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The Freedom of Saying “I Don’t Know”
I don’t know. Three perfectly respectable words. I have spent most of my life avoiding them. Ask me a question and my brain immediately goes to work. What do I know about this? What have I read? What have I heard? Can I figure it out? Is there something similar I can draw from? Can I make a reasonable assumption? Apparently there has been a small emergency-response team living inside my head whose sole responsibility is preventing me from ever saying: I have absolutely no idea. For most of my life, I thought this was curiosity. And some of it is. I genuinely like knowing things. I like researching. I…
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What Does Enough Feel Like?
I have no idea what enough feels like. I realized this recently, which seems rather late in life to discover you don’t understand such a basic word. I know what not enough feels like. Not enough time. Not enough money. Not enough energy. Not enough accomplished. Not enough done. Not enough progress. I also know what more feels like. One more email. One more project. One more thing I should take care of before I sit down. One more improvement. One more goal. One more thing that will supposedly make life easier once I finish it. But enough? Enough is strangely unfamiliar. If you asked me how I know when…
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I Took the Road I Didn’t Know
A Joy Quest story about discovering that courage doesn’t always make the fear go away The other day, I had a mammogram appointment in Devon. Not exactly a Joy Quest. But I’ve been trying to get better at looking at days that already have obligations attached to them and asking whether there might be room for something enjoyable too. I had a couple of things to do before my appointment, so I left early. First stop was Tomahawk. I needed to drop off an ear swab from Gizmo at the vet to make sure his ear infection was finally gone. From there, I was heading to Calmar. For apple fritters.…
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The Quiet Courage of an Ordinary Life
I have spent an embarrassing amount of my life believing I was supposed to be doing something else. Something bigger. Something more interesting. Something more productive. Even relaxation had expectations attached to it. If I was going to rest, perhaps I should meditate. If I was going for a walk, it should count as exercise. If I was reading, maybe I should read something educational. If I was cooking, I could try a new recipe. If I had an empty afternoon, surely there was something useful I could do with it. There was always a better use for the hour I was currently occupying. I didn’t think there was anything…
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The Cinnamon Bun, the White Buffalo, and Turning Around
A Joy Quest story about what happens when you stop long enough to look Earlier this week, my husband had to go to RedDeer for a minor surgery. Not exactly the beginning of an adventure. But I’ve been trying to look at ordinary days differently lately. One of the things I’m learning through my Joy Quest is that I don’t necessarily need to plan an entire day around finding joy. Sometimes I can look at a day that’s already happening and ask: Is there something here I might enjoy? So while we were in Red Deer, I decided we might as well add a small Joy Quest. Breakfast. More specifically,…
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Is Healing Ever Finished?
A few days ago, I realized I hadn’t thought about healing for several days. I hadn’t checked in with myself. I hadn’t analyzed why I reacted a certain way to something. I hadn’t wondered whether I was making progress. I hadn’t read anything about trauma, nervous systems, triggers, boundaries, attachment, inner children, emotional regulation or any of the other terminology I’ve accumulated over the years. I had made dinner. Read. Watched television. Worked on things. Gone places. Thought about completely ordinary problems. I had just been living. And then, naturally, I ruined it by wondering what it meant. Was this progress? Was I finally getting better? Was this what healing…
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The Difference Between Existing and Participating
There are entire stretches of my life I can prove happened but don’t particularly remember living. I went to work. I raised children. I cooked dinners, paid bills, drove thousands of kilometres, attended meetings, bought groceries, remembered birthdays, solved problems and did all the other things that constitute a life when written down on paper. I was there. That’s the strange part. I wasn’t unconscious. I wasn’t wandering around in some fugue state. I was competent. Often extremely competent. I just wasn’t entirely in it. For most of my life, I didn’t know there was a difference. I thought this was adulthood. You get up. You do what needs doing.…
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What If Rest Isn’t Something You Earn?
For most of my life, I thought rest came after everything else was finished. The work. The house. The responsibilities. Whatever problem needed solving. Whatever person needed something from me. Then I could rest. Except there was always something else. So mostly, I didn’t. I didn’t think there was anything unusual about this. I thought I was hardworking. Responsible. Driven. Good at getting things done. And I was. I built a career where those qualities were useful. Working in emergency dispatch and later supervising security at a major oil sands operation, being alert and prepared mattered. I could stay calm when things went wrong. I anticipated problems. I noticed things…
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Why I Started Writing Again After Fifty
There was a time when I thought I’d never write again. Not because I didn’t want to. Because I couldn’t. When I was in my twenties, I loved writing. I filled notebooks with stories. Started novels I never finished. Dreamed about one day becoming an author. For years, I looked back at those early attempts and dismissed them. They weren’t very good. Now I see them differently. They weren’t failures. They were practice. I was learning the craft long before I had the life experience to understand what I truly wanted to write about. There was another reason those stories never became books. Fear. Looking back, fear made almost every…
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When the Road Disappeared
I thought we were going scouting for a fishing spot. We packed our fishing rods, just in case we found a place worth casting a line. Mostly, though, it was an excuse for a drive. Those have become some of my favourite days. We drove for what felt like forever down lease roads that wound through the Alberta bush. The farther we went, the quieter everything became. I noticed something that would have been impossible a few years ago. I was enjoying the drive. Not trying to make it productive. Not thinking about what I should be doing instead. Just looking out the window. The trees. The changing light. The…
