Wherever you go, there you are

Disoriented, tired with surreal flashes of WTF(where not what) am I? That’s me right now. (mostly due to connecting flights all over the US…gotta love the heavy Christmas traffic) In LA now...

I left LA mid December and spent weeks with family and friends back home in Canada. It’s a shocker to my little frame let me tell ya. The air is clearer in Ontario but much colder! (Obviously I wasn’t close to the Hamilton smokestacks, but did manage to visit family near the African Lion Safari) I wouldn’t say it was like the January and February months I spent as a child there digging my way through snow drifts by the apple orchards but there was enough snow in some areas to make me buy new gloves and winter boots.

In my opinion, some people have changed for the worse, some for the better, but not by a large fraction. With the exception of some nieces and nephews shooting up in height, my family is doing pretty much the same. All are happy and keeping busy with the flow of work and family life.

I left there thinking I was the one who had changed, but it’s mixed with moments of wondering if I was the same but just moving around a lot. I guess we all transform in some way…I don’t mean the obvious growth but I feel perspectives in my life have changed. Some of my visits were difficult to listen to people still prejudice in their old ways where I feel like I have learned to be tolerant…but then some of my visits were difficult because the people were doing simple things that I longed for. I often say travel breeds tolerance but I think there is something lovely about routine and tradition.

I feel like despite what I am missing in my life, I am still me. I still mixed in with the same jokes and craziness with family and still had wonderful visits with friends. Whether I am sleeping in my own bed or in a spare room somewhere, I still wake up to me. I wouldn’t say I am as lonely as I used to be. I think loneliness has nothing to do with being alone either. I have felt desperately lonely in the past with a house full of people. I guess what is happening is that I am reacquainting myself with me. I am learning how to take a 5 hour flight and be alone with my thoughts.

But mostly, I am feeling pretty creative and reconnecting with some old childhood friends. When I say childhood friends, I don’t actually mean real people. I mean the ones in my imagination (get yer straight jacket ready) I never realized until lately that the people I have been neglecting to visit the most were the spirits of imagination and creativity. The characters who are waiting to be written about! Remember when you were a child and you spent time with them? They are calling me now.

While I don’t believe much in new year’s resolutions, the timing is just falling here that I am having a new year’s revelation. The season’s visits are just making it obvious who I need to visit the most right now.

If I may be so bold to say, I think many of us are in need of visiting those spirits too! ;) I think when we do, it makes our visits with others that much better.

I hope that you are able to find what makes you passionate…not necessarily this year, this month or even this day…but that you experience a moment that brings you great joy!

Much love on ya!
Karen :)

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places." ~Ernest Hemingway