Reminiscing

I've undertaken to make .pdf copies of the many, many binders full of sheet music I've collected over the years.  It's been a strange process.

On the one hand, it's incredibly rewarding to toss empty binders out of my home office that were once filled with slightly crumpled, somewhat tattered photocopies of music of almost every genre.

On the other hand, it makes me wistful.  For six out of the past seven years, I played the piano for a small-towny music festival and that is where most of these pieces of music originated for me.  Every time I scan a new song I am reminded of the time in my life when I played it.  Some I barely remember playing at all.  Some I could happily never hear again.  Some remind me of the terrible children who sang them (terribly behaved, or terrible-sounding).  Some remind me of great triumphs (my own or someone else's).

I smirked to myself when I scanned the pages of a rather challenging Christmas song sung by a pretty tipsy soprano in striped Mrs Claus stockings who skipped several pages in her song while I simultaneously turned pages like a madwoman and calmly played until I found the spot she had jumped to and kept playing.  The audience never knew any different.

I became teary when I came across the song I played at the beginning of my career as an accompanist; two cousins dedicated it to their dying grandfather when they sang it at the music festival and then bravely sang it again at his funeral.

Even the satisfaction of tossing used binders was tinged with the memory of the somewhat sadistic glee of the music teachers I worked with as they filled the binder or the wonder of some young lady's grandmother that I should learn ALL THOSE SONGS and the satisfying thunk of the binder on the music stand of the piano when I first sat down for the day.

And I wonder if I will ever come to use this music again as meaningfully as I once did.  Will my sight reading skill and my ability to not sweat it when a terrified child with a pretty voice freezes like a frightened deer and bursts into tears three words into her song ever be put to as good a use as they were in that time?

Being an accompanist was a strange combination of voyeurism and exhibitionism.  I was always performing, and yet nobody was ever there to see me.  I witnessed crazy things - friends becoming frenemies becoming enemies, miniature prima donnas and boy sopranos experiencing crushing defeat when the preteen nerves or puberty interfered with their natural talents, children growing into adults, ugly ducklings (in every sense of the word) becoming swans.  And these were the things anyone could see.  As the accompanist, I had a backstage pass as well.  I was aware when a plan went awry.  I always knew when a panicking soloist went off-book; I was the one who had to think fast to make it look natural. I was the first to realize that a struggling singer had surprised themselves with the fruits of their own hard work.

I hope I get to do it again someday.

New Things I've Done - I got a new job.  I start next month.  I also plan to add "started commuting less" to the new things I've done list.

Weird Things That Have Happened to Me - I got some dental work done last week and my whole mouth feels worse for it.  This is why I hate the dentist.

Resolutions - Drink more water.  In a fit of pique I recently tossed out all my loose leaf tea, and as it turns out, that's where most of my fluid intake comes from.  Lately, I've been waking up with hangover-type headaches, and I'm pretty sure it's from reverting back to my non-hydrating ways.

Decisions

Vagueblogging:

In one area of my life, I'm faced with an imminent decision to make a drastic change, or continue to do something I'm pretty sure has an expiry date only to do the thing I could do now, but in the future.

This decision is confounded by the fact that a second decision I've made in another part of my life may make the first decision unnecessary.

Continue with something probably doomed to fail only to bring it to a natural end with a previously made decision, or make a big change only to cut it short by the same previously made decision.

What to do?

New Things I've Done

• I made jam today.  I think it was somewhat successful, but how does one figure that out without opening what I've just sealed?  And I already have a store-bought jar of apricot jam open in the fridge.  Waiting is hard.

Weird Things That Have Happened To Me

• We built a raised bed garden this spring.  We bought soil and then topped it up with compost from our kitchen scraps.  As a result we've had a few surprise plants in addition to those we transplanted from a nursery.  The surprise zucchini is the healthiest plant in the garden, almost taking over our carrots.  If only I could have such luck in other parts of my life.

Resolutions

• Stick with the plan.  I've been weight training for the last month or so, and it's been going pretty well.  The idea is to cross-train for roller derby, but being strong is also just bad-ass.  It's paying off too.  I played a game yesterday and didn't feel completely useless.  I was able to get an extra lap on an impromptu endurance test at practice last week.  People are asking if I've lost weight, which always makes me feel weird.  This is about the time that I start to get cocky and get off message to myself.  I'm starting a new phase of training this week, and it's as important now as it was a month ago to stay on track.

Keeping my Head Up

I've been looking for inspiration, as I had previously resolved, but lately I'm not really finding inspiration that I can boil down to a theme for a single blog post.  I've had a few conversations this past weekend, mainly with my boyfriend, about how unobservant I am, though.  On at least three different occasions in the last 3 days, he has completed a sentence to me that started with "How could you not notice that..." and that makes me wonder what kind of opportunities I've missed because I've got my head in the clouds.  Or more likely, because I'm looking inward rather than outward.

This is especially frustrating because I suspect that if you were to interview me 4 days ago and ask me to describe myself in 20 words or less, observant would probably feature in those 20 words.  Definitely not the top 5, but probably at least the bottom 5.

Something else to work on, I guess.

New Things I've Done:

• I started, on the advice of my new online coach, setting alarms for myself to drink water.  Every 4-ish hours, I have to finish my 800 ml bottle of water.  I have to chug at least one of them every day still, and at least one of my colleagues has asked me if I'm pregnant because I'm peeing so frequently, but I've been successful at this for one whole week.  So YAY!

• I skated with my roller derby team for the first time ever in a parade.  Up north, I had been in the Christmas Parade with my team, but at that point in the year there was usually a carpet of snow on the road already, and often a mid-grade snow storm happening concurrently with the parade, so I'd never actually been on skates.  It was really fun.  I'm pretty certain that some of the people I passed had never seen 8 girls and women dressed in red and white athletic gear looping around on roller skates, and the looks on their faces as we wheeled past was pretty rewarding.

Weird Things That Have Happened To Me:

• Two of the residents at one of the nursing homes I work at got married (to each other) this week.  On a Wednesday during business hours.  Ok, truthfully, this isn't something that happened TO ME, but it was something I bore witness to.  Apparently the nuptials had caused quite a stir in the community among both resident and staff.  Some thought it wasn't right that two elderly people were expressing their love for one another in a commitment-type ceremony in the common room of their long-term care home.  Some thought it was a wonderful celebration of love.  Real talk: I think this home is a pretty great place to work and the atmosphere is usually pretty upbeat, but that day was buzzing with positive energy.  The chaplain I share my office with was practically skipping back to the office to grab his bag before he left for the rest of his day.  I think we should celebrate love more.  Because, based on my sample size n=1, it's nice and makes everyone feel good.  Even if, like me, you're quietly celebrating it by more-or-less eavesdropping on the ceremony from your office while you work on your quarterly assessments.

Resolutions:

• Wear sunscreen.  Back when I was in high school, there was this popular recording that started with the words "Always wear sunscreen."  I first read it in a "Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul" book, and it was full of really excellent advice which I have intermittently followed in the fifteen or so years since I first came upon it.  However, the piece of advice that was most emphasized was the sunscreen bit, which I failed to heed today as I embarked on my first parade on a sunny day in late June.  And as I discussed with a fellow roller girl, I inherited the transparent fish-belly skin of my Celtic ancestors which burns if you even think about the sun.  

• Notice more.  My conversations with my boyfriend make me wonder: How many beautiful things have I not seen? How many people have I not helped? How many conversations have I missed because a cool thing was happening right next to me and I completely didn't see it because I was on auto-pilot?  The answer is: probably too many.

Being Wonder Woman?

I often feel like I'm standing on the edge of something look at the edge of something new, and I have to decide if I'm going to take a run at the chasm, Wonder Woman-style (and last time I checked, I'm not a mythical Amazon warrior woman), or jog along the edge to see where that takes me.  To extend the metaphor, I've mainly been jogging on the edge these days to see if I can find a bridge or something that'll take me across, but you can jog for a long time and that is sometimes pretty exhausting. And sometimes the cliff takes an unexpected turn and you end up jogging right off of it.

My band decided to pack it in a couple of weeks ago.  We had some fun, and I think we had a lot of potential, but we struggled to strike the right dynamic and in general we felt like it was better to call it now and still be friends than have a crazy fight as our plane crashed into a field.  Or wait.  That was a movie I like.

If you were to ask me when I was a little girl what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer was probably "rock star."  Somewhere along the way, after many twists and turns, I ended up being a dietitian instead, which is kind of like the opposite of being a rock star.  But I have always been an avid music appreciator and in my adult life have dabbled in being a semi-professional pianist.  And that's a pretty cool thing to say about myself.  Once in a while, mostly when I was playing the intro to Joe Cocker's "Feelin' Alright" I actually did feel like I had achieved my childhood dream of being a rock star.

Since I moved here, I've struggled a little bit with who I am in this new place.  I had carved a pretty comfortable niche for myself when I lived up north, and for some reason, the things I did there don't all fit here.  Even though my band taking an extended hiatus was probably the right thing to do, I had a teensy identity crisis.  "Who am I supposed to be now?" I thought.

So, it's time for some Wonder Woman-style leaps across the chasm.  I don't know what that's going to mean yet, but I know it's going to mean more writing.  

New things I've done:

• I started one-on-one coaching with an exercise specialist, via the internet.  Doing it on my own has definitely not resulted in anything more than the same old same-old.  Consequently, my butt hurts.  All the lunges.
• Yoga with Adriene. I started at the beginning of her videos, which mainly are foundational poses.  I do them first thing in the morning, and it's been pretty nice.

Weird things that have happened to me:

• This past Tuesday, a transport truck somehow managed to straddle the median of the QEW through town.  It was full of phospine.  Ever heard of phosphine?  Me neither.  But apparently it's a poisonous gas.  The subsequent evacuation of ground zero resulted in my having my commute time tripled to 3 hours, during which time I really had to pee.  I've learned exactly how long I can hold it.  Roller derby practice was cancelled because the arena was in the evac zone, so I went for a walk instead.  A cyclist was coming down the walking/cycling trail behind me just as a chipmunk was crossing the path.  The chipmunk sustained a serious (probably fatal) brain injury during a collision with the cyclist.  I watched the poor bleeding chipmunk writhing in pain in the middle of the path and didn't really know what to do, so I have to admit that I kept walking.  Shortly thereafter, I saw two deer drinking water across the canal from me.  I feel like if I told this story to a psychic, they would tell me this is some kind of portent of things to come, but I'm too cheap to pay a psychic.

Resolutions:

• Watch less TV.  I love Netflix, but I can certainly attest how habit-forming its full-season releases are.  I literally have to make myself not find a new show to watch when I finish one.  It's not good.

Coming Back

Hey.

Long time no see.

I don't have any excuses.  I just wasn't inspired.

I often find I look back on periods where I haven't done what I should have done, and I think to myself, "It's been a hard couple of months."

And it's true, things have happened.  I rehabbed my broken ankle.  I came back to my sport.  I've been working hard to help rebuild my crumbling team that never seems to be able to keep its head above water.  I bought a house.  I may have gotten my mortgage advisor fired in the process.  I'm in a band.  The band has performances.  And band drama.  And true, I only work 4 days a week, but if you add in my commute, there's another full work day every week spent in the car.

But every couple of months is a hard couple of months, so that's really no excuse.  Life is hard.  Engaging in this little bit of public self-exploration is actually pretty important, and being uninspired should be a giant red flag that something is missing in my life.  I should be looking for my inspiration.

What's going to inspire me, though?

When I think about that, I often think about my 100 Happy Days journey.  It was work to find something that made me happy each day, and be able to take a picture of it.  But I persevered for 100 days and I found that I was a happier person at the end.  Furthermore, if I look back at my previous posts over the years, most of my personal inspiration hasn't come so much like fireworks as a punch to the gut or a fish that got away.  Maybe a hard couple of months is just the inspiration I need.

Rehab

I've never thought of myself as someone who takes their body for granted.  I mean, I'm as guilty as the next person of sitting too much and putting more buttery sugar in my mouth than I probably should, but I would say that I put more effort than the average person into keeping the motor running smoothly.

The last three months have been an exercise in understanding both the amazing powers of my body and the devastating limitations.  I had always been cognizant of the risk of injury in a full contact sport where you have wheels screwed to the bottoms of your boots.  I knew one day my number would be up.  And I think most of those around me who had forewarned me and naysay-ed when I first strapped on my helmet and skates felt a small amount of satisfaction to know they were finally right when they heard that I'd broken my ankle.  But I don't think anybody expected that the reason my toes were pointing in a completely unnatural sideways-y-upwards position on April 30th was because my wheels were just a little too sticky as I went over a teensy lip between two different surfaces at a speed that was just a little too speedy while I was trying to slow down a very fast game.  I drink my milk.  I'm not a habitual coffee drinker.  I've always been on the heavy side.  My bones should be invincible.  My fibula shattered like so much glass.

Two weeks into my journey, I was back on my feet.  I had a walking cast for 6 weeks, and though I couldn't drive, or swim, or shower standing up, I could walk almost without a limp and almost as fast as I ever could with two virgin legs.  And after 8 weeks, aside from the super gross athlete's foot and the fact that none of my pants fit me anymore, I felt very little pain in my broken ankle.  I honestly thought when the cast came off that it would be like nothing happened.  Because I drank my milk.  I took my vitamin D.  I walked the shit out of that walking cast.  My bones should have been stronger than ever.  Meanwhile, the muscles around them had wasted away to tiny, inflexible threads.  They expressed their angry fatigue with an almost constant ache.  The fluid that those muscles would normally pump away pooled around my ankle.  My physiotherapist said my strength and range of motion were pretty typical of my injury.  I felt so stupid.

With a sport like roller derby there's a community, and in that community are people who have had similar injuries, so I know there's life after ORIF surgery.  I know that if I stick with my physio exercises and keep pushing myself I'll get back to where I was, and perhaps keep on going.  Every time I look at the hook-shaped scar on my inner ankle I think, "I can rebuild" and do another calf raise, go on another bike ride, stretch another theraband.  I've hired a personal trainer to help get my strength and endurance back so I can come back to my sport with my fists up.  And I'm seeing improvements.  I can almost do a single-leg calf raise with my broken leg.  I can almost point my toe without crying.  I can almost go a whole day without compression socks and not see my foot become a swollen balloon by the end of it.  And those are good things.  But then I think back to those women who've come back from their injuries and see how well they're doing and wonder to myself "Am I working as hard as they did?  Did they feel this pain at this point? Do I seriously have what it takes to come back from this?"  As much as I feel extremely motivated to get back to where I was, I can hear my self-doubt knocking at the back door.  I really hope I don't let it in.

Being Broken

Pardon the hiatus.

I was feeling myself not terribly inspired to write much, and then I broke my leg.  Playing roller derby.  So at least I was having fun.

Because I was more or less indisposed from the time of the inciting incident (a reasonably non-spectacular plough stop over a small lip in the track surface followed by a relatively over-spectacular display of screaming and backwardsy-upside-downy foot in the air because I didn't know what to do with it) to when I got home from surgery two days later, information about my status was transmitted over Facebook by my boyfriend.  Not because he felt the need to announce to the world that I was broken, but because he knew that a lot of people were wondering how I was doing and he felt it was the best way to reach the greatest number of people.

And lots of people reached back.  The outpouring of support and get-well-wishes was, at times, very overwhelming.  But soon after that, I started counting the people that I hadn't been in touch with in some time who were expressing their concern, and I realized that I'm a colossal failure at being a long-distance friend. 

I've come to think of myself as a kind of Madonna (the Like a Virgin kind, not the virgin kind) when it comes to relocating and reinventing myself.  I've taken a number of risks that have necessitated restarting my life from scratch a few times and I think I've been pretty successful.  I haven't been very successful at taking any of my previous lives with me to the next, though there are a few exceptions.

I blame two things.  First of all, I must admit that reinvention is kind of time-consuming.  To be really successful at it, you have to join things and go out with people and hang out with your new friends.  And that's all really awesome.  But it leaves less time than it should for checking in with old friends and asking how they're doing.  Secondly, I don't flatter myself to think that my old friends are completely aimless without me.  They've done things with their lives.  They've joined things and gone out with people and are hanging out with new friends.  And that's really awesome.  And I don't want to impose on that, since, you know...I'm the one who left for different (but admittedly equally green) pastures.

But this is another time that I feel I must be brave.  I suppose if my old friends don't want to talk to me anymore, they'll let me know.  And maybe they're feeling the same way - I'm making a new life and they shouldn't get in the way of that.  That being said, I've certainly welcomed everyone reaching out to me with open arms.  Why wouldn't they welcome me reaching out?

So, like all conclusions, I'm ending with a resolution.  I have friends.  Many friends.  Some are new.  Some are old.  Some are friends that are dangerously close to becoming people who used to be my friends, not because of a falling out, but because of my own complacency.  So I'm going to try to keep in better touch, because you never know when you need a friend.