Ambition

I hardly realized how stressed I have been until after arriving at Danny's last night. We lay down and I started to talk. And talk. After a couple hours of letting it all out, I felt limp as a punctured balloon. We haven't had much time together this summer, and really he's the only person I'm comfortable telling about certain things, so apparently I've kept too much bottled up.

All the hard stuff is about money. I won't go into details about it here. The situation is not much worse than it has been in the past, in fact I'm getting better about managing it and paying the bills, but still, something has to be done. The good news is, I'm sleeping well and not experiencing much anxiety in the physical sense, so it's not making me sick the way it used to. But it stays on the back of my mind, comes out in quite time, and exhausts me.

Actually, there is lots of good news, other aspects of my life falling into place.

Suddenly and unexpectedly, it looks certain that Les will receive a contract to build a new tracker organ in Vancouver. That would mean about a year of work for us. This comes in addition to another probable six-month job in Dorval, a suburb of Montreal. Yes, I would get to travel for a few weeks, though most of the work can be done in the shop. The only scary thing for me at this moment is not knowing when we can begin. Hopefully, after a couple years, more people will have become familiar with the outstanding new organ at St. James Anglican Church in Dundas, so work will come more steadily.

On the creative front, too, things have been moving ahead. One of my goals for August was to re-establish a writing habit. I have successfully rearranged my daily routine to allow time for morning pages. Then on free weeknights, after I go for a walk, come home and upload the photos, I've been sitting down with the laptop to do some creative writing.

Months ago I conceived the idea to write a cycle of poems for Marian and Brenna. Great, but where to start? Wanting to write something is not enough. I had no notion about the content, and had to wait for something to condense out of the aether. Wednesday evening I wrote a poem and, lo and behold, it turned out to be about family, generations. Next night I wrote another. Hm, this one was about conception and life. A pattern is taking form here. The creative process starts happening, and deep down a sense of celebration and gratitude begins to glow.

I've resisted the temptation to post them here, or share them with people. Increasingly I feel an instinct to let creative work simmer in private for a while, not put it forward until it has taken its full shape. Undoubtedly I will show the work to my writing partner when she gets back from vacation, but that's different. These first two poems aren't entirely satisfying, but new images, themes are beginning to announce themselves. That's what I've been groping around looking for, and it's exciting.

I also intended to start learning how to use PhotoShop. That is underway, too. And I'm celebrating four months since the commencement of daily walks, and the daily photo journal.

I've also finished the latest knitting project. More about that later.

I have several end goals for the 12 months ahead: to self-publish another chapbook (dedicated to my daughters) during the winter, to resume sending additional poems to journals in prospect of publication, and to apply for a booth to show photography in Guelph's Art on the Street next July. This last will necessitate getting my best work printed and framed. Stay tuned.