Showing all posts tagged routine

In Identity, Movies/TV, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth, Relationships, University, Writing

Novelty

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

A few years ago, at the beginning of this never-ending pandemic, my counsellor encouraged me to pursue novelty. To look for the whimsical, the different, the charming, the fun to add a dash of inspiration and renewal into my days and weeks. It was fantastic advice.

This spring, when Jason and the kids began planning the annual summer driving trip from the lower mainland to our timeshare in Canmore for Jason to attend the Calgary Stampede for a week of work events, I decided not to go with them. I’ve gone every year, since the kids were born, either driving from Alberta to BC for the cabin with Jason’s extended family or back to the Alberta Rocky mountains when we moved to White Rock in 2016.

I used to love road trips, and may again in the future, but last summer I realized I was tired of the long drive. Routine and tradition certainly have their place, and are important to me, but I’m learning to listen to that quiet voice of intuition when it speaks. While we were on the ten-hour journey home from Canmore last summer, I said, “I think I need a break from this trip. I’ve been doing it every year, sometimes twice in a year, for nearly twenty years.”

The kids were aghast. Why would Mom stay home alone instead of going on the family road trip? But Ava is nineteen now, and driving on her own, so it seemed like a good time to mix things up. Plus, our nearly twelve-year-old cat Flower was diagnosed with feline diabetes earlier this year, so going away for an extended period is not as simple as it used to be with his twice-daily insulin shots spaced twelve hours apart. And I’m finishing up my thesis, so it seemed to make sense all around for me to stay home.

As an introvert, the forced closeness of the pandemic has been challenging for me. Jason has been working from home for more than two years now, and the kids have been home a lot more, too. I know this is a familiar tale for everyone, but when you are used to being at home on your own during the day, five days a week, and then you are almost never alone, it takes a toll on your mental health.

I didn’t know quite how badly I needed some quiet and space until my beloved family left. I sank into the silence, and felt it soothe my soul. Every day for a full eight days, I’ve only had myself and the two cats to consider. What do I want to eat, and when? What movies and TV should I watch? What type of novelty should I build into this day? When should I read my novel, for hours at a time, and when should I get my two thousand words written for today?

All of these decisions were mine, and mine alone. It was glorious. Healing. Rejuvenating. Knowing that Ava and William were fine in Canmore, having their own adventures and making their own memories, and Jason was busy with his work friends in Calgary, meant that I could truly focus my attention and energy just on myself. I took a week’s break from being a mom and a wife. I was only responsible for myself, and I felt like a plant getting water and sun for the first time in a while.

I do love my family. I will be glad to see them when they get home tomorrow. But I’ve also, equally, adored this time apart from them. To regroup. To prioritize myself, and my own needs as a person in my own right. I’m on the cusp of finishing the first draft of my thesis manuscript, which is a big accomplishment. I was worried about it, when I started my MFA last September, and now I’m about to type the words The End. There will still be lots of editing work to do, going back and forth with my fabulous supervisor and committee, but the daunting task of staring down a blank document is behind me. I’ve proved something to myself, and that’s worth a lot.

What type of novelty can you build into your life? How can you mix up your usual routines to provide a new spark of joy and excitement? Are there a few specific things you can do to prioritize yourself, especially when you usually give a lot to others?

In Books, Identity, Movies/TV, Nurture, Personal Growth, Relationships, University, Writing

Recalibrate

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

I’m working with a new counsellor, and she has me focusing on a new word this summer: recalibrate. Making adjustments to my routine or process is not always easy for me. I thrive in predictability, but looking at my plans and goals with the lens of recalibration (or making small, fine-tuning changes) has really opened up fresh possibilities for me.

I survived my first year of full-time grad school in the Creative Writing MFA program at UBC. It was busy, packed with more homework and writing deadlines than I’ve ever had before, but I made it to the other side. I learned a lot about myself as a writer. I met so many interesting and talented people. Over the second semester, I went through a crisis of confidence in my own abilities, unsure if my creative instincts and intuition could be trusted and relied on.

A few weeks off was what I needed to recalibrate and regain my perspective outside of the demands of full-time classwork and TA responsibilities. I took that time off in April, and found myself coming back to life again, the way a plant does with healthy doses of sunlight and water. I read, slept in, walked in nature, meditated, got back to my yoga practice, wrote in my journal, stretched, and watched some great TV (Search Party, Our Flag Means Death, Julia, the final episodes of Ozark, just to name a few).

Now I feel ready to embark on my thesis, a post-apocalyptic cli-fi novel I’ve been thinking about since my third year of undergrad. This story and these characters have been germinating in my mind and soul for more than eighteen months. I’m so excited to start writing and see where it all takes me.

I worried at various points over my first year of grad school that I wouldn’t be up to the task of writing a thesis over a four-month period, but I’ve come to realize that I can do things I didn’t think I could do. I’ve proved that to myself by going back to university in my mid-forties, and deciding to be a professor of Creative Writing after graduating with my MFA. It’s all in motion. I just needed some time to catch up to myself and what I’ve learned.

So now I start writing. I’m determined to hold loosely, to enjoy the process instead of focusing only on the finished product, and to cherish no outcomes. As writer Jami Attenberg said, “The safest place is inside the work.” And to quote Steven Spielberg, “The work that I’m proudest of is the work I’m most afraid of.” I’m going to hold both of these ideas close as I get down to work, taking care of myself by recalibrating my own expectations and shoring up my own confidence in a variety of ways.

In Identity, Nurture, Parenting, Relationships, Uncategorized

Back to School

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on
Back to School

Can you hear that sound? It’s silence, the kind that falls after parents have ushered their beloved offspring to a new year of school (well, you might hear cheering from some and weeping from others – both moms and kids – but here the biggest joy of all is the QUIET).

Other years, when my kids were smaller, I used to feel a bit melancholy on their first day. I would get so used to them being home over the long days of summer that I would miss them for the first week.

Now that Ava is grade nine and William is grade six it’s a different experience. They need to return to structure and see their friends. Both of them require challenges, apart from staring at inane Youtube videos all day long. My kids may have mixed feelings about going back to school, but I can see how necessary it is for them.

As our children get older, things change. For Ava, who has four years left of high school before embarking on her own life away from us, these precious last years under our roof take on a fresh significance. She is supposed to grow in independence and begin constructing an identity outside of our family and it’s important for us to support her in this quest.

We have good friends who just said goodbye to both of their university-age daughters. They are now officially empty-nesters. I’ve been texting with my friend about this process and I know it will be here all-too-soon for us as well. The key is to be present and to notice the stage that is happening right now, but also to transition into a more hands-off parenting style so we are all able to celebrate the coming separation instead of fighting it or mourning it.

William is in that in-between age of eleven. He’s not quite ready for the angst of the teen years but also not really a child. It’s a delicate stage, where one foot is on each side of a divide. He longs to be older but also wants to remain young and safe. We are working on encouraging him to step out of his comfort zone and to take more risks. School helps with this.

Every parent-child relationship is different and will require planning and strategy in order to find success. The beginning of September can be a particularly raw time. It’s exciting in one sense and scary in another.

As parents, we get to practice letting go of our children once again. This is their time: to make new friends, to cry and have their feelings hurt, to take risks and soar, to be embarrassed, to learn that if the first five experiments fail you can keep trying until you get where you want to go.

Happy back to school season to all parents and kids. May it be a marvellous year of discovery, compassion, fun and important life lessons learned.

In Identity, Nurture, Personal Growth, Relationships, Writing

Liminal Space

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on Leave a comment
Liminal Space

Do you ever have trouble finding the words for the big conversations? You know, the ones where you long to communicate some deep truth, pulled from the centre of your being with a huge effort, where it feels like you are standing completely naked in front of the other person?

I’m struggling with this. I feel so utterly changed by the last four weeks of my life, but yet unable to properly talk about it with those I love most. I’ve turtled up inside, processing and going dark to the outside world.

This is likely a necessary step, and healthy, but it’s also a tiny bit isolating. It creates a gap between you and the people in your life. I know I have the right to say I’m not ready to talk about things, and this might be the best solution until I feel more sure of what it is I want to say, but the big conversations in life always leave me slightly terrified.

So much of our existence is regular routine. Only when it’s disrupted do we see things in a new way. And we realize that we are also irrevocably altered.

Liminal SpaceI learned this phrase from Rob Bell’s recent podcast on Seasons (and if you aren’t listening to all of Rob Bell’s podcasts, please rectify this immediately as they will immensely improve your quality of life): liminal space. It means the middle space; when one stage is completed and the next has yet to begin.

I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life to hear the phrase “liminal space”. I love it and plan to overuse it from this point forward. It explains so much of that waiting bit at the centre of big change. It’s transition, uncertainty, fear, loss, excitement. You know you don’t want to go back but you can’t quite move forward as the next chapter hasn’t revealed itself.

Perhaps it’s not a good idea to commit to much in the liminal space. It’s for waiting and growing and shifting. It requires an openness to what will now be different. We can’t forecast what the next season will look like while we are still moving through the loss of what came before. We simply have to wait.

Have I mentioned that I hate waiting? This appendectomy and its long, slow crawl back to my previous healthy state has invited me every single day to be patient. To stop accomplishing and just sit in my new and tired state in my comfy shorts that don’t hurt my stitches. The whole world seems different as a result. It may still be whizzing by, along with everyone around me, but I am in a separate place and I can’t keep up. Nor do I really want to.

I do feel marked in some invisible way. I can see it, but no one else really can. I guess the prescription is more waiting. I must allow this growth to bud in its own time. There is no point to rushing it or shouting something from the rooftops that I barely understand for myself. Some things should be private, particularly in the liminal space.

If you are in a transition point right now, let’s wait it out together. We can reassure each other that we won’t be in this middle space forever. The new season will begin to take shape. We will survive the transition. We have the ability to let go of the last place where we were either happy or sad (or more likely a mix of both). It will simply take a little bit of time. Sit with me in the garden and we’ll encourage each other through this liminal space.