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That Voice

A great deal of my working days consisted of me yapping. Mom was right, I never lack for something to say. There were clients and staff to talk to in person, lots of phone calls, lots of conversations. My gums got a good work out.

Now that I am retired, having left my job because of covid concerns, my mouth has gotten a rest, and alas, many people, their ears.

I still talk, but the audience has changed.

I have great conversations with the cat, myself, the odd inanimate object, plants. They listen very well. They lack a bit for debate, but I think they tend to agree with my points of view anyhow. Cat just walks away or falls asleep in protest, disagreement or boredom. No arguments or shouting matches, just a nice disregard. I kind of like that. It is humbling. So far, the plants haven’t wilted, their leaves turn brown or fall off. My ornaments quietly collect dust as usual. So it is all good.

I read books and my own writing aloud. My apartment has some neat acoustics I hadn’t noticed before. My voice sort of like drums in a ventilator shaft, voluminous and rising to the sky, but not nearly as exciting as a drum solo from Led Zeppelin.

I can almost hear my neighbours groan on occasion. But when they get my flute practice sessions, they concur that perhaps my reading aloud in not so bad, well, not as bad. It just goes on a lot longer than the flute.

Being ones own audience is quite interesting; to laugh at ones own jokes, especially if they are not that funny, or not funny at all. Interesting to debate with oneself and have some pretty convincing arguments, make some nifty observations and get some startling insights. It is all very cool.

And I get to have whole 3 act plays with myself. I get to be the entire play! I write it, direct it, act in it, edit it. I can be very loud if the script calls for it. I end up laughing when I try to be dramatic. Laughter is the best sound my voice makes. Oh yeah, it is very loud too. Think maybe, barking seals. With clapping flippers.

I have to keep that booming voice fine tuned after all. I might need it some day, for a sermon or just to let everyone within 5 blocks know that I am still around. Perhaps I should have been a Sergeant Major like my Dad. Hmmm, maybe that’s where this voice came from. Ya think?

I am not much for making phone calls, the telephone was not my main way of communicating in the past. I tried to keep calls short and sweet.

Now I have marathons.

Before you call me, have your meal, pee break and a nap, because you’re in for a long session. Get comfy.

I’ll never be lonely as I can talk to most anything. Yes even rocks. Now there is a whole other story I will bore you with in a later blog.

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Piles

When I was working I accumulated piles.

No not, hemorrhoids!

Actual piles of ‘to do later’ stuff.

Piles of ‘I can’t deal with that now’ stuff.

And mental piles, virtual to do lists that clog up the brain like sludge.

Come to think of it, they are sort of like hemorrhoids. Ugh.

Piles destroy your quality of life. You cannot live well when you have piles, of any type.

I quite literally had decades of stuff piled up. The actual piles of stuff like paper etc. were annoying to clean up and time consuming but once all was sorted, trashed, cleaned and put away, I could start working on the mental piles.

Things that are stashed away in your mind are the things that make you exhausted and irritable and sometimes crazy. They are unfinished business, and your brain hates unfinished business. It will work 24/7 to solve your problems, to get what you want, to complete your lists whether you are conscious of them or not. This is what your brain is suppose to do; think, solve, plan, organize, be a manager of the rest of you. So mentally file something away and your brain is on it! And no, writing them down does not quiet your brain. It will work even harder on those because they are in writing

The tasks of finishing the unfinished, loving the unloved and the neglected is gut wrenching. From the simple things of sewing a bra strap back on, to finally writing a thank you note (it is never too late for either, your bra and friends understand) I gradually cleared all those mental to do lists out. In the process I discovered many things I’d forgotten about. Embarrassing stuff. Silly stuff. Oh, that would have been great to do stuff.

The great thing about being retired – no matter how short term this may prove to be (money!) is I seemingly have vast expanses of time to do more. Seemingly, because now I really don’t want to do more. I’ve stopped collecting piles, real and imagined and just live for the moment. If something catches my attention, well, if I don’t do it now, I probably will never do it. I will not file it away as a to do later, or sometime if I feel like it.

I am happy to be free of piles for the time being. Life gets so far ahead of you when you are working. Your life belongs to the office and everything else is neglected. So glad those days are OVER.

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Near Death Experiences

Many years ago, at the dawn of Harry Potter, my friend and I, being of an older generation, were intrigued and wanted to discover what all the fuss was about.

Now I know at the moment J.K. Rowling, Harry Potters’ author is getting some bad press about something she posted that I have not read, nor do I even want to go there, but at the time, she was high priestess. So it was pretty close to sacrilege to not take Harry Potter seriously.

Knowing this, we decided to take in the movie, the original, at a big theatre in town. The place was packed. We took a spot among the throngs of mostly youth and settled in with popcorn, not knowing what to expect. We had not read the book, nor had much clear idea of what we would see other than wizards and some special effects.

It was enjoyable and fun, until we met the dog.

The dog in the movie is a massive, menacing, drooling, outright terrifying 3 headed cerebus from hell (but not that scary really). But when the keeper was asked what the dogs name was, well, my friend an I literally fell out of our seats in hysterical laughter at his reply.

“Fluffy”

When we composed ourselves that theatre was so quiet it was like a morgue, but with a thousand eyes all trained on us. For a moment I thought they would stop the movie, turn on the lights and throw us out!

We stayed to the end, frozen in our seats, daring not to even sniffle. At the end we slunk out like a couple of felons on a day pass.

Our apologies to Fluffy et al.

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Only WE

Often lately I’ve been hearing we are in end times, and over the last few years, it definitely appears to be. I have been surprised that even atheist friends have mentioned we are stepping into the Book of Revelation. This is not said glibly, but with some panic and belief.

I once read a book about the Book of Revelation that suggested this is a period of enlightenment as opposed to wanton destruction. That all of these problems; fires, floods, pollution, corruption, poverty, suffering, political upheavals, all this chaos, is a call for us to embrace love. It is meant to open our hearts and make us see the truth.

That is what Revelation is, an awakening. Enlightenment. The truth revealed.

The truth is, there is no US and THEM. There is only WE. We are one.

We are all humans, living in the same place, with nowhere else to go, despite what Elon Musk might envision for Mars (an entirely hostile place. WHY would we leave this Eden to live there?) We are a global community. You can’t separate one place from another. Not with walls, moats, fences, hedges, conspiracy theories or hoaxes! All other living creatures, plants and lo and behold, viruses, understand this. It is just humans with our little egos that don’t. The sooner we get this, the sooner we can fix the world.

My cat is a cat, and I don’t have any prejudices against tabbies, or tuxedo, or persians, or scottish folds or . . . they are all CATS.

We are all humans. It does not matter what we look like, where we live or what we think. We are all the same! We share the same world and the same problems. Why can’t people get this? Because they are not enlightened. And this is what it is all about.

This age of Revelation is going to continue until we smarten up. Our resistance to our problems perpetuates them. And that is probably why the Bible gives us such a terrifying account. It shows us what our ignorance is capable of, and it ain’t pretty.

The sooner we all return to love and oneness, the quicker our suffering will end. The faster our global disasters will subside. We created our own messes, we can clean them up.

There is only WE.

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Small Things

In my working, pre-covid days, each morning I would encounter the same people and have a brief chat before I caught the bus. A man waiting in the lobby for his ParaTranspo pick up, the man walking his big dog, the pony tailed young woman returning from her run, the retired bus driver out for his morning walk, the woman playing fetch with her corgi.

All these encounters and more, that I took for granted were a pleasant start to my day. If I didn’t see one of them, I would wonder about their welfare and ask the next time I saw them. Likewise they often enquired about me.

After several months away from this, I do miss it. I don’t go out very much, due to bad legs, a condition and age that ups my covid risk, and of course, I am now unemployed.

How greatly, in small ways, our lives can change in an instant.

Even when they told us to close our office in March, we never foresaw this. We thought, oh, a couple of weeks and all will return to normal. We had no idea.

It isn’t just the big things that changed, like quitting my job of 15 years, but all the little things, like my daily routines and encounters that I didn’t pay much attention to.

I don’t long for the past by any means. I am still processing the shock of huge changes, adjusting to a new way of life I was not prepared for.

In a strange way however, not being ready has made this a grand adventure, where I have no idea of what the future holds. In the past, whenever I have made big changes I spent a long time planning and working them out. I am not a risk taker. This time, I had no plans, only vague ideas of what I might do with lots of time. And I certainly did not envision the changes in the daily small things.

Making this a grand adventure, from my own self inflicted house arrest keeps me from freaking out.

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Hot Spot

Getting a notice on your door from the City informing you that your area is now deemed a Covid-19 hot spot is a lot like being told, oh by the way, your house is located on ground zero.

“We’re going to test you and let you know if your house is on fire.” Okay.

I make light of this, only because, it was pretty terrifying.

Testing is strictly voluntary, but it is the right thing to do, and we all know it. This way we can know what the demographics are, and do contact tracing. We are so fortunate to live in a country that is making every effort to arrest the spread of this disease. It is an uphill battle as people get tired of the whole affair. Especially the young, which is where the increase of infections are happening now.

And so they came and tested all of us, in our parking lot, one beautiful summer weekend. We stood outside in a long line, six feet apart, with our masks on, waiting our turn and trying very, very hard to pretend none of us is worried. At least I got to see some fellow tenants I haven’t seen in ages, that were once regular fixtures in my day to day life. But we didn’t talk, just nodded our recognition of each other, and kept our thoughts to ourselves.

The mobile testing unit was extremely well organized. The staff were so professional, courteous and talkative, well, when you haven’t had much human contact in a long while this was almost a pleasant outing. These are strange times.

The test itself is slightly uncomfortable, but the person doing it took their time and were so reassuring. I commend them for their patience. I’m not a youngster anymore and it takes me a while to accept a swab up my nose and in my throat. But hey, at my age, I have had way more invasive tests than this, that lasted forever and have traumatized me for life. So if you want the test, be assured, this is nothing.

No word is a good word, that is, if you don’t hear from the Public Health Nurse the next day, you are okay. But I checked my results anyways on-line and I am negative. Which, strangely, is not all that reassuring.

If you are negative, then you are still extremely vulnerable to getting Covid-19. And now I am a hundred times more afraid to go out.

If you’re positive, then it is like sitting on a time bomb, wondering when it will go off. Listening to it ticking each day. And then you fear, have I given this thing to someone else, someone I love?

All this just added to the ambiguity of my life at the moment and kind of makes everything that has happened since that fateful day in March, when they told us to close our office and go home, surreal.

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Trust Not Hope

Now that I find myself in a situation where the future is a vast unknown, I am adrift and basically trying anything that comes my way to see if it fits, I have learned the difference between trust and hope.

Most of my life I have hoped for better. Hoping for things is merely wishing. Hope is limp. It is lame. It has no action attached to it. “Oh, I hope for the best.” Blah.

Trust however, is empowering. To trust in something is to have faith, and faith that is unshakeable can move mountains.

To trust that everything will work out means that I will put forth the effort necessary, safe in the knowing that the universe, the Divine, God, is not indifferent. I do not know what the results of my efforts will be, but I can trust that God has my back. No matter what happens, it will benefit my growth, or someone else. Something will happen.

Hope means I am looking for a certain outcome. Trust means whatever happens will be good in some way. Hope closes you off. Trust opens you up. Trust helps you get past fear.

Hope is to give up and do nothing. Trust is to plunge forward and do everything you can, God will direct your path.

Though the corona virus has severely curtailed what actions I can take in the outside world, it just means working a bit harder on the inside. I am discovering a lot of interesting things.

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Worthless

This is how I’ve felt for most of my adult life. Worthless.

I struggled so hard in my office jobs. I am inept at office work. I am incompetent as a secretary, receptionist and clerk.

So forever I have felt worthless just because I’ve been doing the wrong kind of work!

That has defined my entire adult life.

I wonder how many other people feel worthless just because they are in the wrong place, or with the wrong person, or in the wrong job.

Women of my generation had very few career choices unless they were prepared to fight hard. Most of us accepted our lot and trudged on.

So for 40 plus years I have felt needlessly worthless. It caused me to get nearly everything else wrong in my life too. Wrong partners. Wrong places to live. Wrong friends.

I am astonished by this revelation, that there was never anything wrong with me, I was just a square peg being squashed into a round hole.

Absolutely amazing.

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Things Are Not What They Seem

A bad scenario would be quitting your job without any idea of what to do next. But just as bad is knowing exactly what you want to do, and then weeks into it realize, nah, that’s not it.

I was doing what I loved while working, but in such small hard won amounts that I thought it would be fabulous to have all day to do whatever I enjoy. And I have many interests.

I had several dreams on the shelf. For decades I longed to make them real. At last, shake off the dust and let’s get rolling!

Well, that lasted a short while.

It’s not that I stopped wanting or enjoying what I do.

It’s. Just. Not. Quite. It.

This feels as frustrating as having a sink full of dirty dishes. You know you got to tackle it, but lack the energy.

Not that EVER, in a million, zillion, kabillion years would I ever go back to the job I left. I am so happy to be out of there!

I guess I waited too long to do my dreams and they changed and I didn’t notice. Maybe there is a better version of my dreams waiting to be realized and I just need to stay open to it.

Things are not what they seem.

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Get Out!

If you are in a job that ranges from mildly unsatisfactory to totally dysfunctional, get out!

Believe me, the longer you stay in an unhealthy situation, the greater the toll. You will not be aware of the damage over time as you numb yourself to constant pain, tell yourself lies and deceive yourself that everything is okay in a soul sucking job and/or with a psycho boss.

Pay attention to those red flags. They could save your life.

The more you excuse and tolerate a bad situation, the more contracted you become until you see no way out. You can see no options, no alternatives. You believe you can’t escape.

Until you do.

There is absolutely nothing worse than being in a place, or with a person, that preys on your insecurities, devalues you, or even just bores you out of your mind.

Get out!

Even if you have to take less pay, or be unemployed for a while, or do something totally out of your skill set and experiences, even at this time of record unemployment, it is far, far better than gritting your teeth and enduring something or someone who eats your soul. You will pay and the injuries may never heal.

And when you do get out, spend time with yourself and listen to your emotions without judgement. If you’re angry, sit with it, don’t act out, acknowledge that you have the right to be angry, that it is okay to be mad and truly feel it. You are NOT this anger. The anger is an emotion that needs to be seen and felt and loved. This is extremely important. Emotions have a lot of information to help you. If you have unresolved issues, you will leap from the frying pan into the fire. It happened to me, I went from bad to much much worse because I didn’t listen to myself.

A good book to read is, You Are Enough by Panache Desai.

Here is another truth worth sharing, people don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses.

Trust your instincts.

Believe in yourself.

Make your escape plan and get the hell out!

And love whatever you are feeling without acting it out.