I have gotten so many messages over the years saying something like:
"Hey wow you're so brave/inspiration/wanderlust/free spirit/I wish I could/that's so cool/how do you?/Love it!"
Firstly: Thank you.
Secondly: I getjealous (something?) of your fancy pickup trucks, your boyfriends who help pay rent, your real actual careers and your amazing mom skills. Jealous isn't quite the right word. I'm not sure our culture has a word for it. It's kind of like I take pride in watching you guys accomplish so much awesome stuff that I know I'm supposed to want and parts of me sometimes do (like the Mom skills. God gave me only an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny pinch of patience and self discipline and I am trying so hard to cultivate it)
Thirdly: It's super hard to really know if any of our decisions are really even ours, or if we are just living out some predetermined fate. Could I even make different choices than I do? I love this avatar that I get to be, although am sometimes skeptical of the script they wrote me. (My character says that? wtf? Why did they have to give me such dorky lines? My character is a total shit disturber more often than I'm comfortable with. I'm currently trying to think of a career that requires that as a skill set. )
Minimalism: This was the 20ft storage container we rented when I decided I wasn't going to give birth in an apartment:
"Hey wow you're so brave/inspiration/wanderlust/free spirit/I wish I could/that's so cool/how do you?/Love it!"
Firstly: Thank you.
Secondly: I get
Thirdly: It's super hard to really know if any of our decisions are really even ours, or if we are just living out some predetermined fate. Could I even make different choices than I do? I love this avatar that I get to be, although am sometimes skeptical of the script they wrote me. (My character says that? wtf? Why did they have to give me such dorky lines? My character is a total shit disturber more often than I'm comfortable with. I'm currently trying to think of a career that requires that as a skill set. )
Minimalism: This was the 20ft storage container we rented when I decided I wasn't going to give birth in an apartment:
The right side of this photo was mostly Cam/Cheryl's stuff.
The left side is mine and the kids: That is the entirety of belongings the kids and I own today, plus my bicycle, an MEC stroller-bike trailer & a Weehoo bike trailer, & two kids bikes.
I'm not a "100 thing-ist" or a "something in - something out" person.
I am more of a "Ecclesiastes" person: There is a Time to scavenge interesting junk off the side of the road and make art, and a Time to throw all your scrap back into the e-waste bin. There is a Time to get phat stacks of books from the re-use-it center, and a time to donate most of them to the Library. (And so it goes.)
And my house doesn't look like minimalist porn when we're living in it.
It looks like a contained disaster, because I do not care.
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It does not bother me. There's such a small amount of it that it only takes a few hours to straighten out when I decide to.
The Kitchen is also messy because I do not care.
I used to care. and I still care in the sense that, I'd love it if someone else went and cleaned it for me right now. But there isn't. So it Won't.
It sounds like I rip on the domestic services so hard in this blog, eh? It's only because I'm a mathematician: $0 child support + 1 parent earning only minimum wage = crappy life.
I trained myself to ignore the dirty dishes in order to see myself as someone who has massive human potential. If I am focused on dishes I never find time to be creative. If I am focused on being creative, I always find time to do the dishes. Weird eh?
I could start a cleaning business if I wanted to. But I did that once and it made me hate cleaning my own house. I'd rather stay in love with cleaning my own house. And have affairs of vacuuming at my grandmothers & bouts of domestic polyamory: helping my friends go on purge fests & organizing sprees.
I could start a bicycle powered edible landscaping business. One of those shared harvest type deals. With Ducks. I could ride around planting tomatoes and marigolds and basil and oregano in everyone's yard. I'd have a rack on the side of my bike for rakes and shovels and I'd pull a little trailer with some gorgeous waterfowl in it. At the end of the year we'd have a big salsa-celebration-potluck-poetry-jam in the park. That's the kind of business that really succeeds in a place like Guelph.
Once upon a time my brother said to me "Stasia. My problem is I get super attached to one idea and I become so obsessed with implementing it that I can't let go no matter what. Your problem is that you have a million ideas and you don't implement a single one of them.
He's totally right. I have notebooks full of business plans that would probably take off if I could settle on one thing and stay committed.
Right now I'm really focused on Mom stuff. This Essay is about Mom stuff:
Isn't that a wonderful quote? I didn't read it until after I had given birth to both of my kids, but it's perfectly accurate. That's exactly what giving birth was like for me. Magic mushrooms except with slightly less of the fractacular visuals and significantly more of the being split apart.
Anyways. I wan't going to give birth in in a tiny apartment with carpet. Ew. Yuck. Carpet. Add that to the list of things that are my kryptonite, like long fingernails, and mayonnaise, and bath floofs.
So I sublet The Ab Anbar (54 Sykes St Unit 4, but you surely agree, a residence is better with name)
And then we didn't find another place to live.
So, on facebook my life is portrayed like this:
But that is because Zach didn't photograph me crying my face off when I was 8 months pregnant, and things were not exactly going.... hmmmm... Let's just say I didn't need Cam to finish building his time machine. I had total clairvoyance about what my future was about to look like:
Henceforth, Zach and everyone else have my permission to photograph my life, as it actually is at times, when I am crying my face off, or engaging in some idiotic reactionary behavior, or those stark moments of: "I just figured out what the expression wet blanket means because it rained on my duvet covers last night and I am a homeless pregnant girl with a kid and a dog and a disgruntled unemployed husband and no vehicle."
A wet blanket does not offer any comfort. Wet blankets are heavy.
(I do always meet the neatest people hitchhiking though, and I do always learn stuff.)
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| It seemed like such a score for $2500. until it cost $12,000 in repairs over the next two years. |
(well, what would you do?)
So we checked out a Diffusion Cloud Chamber and played in the Butterfly Room & interactive exhibits on all kinds of topics like the inner workings of the Human Body and we did some Stop-Motion Animation, and some Broadcast Journalism:
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| I LOVE Science North. |
This is how our video turned out:
And then we went to Pukaskwa National Park, because it is one of my all time favorite places:
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| The Big Lake they call "Gichigami" |
Now seems like the right moment to mention that Parks Canada is giving out Free Admission Passes for 2017. So If you've ever contemplated becoming a vagabond gypsy parent, the time is ripe.
The summer I was pregnant with River was as cold as they come. It was July and we were sleeping in winter gear and I abandoned the notion that "it would probably be really fun to live in Thunder Bay! -we should do that!." (the ridiculous whims I get going on. I tell ya.)
So we came back and moved into Sarah Davie's House at Sunset Point. "The Pretty River Imaginarium" My favorite house that I've ever lived in. And I had an awesome home-birth with the Nottawasaga Midwives.
Everyone has different values. I love going into peoples houses who have fancy couches and pottery that matches the walls, and plants that they always remember to water, and so many white accent things that have not a trace of dust or dirt on them. Once in a while I even enjoy flipping through style magazines and indulging in fantasies that I would someday have a house that looks like that. Will I ever? Your guess is as good as mine.
There are many things that I do for the kids because it wouldn't be fair to entirely deprive them of mainstream culture and turn them into complete social outcasts without thier permission. There are also a lot of things I don't do for the kids because it doesn't jive with what I think is right (like buy stuff with Monster High girls on it. Those dolls have no self esteem, you can just tell. And I don't think it's fair to bombard young women with oversexualized flirtatious models at such a young age. If my daughters grow up and they decide to be porn stars, their choice. But that's a free choice one makes at an age of consent, not an ideal that needs to be thrust upon them in kindergarden. I'm not saying I'm right or wrong, that's just my personal opinion.)
I believe strongly in a type of stability that I think kids need because it helps them have emotional certainty. I also believe in a type of reckless exploration that, I think, creates resilient individuals.
Elizabeth knows this: "I feel like what Steve Carell said on little miss sunshine:
I love Steve Carell. I could write several essays about why he is my favorite actor.
I let myself write this essay in an incoherent nonsense jumping around way because there are so many important things I want to write eventually, and I have to get all this cluttery nonsense out of my head because the good writing is stashed under it. I think the point is... Something Francesca wrote to me in a birthday card when I was a teenager. "You know in your heart what's true and that's all that matters. Don't let anyone tell you differently"
In my many years of customer service, strangers regularly walked in for a cup of coffee and told me their life story. Still on a daily basis I receive the most courageous letters from people telling me about all the difficult struggles they are going through. I wish everyone could know how many people are dealing with the exact same stuff as eachother. I wish I could set them up on friendship dates.
I can tell from the success of blogs about minimalism that people are really looking for answers about why their lives look so full but their something feels so empty. That "growth beyond anything available around you" concept I wrote about yesterday. I'll write more essays on that. "The Linguistic Relativity of Love" is one in the works 😃....
Today I read "If you are actively pursuing a life of simplicity, you are living a counter cultural lifestyle" I laughed out loud but then I realized he's right. Holy Wow. Welcome to the revolution, where the most punk thing you can do is offer someone an organic kale smoothie.
I wish I knew the right things to say to people who want so much more out of their lives. Everyone's definition of purpose is unique. It takes time. Change doesn't happen overnight. Be patient and good to yourself but also be honest with yourself. Take a step in a new direction today, and keep taking a step in that direction every day for the next 10 years. The time is going to pass anyways, so you might as well. (Oh. and that direction will seem like you're going in circles. and you are. Because life is a spiral, remember?)
Once, Cam and I were reading Louise Hay and he epiphanied: "This woman has the most positive attitude! She is80 years old (*correction she is actually 90) and she doesn't see her life as over. She could probably master 4 more apprenticeships before she dies!!!"
"Yup." I said. It was an astute observation. One I refer back to when I'm thinking up Ways To Support My Family in the Interim (while I learn to program; so I can be a digital nomad) Do you know what I might do? I might get a job at an oil change place and eventually apprentice to be a mechanic. I would be bored of it by the time I learned how to fix cars, but I would have all this sweet knowledge I could juxtapose with all the other ideas in there. 😃 Who knows what I will do. Your guess is as good as mine.
I would coach women (& men & nonbinary folks) who desire natural home-births. Wandering aimlessly around the province for a month living in a tent is not a prerequisite, but it is therapeutic. The Smell of Trees and The Crashing of Waves always is. Crying your face off and having temper tantrums once in a while is also therapeutic, if you chose to grow from it and then look back on your silly self and laugh.
" Worrying about scarcity is our culture’s version of post-traumatic stress. It happens when we’ve been through too much, and rather than coming together to heal (which requires vulnerability) we’re angry and scared and at each other’s throats."~ Brene Brown
Elizabeth knows this: "I feel like what Steve Carell said on little miss sunshine:
Frank: Do you
know who Marcel Proust is?
Dwayne: He's the guy you teach.
Frank: Yeah. French writer. Total loser. Never had a real job. Unrequited love affairs. Gay. Spent 20 years writing a book almost no one reads. But he's also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. Anyway, he uh... he gets down to the end of his life, and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered, Those were the best years of his life, 'cause they made him who he was. All those years he was happy? You know, total waste. Didn't learn a thing."
Dwayne: He's the guy you teach.
Frank: Yeah. French writer. Total loser. Never had a real job. Unrequited love affairs. Gay. Spent 20 years writing a book almost no one reads. But he's also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. Anyway, he uh... he gets down to the end of his life, and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered, Those were the best years of his life, 'cause they made him who he was. All those years he was happy? You know, total waste. Didn't learn a thing."
I love Steve Carell. I could write several essays about why he is my favorite actor.
I let myself write this essay in an incoherent nonsense jumping around way because there are so many important things I want to write eventually, and I have to get all this cluttery nonsense out of my head because the good writing is stashed under it. I think the point is... Something Francesca wrote to me in a birthday card when I was a teenager. "You know in your heart what's true and that's all that matters. Don't let anyone tell you differently"
In my many years of customer service, strangers regularly walked in for a cup of coffee and told me their life story. Still on a daily basis I receive the most courageous letters from people telling me about all the difficult struggles they are going through. I wish everyone could know how many people are dealing with the exact same stuff as eachother. I wish I could set them up on friendship dates.
I can tell from the success of blogs about minimalism that people are really looking for answers about why their lives look so full but their something feels so empty. That "growth beyond anything available around you" concept I wrote about yesterday. I'll write more essays on that. "The Linguistic Relativity of Love" is one in the works 😃....
Today I read "If you are actively pursuing a life of simplicity, you are living a counter cultural lifestyle" I laughed out loud but then I realized he's right. Holy Wow. Welcome to the revolution, where the most punk thing you can do is offer someone an organic kale smoothie.
I wish I knew the right things to say to people who want so much more out of their lives. Everyone's definition of purpose is unique. It takes time. Change doesn't happen overnight. Be patient and good to yourself but also be honest with yourself. Take a step in a new direction today, and keep taking a step in that direction every day for the next 10 years. The time is going to pass anyways, so you might as well. (Oh. and that direction will seem like you're going in circles. and you are. Because life is a spiral, remember?)
Once, Cam and I were reading Louise Hay and he epiphanied: "This woman has the most positive attitude! She is
"Yup." I said. It was an astute observation. One I refer back to when I'm thinking up Ways To Support My Family in the Interim (while I learn to program; so I can be a digital nomad) Do you know what I might do? I might get a job at an oil change place and eventually apprentice to be a mechanic. I would be bored of it by the time I learned how to fix cars, but I would have all this sweet knowledge I could juxtapose with all the other ideas in there. 😃 Who knows what I will do. Your guess is as good as mine.
I would coach women (& men & nonbinary folks) who desire natural home-births. Wandering aimlessly around the province for a month living in a tent is not a prerequisite, but it is therapeutic. The Smell of Trees and The Crashing of Waves always is. Crying your face off and having temper tantrums once in a while is also therapeutic, if you chose to grow from it and then look back on your silly self and laugh.
" Worrying about scarcity is our culture’s version of post-traumatic stress. It happens when we’ve been through too much, and rather than coming together to heal (which requires vulnerability) we’re angry and scared and at each other’s throats."~ Brene Brown
