Saturday Morning

It's wet and grey outside - a good argument for slippers and pyjamas today. We can't help being reflective at the turn of the year, I've been thinking about this time last year and how tired I was to go back to work (a workplace I love, but even so...). This time last year was the beginning of a slow realization that I needed to do something else, to find a way back to my deeper creative self, to get more grounded in the solid core of me that I'd lost along the way. It was a year of lots of work travel (New York, Winnipeg, Brandon, Chicago, Edmonton, Toronto, Vancouver, Whitehorse, Iqaluit - all those meetings, all those wonderful people). It was a year of crazy workload and my dear crazy funny colleagues that got us through. Tip-toeing on the edge of burn-out, it was also a year of migraines and incredible solitude (weekends in pyjamas, lots of jamming-out of dinners and parties) that even if a little scared sometimes by both the viciousness of the headaches and the comfort of my loneliness, I look back now and realise I would not have come through the year intact without those crucibles and havens of rest.

And creativity did blossom in surprising ways. I started last year with Susannah Conway's soulful and stirring Unravelling course. Inspired by that, I'm treating myself now to her Photo Meditations class (it's week one and I've so much to reflect on with my photography already, I love it). Susannah is good and gentle medicine. I recommend her courses for any woman who has a stirring for inner work, for exploring creativity.

Now this will sound nerdy, but it was also the year of my iPhone. I've photographed nearly every day and found a wonderful community of like-minded people through the photo-sharing app Instagram. It's such a treat to get a daily dose of creativity that's not related to my job. I can once again participate in conversations as a creator and not a funder, how I've missed that!

It was the year I stopped running (for silly reasons). In all honesty I became too shy to run with the good  folk at the Ottawa Running Club. Tongue-tied and socially tired I couldn't remember people's names from one week to the next (there's an iPhone app for that now) or find conversations to have while we ran. I can see now, I didn't have leftover energy to build and maintain relationships - even casual ones - with a new group of people on weekends because of such a high demand for extroversion at work. I'm going to give it another go in 2012 and sign-up (yet again) for the Learn to Run course that starts in two weeks. I do love running, and even if introverted, I realise now it is easier to run with people than alone.

And, because of all the above, it was the year I finally embraced change. It's one year later and I feel a bit stronger inside, this lovely sunny apartment is for sale, I've been accepted to an MBA program in Nanaimo, I'll have an 18 month leave without pay from my job.  I am awake with the bittersweet knowledge of the good people and places I'm leaving. It all shifts to the new and unknown in June.