Tag Archives: milestones

A WP Anniversary

Yesterday WP sent me this.

I forgot that it was my anniversary. For the most part, blogging has been fun and I have “met” many great people, some of whom I feel as if I know.

A flower from my M.

Unfortunately, only a very few of the bloggers that I started following in those early days are still here, but others have come along, and the life wheel has continued turning.

An Okanagan willow tree.

I have also changed. I started out (very rustily) writing about narcissism, but over the years I gradually dropped it and now haven’t written about it for a long time.

Lots of other changes occurred during these years. My M and I had some significant career changes, we moved from one province to another, and I took on a last big career job in the north while maintaining our Okanagan home. M retired. We will be moving again next month, but this time, only to the other end of town. We have been busy!

Flying. It’s the best.

I will soon be retiring myself; in fact I am in my last 18 months of formal working time.

So what’s up 18 months from now? We’ll be starting work on a book about local wine, and I’ll spend some leisure time in a Cessna. It’s exciting, and I’m looking forward to the next chapters. 🙂

A Blogging Anniversary

I recently got a notification that I’ve been on WP for seven years now.

It has been a growing, very changeable period. I started with wanting to share an experience, and through writing about that experience, I was able to sort through what happened and how it happened and how I had contributed to it. I wanted my blog to be informative for others, and more importantly, I wanted it to be a sort of catharsis. But, as with so much of life, it turned out that I had much more to learn than to share.

So, what happened? I didn’t know it then, but I started with a question about being a human being. I was asking, where in my head do I come from? And later, where in OUR heads we do WE come from? And still later, where in our heads are we going?

This blogging experience became a journey of interior exploration which became a journey of exterior exploration, an exploration of others and how they bounce off me, how I bounce off them, and how that bouncing changes us, even if only in the smallest of ways.

When I was much younger, I used to think that everything changes. Then I thought that nothing changes. Then I realised that in between the everything and the nothing is a world of life, that if I spent too much time worrying how I should change or not change, or how others should change, that nothing would change.

Which is really interesting, because physically, lots has changed, and that lead to a further discovery of inner landscapes that I didn’t know were there. I did a 360.° What comes around goes around. 😉

In the last seven years, I got married. I moved to a different province to take a job in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley. Then I moved, sort of, again, this time to take a job in Canada’s north. My home is in BC and I have another home, a “work home” in the Northwest Territories.

I am now an administrator and the buck stops with me. It was scary at first but I have become more comfortable as I have become more experienced. I am paid very well; I am at the top of the earning capacity for my profession, something I thought I would never achieve. I didn’t even think of it as a possibility, but now it’s a reality and I’m grateful.

My M retired. About three to four years from now, so will I. We have started looking for another home; it will likely be our last one.

As I have changed, so has the content of this blog. I started with posting about narcissism, then I slowly started posting about lots of other things. I still post about narcissism and still read about it, but it’s less dominant for me now.

My readership has changed lots too. The vast majority of the bloggers I followed in the first couple of years have stopped posting. A few announced that they were leaving. Sadly, a few passed away. Others have completely revamped their content and moved on to other topics as well.

Some of those first blogs that I started to follow are still here and I love that I’ve gotten to “know” these bloggers so well, even though we’ve never met and in some cases, I don’t even know their real names. I don’t post under my real name either – I post under my grandmother’s name. I remain cautious about the old ex-narcissist still lurking out there behind his computer screen.

Those I have followed for years now have changed too, and I have enjoyed that they have shared those changes. Some of the changes were planned major departures from the previous, others much more subtle. These bloggers welcomed me, enveloped me, and challenged me to think or feel or see in a different way. Thank you. 🙂

I initially wasn’t sure how this whole blogging thing was supposed to work, but I got the hang of it. I still remember thinking that it was pretty amazing that someone would click “follow,” that people would want to read or look at what I have here. It still amazes me.

Having said that though, blogging is kind of odd. We say a whole lot about ourselves, either directly or indirectly, and we put it out there for others to look at, comment on, and to decide whether they like it or not, literally.

All of the photos in this post are of roads. They were taken through the windshield of our blue Ford truck while we were travelling rather long distances. M and I very much enjoy our long drives. We talk, we think, we daydream. These roads all lead to places large and small, unique, ugly, barren or dazzling. But really, in the end, it’s the journey, isn’t it?

Kind of like blogging. 🙂

Changing, Moving, Growing

IMG_20151004_165227When I realized that change was headed my way, I didn’t realize that it was going to be this intense.

In July, we sold our house in preparation for a move next year. We packed up all our stuff and trucked it to a rental. I whined about that a couple of posts ago.

However, life is not always orderly nor predictable (nor should it be). In late August, the opportunity for a great job came up. I interviewed, and a couple of days later I accepted their offer.

The job was 1000 km. away in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia. Wine country. Some of the best wine in the world.

Real wine.

I was on my way west (even though I’m not a young man) inside of a week with my car packed to the rafters, my poor Rudy dog parked in a kennel and my dear M left on the prairies to finish up a work contract.

Now I live near all those wine grape vines you see in the top photo.

After finding a long-stay motel to reside in and starting my new job on August 31, I immediately got sick. Go figure.

There was sniffing, snorting, blowing and wheezing. A cough that came out of my bootlaces. A jackhammer headache that doubled in intensity every time I coughed. Aches and pains in my muscles that could have been caused by digging the equivalent of the English Channel tunnel but weren’t. I sounded like a four-pack-a-day, 60-year smoker. If I laughed, I broke into a cough. Sneezing turned into a chain of mini-eruptions with attendant lava flow. I was feverishly hot and cold at the same time.

And through it all, I kept working. New job and all that. I was the queen of hand sanitizer, giant tissues and elbow coughing.

Then it started to go away.

I started to feel better.

I started to get cocky. I’m like that.

Then I started to feel really, really bad. I woke up one morning feeling like I needed to get the bolt in my neck tightened.

Which would have been all fine if my name had been Frankenstein.

But it’s not.

I decided to investigate by taking a look in the bathroom mirror.

I looked like I was wearing a turtleneck sweater with an inflation device inserted into the neck part.

The side of my neck was swollen from my ear to my shoulder and the pain that accompanied it was intense. My tonsils were swollen. My ear ached and crackled. I could hear everything inside my mouth but nothing outside.

A secondary infection had taken up residence. Yum.

It’s still not gone but I’m about to start my second round of antibiotics, for which I am eternally (and internally) grateful.

Nevertheless Continue reading Changing, Moving, Growing

Age? What’s Good for Cheese Is Good for People??

I’m pissed off. About ageism, that is.

I was just at a store picking up some necessaries for my new abode and got treated like a doddering old fool at the till. And the thing is, I’m not much older than that cashier is.

I’ve noticed this more and more lately. The penchant for people to automatically think that I don’t know how to use a debit card. That I have no idea what the internet is. A couple of days ago, I was asked by a bank employee if I use online banking.

“What was that sonny? Speak up! I can’t hear you! Frontline spanking? Is that what you said? You oughtta be ashamed of yourself. What would your mother say if she knew you were talking like that to a customer?” Of course, I was just thinking this. But I felt like saying it. In a loud, high-pitched, whiny voice.

Yikes.

I’ve been using online banking for 15 years. I’ve had a debit card for, I don’t know, probably about 30.

People keep calling me “dear” too. Does getting older automatically imply that I’m in some sort of relationship with you? A few days ago, I politely asked a waiter to stop calling me “dear.” He kept doing it anyway.

People who use that word also have a special voice that goes along with it, too. There’s this patronizing, condescending tone, like they’re talking to a half-deaf half-wit. Just give me some pablum and a glass of warm milk and let me be on my way. Don’t let my clippy clop bother you as I head for the door, if I can find it.

Holy bloody hell.

And another thing is that my husband, who is five years older than me, doesn’t get treated like this.

He’s a guy! He still has all his faculties! His hearing! His virility! His drive! He’s vital and living!

While on the other hand, I have one foot on a banana peel and the other in my grave.

I’ve faced a lot of discrimination in my life. Nowhere near as bad as what some people have had to deal with, but still.

My guidance counsellor in high school told me that I couldn’t be a pilot. (You’re not a guy!)

People gave me suspicious looks when they heard my very French surname. (You’re not English!)

Military combat? (You’re REALLY not a guy.)

But the government says I can, so f**k off.

Yes. I’m 50-something. Yes. I’m female. It doesn’t mean that I live under a rock with only my walker and my knitting for company. And, I’m not a cheese.

So get with it, “youngsters.” Just treat us older people like … well, like people.

Have you faced ageism in action?

When You Move House, Don’t Forget to Pack Your Brain

I once read somewhere that moving house is the third or fourth most stressful thing you can do. I’ve moved before, but for some reason, it didn’t seem as stressful as it does this time. Maybe that’s because I’m older. The joints and muscles don’t work as well as they once did, and as a result, everything takes longer and is more tiring. 😦

The other thing is that last time, I was just moving me, and I hadn’t accumulated much stuff. Now there’s two of us, and I’ve been here for six years and I’ve managed to collect an impressive array of stuff that I didn’t have when I lived in a condo.

A complete set of garden furniture, including arm chairs and a chaise. A vast assortment of hoses, rakes, shovels and other garden implements and tools. Two rain water barrels. A garden gnome. Bags of drought-resistant grass seed. A weird instrument that looks like a mini-oil well driller but I have no idea where I got it or what it’s for.

You find stuff like this when you’re moving. Questions like, what am I keeping this for? And, what is this for? keep popping up. And let’s not forget that ureka moment when you realize that you’ve just found something that you’ve been looking for for ten months.

Yesterday, M called me out to the garage to ask me if I wanted to keep the rain barrels. It felt like answering that question might take two sessions with a therapist.

We have cartons and packing paper and bubble wrap everywhere.

It took nearly three days to pack up our rather large collection of china and wine glasses.

And, just for added excitement, we’re deciding what needs to be packed up for next summer’s move and what needs to stay out. Because …

right now, we are only moving across town to a rental house.

Next July, after my last year in my present job, we are moving to another part of the country.

As a result, I’m not doing a very good job of keeping up with my reader, or with much of anything else outside of this move, either.

I actually think today might be my birthday, too. But I’m not sure. It’s also entirely possible that I’m a Justin Bieber fan, as well. Er – no. I don’t think I’ve lost it that much. Have I?

So wish me luck, because if my brain falls out and lands in the wrong packing box, I might not find it until next year.

As you know, misery loves company. Do you have any moving stories to tell?

A Whole Year, with Thanks

A decorated birthday cake
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)


So WordPress reminded me a couple of days ago that it was my anniversary! I’ve been blogging for a whole year! I think it’s time for a round-up!

October, 2012 – I started the year all serious. I was going to  save the world from narcissists!

November – Still serious about the dreaded narcs. Was starting to realize that there was a lot more to write about, though, and a lot of interesting stuff to read, like why I shouldn’t fear potatoes and why google is better than yahoo.  With names like that, recreational water torture is probably better.

December – I wrote a couple of rants about the holidays. I hate shopping, so shoot me now. Happy Thankshallowmas. Jenny Pellett thought this was great – thanks, Jenny :). Btw, there are lots of great writers around here named Jenny .

January – I was back at work after some medical leave and then got sick. Go figure. Water was a central feature of my life.

February – I did a couple of fairly well-received posts on narcissism and then moved on to other things.

March – I was back ranting and/or commenting again and began thinking about changing the name of my blog.

April – I changed my name! No more Mr. Narc Guy. Well, mostly.

May – I wrote a lot of random stuff. And then I wrote a post called Random Stuff.

June – I did some whining about how I’m not a morning person. You’d think that I would have this out of my system, but oh no. I just found out that non-morning types live shorter, unhealthier lives. If I wasn’t awake when I first started reading the article, I was certainly awake afterward. Since then, I have radically changed how I deal with sleep, I eat healthier, I exercise more … yeah, right.

July – I dipped my toe in the fictional waters again after a long absence.

August – M and I got married!

September – Waaahhh! I broke my computer! When it recovered, I started whining about the holidays again. Yup. That would be me.

October, 2013 – Only one post from me, because I’m monumentally busy with a change-of-career project that I’m working on. I’ve been reading all of you, though, and enjoying your posts thoroughly! 🙂

But this post together with a post from Rarasaur got me thinking. How long do we bloggers last? The shelf-life seems pretty short. Many people whom I started following last year don’t post anymore, even though they were doing well. Is keeping up the blogging harder than people anticipate? Do many not really understand what they’re getting into and how they are essentially making a commitment when they click that “follow” button? What do you think? Any thoughts about this?

In any case, I want to send a sincere thank you to all those who follow me or have clicked like – I appreciate you all. 🙂