Author Archives: nothingbythebook

Let it snow, let it go

Winter is evil. I know this is not a universally held opinion, and while I don’t want to yuck the skier or snowboarder’s yum, come on. Black ice, killer roads, snow drifts, -40 temperatures, the sun setting at 4 p.m. — winter is evil. Terrible. Gross.

And it brings out the best in people. Doesn’t it?

When my son has his very close encounter with a concrete barrier on the second day of winter’s awful roads, strangers immediately stopped, made sure he was ok, and got his truck to a safe place.

After giving up on trying to make it up the hill to his house, my love parked his car by the road and then spent an hour helping half a dozen other cars get up or off a snow-drift covered urban hill of death. And then, they pushed his car up the hill and into his parkade.

Much as I hate the sound, smell and environmental cost of snowblowers, the dude two streets over who owns one clears snow off the entire block with his.

And much as I hate my next door neighbour, he’s shovelled my entryway and driveway, as well as any car parked in said driveway, with his snowblower.

He’s also attached it to his bicycle to make it go faster — he’s still biking in this weather although not because he wants to save the world — and he’s also used it, consistently, between 10 p.m. and midnight as I’m desperately trying to fall asleep. 

It’s ok. I have ear plugs.

Also, as much as I hate my neighbour, I recognize that he’s doing his best to use the snowblower for good. Evil winter is bringing out the best in him, too.

Are you judging me for hating my next door neighbour? You shouldn’t, until you live next door to him for a while. According to the gossip on the street, he and his roommate-partner-girlfriend-common law wife (she insists they’re just roommates; he has a different spin on their relationship), have been in the middle of a violent domestic break up for going on twenty years. He screams and calls her terrible, terrible names. For hours. At some point, some neighbour breaks down and calls the police. I’ve done it once myself. It’s awful. How can someone, anyone scream at anyone, much less a person they possibly claim to love, like that?

Almost every day. Sometimes, for hours.

Then he apologizes. To me. Perhaps to her, I don’t know. I never hear the apologies, only the screaming.

On the days when I can access my deeply buried compassion, still not back at its pre-pandemic levels, I remind myself that however awful my experience is as next-door-neighbour to the neighbour from hell, it’s nothing compared to the hell he and his partner-roommate-whatever have created for themselves.

She’s not an agency-less victim, by the way. She’s his active enabler and enthusiastic participant in the fights. She just doesn’t scream — she whispers her venom. I only hear it when we’re all outside, which I try to avoid happening.

Anyway, point: The terrible, terrible neighbour is shovelling my driveway when snow comes. I still hate him. But I also appreciate him.

Hate is a strong word, you say. You hate winter, you hate your neighbour. Can you dial it down, you say. Dislike. Don’t enjoy. How about that.

No. I hate. Don’t weaken my passion. I hate winter. I hate my neighbour.

I love the strangers on the roads who stop their cars at the risk of never ever being able to move them again to help someone else get unstuck from a snow drift or a stretch of ice.

I hate, hate, hate the guy leaning of his horn because he doesn’t understand what flashing hazard lights mean. But I won’t stop my car and go yell at him. He’s already suffering. Right? That’s why he’s leaning on the horn.

My neighbour is also suffering. Constantly. I’m aware of that, I see the signs of mental illness and addiction, I see the eleven year old — maybe seven year old boy — who got totally screwed over by life and is now stuck in his loops and patterns, living in a nightmare, inflicting said nightmare on the people around him. He does not want to be an asshole, this I believe. 

He can’t help it. I can understand that — and I can hate him. I’m no enlightened Buddhist.

It’s late at night and it hasn’t snowed today, but the snowblower next door is out. I shudder and put in earplugs. Winter is evil. My next door neighbour, while not evil, is definitely not good. And prone to engaging in evil acts. Yelling and swearing at your roommate-partner is evil. I can hate him and his snowblower and also be grateful that he shovels my driveway.

Human beings are complex.

Winter is evil.

But it does bring out the best in people.

“And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said…”*

i

The first thing you need to know is that he’s ok, the second thing you need to know is that he spun out on black ice on Glenmore on his way to work and crashed his new-to-him truck into a concrete barrier. The third thing you need to know is in the five seconds between I heard “I spun out on Glenmore” and “Yes, I’m fine, but I hit the barrier” I died a thousand deaths and aged two decades even though, obviously, logically, whatever had happened, he was well enough to call me.

They never tell you, before you have children, what a horrible thing you are doing to yourself — putting a piece of your heart, body, soul out into the world, exposing it to all of its dangers, nastiness, black ice on Glenmore.

They never tell you, when they lie that it gets easier, that as they get older, the dangers get bigger and your ability to keep them safe from the dangers smaller. You can keep that baby in a wrap, the toddler in your lap.

You can’t keep a 22 year old off an icy road when he has to drive to work.

He’s ok. Sad and angry at himself, of course. But he’s ok, that’s all that matters.

I’m not quite ok yet. My adrenaline, 10 hours later, is still elevated.

They’re not ours. But we think they are. And it hurts.

ii

Another thing you need to know is what parenting after divorce should look like. He called me and his dad from the side of the road as soon as he got the truck, with the help of a passer-by, onto the shoulder. I was on my way to pick him up in minutes, texting co-workers and cancelling meetings in the Uber that would take me to my car, while his dad talked with him on the phone, settling him down. He called for a tow truck — which would come in four to six hours — and I drove him to work. His dad left work to facilitate the tow truck transport later and then picked him up from work. Yeah, we could have made him take transit home in the evening after his stressful day. But also — while I drove his younger brother to a math tutor, his dad went to pick up the adult child who had just had his first car accident. To be with him. 

Tough love is bullshit.

We’re GenX parents. We know that first hand.

iii

I don’t know if you need to know this but I’d like you to know, or maybe I don’t even need to say it and you already know, I’m going to be sick for weeks now when I know that he’s driving and the weather is bad. I’ll find excuses to send him texts about the time that he should be arriving at work or home. Nothing so obvious as, “Hey, did you get to work safe?” But, like, you know. Memes, Instagram reels.

When he gives them a thumbs up, I’ll breathe easier.

iv

There will be other accidents. Worse ones. He got his motorcycle licence — and a motorcycle — this summer and every time he rode, my love and fear rode with him. There will be worse things than accidents: Heartbreaks. Injustice. Illnesses. Pain. Nothing I can do to protect him, nothing I can do to save him — not him, not his brother, not his sister.

They never tell you, before you have children, how helpless you will be after you bring them into this world. They never tell you how hard and heartbreaking it will be.

They talk about the love. And it’s there and it’s huge and life changing and all of that.

They never talk about the pain and the fear. 

But then, if they did — we wouldn’t believe them.

We’d have them anyway…

v

All you need to know is that he’s ok. It was really the perfect first car accident — dear god, I know there will be more. No one hurt, no other vehicle involved. Crunched bumper on the truck, but hey, that’s what bumpers are for, also, a jostled engine. (That’s the technical term. No, it’s not, I don’t speak car, but, you know, the engine is just behind the bumper, there was jostling and a loose cable or two. Really, I don’t need to be talking about this, I’m babbling, because I’m so relieved. He’s ok.)

And that’s all you need to know. He’s ok.

Also, maybe this:

*On Children
Kahlil Gibran

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you.

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

On losing the plot

It’s easy to write when you know what story you want to tell.

When I teach writing, whether creative or business, at some point I always insert this truism: Writing is easy. Thinking is hard.

Solution: Don’t write and think at the same time.

I’m currently not writing — this may confuse you, as you’re reading, and of course I write every day at work — but I feel I’m not writing. By which I mean I’m not writing to a purpose, to a goal.

I don’t have a story to tell.

Unfortunately, I might also not be thinking. I might have lost the plot completely.

Repeat: It’s easy to write when you have a story to tell.

When you don’t have a story — when you can’t tell what the story is — or you can’t tell the story you need to tell — well.

You don’t write. At best, you meander and practice forming sentences, maybe, on a less bad day, paragraphs.

At worst, you stare out a window and cry.

(Hey, at least you have a window.)

Creative writing practice is about showing up to practice, even when you don’t feel creative, even when you don’t want to do the work.

It’s about showing up.

I know this.

I start the day with morning pages. I pen the occasional post or vignette. (Stress on occasional.)

I think about the 6 or 7 manuscripts on my computer in various stages of not-done.

I try to remember the woman whose main complaint in life was that she did not have time to write — but wrote anyway. Copiously.

I look at the woman who has the time… and isn’t.

I try not to hate her.

Sentences.

Paragraphs.

Posts.

Practice.

Advice to self: Find the story you are committed to finishing.

Ok, just pick one. Any one. Make it random. Come on.

Pick one. Start a new one? Do something.

I don’t. And I complain about it in my morning pages.

I’m starting to question if I will ever again — start, finish. I’ve never been in this place as a writer.

I need… an intervention? To re-read The Artist’s Way? Break all the routines?

I don’t know.

In the meantime — in the meantime, I practice. Three long hand pages. Words into sentences into paragraphs.

Practice.

The story will come.

Probably.

xoxo

Jane

Repeat until you believe

1

I’m moving this week and I’m worried — what? I didn’t tell you I was moving? How is that possible? That’s all I talk about. It’s the centrepiece of my menopausal midlife crisis. Short version: I bought a house I’m not sure I can afford with imaginary money I’m still expecting the bank to claw back from me at the last minute, all to assuage the (imagined) fear that I’d be 50 and living under a bridge and the (very real) housing insecurity the comes from living on a six-month lease in a rented crackhouse that’s about to be be torn down.

Anyway. Yeah. I bought a house. Well, a condo. Townhouse? It’s a vertical, three-story affair that faces onto an alley — not a coincidence that it has so many of the characteristics of the place I lived for 15 years and which I loved so much. It’s old and it needs not just new paint but new floors and electrical work and a new bathtub and OMG I bought a moneypit, what have I done?

And it probably comes with a crazy condo board — they are all crazy.

But it’s mine. (Or it will be unless the bank changes its mind tomorrow. They can’t do that, right? They won’t do that.)  It’s mine. I’m the only one who can raise my rent (well, also the Central Bank, but whatever, don’t think about that). I’m the one who decides how long I get to live there. And I can paint the walls. And hammer in nails.

Mine.

It’s intoxicating.

Until I think about the money and then it’s terrifying. So I’m trying to not do that. The money will work out. I’ll figure out the budget. I’ll figure it all out and I’ll still be able to take the kids out for sushi once in a while.

(Repeat until you believe.)

2

So I’m moving and I’m packing and living in chaos and of course stuff is coming up — stuff I thought I had dealt with, stuff I didn’t think I needed to deal with.

Dealing with stuff sucks. I’d really rather not.

Here’s what I want to focus on: Four years ago, I was severely underemployed (thanks, COVID), in debt, paying rent on a one-bedroom basement suite (although it was a lovely basement suite) with imaginary money, with part-time access to a battered car that I didn’t like and didn’t want — and I wasn’t sure my children would ever love me again.

Today — I’m pretty sure my children love me, I’m about to move into MY house, the mortgage on which is my only debt, I drive a funky VW Beetle that I’m way too fond of, I have a job at which I’m valued and well-enumerated — and did I mention that I’m about to move into MY house? And MY house has space for all the children — a bedroom for Ender, a bone room for Flora and a garage where Cinder can store his motorcycle and make things. And a lover who adores me and treats me so well and oh, so much love, and also, did I mention, I bought a house, I’m about to move into MY house?

I did ok.

So it’s also ok that I’m tired. And that I haven’t published a book in four years.

(Repeat until you believe.)

3

I’m moving and everyone is helping me. I’m loved and I’m supported and I will not die alone, eaten by my cats.

(Repeat until you believe.)

Editorial note: Can you make that “I’m loved and I’m supported sentence” more positive? Like, cut that “I will not die alone, eaten by my cats” part?

Jane: In the end, everyone dies alone. And there are worse fates than being eaten by cats posthumously. Being eaten by cats while still alive would, I grant you, be unpleasant.

Editorial voice: What’s wrong with you?

Jane: Nothing.

(Repeat until you believe.)

4

I’m moving and I’m so excited and I can’t wait to show you MY house and everyone is helping me and I’ve done so much over the last four years and I’m loved and supported and oh, I’m going to write so much in my new house.

(Repeat until you believe.)

xoxo

“Jane” 

On priorities, parties and product (totally not)*

1

The week I turn 50, I do all the things.

I’m supposed to be in Cuba, but I’m in Toronto – an interesting choice that I’m second guessing until I do the thing and kill it, but I’m getting ahead of the story.

I’m in Toronto with my loverly partner and they’ve never been, so over the weekend, I am a cicerone of sorts. Of course, all I know about Toronto are the book shops and the shoe stores, also, a few cafes.

We go to all the book shops and eat all the food.

Also, we dance at Lula Lounge with my work dancing queens, because dance is life.

Well, life is life. But dance makes life better.

2

On Monday, I take myself to the Bata Shoe Museum and then along Queen Street West to Church – that is, the Toronto John Fluevog Store, because a) it’s huge and b) it has an illusion room in a former bank vault c) why do I even need to give a reason? I go to Church in every city I visit that has one. Don’t judge. I don’t believe in god but I believe in the power of shoies to make any mundane day better.

3

On Tuesday, on my way back to the hotel from my Toronto office, where I spend a fairly productive day, I stop to buy a rose to make my lover’s heart sing. Buy the men in your lives flowers more often, people. It feels good – to get flowers. To give flowers.

Tuesday is our actual birthday – not the royal we, but the loverly we, which is really cool. Everyone should partner up with someone who shares your birthday. It’s very fun. Also, efficient. It’s our birthday trip. What shall we have for our birthday dinner, how shall we celebrate?

By eating the 27-ingredient Singapore Slaw at Lee Restaurant, of course. If you have not experienced this, put it on your bucket list.

4

On Wednesday, I do the thing I came to Toronto to do, and I make magic happen. I’m so high. And then my colleagues fete me all night long in the most incredible way (unrelated to the magic I performed, btw) and I can’t get over it because I’m kind of a cranky bitch at work most of the time, focused on product, impatient of process and frequently inconsiderate of people – why do you all like me so much, I sob as I blow out the candles?

(But they do. Mystery.)

5

Thursday, I do a little more magic. Kill it again. Sidenote: It is very fulfilling to be good at that thing you get paid for. Definitely.

Then, goodbyes. Flight delay. A few hours in a sheesha lounge with my loverly love pretending to work. Airport. Flight delay continued. We will get home eventually, right? Plane. Take off. Interrupted sleep. Landing. More waiting. Uber. I’m in bed shortly after 4 a.m. Hey, it’s already Friday.

6

On Friday, I celebrate the birth of my eldest, now 22. When did that happen? He was a slime-covered mewling newborn just yesterday, you know? We spend the day, birthday boy and siblings, sitting on motorcycles and eating too much food. I pat my primordial pouch with pleasure, watch this man child I grew with joy.

7

Saturday, I have almost all the people I love in one room for a final shared birthday celebration. My cup runs over and all that.

8

Sunday, I spend the day in bed, feeling things.

9

And then it’s Monday again and time to return to the ordinary and routines

The cup is full.

The well is deep.

It will be a good week.

xoxo

“Jane”

PS *I realize the headline is misleading. Whatcha gonna do. I wanted to alliterate. With the latter P.

PS2 It was a rather hard Monday tbh. But. The well is deep, the cup is full. It will be a good week.

PS3 But will it? I wrote this before reading the news and starting my day and I end it feeling sick and horrified and guilty for being alive and happy and safe. How can ordinary life go on and feel beautiful when horrific things happen to an entire people? I don’t know. Do you? I make the decision to hit publish anyway as this is my reality. And my guilt. We probably share it. It will be a good week… for some. Definitely not for others.

On learning to love the number 5

1

I’m still in my 40s today, and as I move from the decade some friends tell me was the best decade of their lives to the one other friends tell me is the best of theirs, I’m trying to come to terms with my utterly irrational hatred of the number 5.

I don’t want to turn living through ten consecutive 5-something birthdays – including a horrific double-five – into the worst decade of my life… because I don’t like the number 5.

Wait, it’s even more irrational than you think.

I know nothing about numerology or kabbalistic magic – which always sounds like cannibalistic magic, don’t you think. I just don’t like the number 5. It’s icky.

I should like it. It’s a cute number. It’s a prime number and a Fibonacci number. I love 3 and 7. I embrace 4 and 8. I’m neutral about 0, 1 and 2. I’m cool about 9. I’ve got reservations about 6 and I hate 5.

Flora: And we’re still debating about where I got my pattern things from?

Jane: Me. I know it’s me. Sorry, child.

I google the meaning of 5 and hey, if I believed in numerology, all would be hunky dory. The number five is amazing. It symbolizes curiosity, freedom and change. New beginnings and opportunities, high energy, excitement.

The Wikipedia definition resonates with me more:

5 (five) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number, and the cardinal number, following 4 and preceding 6, and is a prime number.

It’s just a number.

Get over it, you freak.

2

My dislike of 5 is not new – I did not like being 5, 15 or 25 (I don’t remember 35 or 45; life was intense). But I concede that some angst about turning 50 is mixed into it. I’ve not been relishing the approach of this round birthday. I barely noticed 30 or 40 – it was another birthday, another year. The 50 seems – very round.

And significantly closer to death than 40.

It’s presenting me with dual angst: First, a sense that there’s not that much time left. Less than 30 years (I plan to be dead at 78 – but that’s another story), and the last decade passed in a blink. The clock is ticking. And second, perversely – 28 years left, an entire lifetime. What am I going to do with them, how am I going to make sure I don’t piss them away?

3

I’m reading The Marginalian and Maria Popova’s insightful (but long-winded; I love her, but the woman needs a ruthless editor) summary of Marion Milner’s a Life of Own’s Own:

Here then was a deadlock. I wanted to get the most out of life, but the more I tried to graps, the more I felt that I was ever outside, missing things.

…I could not understand at all that my real purpose might be to learn to have no purpose.

…

I want to feel myself part of things, of the great drift and swirl: not cut off, missing things, like being sent to bed early as a child, the blinds being drawn while the sun and cheerful voices came through the chink from the garden.

…

I want… the patterns and colourings on the vase on my table … I want to be so harmonious in myself that I can think of others…

…

…why was I always striving to have things or to get things done? Certainly I had never suspected that the key to my private reality might lie in so apparently simple a skill as the ability to let the senses roam unfettered by purposes.

…

It struck me as odd that it had taken me so long to reach a feeling of sureness that there was something in me that would get on with the job of living without my continual tampering.

I suppose I did not really reach it until I had discovered how to sink down beneath the level of chattering thoughts and simply feel what it meant to be alive.

It resonates.

Marion Milner wrote A Life of One’s Own under the pseudonym Joanna Field

4

Five is just a number.

Fifty is also just a number. It’s also half a century. Definitely the latter half of mid-life. Maybe the beginning of the last quarter.

I don’t mind aging, getting older. It’s better than the alternative.

I just thought I’d be somewhat more with it by 50.

Instead, I feel, in so many ways, like I am back at “start” again.

Except with baggage.

Scratch that. 

With experience. Right?

5

Five is a very cute number.

It combines lines and curves. It’s in the middle, and I like to be in the middle. The middle is cozy, fun.

My decade of fives will be fine. Fiery. Formidable. Freaky, even.

(Menopausal bloggers have ruined fabulous and fantastic as adjectives that can modify 50.)

(Omg, I’m about to become a menopausal blogger, fuck me now, how did that happen?)

Five.

Just a number.

A cute number.

Curvey and strokey, bold and soft. 

A perfectly good candidate for a favourite number.

My favourite number.

So cute.

Ha.

I’ll totally come to believe it. By tomorrow.

See the power of story?

xoxo

“Jane”

 

First, burn the Morning Pages, then, burn the body

1

I did a very stupid thing this weekend.

I sampled a decade of my Morning Pages.

I didn’t plan to. It just happened. But wait. I’m telling the story badly.

Morning Pages are the foundational practice of The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron’s 12 week recovery program for blocked creatives.

Shut up. I know it sounds woo-woo. It is. It’s ridiculous. There’s too much god in the book, also, kindergarten craft activities involving glue, glitter and imagines from magazines, exercises about childhood memories and worse.

It’s kooky.

It’s 100 per cent not science or research-based. The word “intuition” appears about twice a paragraph.

It steals wholesale from the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

It works.

The Artist’s Way works.

And the Morning Pages are its foundation. Three pages of long-handed writing, written right after you wake up — according to Julia, before you have coffee, do yoga etc. (I think she allows you to pee, although that’s not explicitly mentioned.) Me, I make the coffee first and drink it as I write, but that’s the only cheat I engage in.

I make the coffee, I sit down and I write.

Three pages.

About nothing, about everything.

My pages are often about how I don’t want to write them. I have nothing to write about. Or, I have too much to write — I want to jump right into the current work in progress. Or, these days, get to work and do all the things I’ve got happening that day — I want to get started now!

Sometimes, they’re about how I’m hungry and I can’t wait to eat breakfast. Or a debate about whether I should make more coffee after I finish writing, because I’m just on page two and the press is already empty…

Sometimes, I write this: Letters make words. Words make sentences. Look, that’s three sentences. Actually, a paragraph. At which point will this rambling become a thought that can be split across to paragraphs. Words. Word by word. Write. Just keep writing.

Silly, right?

But also — it’s in the morning pages that I’ve planned all of my novels, tried to find ways to stay in my marriage, found my way to divorce, anchored myself and stayed breathing and functioning when all else failed.

Morning pages are like journaling, I suppose. But also, different. You get three pages. You must write three pages even if you don’t want to write, even if you feel you have nothing to write about. Word by word. Sentence by sentence. Write until something comes. And you write. And at a page and a half, like clockwork, the hard truth appears.

At the end of page three, you stop.

You want to write more? You can’t, says Julia. You still have something to stay after page three? Execute. Turn into into art. Write a scene, a poem (a blog post).

Draft a screenplay.

The pages are a place to rest, sort, get inspired — to move you to action. Not to hide.

I told you. Woo-woo. Kooky.

They work.

2

The other rule of Morning Pages is you don’t talk about Fight Club. I mean — you don’t show them to anyone. Not your therapist, not your writing group — not the people you’re working through The Artist’s Way with. Julia’s advice is to not even show them to yourself. Put them away. Revisit them later if you like, but not the next day or the week after.

Julia also suggests you make arrangements with a trusted friend to have them destroyed when you die, so you don’t traumatize your children and friends. Or, I suppose, strangers…

She re-reads her pages periodically, to see where they are guiding her.

I don’t. I haven’t for 10 years.

My advice, after this weekend? Destroy them as soon as you write them.

3

I started keeping Morning Pages in September 2014, about a year after the Calgary flood and my monumental not-really-flood-related-but-everything’s-conflated post-flood crash. I promised to start them because a cute girl insisted I give The Artist’s Way a try. I had to trick myself into the process. I had burned all my diaries and stopped reflective writing when I was 16, for very good reasons. I did not want to expose myself like that again.

So for the first two months, I did not write Morning Pages. I wrote in the morning, and I wrote about three pages, but I used writing prompts to draft random scenes of what would become my second novel. And then, eventually, with gritted teeth, I told myself to do the whole 12-week program, glitter and all. If I managed to do that, I’d let myself consider a creative writing MFA. A writer’s retreat. A trip to Cuba.

Something.

Instead, the Morning Pages helped me write a third novel. Then a fourth. Then another. And another. A trilogy. An idea for a seven-book series. Redefined my marriage. Kept me on this side of sane while my child fought for her life. Helped me end my marriage with grace. Saw me through the pandemic and the end and beginning of so many, many things.

They took me to Cuba, too, actually.

Everything is in my Morning Pages.

They’re full of 10 years of terrible things.

4

Not just terrible things, of course. Plenty of good things happened in that decade too.

But all the terrible things are there. In grotesque detail. Writ large in pain.

5

I’ve never counted the notebooks and math is hard, but it takes me about two and a half months to fill the average notebook. So that’s about 5 notebooks a year. Times 10 years. About 50 notebooks. Plus some sketchbooks and process journals. 

I threw most of the process journals and sketchbooks away, easily. They’re not meant to be product. Or to be revisited.

The Pages, though.

I was going to throw them away. All of them. Burn them. Ritually.

But what happened is, I flip one open. I see a story. I don’t remember the story. I don’t remember the memory. Now I do. I flip over a few more pages. Pain. Lies.

The lies are the worst — the parts where I see myself lying to myself. (I know they’re lies, because the truth comes eventually. Later.)

The pain is awful, but at least it’s true.

The lies are a betrayal. Stupidity. 

They bring shame.

They need to be burned.

But.

In-between the pain and the lies—story origins, story ideas, story attempts.

I hesitate.

That’s a really neat one. I don’t remember it—but oh. I want to write it. Maybe now I have the chops to write it. I didn’t back then.

In the end, I don’t throw away the pain and lies, because I want to keep the stories.

6

I don’t have a cute wrap-up for this post. Truthfully, what happens is, I don’t deal with it. I stack 10 years of lies, pain and stories — and good moments too, but you know, where’s the drama in that? — in the corner of the crack house living room and hide them with my reading chair. I’ll burn them eventually. Soon.

I will not carry them with me into the future — I will not move with them again.

I will leave them behind.

But first. I will go through them and rip out the stories.

Not today though. Not next weekend.

But soon.

Eventually.

xoxo

“Jane”

PS Flora, my child, if I die before getting my act together and destroying the journals, shred them all. Burn them all. Don’t read them, don’t let anyone else read them. Thank you. Love, Mom PS2 Remember, Murder Mystery funeral. I’ll leave a few different scenarios you can use but if you’ve got a better idea, do it. I won’t care — I’ll be dead. PS3 Not dying. Just freeforming. This is why you need to burn the Morning Pages. Decades of this shit, immortalized forever. Burn them all. Ok, thanks. Love you.

The meaning of life, redacted

i

I have a problem.

I’m about to turn 50 and I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.

That’s the question we inflict on children as soon as they master more than a dozen words. First day of preschool, first time you play with a fire truck or dinosaur: “What do you want to be when you grow up? A firefighter? A teacher? A palaeontologist? An astronaut?”

What, by the way. The question is what. Not who.

I think I know — no, I know, I know — the who. I know who I am. I am myself. I am a mother. I am a writer. Usually a human, sometimes a feral animal. I am myself — I am at peace with who I am. For the most part.

What I am, how I’m supposed to organize my life for the next 15 to 20 years to make sure I don’t spend my twilight years under a bridge somewhere… apparently, I haven’t cracked that yet.

You: You seem to be doing ok.

Jane: The operative word there is “seem.”

I seem to be doing ok. I have not just a job but a career. I’ve done the thing that I thought I had to do for my life to have meaning and not just once or twice, but, depending on how you count, four to 10 times (the novels, I’m talking about the novels, not the revolutions). I’ve birthed and almost shepherded into adulthood some fabulous new humans. If I died in a fiery car crash tomorrow — I think about this a lot — I’d largely have no regrets.

The thing is, I have to live for another 28 years, give or take half a decade on either side (but no more, please, and I’m ok with less). At least 15 of them should be productive, creative, meaningful, working towards some kind of larger purpose beyond that of keeping myself and my children alive, fed and housed. Right?

Or is that a first world whine, a neurosis of affluence?

ii

Sometimes, I just want to be a cat. A kept woman. A retired snowbird. An entitled parasite.

Sometimes, even the little that I do seems to take too much effort.

Sometimes, I want to sleep and not wake up.

iii

I always wake up.

I always do what needs to be done.

I always find something to chase, to build, to dream about.

Often, it takes a while, butI always get there. Eventually.

I’ll get here this time too. Eventually. Hopefully before my 50th birthday.

I’d like that.

iv

Interlude from a coffee shop, unedited:

The three baristas behind the counter form a funny triad. He’s at least 6’4, a mountain of a man. Not a Rocky Mountain — maybe that’s the wrong metaphor. He’s more of a giant hill —  sloped, rounded shoulders, a bell of a belly, a triple chin, an overall impression of softness. But you can’t say, a giant hill of a man. Bad metaphor. A mountain of a man. But mountain of a man makes you think of someone… less squishy. More powerful. Work on that. Still. Mountain of a man. He towers over his two colleagues, both female. They barely reach his belly button. Ok, I lie. But they definitely do not reach his chest. Their size difference would make a sex scene quite difficult to write. Don’t go there, why did you write that? But seriously. To talk to him, they crane their necks up at an angle that looks painful. He also cranes his down. All that craning. Ouch.

One of the small women likes him and thinks he’s funny. She’s laughing, chatting, flirting — tilting her head up like a flirty bird. The other is intimidated. By his size? By the repertoire between the other two? She talks to both of them always from a distance.

But she cranes her neck up when she talks.

When he leaves — end of shift? Just a break — and the two small women are left alone, they don’t talk to each other.

Yes, small, not short. That’s the right word. They are not just short but small in my head. An objective assessment or did their mountain of a colleague shrink them?

I don’t think there is an idea here. Is there?

v

Maybe it’s not a problem.

Maybe we’re not supposed to know.

No.

I need to know.

I need to be working towards something, building something.

Feeding the kids and paying the rent is not enough, it never was.

First World neurosis, mediocre artist problems.

vi

I plot out a love triangle between the three baristas but I’m in a mood. One ends up dead in the coffee shop bathroom, one of the lam, one devoured by guilt, everyone alone.

I do a take two.

This time, everyone dies.

When I leave the coffee shop, I feel like a murderer. The two women behind the counter — their mountainous colleague never came back — smile at me, say goodbye.

I avoid their eyes.

You should not look into the eyes of the dead. It’s bad luck.

vii

I have a problem but perhaps it’s not what I think it is.

And it could be worse, right?

At least I know who I am. 

Do you?

Xoxo

“Jane”

Rumour has it, spring is coming

i

It’s not depression, I say. It’s February.

You: Baby, it’s March.

Jane: Look outside. It’s February.

The sun is back, though, and the weather forecast promises above weather zero again, so the prognosis looks good. I will probably make it to another spring.

But I’ve got to tell. you, kittens, the amount of energy I expend November through February to make sure I see March is excessive.

Perhaps that’s why I want to be in bed 12 hours a day.

It’s March.

So they say.

I expect I’ll make it.

ii

I’ve actually done ok this winter. Really. Two weeks in Mexico in November saw me through a crappy December. January and February were brutal but I made arrangements. I freebased Vitamin D. I went to the theatre, twice. I danced (twice!). I RSVP’ed to events and usually showed up. I took my sons places and I fed them decent suppers. I even went out for a 1:1 lunch with a friend once, and a walk another time.

I’ve had worse winters.

My best winter ever, though, was the one I spent in Cuba. And I had sun.

It’s true.

I’m basically a plant.

iii

It’s March, you insist, but I still need help ensuring I’ll be here tomorrow. Plans help. I make a list of road trips, activities. I buy plane tickets.

I ponder moving. Maybe next winter, I need a place with bigger windows, better heating.

Somewhere closer to the equator.

It doesn’t feel like March, not yet.

iv

Exercises to remind you life is worth living:

Make a list of all the people who love you (yes, you’re on it).

Make a list of all the things you’re grateful for. Coffee. Books. Butterflies. Cats — when they’re not in heat. Keerist. Why have I not spayed this cat yet?

Don’t read the news. Do’t think about P@lestine, the Sudan, the Congo. Don’t think about what a pathetic First World Loser you are.

Go out for a fancy coffee instead. But not Starbucks.

Go for a walk.

Do not hit the person who suggested you go for a walk. But also, fuck you, I walk to and from work every day, I walk the dog two or three or more times a day, just because you’re so pathetic and inactive a walk seems revolutionary doesn’t mean it’s a cure all, fuck the fuck off with your stupid go for a walk advice, seriously, it’s just a walk, did we not prove over the pandemic that walking around the block is actually NOT all that we need to be happy?

Don’t say that. Choose kindness. Remember, people mean well. Smile a fake smile for two minutes, then take yourself for a solo sheesha date.

Go to John Fluevog and wind show for shoes. Don’t buy any, though, because all the spare cash (what’s that?) in your budget is going to the heating and electricity bill and to bolstering grocery store profits.

Make a list of all the people who love you again.

Turn it into a list of all the people who would come to your funeral.

Plan your funeral.

Make it really good, a combination murder mystery-escape room-dead disco-wake-no one gets out alive kinda thing.

Stop spiralling. Now.

Eat some carbs. Or ice cream.

There’s a new flavour of soft serve — Matcha! — at Luke’s. Go try it.

Oh — carbs with ice cream. Do it.

Try to remember why you stopped drinking and don’t go to buy a bottle of wine.

Go dancing.

Ok, that helped, a little.

Make a list of all the people you haven’t seen lately.

Screenshot

Text one of them.

Make plans.

Don’t cancel them.

Make a list of the people you want to invite to your next birthday.

Tell your cat she’s beautiful.

Buy a new houseplant.

Don’t feel too bad if you kill it within two weeks. Everything dies, everything passes.

This too shall pass, this mood. You know it will.

Have you eaten some carbs?

Ice cream?

v

It’s March. The calendar says it’s March.

We made it, baby, 100%, it’s March.

So they say.

You: It’s March. I promise.

I almost believe it.

I think we made it.

xoxo

“Jane”

PS We made it. We totally made it. It’s March.

On not cancelling my past self’s plans

I am trying to not cancel plans.

Past me made these plans purposefully, to try to shake off the “It’s February and still dark and my lover is in Egypt woe is I” blues. On Friday: a High Performance Rodeo play with a hot girl (also, tall, so tall). On Saturday: a walk with an old friend (also tall, but it doesn’t matter so much in this case) and an evening party in the role of wingwoman to another friend. Sunday, a lunch date with another hot girl (this one, short), then dinner with my kids and parents at the end of the world.

I want to do none of these things. Cancel it all, stay in bed, binge watch Deep Space Nine.

It’s not depression.

It’s February.

Also, it’s overload. What was I thinking? Going to a play on Friday means do nothing Saturday. Party Saturday means lay in a dark room all day Sunday.

I’m already exhausted by the people I haven’t met yet.

Not depression. 

February.

The thing is – if I go and do all the things, I’ll have a good time. I know this. I will. I always do.

But also, if I cancel everything and spend the weekend in bed with my cats and books and laptop… I’ll also have a good time.

I won’t cancel.

I’m exerting all my will to not cancel, chiefly because I get very cranky when people cancel on me last minute, their reason being “I don’t feel like it” (code word: self-care) and I don’t want to be that person.

(I might be that person.)

(No, I won’t.)

(I mean, sometimes, I am not person and I’m sorry. I try very hard not to be.)

I tell my present self and my future self to remember this anguish and to not make more plans. Keep the next two Sundays free. Don’t make Friday night plans. (It’s too late to save the Saturdays).

(Remember the pandemic, when  you had cabin fever and couldn’t wait to get out?)

(Yes, but it’s different now. I want to stay in.)

(Do you really?)

(Why are there always at least two voices inside me? It’s exhausting.)

Summer is for plans.

February is for hibernation and feeling sorry for myself.

I’m not going to cancel.

I promise.

But, like – tall hot girl, short hot girl, old friend – if you’re feeling like I am, and you cancel… I forgive you  in advance.

xoxo

“Jane”

PS Short hot girl cancels lunch, because totally legitimate reasons. I send her kisses, plan a luxuriously lazy Sunday morning-afternoon in bed.

Hibernation, in five stanzas

i

January is almost over and I’m still processing 2023 — how about you? It wasn’t a “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times” kind of year — well, if you live in Gaza and the Sudan, yeah, it was definitely the worst of times. For us privileged First World Whiners, really, it seems shameful to whimper that it was a hard year. But it kinda was. Maybe not hard. But draining. Was it not? I think I have a hard time with coming to terms with its essence because it was so full of good moments, not just short ones, but amazing days and weeks, peak experiences even.

And yet, I arrived at its end exhausted and mildly dissatisfied.

Therein’s the rub — exhausted and satisfied is a grand place to be. Exhausted and meh — meh. Not an awful, “I’d rather be dead” feeling.

But not a great feeling. You catching what I’m throwing?

(It’s not a snowball.)

So. I’m going to do what I always do when I can’t make sense of the past: Decide root causes don’t matter, put it in a box, duct tape it, and try to be less exhausted and more satisfied in 2024.

ii

January is almost over, so it’s staying light until almost the evening — well, until 6 p.m., which is at least late afternoon and, actually, at the equator, this is when the sun sets year round, so why am I complaining, also, the only stuff falling from my sky is snow and rain, why am I complaining — but it’s still so dark when I wake up — so that’s why I’m complaining.

The dark is hard.

Two more months, six weeks, really, and I can pretend spring is around the corner — the sun will be back. I want a life in which I’m not in the Northern-Northern Hemisphere November to February. Canadian and American snowbirds ruin every Mexican city they invade — I hate them, I want to be one of them.

iii

Snow can be beautiful. The cold, less so. The dark, never, not in the winter, not for me. The dark takes away the will to live.

You want to make plans to get me out of my blues — I offer a date in March. You say, but I haven’t seen you since October. I haven’t seen me since October either. I am still, asleep, hibernating. I will wake up in March.

My challenge with 2023 — I don’t think I ever woke up. I slept through spring-summer-fall and I’m not sure I have enough reserves for a second winter.

iv

I am not unhappy or depressed. Let’s be clear here before you start planning an intervention or prescribing mindfulness and CBT therapy. I’m just cold. And sleepy. Because it’s dark. No, I can’t take any more Vitamin D. Yes, I can probably turn on a few more lights — no, I can’t, we just got a government alert telling us to stop using so much electricity because the polar vortex is threatening to overload our power grid, tell me again why winter is fun?

v

I light a lot of candles and my happy blue light. I google “is it possible to overdose on Vitamin D” (Yes, but how you could swallow that many pills in a day, I’m not sure, and you have to keep on doing it for months, so I’m ok). I turn down another invitation for a tete-a-tete but I make plans to dance in the dark with everyone I know. I will try very hard to show up

The dark is hard.

Six weeks, two months, soon.

I’ll see you in March.

xoxo

“Jane”

Same old, same old…

i

I bought a new-to-me car last week – thank you, it’s a boy, his name is Darwin and you should see his eyelashes, incredible!

I feel immense guilt over this purchase and how much joy it is bringing me because a) I’m incurring debt, however small and however manageable and debt makes it hard for me to breathe and b) death, death, death.

I can’t even – how can ordinary things, selfish things, materialistic things, such unimportant things when, this? Helpless, frustrated, privileged – I am no activist. When I stand on the sidelines of protests, ill with other people’s pain and anger, all I can think about is the futility of it all. When a government doesn’t care about human lives why would it care about the public opinion of… aliens?

Guilt. Pain. End times. But hey, I have a sexy, new (to me) car. Want to go for a ride?

ii

Guilt, pain, end times – we go to a protest, then, to a party. In the car (not mine), the cognitive dissonance is killer and I wonder what we’re doing. We can’t dance, laugh, play. Not possible. Not right now, not tonight. Not. Possible.

But it is. At the party, we dance.

You can meet the end times in a sack cloth with ash on your forehead or in stiletto heels with a glass of cheap red wine in your hand.

Actually – splurge, get a good wine.

After all, end times.

iii

Ok, so it’s probably not so much end times as same old, same old – but really, don’t you think this experiment called Homo sapiens has failed? Sure, it’s made some cool art and built spaceships, but overall, it’s a nasty, vicious species, destructive and selfish. Pull the plug, bring on another flood (Homo sapiens has facilitated the frequency with which these occur, so it seems appropriate), start again – or maybe don’t. This time, give the Earth to the octopi.

Better yet, the orcas. They seem to want it…

iv

The sad thing about orcas is that they will never know the pleasure of driving down a spirally highway in a sexy car with a tight turn radius and a killer sound system.

I know I’m burning fossil fuels and contributing to global warming and the flood that might wipe us all out. You’re welcome, YHW, just doing my part to hasten Armageddon. End times.

Same old, same old times.

v

I park Darwin in the pull-out over the cliff and look down at Earth over which I have no dominion, rolling hills, mountains in the distance – I can’t see it, but behind them, there’s the ocean.

It’s beautiful. So beautiful. Heartbreakingly beautiful.

I let my heart break.

End times.

Same old, same old.

“Jane”

Plot twist!

I’m giving myself a pep talk so that I get inspired and motivated to do more: to write more, to exercise (at all), to make plans with friends. My baseline energy and ability to people is, if not quite in my heels, definitely below my knees. I’d like to get it at least up to my waist – the bra line would be phenomenal.

I’m not sure how because in the past, telling myself “Suck it up and just do it” sufficed. My executive function is off the charts. I accomplish things. I get things done, no matter what. That’s my superpower.

Well. That used to be my superpower, apparently.

My pep talk morphis into a spiral of self-hate and I slap it back. Come on, self, WTF? We don’t need that. Stop. My daughter’s illness, the pandemic, my own brush with COVID and its lingering effects, my divorce, the effective end of a very significant six-year relationship, a complete reinvention of how I earn my living, supporting my youngest son through his transition to public schooling, did I mention, COVID, divorce, new job – all of these things tax the bandwidth. Could I, maybe, cut myself a little slack?

No.

I don’t cut myself slack.

I do things and I don’t whine about it.

That, by the way, is the difference between us.

I do things. I accomplish, I achieve, I execute.

Except I’m not, so now I’m just like you and I hate myself.

Yes. Apparently, I hate you too. Well, hate is a strong word. Don’t feel a lot of respect for, shall we say?

That might be worse.

Myself though, right now, I hate. With a passion.

Stop.

This pep talk is going horribly wrong. And I don’t really hate you. And I don’t disrespect you. I used to even understand you. But I resent you. God, I resent you. Because when you don’t execute, someone else has to and that has always been me, you know?

Spirals within spirals. Stop. Can we just make it about me? Leave you out of it?

Side-spiral: between them, the pandemic and my daughter’s illness, stripped me of compassion and empathy. Completely. I hate all of you. I have a hard time finding my way back to the person who loved deeply if selectively and who understood and empathized with almost everyone. I miss her. She was nice. Also, she accomplished things.

Back to the pep talk.

Just do it. Why can’t you just do it?

Because, I don’t know, I’m tired, can’t somebody else?

No. There’s just you.

Ugh, what a depressing thought.

Another spiral. Stop.

Ok. My daughter’s illness, the pandemic, the divorce. Everything that came before. The end of relationships, the beginning of another, the new job, housing instability, the pressure to be financially responsible for two – now three – households. Let’s not think about the aging parents. They’re not demanding yet – but it’s coming. It’s coming.

Oh, a new spiral. Not fun. Stop.

Pep talk: so many legit reasons to feel drained and tired. And all the important stuff is getting done. I’m not spending my days curled up in the fetal position under the bed. The children are taken care of. The rent is paid. The morning pages written. And I’m even dancing. Sometimes. Going to conferences, teaching. It’s not so bad.

By your standard, I’m doing just fine.

It’s not Kenough.

I’m sorry. I don’t hate you. Really.

Ok, a little. I’m sorry. I’m trying to find my way back. To compassion. To my usual baseline.

I’m tired of being tired and of cutting myself slack. I want to want things and I want to do things. All the things.

Him: Amphetamines?

Jane: Meditation.

I mean… nothing else is working. And it did help me, before. For a while.

Day 1.

Ommmmmmm….

;P

“Jane”

What would a cavewoman do?

i

I feel about modern self-help cults much the way I feel about the patriarchy. I’ve written extensively about how I don’t want to be a better person. I’m not going to floss more and drink less coffee (although I do keep an eye on the wine intake), and while I might exercise more, I’ll always do it resentfully, and… well. There it is.

None of this is to say that I’m perfect. Or that I accept myself as is. I irritate and disappoint myself continually. I wish was kinder. More patient. Thinner, fitter, all the things my Instagram feed tells me I should be. I am not immune to those social pressures.

Just, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve increasingly come to terms with my innate… laziness? Wiring? Whatever you want to call it, it boils down to this: I don’t want to put my limited energy into making myself a work of art.

I’d rather put it into making works of art.

And, loving my children.

ii

Question from a former lover who never understood me: Everything in your life and its quality remained the same but you didn’t have children. Would you choose that option?

Answer: Never.

Also, the fact that you’re asking that question is one of the reasons, maybe the reason, I don’t love you anymore.

You never understood how important my children are to me. How they shape my work, how they fuel me, transform me – drive me. How they are an inseparable part of me – three living, independent beings that exist outside of me but whose every pain and joy I feel in my own flesh.

I could not love as I do, live as I do, write as I do if not for the joy and pain (there is a lot of pain, I won’t lie) my children bring. So the “Everything in your life and its quality remained the same but you didn’t have children” statement is not possible. The question is something only a psychopath would ask.

Right, I forgot. You are a psychopath.

(I knew he was a psychopath when I loved him – I probably loved him because he was a psychopath, but that’s another story.)

I don’t tell him all of that, by the way.

I just say, “Never,” and move on.

iii

My good friend, who works on herself a lot, often says, “I work on myself so that I can be a better mother.” I never say anything in response – just make supportive sounds – but the phrase always bothers me.

Being a mother is… well, it just is, right? I try my best, every day. Sometimes, I fail, spectacularly. Sometimes, I’m amazing.

Sometimes – like that day, ugh – I’m barely adequate. Not even adequate. Sub-par.

On those days, I wish I was a cavewoman and that doing my best meant not letting the children get eaten by the neighbourhood tiger. 

That must have been very high stress, high stakes, of course, but also, very clear: Woo-hoo, child alive! Good job! Fuck, child mauled and devoured. I fucked up and  have increased my chances of becoming an evolutionary dead-end.

I don’t suppose a cavewoman ever said, “I work on myself so that I can keep my children from getting eaten by a tiger.”

She just, you know. Did her best to keep her kids alive.

iv

Recently, though, I have been thinking that I should, perhaps, exert a little more effort on Project “Be a better person.”

Peri-menopause is coming, is possibly here, and the happy “I’ll adjust and love you no matter what” hormones are leaving and the “Smash all the things!” hormones are spiking. I suppose I could take drugs to balance them out, but, to be honest, I want to see what the “Smash all the things!” hormones do to my work (and the patriarchy). 

It could be amazing.

So, no drugs. But also, no temper tantrums – not with the kids, not at work. (But in the work, maybe. Things need to be smashed.)

Instead, what? Meditation? Actively working to be a better person?

Maybe. I’m thinking about it.

Or, you know. I might just yell at the tigers.

What would a cavewoman do?

Xoxo

“Jane”

PS Alas, most cavewomen were dead before menopause hit, so this last question does not arise. 😉

Project “The Rest of My Life is More Important Than Work” begins today

So the therapist I’m working with now – wait, before I tell you that, a caveat – the therapist I’m working with now exists only in my imagination, because the last one was so bad. But that’s ok. I have a fecund imagination and I’m a Gemini: magicking up a virtual therapist who disagrees with everything I say, believe and want to do is not hard.

With that caveat – the therapist I’m working with right now (in my imagination), unmindful of the reasons for which I’ve fired the last one, says that I’ll be much happier, fulfilled and healthier if I care less about my work.

And I might actually be ready to listen to her.

The last two years have been the first time in more than twenty years that I’ve had a job-job – applying my skills on behalf of one employer, for a salary, instead of, with every gig, article, script, book, building my brand(s) and business.

The difference between the two pursuits is immense. After two years of the job-job, while I value the stability and security of that biweekly paycheque (people, it’s amazing, it appears in my bank account like clockwork, and I never have to remind, plead, cajole or threaten legal action to get it), I’m starting to realize that giving my all to it, the way I did to the “I’m working for me” job, is not serving me.

When you’re engaged in creative work and when you’re basically your own employer and sole shareholder, the separation between work and life is blurred at best – impossible to achieve on the most meaningful projects. And not necessarily desirable. Some of the best work I’ve produced has been the result of personal passion, fueled by the demands of daily life. The process was arduous, but the end result, worth it, so worth it.

I was still in that place, trying to find ways to keep that fire going in the face of Flora’s illness and other pressures, when my (real-life, now fired) therapist suggested that perhaps the solution to my struggle was caring less about my work.

I fired her, stopped going to therapy and kept on caring, passionately, about every word, sentence, paragraph, project, initiative.

Today?

I’m very, very tired, and as my imaginary therapist echoes her words, I pause and ponder. Bringing that same level of passion and dedication to a Monday-to-Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (Eastern Time) salaried job, in which I have limited (zero) control over and, most of the time, inadequate knowledge of, the strategic vision of not-my-business? Recipe for angst, stress and unhappiness.

The cure, unfortunately, is probably that elusive Buddhist detachment: I do my best – for 35 hours a week – and I let go of the outcome. And I expand zero energy thinking, “OMG, I could do much better work if,if, if  [long list of things outside my control].”

So suggests my imaginary therapist.

She’s not saying work is an illusion (although sometimes, me, I do think work is an illusion). Her point is that all my pain points related to the job-job will disappear as soon as I stop caring so much…

And, dammit, she’s probably right.

Except, of course… passion is the secret sauce. Technique makes you competent. Passion makes you extraordinary.

Therapist: You’re sabotaging yourself. Again.

Jane: You’re fired.

Yes, you can fire your imaginary therapist. Her replacement sits down beside me.

Imaginary therapist 2: Where were we?

Jane: I want to bring my all to my work, and not be stressed about things outside of my control, and to definitely not bring that stress into my non-work life and, also, to have all the time – chronological and emotional – for my kids, my loves, my friends, my writing and dancing.

Imaginary therapist 2: Have you tried meditation? Or medication?

So she’s fired.

And I’m on my own again.

Still. Project The Rest of My Life is More Important Than Work begins today – as does a search for a new therapist. Perhaps a flesh and blood one this time, but no promises on that. I don’t need a therapist to tell me to meditate, take baths and walks, and smell the roses.

I need one that will help me dismantle the structure and conventions of today’s workplace while still collecting a biweekly paycheque.

In the meantime… I’m going to not work on Tuesday afternoon so that I can go to my youngest son’s year-end celebration at school and I’m not going to feel guilty about it.

Baby steps people, baby steps.

xoxo

“Jane”

“Vengeance is mine”

i

Jane: That’s it. I’m done. I can’t walk another step, I’m calling an Uber.

Cinder: Come on, Mom. We’re almost there. All the cool stuff is just around the corner.

Jane: You said that two kilometres ago. And four kilometres ago.

Cinder: We’re almost there. Don’t be a wuss.

Jane: OMFG why will you not let me call an Uber?

Cinder: Remember all those family death marches you took us on when we were kids?

Jane: …

Cinder: And that time in Havana you made us walk all the way to the Hemingway Marina?

 Jane: …

Cinder: Vengeance is mine.

ii

So I’m in Vancouver with my eldest progeny, days shy of his twenty-first birthday, stupid fit, and apparently determined to kill me. We’re walking 20 to 30 kilometres a day, partly to avoid Vancouver traffic, partly because Vancouver is so very walkable (East Hastings and some of the bridges except, but that does not stop us), partly, as I find out on the last day, as payback for all the walking and exploring I inflicted on the children when they were younger. 

Vengeance is his.

Raise fit kids, they said. Make them play outside, they said.

I really need to stop listening to them.

iii

I don’t think he appreciates how well I’m doing, though, keeping up with him. I’m doing that damn 6.8 kilometre hike across Stanley Park into the West End – and then back at the end of the day – at the end of the day with nary a murmur, ligament-light knees, misaligned pelvis, malfunctioning SI joints, and let’s not talk about what’s happening with the cartilage-less vertebrae, notwithstanding.

I’m pretty happy with my performance. My feet and shins hurt, but the back-hip-joint pain, my constant companion for the past 15 years and flaring up badly the past year, is proving the point that these days, it’s sitting that’s killing me, not exercise.

But not this week. No time for sitting this week, we’ve got bridges to cross.

iv

I’ve never experienced Vancouver at quite this pace before. 

(A travelogue, for my reference purposes, follows. For the punchline, skip to section v)

Friday

On the night we arrive, after driving 973 km in about 11 hours and six minutes, we do our first hike from North Vancouver across Stanley Park to the West End and join the hordes of people at English Bay to watch a sunset. 

The sunset is indifferent: we are from the land of pornographic skies and spectacular sunsets, and we’ve had the Northern Lights on every other night over the last little while, so, you know, the boy is hard to impress. But the Persian meal we devour for supper does impress even him (Kaghan Restaurant – we are spoiled for choice on Denman). We Uber to the hotel that night, but just to pick up the car and drive to the Richmond Night Market.

I don’t know how to describe the Richmond Night Market. You should probably just go and see it; bring cash, go hungry.

Saturday

The next day, we do all the things. Literally. Hike across Lion’s Bridge, and then around the Stanley Park seawall. Stroll a bit through Denman and Davie – find some amazing ice cream – keep on walking to the False Creek Ferry Terminal, where I convince him to hop the boat across to Granville Island (he wants to walk across the bridge). We explore the Island and I buy him some overpriced artisan leather works, also, fish and chips. We take the ferry to Yale Town and walk up to Pacific Centre and around Robson and Gastown, skirt the edge of Chinatown and end up at the Plaza of Nations – a ferry to Granville again and another to Kitslana. The Beaches. Final ferry ride to Denman, then we search for what’s supposed to be the best sushi in town – so we overheard some random dude telling some other random people on Granville, and we really don’t know any better.

(It is maybe not the best sushi we’ve ever had. But it’s very good. Miku on Robson. Yum.)

Then, an 8 kilometre walk back to the hotel, through the interior of Stanley Park at night. We don’t die, and we only run into two slightly sketchy people. Everyone else is a cyclist.

Sunday

On the third day, it rains and progeny wants to see Richmond (long story, don’t ask), so we get in the car, avoid the traffic on the bridge and have a pretty smooth drive into Richmond. We explore Richmond pretty thoroughly, then drive to the UBC campus to check out the  Biodiversity Museum and walk around the Museum of Anthropology. We walk down the 400? 500? Steps to Wreck Beach, even though it’s gross and cold, just so that we can say we did it. Then, we drive to Chinatown for dim sum at Jade Dynasty Restaurant and eat all the things.

I take him to Blim, which is basically next door, and buy him a couple of outrageous outfits, and a present for his brother. Next, Commercial Drive – via a look at East Hastings and Main, because I think it needs to be seen, talked about, processed.

Then, we drive to Burnaby to check out City of Lougheed – the boy likes modern buildings and is fascinated by the execution of the Lougheed concept – before heading back to the downtown area. I had seen a Persian teahouse – potentially a sheesha lounge – on our earlier walkabout adventures and I think it might be a good place to sit and chill for a couple of hours, so we track it down and are treated to an… interesting experience. (The sheesha is terrible, the atmosphere is not – I’m conflicted about introducing my son to my one substantial vice, but there it is, I do it.)

Then we wander down Granville Street for a while and find an Irish pub, share a pint of Guinness – the first drink we’ve had together since he turned 18 in 2020.

We eat dimsum and Persian leftovers for a late dinner in our hotel room that night, sleep like the dead.

Monday

We have no agenda for Monday, so we start the day by going up Capilano Road to the tourist trap Capilano Suspension Bridge Park. I’m not saying it’s not pretty – it is. But the pricetag. Dear god. I push through my fear of heights and walk the bridge, the clfif walk and the canopy walk with the child, all the while talking about cars.

I know nothing about cars, but knowledge is not required. Listening is.

We hit a Belgian waffle house off Denman for a brunchy-lunchy, and eat delicious things before heading back across Stanley Park and the Lion’s Gate Bridge to West Vancouver and Lighthouse Park. The drive is beautiful as is the park. We walk. A lot. I guess it’s a mini-hike. There’s al lighthouse. Big trees. Conversation.

We drive back to the hotel, I think, to rest. No. We’re just ditching the car to walk back across the bridge and Stanley Park. I weep. I negotiate: the demon child wants to run around the Stanley Park seawall, because he didn’t get enough exercise yesterday. I walk the short way through the park with the plan to meet him at English Bay.

He laps the all twice and runs all the way to Granville and back before I make it to Denman. We find a Greek place on Denman and eat all the food.

I desperately want to Uber back to the hotel. But we don’t.

Tuesday

The plan is to Uber to Lonsdale Quay and take the seabus across to Canada Place. But of course we don’t Uber. Why would we? It’s only 48 minutes and mostly downhill and we have time, so we walk. We explore Lonsdale Quay, then hop the bus across. Walk to and around Canada Place, and then to the Harbour Air dock for a seaplane tour of Vancouver. This is the kid’s special treat, but, also, to be honest, my motivation: here is 45 minutes that I can spend not walking.

I manage to forget, somewhere along the line that I’m really afraid of heights, Oops.

The plane ride is marvellous. Although we both feel sick when we hit the mountains.

That afternoon, we separate. I set him free to roam – and suggest he stay away from East Hastings, but, you know, odds are he can outrun any trouble – while I meet my Vancouver colleagues for lunch.

We reconvene in a couple of hours on Granville Island. I Uber there. He, of course, walks, through Olympic Village.

We visit our favourite places on Granville, then take in the car dealerships on Burrard (yes, all of them) and explore along 4th Avenue in Kitslano. 

It’s after that that he enacts his vengeance.

We end the day with ramen at Jin Ya – and an Uber ride back to the hotel.

The next morning, we leave Vancouver at 6 a.m. to drive to Kelowna – but that’s another story.

v

It’s a good trip. He says, I feel. I have felt distant from this eldest child of mine for some time: I feel I basically threw him to the wolves and told him to fend for himself when his sister got so ill and, well, he did, but I had felt I had lost him even before he got so angry at my about the divorce. His sojourn in Kelowna during the pandemic was both healthy and necessary but I lost him even more during that time.

I don’t know that I find him, or help him find me, on the trip. But perhaps I set up some signposts.

Get in a lot of steps.

Learn that revenge is a dish best served walked.

xoxo

Jane

PS I’d post photos, but then I’d never actually hit publish on this post, so if you want to “see” this trip, check out my Instagram – @nothingbythebook. It’s private, because single Christian fathers of four and retired military colonels keep on following me and sending me creepy message requests, but if you have a legit Insta handle – and do not claim to be a single Christian father of four or a retired military colonel on your profile – I’ll probably let you follow me. 😉

On the price of peace

i

A text from London: “Have you heard, how are you feeling, wanted to check in on you, knew it would hit you hard.”

I haven’t heard. But now that I have, I’m fine. The impending death, current suffering of someone I’ve neither seen nor thought about in twenty, more, years doesn’t pain me.

Does it?

Should it?

The feelings come after: some shame and guilt at not joining the frenzy of concern, care and support for an old friend. Narcissistic concern that perhaps I am broken beyond repair. Why don’t I care?

Sometime around Christmas 2018, my world shrunk down to my three children, the sick one more than the others, and there was nothing left for anyone else.

The tank is still empty, there is no reserve, no extra space in my emotional bandwidth.

And I’m not sure that this is a bad thing.

ii

Person I can’t wait to get away from: Well, this was lovely. I hope I get the chance to dance with you under the stars.

You won’t. Jesus. Were you at the same date I was? I can’t wait to get away. In the 45 minutes that it took me to finish my matcha latte, the person sitting opposite me found it necessary to tell me that I should take yoga, have my hormones checked, drink less caffeine, teach my parents better communication skills, stop throwing money away by renting, embrace minimalism, get out of my neighbourhood more, be less guarded and be more open to manifesting what I want in life.

I focus on manifesting a quick end to the date and debate if I should complete the circle of unsolicited advice by explaining to him why he is single and will probably die alone, albeit while doing yoga and not drinking caffeine.

I don’t.

I actually love dating in my (so very late) 40s. I’m confident, experienced, uninvested in the end result and while I’m perhaps not sure what I want – after all, life offers almost infinite variety – I’m crystal clear on what I don’t want.

Don’t want that.

Do you?

iii

I am not as unaffected by the news of my old friend’s ill health as I initially think. I had loved him once. If 30 years ago – even 20 – he had needed one of my kidneys, I would not have hesitated.

The grief comes in dreams and nightmares. I mourn in my sleep.

When I wake up, my world contracts and focuses again: Flora. Ender. Cinder. More or less in that order. Even though Ender is the youngest, it is still Flora’s life that is most fragile.

With all three of them, the prevalent, daily worry: am I short-changing them? Am I giving enough? 

Flora, Ender, Cinder. Writing. Work.

Empty.

I used to be able to give other people, friends and strangers, more. Something. I remember that person and I value her.

I would like to be her again.

And perhaps I will be.

But not yet.

iv

My lover is far away right now and I miss them and I miss the person I am when I am with them. They see in me a person capable of kindness and love and compassion. They think I love enough. It’s a nice, comforting feeling.

v

I compose a text: “Hey. It’s Jane. I just heard. Much love.”

So lame. Not enough. What’s the point?

I don’t press send.

vi

Mondays and Tuesdays, I aim for a 6:30 start at work so that I can log off at 2:30 guilt-free and go pick up Ender from school. I could outsource the school pick up to a classmate’s mother or to my own but that 20 minutes in the car, side by side, is precious. I get the fresh memories from the school day, I get to be there while he processes the day. Then we do homework – I occasionally work a little bit more in-between relearning algebra, trigonometry and grade eight science.

Until last month, Mondays and Wednesdays, instead of lunch, I’d drive Flora to her Chem 30 class, also for that 20 minutes of precious time in the car.

Wednesdays and Fridays, I drive Cinder to the train station at 6:45 to shave an hour off his commute to school. We don’t talk much, because it’s early in the morning and we’re both cranky and sleepy. But it’s something.

Wednesdays and Fridays, I work from home so Ender and I can keep on unschooling. Thursdays, a long day in the office to make up for my scattered professional attention on Wednesday-Friday.

Tuesdays and Fridays, I take care of my spine by letting Pilates instructors torture me.

Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays, the kids and I eat supper together, sometimes watch movies or play board games. I try to cook. These days, Flora and I spend Sundays meal planning, shopping and cooking something fancy.

Saturday nights, I walk or drive Flora to her D&D game (campaign? Meeting?) I have learned that “did you win?” is not the right question to ask when I go to pick her up at midnight. Recently, one of her fellow campaigners drives her home. I should be grateful, but I’m not, not really.

I’m hyper-aware there aren’t a lot of those Saturday nights, Sunday afternoons left.

It’s all borrowed time.

I write in the mornings, before I do anything else, cardamom flavoured coffee beside me. It’s not enough: I need to return to the habit of writing mid-day and in the evening. But neither the stories nor the deadlines are urgent right now. The ordinary time with my children –  and the time it sometimes takes to recover from it –  is.

vii

Text from London: “Are you all right? You sound burdened.”

I’m not. I’m actually, on the whole, the happiest I have been in years, decades. I haven’t been inside a hospital in forever. I know exactly how I’m going to pay the rent – so long as my landlord doesn’t get greedy (or desperate) and decides to raise it. I go to sleep at 8:45 so I can wake up and write at 5. Sometimes, on Friday and Saturday nights –  Tuesdays in the summer –  I dance, sometimes, I go out for dinner or coffee or dates. Through it all, my priorities, my purpose are all crystal clear.

I’m at peace.

But empty.

That can be a thing.

viii

I type out a text: “Hey. It’s Jane. I’ve just heard. Thinking of you. Realize nothing one can do or say that’s helpful… just thinking of you and sending love.”

I press send.

It’s so lame.

It’s not enough.

It’s something.

My heart aches.

It’s not enough –  I’m empty –  I’m at peace.

xoxo

“Jane”

On not buying a new notebook

I’m on page 136 of 250 in a bright yellow Leuchtturm 1917 hardcover notebook — my favourite notebook type and brand, yes, I’ve just inserted an unpaid product placement in this post, sorry. Each notebook lasts me two to three months. It’s where the Morning Pages and first drafts of posts, skeleton sketches of ideas and occasional texts live. (Yes, I sometimes draft texts longhand, don’t you? Perhaps you should. Halfway through the drafting, 90% of the time, I decide to make a phone call instead… or NOT send the text, let the argument go. And if I do decide to send that text? It’s PERFECTLY crafted. #highlyrecommendedcommunicationpractice — no, I don’t think that hashtag will catch on but how about #hrcp? ok I’m lost in a digression, let’s move on…)

Shopping lists also live in the notebooks, ditto bad poems (first and final drafts of). And, when I’m writing the way I want to be writing, the notebook is my process journal, the place in which I ponder how and when to kill grandma and where did I go wrong with the hero’s character development, because he is such a soppy milquetoast (it’s a GREAT word, look it up), I don’t ever want to be trapped in a conversation with him, so why should Amelia be remotely attracted to him when he trips over her umbrella and falls down at her feet?

Anyway, point: I’m on page 136 of 250 (137 now), more than 100 blank pages to go, and I want to abandon this notebook and start a new one.

Don’t get me wrong: if you ask me, ever, “Jane, look at this cute notebook, should I get it?” the answer is always, Yes.” If you’re a working writer and you enjoy working longhand, there is no such thing as too many notebooks. You’ll get to it eventually.

(But if you’re looking for a gift for me, please don’t get me a notebook. I’m particular: it needs to be hardcover, the lines need to be a certain size — too narrow or too wide and my experience is 100 per cent affected, the paper has to take fountain pen ink well, the size of the page needs to be just right and, god, it’d better lie flat when opened, how do they even get away with making notebooks that don’t do that? Dammit, I’m digressing again, it’s because I’m afraid to write about the thing I actually need to write about…)

The reason I want to get a new notebook now is because I want to abandon the current one. I want a hard break between today’s writing and tomorrow’s first line and I want it because I hope that new notebook will galvanize me into doing that thing I need to do right now — take one of my six unfinished manuscripts and take it across the finish line.

Yes. I currently basically have almost as many unfinished manuscripts than I have published novels – more if you count the 2020 trilogy as one mega novel rather than three novellas.

This is not ok. 

They’re not even rejected manuscripts. They’re just… unfinished. So close to finished — Matilda a final proof away from being ready for an agent’s and publisher’s eyes.

A new notebook will get me doing what I need to do do finish them, right?

You don’t have to answer.

I know the answer is, “Wrong.”

I know this. But I’m kinda thinking… maybe? Sometimes, a hard break, not just a new page but a new notebook is what you need to mark the end of one thing (procrastination, paralysis?) and the beginning of another (execution!). How else do you really make a commitment to the change you’re promising yourself?

Well… you just do it.

But I’m not doing it.

Maybe a new notebook… and if doesn’t help, surely, at least it won’t hurt?

Jane to Jane: Or, you could use the time you’d spend going to the store to get that new notebook to, you know. Write those final chapters of Bingo. Proof Matilda.

Jane to Jane: But I just don’t think I’ll do that until I get that new notebook.

Jane to Jane: I don’t think you’ll do that if you get a new notebook.

Jane to Jane: I hate you.

Jane to Jane: The feeling is mutual.

ii

Let me name the demon again, shall I? I know it intimately. The last time I set aside a generous block of time in which to focus on finishing Bingo – and also, to plan my writing year and quarter – I had a bit of a breakdown and cried for two hours instead.

So here’s the thing, here’s the demon.

The five years between the publication of my first novel and the publication of the last were really, really hard.

They sucked.

They had good moments, of course, and lots of photogenic highlights, but they were the worst years of my life to date.

I create the novelist and the novels as a way of getting through them.

I feel, right now, as if I’ve come through… a very dark forest, or that part in a video game where you just keep on dying and being forced to relive, over and over again, a really awful, unenjoyable part of the terrain.

I don’t want to go back.

And I haven’t quite figured out how to make my way back to the good parts — the writing, the finishing, the publishing — without revisiting, reliving all those shitty bits I want to keep in the past.

Him: Well, if you know what’s wrong…

Jane: We’ve been over this. Self-awareness is actually not enough.

I suppose what will happen is that I will not get a new notebook.

And I will not finish Bingo before the end of the month.

But I will finish it eventually?

iii

I am not getting a new notebook today.

I am writing this post, and I am looking at Bingo, and what I need to do to it. Also, All in the Cards. Clearly, what I should do, is proof Matilda and send her out into the world, but that’s too easy. And I’m thinking about writing a new short story about a wanna be dominatrix called Tina and her best friend Fran and I’m thinking I might have them discover a body in the dungeon and maybe what I really need to do right now, instead of finishing one of those six romances, is to write a murder mystery?

Help.

At least I’m writing and not shopping for a new notebook. Right?

xoxo

“Jane”

18.

Flora is 18 today. It feels like victory – over fate, genetics, the universe, God, whatever you want to call it. She’s made it another year, we’ve made it another year – she made it to 18, dammit, and you can all 18 just a number but socially constructed milestones matter. She can vote, drink legally in most jurisdictions, be tried in adult court, and possibly own a gun.

My girl is 18. She made it.

My joy and relief are, and always will be now, fragile. The demons that started to ravage her life four, five years ago will never leave. They are part of her DNA and for the rest of her life she needs to work to keep them controlled, contained, and the people who love her need to stay aware, vigilant.

But when the meds and therapies are working, we can relax, at least a little, and rejoice.

Celebrate this 18th birthday for all that it’s worth.

If you see my beautiful, confident daughter today, you’ll be blown away by her poise, style – and, as soon as she opens her mouth, you’ll be blown away, and likely intimidated, by her intelligence. You never see what it costs her to get there. Not in some distant time in the past, not in the time she spend in hospitals, clinics, with armies of doctors and therapists, but that morning, every morning, an hour ago, every moment of every day.

Maintaining her health and well-being is, in effect, a full-time job that she fulfills while going to school and working to spend time with friends, have fun, live a life.

In her university applications, she’s had to reflect on her youthful milestones and accomplishments, to tell the gatekeepers who she is and why she’s worthy of admission. She’s told me and her dad that the questions are had to answer. Retraumatizing in some ways. At a time when most teenagers are supposed to do the teenage thing, find their first selves, and also party a little, have their first crushes and broken hearts, all of her energy was focused on battling her illness, staying alive.

“I don’t know who I am,” she says, writes. “I’m just starting to be able to ask that question.”

She’s 18. She’s alive. Beautiful, smart, tough. A little cruel and unforgiving, but I understand. Surviving her illness made me cruel and unforgiving too. Perspective is actually a terrifying thing.

She’s 18. Every functioning day a gift. Every hard day that she sees to the end and to a new beginning a victory.

Happy birthday, my most beloved. Keep on fighting.

xoxo

Mom

Why I document…

Kick like a girl, April 28, 2019

Her story, my story, our story, June 22, 2019

“You are amazing” — you are partly right, June 25, 2019

Suffering, living, loving… home , January 5, 2022

Happy birthday (the war’s not over), January 9, 2022

Happy 2023: Here’s to NOT becoming a better person, again

i

Happy New Year, and belatedly, Happy Solstice, Happy Yalda and also, merry three days until Christmas Eve – I wrote the first draft of this post on December 21, while I was still busy dying, but when it started to look as though I would live and I would not have to spend Christmas in isolation.

The bad news, of course, is that I’m two weeks behind on life during what we’ve managed to turn into the busiest and most stressful time of the year

The good news is that I don’t care.

The neutral news – the news that I’m not sure is good or bad, but which has acquired consciousness and insists that I recognize its potential significance – is that I ran out of coffee a day or two into my incapacitation, and I was too sick to do anything about it. Didn’t matter, anyway, my main beverage was NeoCitron.

So my First World dilemma as I recover: the illness enforce a caffeine – and alcohol – cleanse of sorts. Do I keep on riding that horse or do I celebrate my return to the land of the living with an espresso and a glass of Cab Franc?

I hate, tbh, that this question is even occupying brain space in me. I don’t drink coffee morning to night. I don’t think it affects my sleep, my energy levels or my behaviour. I just really enjoy my coffee. I love making it, smelling it, tasting it. It’s glorious. (See “But I love it” https://nothingbythebook.com/2017/10/16/but-i-love-it/

Wine and its variants are a bit more complicated. There are signs that alcohol adversely affects my sleep, and even a drink or two makes me more sluggish in the morning. But I don’t drink a bottle of wine a day – or even a week. And  if I choose to indulge with the grape on a Saturday night with friends and am willing to pay the price of a mild hangover for a couple of glasses of wine… why do I feel as though I should work towards eliminating all alcohol from my system til the end of time?

A smidgen of it has to do with the family and national history of alcoholism – I do not want to all victim to that, ever.

But most of it is your fault.

ii

I don’t mean you personally, of course. I’m talking about the meta-you, the global-you. Or, if you don’t want to take any responsibility for my neurosis, we can say it’s their fault. You know, them. The media, society, Instagram wellness reels and pop-up advice about nutrition trends. The First World has eliminated famine – for the First World – and replaced it with joy-killing obsession about what we put into our mouths, our bellies.

I wish I was immune to its guilts, but I’m not.

Coffee. Alcohol. Gluten. Processed foods Dairy. Soy products. Nightshade vegetables. If I  really cared about my body and my health, I wouldn’t put any of those thigs into my system.

Ugh.

I love all of these things. (Except soy. I can give up all soy products tomorrow. Tofu is what people invented when they were short of yummy animals.)

Here’s the thing: I’m actually a pretty healthy person. Reasonably fit, and the bit of squish on my belly is a perfectly reasonable amount of squish (and, if I believe my lovers, adorably cute to boot) for a woman careening towards 50 whose body has birthed three humans.

Nope. Not good enough, not thin enough, not firm enough, not flexible enough, not strong enough, not Instagram reel worthy enough.

Double ugh.

Why did you do this to me?

iii

I don’t believe in conspiracy theories. I lived in cooperative housing for 15 years, and let me tell you: getting a group of like-minded people already committed to a common goal to agree on the colour of building siding and the cost of bathroom fixtures is hell. The Illuminati don’t exist, and if they do… all their energy is spent on vicious in-fighting over the interior decorating choices of their secret meeting room.

I know no government, media, corporation or religious representatives ever sat down in a room and decided, “You know what’s guaranteed to perpetuate the patriarchy? Getting women to obsess about the inadequacy of their bodies. Here’s how we do it.”

No. They didn’t do it to us to push their agenda. We did it to ourselves – and they (corporations in particular) happily leveraged it.

The last few decades, instead of liberating women from The Beauty Myth, we are sucking men into it. Check out the beard oil product selection in a drug store, or how exercise is marketed to men now if you don’t believe me.

For the last few years, I’ve been becoming increasingly – suspicious? disillusioned? angry? hard to choose the right adjective, they all fit – with the self-improvement cults sweeping the First World and invading the globe. They are all replacements for religion, tradition, community. They give their adherents something to focus on, something to believe in, and a group of fellow believers to commiserate with.

They keep us focused on ourselves. We make ourselves the work, the project – instead of making the world the project.

That’s right. I’m not giving up coffee, because if I do, the Illuminati win.

(I know I said they don’t exist. It’s a metaphor, dammit.)

In 2023, again, I am NOT working on becoming a better, let alone a best, version of myself.

Screw that.

So bring me a latte and a glass of the house red, a side of fries and then a crème brûlée.

I’ve got two weeks of the NeoCitron diet to make up for

xoxo

“Jane”