word count goal per day I can do a lot more much quicker!

I also have to say, in my last week of writing away, coffee was a big help.  I never drink coffee.  It usually makes me crazy.  But I sacrificed the crazies (well, I didn't actually go crazy this time) to help fuel some serious speed writing, especially near the end.

Is the book good?  No, it's probably terrible.  There are holes, and weird plot things going on and some overall bad prose.  But it's a first draft.  And what's my new motto for a first draft?

Get it written.  Then get it right!  (I read that recently in this book).

And there you have it.

Now I am officially taking a bit of a break, which also means a bit of a break from blogging.

During this break I plan to just feel the joy and gratitude of making it to this accomplishment, because despite the worry that I'm wasting my life on something that may never become what I hope it will be, I'm grateful I get to try.

And to all of you out there — most of whom I know personally and perhaps a few that I don't — thank you for your support.  Thank you for your love.  And thank you for helping me hold on to this dream of mine, regardless of how many years go by.

Great big love to you all xx

Making the final check-in

Wait! #ROW80...I'm here.  Out of breath and panting but I'm here to deliver my final check-in.

I've been off the blogging grid for almost three weeks now....first because I had a number of visitors and then because I opted for working on my writing goals instead of blogging about them in the last hours of the first round of #ROW80.

But before this round ends I wanted to just put in how far I made it with my goals, and to send so much gratitude out to Kait Nolan and this writing challenge and as well to the sponsors and every other ROWer who came to encourage and visit my blog.  It was also fun getting to visit some of yours!

So, for a recap of my goals:

Through Kait's advice, I started out by chopping my original goal in half.  I know I can write between 2,000 and 3,000 words when I'm trying, so doing as Kait said, I made my #ROW80 goal to write 1,000/day, five days a week, and have this also translate into 5,000 words/week.

It didn't take me long to realize that this was the best goal I ever set for myself.  Through the first two months of #ROW80 I was meeting or surpassing this goal every week — and sometimes only writing four days instead of five.

It's been SUCH an eye-opener for me.  Before this, I would set these massive goals for myself and I would never accomplish them and there would be a lot of self-hate involved and defeatism.  Then, along came #ROW80 to show me that I can actually set smaller goals for myself (and this was MUCH smaller by my standards) and then...I would actually end up getting MORE done than with any of the big goals I've ever set for myself!

I had to take a week and a bit off in February to go see family in Vancouver, and then I had some visitors, but by the time I came back to write I looked at how much I had done so far for #ROW80 and saw that I had written 35,000 words in 6 weeks!!  Now, add this to the 5,000 words I'd already had before the writing challenge started and that put me at 40k!

I realized then, that if I worked hard, if I played my cards right, I could actually finish this novel!!!

So I upped my goals.  2,000 words/day, five days a week — translating into 10,000 words per week.

Now, this goal, I learned quickly was much harder for me to achieve.  I felt burnt out by the end of the week and if I missed a day it was much harder to make up the extra word count if I fell behind.  Still, I made it to 9,800 words the first week and 9,000 words the second.

Something I also started doing through this challenge is keeping track of my daily word count on an excel file — and I highly recommend this.

Then I reached 60,000 words and I just said $%^$ it...now I've just go to get through these last chapters and get this thing done.  So I've been writing day and night — as much as I can.

I must say I'm also motivated by the fact I'm going to Toronto for two weeks, leaving April 3.  So the deadline I've given myself for finishing this novel is actually April 2 (after ROW).  So I am still writing away...

But where am I on this last day? 72k baby!  And I've got about five or six chapters left to write....in 6 days.  Can I make it?  Maybe?

I'm not putting too much pressure on myself.  I haven't been feeling that great this last week or so, so even though I'm working, it's not as easily as I would like.....but I'm just going to keep going and hope I make it — if I don't, I don't.  I'll be pretty much done anyways and I'll only have a chapter or two to write when I get back if I don't make it.

All I can say now is how grateful I am that I found this challenge.  Kait Nolan, I am so grateful to you for creating a challenge for writers who have a life. Thank you!  I'm grateful for the lesson you taught me that just doing a bit each day can actually bring me further in the end than going after a huge goal.

Thank you ROWers for all your support and for sharing your own writing challenges and goals with me.  In these past three months I've pretty much written a novel and I'm smiling from ear to ear, looking at the writing world a little differently (in a good way) and so excited for how this challenge will shape my productivity in the future.

Alas, I cannot join #ROW80 for the second round....I'll be travelling too much in April and May.

I leave you then, with IMMENSE gratitude, the possibility of knowing that I may join ROW80 again in the future, and an almost-written-novel I shall now return to.

Good luck everyone participating in the second round, and good luck to all writers, everywhere, near and far.

So far so good

I ended up with a total of 9,818 words, written over four days for my first week of upping my goals.  That's 182 words away from my new weekly goal of 10,000 words, and I accomplished this writing over just four days instead of five.

Can't say I'm disappointed with it.

If I can keep going like this until I leave for my trip to Toronto, April 3, I will have written a novel in three months!  I want to reach this goal.  It would be absolutely stupendous if I reach this goal.  I'm hopeful I can get there but I don't want to say I will for sure.

For one this is because it was a lot harder for me to write 10,000 words this week then my ROW80 average of about 6,000 words/week.  The second reason is we've got visitors coming, two sets — arriving Wednesday and leaving Sunday, so this will make reaching word count a little more difficult with only three weeks and a few days left to reach my goal.

But what I promise myself is that, to the very best of my ability, I am going to work towards my 2,000 words per day, five days a week goal.  I'm going to treat each day as a new day and each day I'm just going to do what I can to get to where I want to go.  If it happens, awesome.  If it doesn't,  I'm going to try not to be too hard on myself and the next day I'm going to try again.

Last week I ended up doing no writing on Tuesday and so added to my word count goals for the rest of the week.  This works, but as I've learned it makes each writing day a little harder.  If I have to do this I will, but again it's not ideal.

Still if I am able to accomplish this goal and finish this novel by April 2, that will be such a HUGE accomplishment for me.  I've written two novels before this one, the first took me a year.  The second took me, well, let's just say YEARS.  Granted I was working longer hours then (and not on a freelance basis), but still, if I do this it will be such an awesome improvement.

And even if I only almost make it there it will still be a huge improvement.  But I can taste the end of this frist draft and boy do I want to devour the whole thing!!!

Good luck all you fellow ROW80ers this week!  Happy writing.