I do not want to forget

From my trip to Toronto last week:

1. The buildings. So many buildings, some so tall you have to tip your head wayyyyy back to see the tops. So many houses, all side by side, sharing a wall or an alley. Street after street after street of them.
2. People, people, people. Not just white people. Brown, black, Asian, Indigenous, so many different kinds of people. (It's easy to forget in mostly-white Cape Breton how many different kinds of people there are.) Subway cars full of people, sidewalks walked over hundreds of times an hour. People crossing the street in droves. People, so many, each with their own life, their own plans for the day, none of which I'll ever know. I delight in this and also am a fish out of water in this. I can pass, I can play along and pretend I am a city girl, enough to navigate the Subway. But it is also unnerving, it is not my normal. Still, I like it.
3. A city so big and sprawling. One neighbourhood of it is the size of my town. Subways, street cars, taxis, Ubers, cars, bikes, people walking. Homes and stores and highways spooling out and out and out into the farmland beyond. Clouds overhead, grey-blue and ominous, threatening thunder later. A humid summer.
4. Gardens, to match all the houses. Lush, spilling onto the sidewalk. Some manicured and tidy, little postage stamp lawns. Some unruly and moist. A little space is enough. People live with it, this is their life. A house ten feet wide and 50 feet long. I come home to my house in Cape Breton and feel the space of it, luxurious all of a sudden. Wide. 
5. The way Aleena looked like a Queen in her dresses, the way all the women at the functions sparkled. Literally sparkled, from all the jewels and shiny threads on their clothes. The way each lenhga or garment had a different colour scheme and it all worked beautifully. 
6. Niagara Falls and the mist like rain, pouring down on my and Laura's heads. I had the red poncho hood pulled down to my eyebrows and my sunglasses pulled down just enough that I could see out, but barely. My sunglasses were covered with water and there was water everywhere. The sunscreen on my face was running into my eyes. The boat was in the middle of the horseshoe of the falls and I have no idea how the Captain could see in the white froth and churning water and the mist that was not mist but pouring rain. The roar of the water, and the excited cries of all the tourists on the boat, all in red ponchos, exclaiming over being drenched, exclaiming over being right in the heart of a huge cataract of water pouring four million cubic feet of water every second. The rush of it, the energy. 
7. How I feel when I take myself out of my normal and plop myself down in someone else's normal for a week: like anything is possible. Like all the little excuses I tell myself in the run of a day about why I do a certain thing a certain way, or why life is the way it is in Cape Breton, or about what I want to do with my life - are just that, excuses. That I can change it at any time, if I put in the effort. Sometimes the effort isn't physical, it's mental - just working to see something differently. Seeing excuses for what they are and choosing what to keep, what to let go of, what to try to change into something else. 
8. A special dinner out with two women I have known for thirteen years, at a fancy-ass restaurant where we laughed and laughed and joked with the waiter and caught up on each other's lives and ate fancy-ass onion rings and they split a truffle.
9. Sour candies, two couches side by side, "Insecure" and "Mistresses", laughter spilling out of us.
10. A furry, soft, excitable, delightful dog named Harriet. 

A present

A special weather statement is in effect. 

A low pressure system will pass south of Nova Scotia tonight as it intensifies and tracks towards Newfoundland. Snow from this system is expected to reach the Atlantic Coast of Nova Scotia this afternoon in the south and early this evening further north.

The clouds hang low. The air is still and cold. 

Just a few days ago it was warm. You could feel spring coming. I half expected to see the tiny tips of chives poking up out of the ground. I felt drunk on garden plans. 

A few days and a weather statement later, and we're back to considering shovels. Back to factoring in extra time in plans for clearing the driveway. Back to thinking, "Do I have enough books to read if the storm is heavier than expected?"

(I will always technically have enough books to read, as I have plenty on my shelves that I've never read. But what I'm really asking is, "Do I have enough books from the library that I'm actually excited to read?")

_

Tonight on my way home from work (which is in Sydney) I drove past the turn to my house and all the way into town (which is North Sydney - and which is actually a completely separate town than Sydney; separated by a harbour in fact). I had gotten an email from my local library branch earlier, letting me know that an Inter-library Loan (or ILL for us nerds) was in. "Present Over Perfect" by Shauna Niequest. A title I have been wanting to read since I first heard about it last year, but which my own library system didn't buy, so I had to order it via ILL from somewhere else in the province. But you have to wait a year for those: they don't ILL books within a year of publication. 

So I knew I wasn't waiting til later in the weekend for this book. A storm on the way, and an exciting title? I'm definitely spending those extra ten minutes and what, a dollar? on gas to go get it. 

Happy Friday - and possible storm day - friends. 

_

PS Bonus mini "Links Loved": these blogging tips by Erin Loechner feel really good to me right now. I read them through, and thought "yes, yes, yes." I want to go back and chew them over a few more times. 

Design Crush: Celtic Colours brand

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Here on the blog, I want to share more local design that inspires the heck out of me. I absolutely adore the illustration in the Celtic Colours brand, and one of these days would like to pick the brain of its designer, Neil Gascoyne for Vibe Creative Group. Check out the Vibe portfolio page for the backstory on this brand, including seeing the original logo that Vibe modernized. 

I love how the brand is both clean, and yet also full of life and movement. I love the way you can feel the swoosh of wind through the woman's hair and in the leaves, and the way her hand and arm echo the curve of the fiddle bow. It's graceful, and gorgeous.

As I just got back from a trip to Maine (and Halifax and Fredericton on the way there and back, respectively), I'm looking forward to the weekend to relax and won't be taking in any Celtic Colours shows this year.  Luckily, though, you can livestream through the website! So I might just have to give that a try. 

Do you take in Celtic Colours shows? What are your thoughts on the brand? 

December Devotion/8

After Saturday, there was Sunday. 

And on Sunday, the weather was beautiful.

I got out of the house, and out of the neighbourhood. I drove out to Sydney Mines, and walked along Florence Beach. 

I stayed devoted to fresh air, to my own deep need to walk in the air, to see the ocean. To hear the beach sounds. To play with light and shadow. 

December Devotion/7

Me, hopeful, before I started trying to curl my hair on Saturday.

I took a break over the weekend from writing these December Devotion posts, because, well, I am human.

And humans need regular breaks from things. Like work. And projects. And other people. 

Breaks are good. You could say this is the overarching, reoccurring lesson of my life. From my Big Depression in university in 2007, to just managing the day-to-day needs of human life, breaks are good is something I forget about with alarming frequency. And then, remember, more often than I used to. So at least, I'm learning, somewhat.

And again, I'm human, so that's the best we can do, I think. To learn, somewhat, as we go through this life business. 

The weekend was, among other things, an opportunity to re-learn that phrase, "Man plans, God laughs." It was the staff Christmas party at my work. My boyfriend Adam really does not like going out to social events like that, where he's totally out of his comfort zone. You could call him an introvert, you could call him socially anxious, although he doesn't call himself those things. He just says, "No," when I ask him to come out to things. So anyway, I'd been asking him for weeks if he would come with me to this. He's never met my co-workers, and I've been there for a year and a half now. I really wanted him to come. He kept saying, "We'll see," and "I really don't want to go." 

"I know," I'd say, "But just this once?"

"We'll see," he'd say.

The night before the party, I asked him to commit. I got upset. I said, "I hate going to these things alone," which is partially true. It's also not: I don't super mind. 

We fought. He said, "I've told you all along I don't want to go!" 

"Yes, but you also said, 'we'll see'!" I said.

And back and forth like that for a while. 

Anyway, long story short, in the end he came with me. But I had had it in my head that we would have this wonderful, date-night-like, sparkly, glamorous evening, where I would look fabulous and we would be in our best couple-shape: cozy, intimate, witty, in love. 

And, I had decided to try and do this vintage style with my hair. But my hair wouldn't take the curl, and I'm only very new to using a curling iron anyway. 

That afternoon, when I still wasn't sure Adam was coming (even though he had said he would), and my hair wasn't doing what I had wanted it to, I got frustrated as heck, and went for a long walk in the field and woods near our house. I cried. I texted my friend and ranted to her about why life was so unfair at this particular moment. I took some pictures. I cried a bit more. And I realized, I needed to just go with it. So what if I my hair wasn't pin-up-worthy. So what if Adam was grumpy with me, and me with him. 

One of the pretty photos I took while out on my walk.

In the end, it was what it was. Adam was there in protest, but he still got along and made jokes with the people we sat with. I looked perfectly fine, even if I didn't achieve my pin-up hair goals. I said a few awkward things, but let's be honest, I probably would have said them anyway. We ate our stuffed chicken breasts, potatoes with gravy, corn, carrots and turnip, and laughed at other people's jokes, and then we left before the dance started. We went home, got in our PJs, and watched hockey (him) and "Gilmore Girls" (me) on the couch, while our cat snoozed on our legs. And it was good.

Anne Lamott wrote, in "Travelling Mercies," which I am reading these days, in a story where her little boy doesn't get to swim out to see some seals, as he was hoping,

"I was desperate to fix him, fix the situation, make everything happy again, and then I remembered this basic religious principle that God isn't there to take away our suffering or our pain, but to fill it with his or her presence." 

And I think that's what devotion is about, and what this weekend taught me about devotion. Devotion to a moment, staying devoted to your situation, even when it's not what you thought it would be. Looking for the presence of God in it, anyway. 

There was a layer of snow on the field. This one makes me think of the title, "What Lies Beneath," as in, the bones below the snow. 

nature + inspiration

Nature, man. It's the best. That's why hipsters take photos of leaves in front of their faces, right? 

I put on my agenda, "Write a blog post about how nature inspires me." I was thinking of making moodboards, and taking some photos and then making colour palettes out of them, which is like, lovely, designer-y stuff, and might be a fun project for me sometime, but it isn't something I actually DO.

What I actually DO is go out into nature and take walks. 

And I take photos. So many photos. Most of my iPhone photos are of leaves, trees, roots, water. Shit that at the time, feels so awesome and powerful and beautiful. (And, it is.)

So then I was like, I'll just write about how nature impacts my designs. 

And then I sat down to write about it, and this is what came out:

How can I put into a blog post what nature does to me?

The way it makes me feel? Why I want to be out in it, all the time? What the fresh air does to me? To my soul? How excited it all makes me? The leaves on the ground, the flowing brook, the needles of the larch, the colours all around, the way the clouds change colour. The smell of the air. The goddamn smell of the goddamn air. It invigorates me!! All the exclamation points!

I need it to breathe. To breathe deeply. To really inhale. To feel free. That feeling of freedom, that’s what I’ve been searching for, for the last year. I was feeling frantic, and stuck. Stuck in between boxes and boxes and boxes that existed in my dayplanner… boxes I had set up. The boxes are commitments to things. But along with all those boxes, I was also checking social media all the time. You don’t realize what that does to you. I didn’t realize until these last few months, when my imagination started coming back. When my sense of freedom started coming back.

Reading back through 100 Rejection Letters book, I see: Slow Down comes up a lot. SO WHY AM I RUSHING MYSELF AND PUSHING MYSELF TO DO MORE? I want to build a business sustainably. So that means not making myself burnt out doing it. Simple. As that.

Here and here are other posts I wrote (on my old blog, Dream Big Cape Breton) about nature. I like 'em still. 

fall days

A few weekends ago I went around the Cabot Trail with my friend Jacquie. This is taken in Red River.

It's Saturday. It's 11 am. It's late Autumn, and outside the air is cool. In the sky, there are patches of blue sky, and patches of clouds. The leaves on the trees I can see outside my office window are half orange, half green. And swaying slightly, rustling, in a lazy little wind. 

Adam, my boyfriend, is hanging out on the couch in the living room. He's watching Sports Centre. It's his happy place. He's got a blanket over him, and likely he'll doze off. The cat, Mittens, was outside earlier, so there is a good chance she'll curl up on top of Adam and sleep too. And me, well, I'm in my office, carving out some time for my business. 

What that looks like today is: first, tidying up my space. Emptying the recycle bin of paper into a blue bag. Piling up the library books that I'm ready to return. Moving the pile of newspapers I'm saving to use in the garden, from the middle of the desk over to the far corner. Creating a spot on the shelf for magazines I want to use in making collages. 

Same Cabot Trail trip from a few weeks ago, this is from the top of Smokey Mountain.

Then, I open up my planner. I take care of a few quick things: emailing my Mom and brother about tomorrow, when I'll drive up to Baddeck to hang out with them. We needed to confirm the time. I send an email to my friend Leah Wechsler, who came through the It's Business Time program with me, and who is now my "biz buddy" - we will be Skyping next weekend for a monthly check-in with each other. (We call each other Wechsler and Noble, since we are both Leah.) And I send one to my mom and Adam's mom Mary Jane, to confirm a date in November when we three will meet for lunch. 

This is at Groves Point, collecting seaweed for my garden, a few weeks ago.

Now we get to the hard part. The part where Resistance gets to come out and tap dance all over my face. It's like when I'm at the gym, and I'm on the exercise bike, intending to be there for 30 minutes, but the pedals start to feel heavy. The machine is pushing back at me. It's on purpose: it's to make me work. It's to make me use my thigh muscles to push back, to raise my heart rate, to get healthy. It feels good, and it will feel good, once it's done. But in the moment, I'm incredibly tempted to get off the bike and say "Well that was just too hard, maybe I go better read a book about exercising, instead." You know? LOL. 

It's the same with doing the work of my business. The work of my business takes a number of forms: doing design work, but also writing my blog posts, coming up with ideas for things to create, things to share. Showing up day after day after day is actually how things get done. And Resistance looooves to tell scary stories about failure, about how they're all gonna laugh at me, about not having what it takes. 

From a mid-week walk, a cloud selfie in the field near my house.

Funny how easy it is for me to forget I've been blogging since 2002. That's thirteen years I've been typing into a white box on a web browser and hitting Publish. I forget even now, thirteen years later, that we figure it out as we go along. As we show up. That content plans are great, and goals for what we want to communicate to our audience are great, but that Showing Up and Doing Work (and maybe changing the plan as the work happens and we realize new things) is what trumps ALL. 

I so want to be able to plan plan plan, and then have creative inspiration show up when I schedule it to. "Wednesday at 9 am, OK inspiration? Show up then if you can." 

But Inspiration is like, "Leah, you show up, and I'll meet you there. Sometimes. Sometimes you'll be all by yourself. But do the work anyway. I'll be there again soon."

West Mabou Beach, last weekend.

As I'm writing this, Mittens came and sat next to me, right next to my computer.

Adam is getting up, I can hear him moving about the house. I think he's going to do some sort of home-reno-something-or-other. He's the handy one in this relationship, for sure. He does things like tile the laundry room, or put a new screen door and trim on the front door. 

So is there a moral in this blog post? Ha! Likely not. Likely it's just me rambling. But it's also me showing up. Showing you pictures of life lately. Sharing thoughts from life lately. Putting into practice my belief that 60% is a passing grade. That you do the work, and put it out there. Before you're ready. Right? Right.

So now I'm going to use the remaining hour or so of the time I've blocked out for myself today to work on upcoming blog posts. I'm thinking of doing a "Day In The Life" post this week or next. I'd also like to share some actual designs I've done, but I imagine those posts will take a bit more to get together: sketches, my thoughts on the process, the finished designs. I'd also love to know in what ways I can be useful to you, my readers. What bits of expertise or thoughts can I share, that would make your day better? Do let me know. 

That's all for now! I hope you're having a lovely day, that you get to get outside and feel the fresh and delicious Fall air on your face and in your hair. 

xo Leah