Red Cedar

I’m in a hotel in Prince Rupert drinking one of those powdered hot chocolates they set out alongside the coffee machine. This morning I flew from Prince George to Terrace, this afternoon I drove through the snowy pass from Terrace to Rupert, and this evening I ate dinner at Herby’s Vietnamese Family Restaurant. A glamorous life indeed.

I’m having one of those nights where I’m a bit bummed out for no particular reason, feel old even though I’m not, and am wondering exactly why I bother, why I’m here at all. Perhaps it’s just because this is the end stage of bargaining (ratification) and I’d rather the whole process was just over with. Or maybe it’s the looming christmas season. It could also be that I’m just a little tired and that makes everything seem that much bigger and more dire than it really is. Whenever I tell people I’m going to take a short break from doing *everything* in February, they laugh at me. No one believes it, but man I need some time for myself (and with Brian, not to mention everyone else in my life).

It probably won’t happen anyways. At the very least I can’t take a real vacation from work until the spring, but I do think it would be nice to only do one job for awhile instead of two.

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Brian is putting his house on the market this week which I think is part of my vexation. I want that to happen, of course, but it also signals the beginning of a long, complicated process that involves selling, buying, and moving. None of which will happen as quickly as we want it to (as in right now) and all of which could be thwarted by the escalating economic crisis. There are so many things wrapped up in that, our desire to live together, to make the payout to his ex by the time it’s due in the spring, the fact that our busy schedules already divide time and shuttling back and forth between houses just makes that exhausting. But mostly it’s about moving forward, sealing our relationship in cohabitation, continuing to build our nest of family and friends together. A bulwark against the scary times we live in. It’s security I seek, in the arms and bed of my loving partner. I want home.

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I know the answer lies in being good with where I am at, counting my blessings (of which I have many), and allowing events to unfold as they may. But when I am busy, stressed, working all the time – I get more rigid with my *needs* and frustrated with what isn’t being delivered when I feel it ought to be. It’s crazy privilege that even gets me to the place of believing I could have what I want, again with the blessings. I know in these times I am struggling far less than many people are.

Mid-January I am done these meetings and not taking on anything new and huge for at least a couple of months. I’m thinking of taking a writing class, celebrating my birthday, perhaps going to the desert for a few days – not ditching my union work of course, but cutting down my profile a bit for some weeks to restore myself and my relationships a little bit. That seems so far away, but the time goes fast when you’re working seven days a week, what with the holidays thrown into the middle and all.

Moving forward in the new year, I’m looking forward to leaving old projects behind.

On Wednesday I’m hitting the road to Prince George, Terrace and Prince Rupert for a whirlwind northern ratification tour and hopefully a visit with some friends. Really, I’m a bit of a wreck today – not terribly so – but angsty and restless. Lots of work, realtor appointment tonight, fingers crossed about some recent developments, more bags to be packed. I’m feeling light at the moment, but not unburdened. Like floating away in a balloon suddenly untethered. Not a breath out, but rather a sharp one in.

I am copying files at the moment. Web server to hard drive. That way I can take this audit of scientific holdings on the road, hole myself up with the secret document caches people think they’ve got away with. I’ve got to sweep it all out before I can beging the process of converting it into our new site format and architecture. A good project for dark northern nights, for the lull between christmas and new years.

Since last week I’ve been immersed back into this murk of creative organization, from which will emerge a new and better information hierarchy, a cleaner and faster-loading approach. What importance we place on finding what we want right now! When little more than a decade ago it was all libraries and microfilm. Remember the dizziness of sitting in the dark corner, speeding the film along in search of the article, the reference you were looking for? Sometimes I had to close my eyes, and it was always then that I skipped right over what I wanted, never realizing it until the end came up to catch in the spindle.

I didn’t even know such a wonder existed until I went to college – never having had occasion to research news articles, old government reports, magazine advertisements from the thirties before then. All those words and images and publications accessible to anyone who wanted to come in for a look. I miss the private wonder of that sometimes, though not the fact copies of the material cost a quarter and rarely came out light enough to read. The web is not quite such a wonder to me, I suppose because the fact of it grew with me, I’ve worked with it since it came into being.

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The weekend was good, I had a party for a friend that was very successful – we ate Saint Honore cake and danced in the living room until my downstairs neighbours banged on the ceiling at midnight. I split my time between party and quiet, took photos of Brian’s house to show friends of ours who might want to buy it, and drew a picture of the future in stick figure and scrawl which pleased me greatly. It’s not every day I give into the fantasy things are going to turn out alright after all.

Darren is home and settled in which makes me feel good, not only for him, but for the fact my house is not empty for a week at a time when I stay at Brian’s or hit the road. We had a bit of a plumbing emergency last week and I discovered that my upstairs neighbours really are as flaky as I thought they were – despite pipes that rattled like a generator for at least twelve hours straight, they never once bothered to call the landlady until their showerhead blew off. I had called, but somehow she never got the message. The weekend before, we had no hot water for four days – and again, not once did my neighbours call the landlady. Can a house of 4 people really go that many days and not notice?

I suppose they can.

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I worked on a poem this morning, questioning once again if I have to put a lot of effort into a poem will it really be any good? I mean, the ones that just come out as if inspired are always my favourites – I’m still not convinced how this one will be – but I’m trying my hand at writing a series of poems for submission. Two series actually. Two totally different themes. Which means I can’t just sit around waiting to be inspired enough to write or it could take me years to get 5 pieces out of thin air.

I look at the computer and realize that if I don’t leave now I won’t be home in time for the realtor. Damn. That was fast.

I have been trying to find time to write in the past week, not just here on the blog, but otherwise – and I’ve come back to the hard reality: finding time to write, and making time to write are two different things with wildly divergent outcomes. No matter how busy I am, when I make time to write it happens every day, often more than once. When I look for time to write, I’m lucky if I get “inspired” enough to be motivated a couple times per week.

Now, granted, it’s been a busy month and that’s all well and good – but I miss writing here and elsewhere – there’s something in having one writing project or another in the hopper that gives me a tad more grounding. And the blog gives me a sense of connectedness to others – both intimates and strangers – a sharing of stories between those of us who write our lives in public. So with three weeks of barely anything said, I’m starting to notice where the seams are wearing a bit thin.

Likewise, my body made me painfully aware last week that skipping workouts for ten days was not on. The thing I suspect is arthritis came back in my toes (pain that I started having last spring which prompted my renewed fitness commitment), and my overall resilience and energy had sunk to new all-time lows. A single workout later and I felt immediately better, and I’ve been to the gym almost every day this week as a result.

With the fitness back into my daily schedule, the writing must follow. Busy, yes. But a commitment to myself is one I know I should keep. No matter the schedule. No matter the circumstances.

This is really just a post to say, yes I’m still here and feeling quite a lot better. And yes, I’m coming back to share my stories and thoughts here.

I have been a little absent here for the past ten days and not because I was relaxing or holidaying or anything like that. Quite truly, this has been two of the craziest weeks of my life between bargaining a final deal, responsibilities to my union at the fed convention, and the complete chaos inspired by Stephen Harper last Thursday. Although I had this past weekend off and was home, I spent most of it doing chores and laundry – between catching up with a few friends. This because I am about to plunge into another six weeks of insanity as I hit the road to sell the tenative agreement at ratification meetings around the province.

I have yet to tell my employer that I am gone most of December and half of January. (But then they get me back full time – since ratification brings an end to bargaining!)

But I am back in BC for the forseeable future at least which makes things somewhat easier. No time-zone changes, no five-hour flights. As much as possible I am trying to re-establish my schedule of working out and writing, so that even when I’m on the road I don’t feel that I’ve given all of myself up – but if I seem a tad absent these days – it’s because I don’t have a choice but to be at the moment.

And I think that’s something not everyone in my life gets. Like, when I ran for office in my union last spring that actually meant something in the way of greater responsibility and leadership. And sometimes I am called on unexpectedly to rise to some activism and I don’t get the luxury of refusing it. Even when I’m tired. Even when my family misses me. It’s something I actually take seriously

I’m really lucky to have a partner who does understand, because really he’s been ignored an awful lot lately at the behest of my ever-changing schedule. It’s just a weird time though and he realizes (like I do) that it’s not going to go on and on. There is a definitive end date for my bargaining talks (January 15) and that should pretty much wrap up the crazy travel of the last few months. Then I can focus on the local stufff, and writing, and learning how to knit.

On the plus side, I’ve got lots of idea for blog posts at the moment so at least I can get back to that during the in-betweens!

On another flight to Ottawa – what I thought was going to be a short trip for work (home on Friday night) has turned into a longer affair because the union has now called an urgent meeting for all negotiating team members that stretches from tomorrow until Sunday. This would be in response to the “final offer” issued yesterday by Treasury Board in the form of a press release – a grossly disrespectful act which constitutes bargaining in the media and disregards the process we’ve been engaged in for the past 19 months entirely.

To put it mildly, I’m frustrated. Frustrated and overwhelmed by the facts of my life right at this moment. Apologetic to those I have commitments to. Worried negotiations are unrecoverable at this point. Ill with the responsibility I’m feeling. Tired. Wishing I could run away from home.

And it’s not just this, you know, but everything that’s happened in the last couple of weeks – a rough patch last week over step-parenting adjustments, trying to fit a week’s worth of work into two days to keep my union commitments while also making my employer happy, and Darren’s arrival on my doorstep at 9:30 Monday night. Not that his arrival is a negative (finally, we’re done with that waiting!) but it’s another factor to be reconciled with everything else.

I suppose what I must do at this point is put everything else out of my head and just take care of what is most urgent first – a presentation for work tomorrow, and then union meetings the days following. As much as I would like to put my human relationships first, it seems I must deal with the systemic web I’m in before I can move on. And that, more than anything else, riddles me with guilt because I know it’s not the right order of things. It’s not the natural priority in my heart by any stretch. But here I am caught up and headed into what is bound to be a difficult set of discussions.

It’s probably asking too much of myself to just accept everything without emotional response, and I’m sure it’s asking too much of Brian who has put up with so much recently. I can only tamp it down at the moment, cap my heart against the panic coming forth, and reassure myself that we’ve built something strong enough to have faith in against the disappointments of every day life.

It’s 9:30 in the morning and I need a drink, which I won’t have despite the willingness of the air host to serve liquor this early. Perhaps a nap instead. Or perhaps I need to breathe deep and wait it out. The moment passing, it always does.