Choices: Living with Regret to Get Reward

Being a photographer and loving light, it’s going to be a long time before I get over the regret of missing the sunset-lightning-fireworks for the ages experienced by Vancouver on Saturday night, all for more work on the home, but I will get over it, and then I’ll get to live with the results generated by that loss.
Deep down inside, I know I’m shit company when I’m distracted by things I feel I need to be doing. I get obsessive and focused, and conversation isn’t very conducive to making me on anyone’s top 10 to-hang-around list anytime soon when I’m in that mode.
Which is sort of where I’m at. I know I wouldn’t have been “present” wherever I was on Saturday, I know the price I’ve paid will ultimately reward me more than the regret will haunt me. Continue reading →

Writing: The Art of Digging In?

I fall out of love with writing.
It’s a love/hate relationship. I can’t live without it. I wish I could.
It’s a near-pathological need to dig, writing. For some of us. For me. Dig, dig, dig. I feel like I’m taking a stab at digging my way to China in my back yard. I’ll never finish. I’ll never even get halfway where I’m going. I know this. Thank god it’s a free passage. Taxes would kill me. And, unlike digging to China, the scenery’s interesting. Continue reading →

Pop Culture Smackdown

A lot has happened of late, both in my private world and the big ol’ real world, and I’ve been focusing mostly on me.
Let’s do something different here for a change. I’m gonna weigh in on some of the things Twitter and tabloids have been talking about from the last month or so. Continue reading →

Everything In Its Place

I sometimes forget I’m a writer. I get out of practice, and then it doesn’t occur to me that, to be true to who I am on any given day,  I should be playing with a few words. Sometimes I forget that wrestling hands-on with my experiences and my past is what makes me the person I am, and it’s best undertaken in writing.
But it doesn’t always need to just happen on the page. My Sunday was an infinitely illuminating day, and just the beginning to what I think will be a strange but profoundly fulfilling experience.
I’m undertaking a MASSIVE restructuring of my home. Continue reading →

Unraveling the Headfuck

All these insecurities
That have held me down for so long
I can’t say I’ve found a cure for these
But at least I know them
So they’re not so strong

-George Michael

In my mind, there are two lives. The life I’ve lived, and the life I might’ve lived if all my insecurities hadn’t held me back for as long as they have.
For someone who doesn’t give a fuck what others think, I sure let it prevent me from living out loud. Continue reading →

Why I (Love to) Hate Facebook

There I am, second-last day of vacation, scouring my deck and cleaning my deck chairs. I bought the chairs about eight years ago now. As I scoured them down, a flood of old memories came back — drinks drunk as planes soared in across the southern horizon, headed for the airport’s runways, conversations nattered until wee morning hours with faces that still bring a smile to mine, silent moments spent alone or with others, like one sunny perfect beautiful morning spent with a coffee and a flawless and strangely-quiet empty horizon before finding out a couple planes had earlier crashed into a building and changed America’s future.
It’s just a chair. A measley little chair I see out my window every day, and yet when I really crunch the memories as I scour it down from up-close, a world I’ve lived through in eight years come washing over me. It’s just a chair. Wow.

Imagine if everything had that kind of conjuring power? But then I log into Facebook. Continue reading →

Because Every Adventure Needs a Story

Every vacation comes with that one day when Nothing Really Goes As Planned.
For me, that day was Thursday.
I got up early, psyched and ready for a great day. The plan? Throw my bike on a bus and do an extensive cycling tour of Kelowna for my last day in town. I’d pick up some ingredients to make a good dinner, and would have some Me Time around the water. Good stuff, I figgered. Easily done!
Or was it? Continue reading →

What I Learned on My Summer Vacation

Sometimes I just post a smattering of thoughts. This is such a time.

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  • Time evaporates. Make use of what you have.
  • It’s a big world out there. Get lost in it sometimes.
  • When I grow up, I want to be carefree. And aware. Always.
  • Alone is good, but so are people. When meeting them, it’s easier to find flaws than positives, but more rewarding to make the effort for the latter. Continue reading →