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!
And what a big year. We moved to LA. I finished a novel and started another. We had seven sets of visitors. I visited the South Island of New Zealand, Hawaii and Orlando. I started writing for a few new travel publications, did some PR work for the first time on the side. Tom and I took trips to Laguna Beach, Palm Springs and Santa Barbara. We flew back to Toronto to visit family twice. I completed eight full weekends of a yoga teacher training. I've made new friends and kept in touch with old ones. I did my first three-day juice cleanse. I started riding a bike. I started writing this blog. Tom and I made a new home. Close to the end of this year I hit a bump in the road and stumbled. Now it's the last day of 2012 and I'm pretty much back on my feet. My knees may feel a little wobbly but there's sturdy ground beneath me and strength in the muscles that hug to my bones.
So those are the main events among the many others of 2012, but in truth, this was the year...
...the ocean got closer
....and I remembered you can always hear it, even in the sound of a breath.
This was the year of knowing you're always moving forward as long as you don't give up
...and that gratitude is infinite
...fun is of the utmost importance
....and fear is what you feel just before your spirit grows.
This was the year I was reminded you can't worry about unanswerable questions
....and that hope is at its strongest when you're staring the hardest truths in the face.
I learned that love travels through text messages, and webcams and emails. It sits inside photographs and birthday cards, on notes written on the back of old bills. And even when you're not thinking about it, it's hanging out in the air around you, connecting you to the world, and all the people you love no matter how far away. It's connecting you to all beings. Everywhere.
You are you. Dare greatly. Put your true self out there for the world to see — even if that means risking failure, being vulnerable, and writing corny, heartfelt blog posts that are a little too sappy for most people's taste.
See what can happen when you just go with it?
Know that you are blessed beyond your fondest dreams.
Keep your heart open...
...to give, give, give and to receive. Forgive yourself for being human. Find gratitude even for the things that happened this year that were excruciating, or at least work on finding it. Because one day you're going to look back on this year and be in awe of how long ago it was, of how it shaped you, of how you got through it, and of how you were actually able to accomplish so much. Even though it may not feel like it, even though it might feel like the opposite, you're stepping up.
And the truth is no one can promise you this means you'll see your dreams realized. The truth is no one knows that much for sure. But if you're here, you're fed and clothed, sheltered and breathing, you've got today to give it your best shot.
This was a year of love. This was a year of greatness. This year and all. xo
This Sunday will be six months since I started this blog, six months since the day I proclaimed to the web that I will finish drafts of three novels in one year
I'm not going to lie about anything here, I'm not going to avoid owning up to where I am because maybe it's not where I thought I'd be. Instead am opting for honesty. It's who am. It's gotten me in trouble before and I'm sure will again, but I hope right now that maybe it won't.
By the middle of April I was ten chapters away from finishing the third draft of book one in the trilogy. I was whizzing through it and feeling great. If you've been reading this blog you know what happened next. I won't spare you with the details. They were all great things, of course. Experiences, visits, jobs I am grateful for, but it did take me away from writing. Between mid-April and the week before last I finished two chapters, which brought me down to eight left. Then if you read my last blog you know I decided I needed to make a change in the draft that took me back into rewrites of a few chapters already written. I just finished those rewrites now.
So I've still got eight chapters left, maybe seven. I'll finish them in a week from now if I'm really lucky. Otherwise I'll finish them the week after.
That gives me just under six months to write two novels from scratch. Can I do it? Yes, I can do anything!! Will I do it? Time will tell.
The main thing I want to tell you all is that I'm not giving up. I'm going to do my absolute best to get as much of this trilogy done this year as I possibly can. But IF, for some reason, I don't make this self-imposed deadline, I am going to be happy with however much I've completed. No, not happy. I'll be over-the-moon, insanely proud, elated, rave-dance excited. Why? Because I will have given it my absolute all. I will have lots more done than I ever thought I would get done in those dark, cold moments at the bottom of a pitiful mood.
That's the point isn't it? Journey, not the destination. I recall saying something along these lines before: Not just about this year, but all years.... Not just about a year of greatness, a year of love, but a lifetime.
And then one day I will be finished this trilogy. And hopefully one day some people will read it and hopefully those people will feel at least some of the love I put in. Then, even if they do or if they don't, it will be on to the next thing. That next journey, the next book, the next year.
I've travelled all around the world and I'm only 30. There are a lot of places I get to visit because I am lucky enough to have a job (now as a freelancer) that sometimes takes me places. I love seeing the world. I love experiencing other places, the people that live there, their culture, their landscape and the food they eat (this is always a big part for me!). I am immensely grateful for every trip I take and have taken, but (and this might make me different than most) what's one of the best parts of travel for me? Perhaps the best?
Coming home.
I chose this photo because for me, home isn't really a place. I don't need to use the cliche for you to get it. And don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't enjoy being away and that I'm wishing I could come home the whole time... it's that travel makes me feel so absolutely grateful for the love my life is filled with.
When I'm travelling solo, Tom and I often miss each other so much it can almost feel a bit painful at times, but you know it's worth it — not just for the experience whilst travelling but because the reunions are so sweet.
I can compare it to being away from all my family in Toronto too. I miss my Mom, my Dad, my sisters, my in-laws, my niece, my aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents and friends so much sometimes I could burst. But I promise you that because of it I put my love for them into everything I do.
Now the thing is, most of us don't have to travel away from our partners very often and if so it's usually never more than a night or two, let alone two weeks or more. Most of us live so close to our family we can get in a car and drive to them at a moment's notice. When that happens it can sometimes be easier to take the special people in our lives for granted, to assume that they'll just always be there. So how about today or tomorrow, right now and always, we just think about that for a second?
In the words of one of my all-time favourites, Alicia Keys, in a song where she also refers to my theme song for this year: "Live. Love life. Give love."
I can’t believe how long it took me to get through this though.I’ve read my drafts before in one day but it
took me six days of work, including a full Saturday and one Sunday morning, to
get through everything because of all the notes I was making.
The good news? I don’t hate the thing.
The great news?I
think I know how to make it better.
Still, despite the good and the great, the best part is that
I feel REALLY EXCITED about getting back to work on revisions for the next
draft.
None of the changes I’m making are to the story really – not
at this point.Sure there are a few
aspects I’ve decided to tell differently but most of all I’m making structural
changes and one other big change – which I’ll let you know about in another
post.
What have I learned about my writing process after
reading this draft?
Mistakes are the best thing that can happen to you.
Really.
I had to do things wrong to learn how to make them right.
Mistakes aren’t things to forget.They’re not things to be embarrassed about.Mistakes are all you’ve got to grow from.
They can be your greatest gifts if you let them.
What’s the best mistake you ever made?
p.s. Yes I'm so freaking grateful for my writing mistakes (maybe not right away) but this post isn't my new weekly gratitude post. That one's coming so stay tuned!
So I may have lied in my last blog post but what you need to know is that I didn't mean to. It's just that, I may have been a little overambitious. I read for 14 hours last Wednesday and I only got half way through reading my first draft (Bah!).
No, this isn't because I'm a slow reader (which I am) it's because I was making so many notes that it was just taking me a lot longer than expected to get through each page. Also, life got in the way a bit the rest of the week, as it tends to do, which means it's Monday and I'm still not finished reading. I will finish this week though. I promise!!! And then I'll have more to say later.
What I have more to say on now, is two words: Thank you. Yes, thank you (and yes I'm a bit italic happy today as you can tell). But really and truly, thank you for reading this blog. I know it's just the beginning and it's boring and I haven't yet turned to a completely regular blog schedule (though I will!) but my stats are better than 0 and that's pretty darn good.
The other thing I have to say about these two words today (you know, Thank and You) is that what they mean is really important to me. Gratitude is so important to me in fact that without it I would probably be considering suicide (well not really because I'm scared of dying but you know what I mean).
Gratitude is really what gets us out of bed everyday, happy for the experiences we've had and eager for what's coming next. If you're grateful for nothing then you may as well be dead. (Hence the suicide mention).
Seriously though, EVERYONE can be grateful for something, whether it's the obvious things like your health, your breath, the ice cream you had last night for desert (or not so grateful if you're lactose intolerant), your family, or that really friendly gal at the cheese shop who chatted you up for no reason and reminded you that some people really are just nice. If you can put one foot in front of the other then you have something to be grateful for.
What I'm saying here, albeit kind of randomly, is that I like to think about and talk about the things I'm grateful for and I like to hear what other people are grateful for too. So I'm going to make this a regular blog thing. One day a week. You'll hear about one thing I'm grateful for. It could have to do with writing. It could have to do with yummy food, or new curtains, or the love in my life, yoga, sunshine, rain, getting an awesome new hair cut, picking out a new sofa or picking my nose (cause let's just face it people, sometimes you gotta do it, you just gotta).
Hopefully, with all these thank yous I'll be blogging, you'll want to comment on what you're grateful for too. You could have one thing you're grateful for that you'd like to share. Or heck, if you've got more than one then by gosh darn golly, you just go ahead and share those too. (And if that last statement made you think I live in Texas now instead of LA, I don't. That's just the way that sentence needed to come out and I'm not even quite sure if that's how a proper Texans would speak anyway).
Now, back to now. What am I grateful for? A song, by my new favourite band Foster the People. The song is called Waste and the reason I'm grateful for it is because whenever I'm feeling like I'm not getting enough done, or I'm a bit unmotivated, this song reminds me that I have the power to waste the day. Sure there's consequences, there always are, but that doesn't mean I don't have the choice.
OR....I have the power to take today and do with it what I need to so I can be the change I want to see in my world (and by the way that's me ripping off Ghandi, not the song).
So, in other words, I've got a lot of freedom and regardless of where you work or what your life looks like if you live in the West, you probably have a lot of freedom too.
Ain't that something to be grateful for?????
Now go on, what is it you feel like saying thanks for right now?
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