Weyburn Skyscape

This was the view from my new 4th floor balcony this morning, at dawn. This is what I came back here for. This is what I was homesick for.  

I confess, I'm not getting a lot done these days. I feel lazy. All I want to do is drink in views like this, enjoy the infinite focal length out all my windows here. 

If not now, when? 

The rooftop in the bottom right corner is the condo building where my mother lives. 

Home at last

I'm sitting in my new living room, on a new couch, looking out a new patio door at a new scene.
From this fourth floor level, the scene is a cloudless blue morning sky above rooftops. The rooftops come up to the top of the railing, and above that... endless infinite blueblueblue.

My view is west, so I get reflected light in the morning. In the afternoon/evening I get lots of direct sun, then a sunset. Every day. So pleased about it.

Looking around there is still a lot to be done to make the place more livable, but it's coming together quite well - slowlyish, putteringly, the way I like to do householdy stuff. Contemplatively. It's my zen, and there's no rush. It's a process. Do I mind the mess and clutter? Yes I do. Am I making progress? Yes I am. At exactly the right speed for me.

And I take lots of rests and breaks and do plenty of out-the-window gazing. This is why I moved, so I could have a focal length that goes all the way to infinity. It will take a little while to get there, so I have lots and lots of time.

I'm liking this whole living in utter silence thing I've got here, too. I can't hear any of my neighbours, as the building is concrete. I don't have to actively filter out my mom's country and western music, or her soap operas, or her football games, or chatter about whatever. I can think here. At least I hope I'll be able to think here. That's the plan.

Blogger is acting weird

I can't blog from my iMac at the moment, because everything I type turns to squares as soon as I type a period. None of the other places I visit or post at seem to be affected. This MacAir laptop seems to be working OK for blogging, so I'll have to blog with it.

Update: It must be Firefox - I'm using Safari now, and it's fine. No boxes.

A welcome time-out

My mother climbed on a bus today, with her cousin (the one whose garage is currently holding my stuff in storage), to go off on one of her regular casino excursions. Earlier this morning she got up and showered and dressed. When she goes out, she always looks well put together. Anything she puts on always matches, and she always puts on a watch from her vast collection of watches to match her clothing. My mom and Joan Rivers, two watch queens. Before she left, she pulled my attention away from my computer to comment on how great she looked, how summery her shirt was, and seek my confirmation of her visual congruence. "Uh huh. Looks nice" I said.

Such a relief to have her be out for the whole day. My inner space can expand outward once more to envelop its surrounds. Mostly it doesn't care what those surrounds are, as long as they are unpopulated by other humans. The only thing still noisy and interruptive around here at the moment is the clock my Uncle Peter built and gave to her as a gift. A Dutch immigrant to Canada long ago, my Uncle Peter is now gone but managed to live a long and healthy life. He married my dad's sister, the youngest in a family of nine living siblings, the second-youngest of which was my own dad. My dad and aunt were from a dirtfarm family, born between world wars, the tail end of a succession of children made to toe stiff lines by parents who were sternly religious in a Calvinistic sort of way. Dour. No fun allowed. Lots of work. So many older siblings. No particular personal attention. Lots of physical punishment. Lots of churchy activity.

My dad rebelled by learning to play music on a violin. He would sneak away and go for music lessons from his high school teacher who lived a few miles away. If he came home after 10 PM he could expect a good thrashing from the stern patriarch of the family, my grandpa Carl, who brooked not even a slight hint of disobedience. From anyone. My dad grew up stunted in many ways from this lovely upbringing he had. I think he was likely chronically depressed from birth, but faked his way through life, mostly adequately. He got away with being stoic and quiet, because when he lived, that is what men were supposed to be anyway.

My Aunt Ella, the one who married Uncle Peter the Dutchman (so handy with tools and able to build anything out of anything), was the closest to my dad in age and close observer of his treatment by his father. On the day of my dad's funeral, when I asked her how she had felt when her own father had died, she disclosed that she had felt quite fine, was glad to see him gone, that he had been a real tyrant. It was then I found out, for the first time, that all my dad's life, pretty much, as a child, he'd been especially singled out to be physically abused by his father.

The things you don't learn about your own family by attending funerals, when everyone's guard has been lowered, or else breached, by grief.

My Aunt Ella, unlike my dad, has been an endlessly cheery person, extroverted enough to keep up with my mother. In fact they are quite good friends, these two old women. Aunt Ella's rebellion was to cut her hair and wear a bit of make-up. Both of which were taboo in her family of origin, and both of which were adopted by only one other female sibling out of five.

Anyway, Uncle Peter came along and managed to charm the old patriarch, Carl, with an old-fashioned approach - asking for Ella's hand in marriage from her father, maybe even before he asked her. Uncle Peter cracked, then translated into English, coded messages during the war for the Allied forces. He was highly mechanical, understanding heavy equipment well enough to be able to maintain a whole isolated prairie power station, himself, for decades, employed by the province. In his spare time he built things, useful items, from scratch and from kits.

The clock he gave my mom is one of his many constructed contributions to the world. It doesn't run on time anymore, as he is no longer around to maintain it periodically, but it still sounds nice, chimes out the hours abut 10 minutes before the actual hour. A clock like that is nothing I'd ever have in my own place, as I would find it too intrusive, but my mom likes it because she liked Uncle Peter a lot, and because she likes noise. She's extroverted. Noise feeds her brain. Her brain organizes itself around externalities whereas mine organizes itself around the still place in dead center of its own quiet world, inside its own inner space. Which, when I live alone, I can easily find and orient to. Living with my mom, not so much.

Temperamentally I am more like my dad was, although outwardly I'm like a carbon copy of my mother. She is a "field-marshall" type, in the Myers-Briggs sense. Me, I'm more an INFJ. What I find irritating is her need, compulsion really, to organize every breath I draw, in advance, as though I was still 3 years old. She always has. It has taken me a very long time and a lot of space between her and me for me to find a good boundary to erect between my life and her version of it. Staying in her spare room for three weeks has been quite a test for that boundary - it's still holding but I can hardly wait to move into that place of my own on Saturday, and I'm so happy to have this day - this precious day, to myself. Well almost, except for the clock sounding, reminding me every 15 minutes that this is not my space.

My new place

Somehow events transpired to permit a barely 5-year-old, two bedroom condo, gently used, to fall straight into my lap, for a very very good price. I didn't hesitate, not even for a moment. I bought it as fast as I could. It will be perfect. It faces west, is on the fourth floor, plenty of sky (sunsets) to watch. I move in just a week, out of my mom's spare room.

It's been interesting, living with my mom, age 85 and still going strong. I do not feel as invaded by her anymore, have more patience with her, can see all sorts of similarities we have. However, she's extroverted and I'm introverted. Right there is the origin of most of the issues I've ever experienced in our relationship. She talks almost non-stop about everything, including topics as diverse as who might belong to the truck parked outside to making gingerbread cookies to the best way to make Saskatoon crisp, has the soap opera going on TV while the country music is still playing in the kitchen, wears dual hearing aids but still doesn't hear very well. I don't hear all that well myself, and am used to living in a completely quiet environment. So we are joking about having to yell everything at each other twice.

She endlessly ruminates aloud, I figure, to keep her own brain organized. She drives too - a nice fancy new car ("not a Cadillac, but the next thing to" she commented), even if her destination is only two blocks. "My car needs the exercise!" she declares. I realize she needs to keep driving or she might lose the ability to do so. She carefully parks in the underground, not letting her shiny car bump into anything. She wants to drive me around Weyburn, which is a real pain, because I like to walk, am used to walking everywhere, kilometers a day, and here the downtown core is a mere six blocks in diameter, and we are living right on the circumference. Yes, I'll be glad to move out. Again.

The last time I moved out I was just seventeen, and it was to go to university. This time, I'm pushing sixty, but I remember exactly how I felt over 40 years ago. What a gift, to be able to revisit that ground.

I will be living just down the block from her, on the same block actually, but on the other side of the street. We can see each others' balconies from our own. I can keep an eye on her without having to be directly in her space. She can phone me everyday to let me know how she's doing, and I can write my brains out while looking at ferocious prairie skies. At least that's the plan. For now.

Somewhat unfortunately, the weather here isn't how I remembered it. This year south Sask. weather has been cloudy and cool, more like Vancouver weather. The good thing, though, is that the sky is so big there is still lots of light even with thick cloud cover. Yesterday we were out shopping at Canadian Tire, where I bought four new bookcases and some new clothes (in Weyburn, Mark's Work Wearhouse and Canadian Tire are under the same roof). As we walked back out - to the car - we noticed that there were patches of blue opening up. Mom remarked, "My Aunt Hattie used to say, if there was enough blue to mend a Dutchman's pants, the sky would clear." And there was. And it did.

Small bits of progress

So, by now I've been inside several of these little charming-looking on the outside, cottagey homes, and have seen how how ramshackle the walls and ceilings, how flimsy the windows, how old the furnaces and scary the basements, how dangerous the stairs down into them, how buckled up and damp and cracked and upheavaled the floors and basement walls are, how desperately people tried to reinforce them. Hmmnn.. don't think so.

On the bright side, I got my big computer up and running (so much faster than the laptop), and will have tethered internet installed this afternoon, with my mother's consent. I was so glad to find out it had been tough enough to survive the trip to Weyburn riding on the floor by the front seat, clad only in a couple taped-on recycled grocery bags, with lots of stuff pressing against it and a lot of bumpy fast driving.

I will be able to get a lot more of my regular stuff done now, plus I'll be able to preview properties way easier.

July 27/09 - first day of the rest of this life

I am sleeping these days - deep deep deep, lots of decompressing dreams. Many hours of dreamless sleep too. I think my brain is beginning to catch up to itself. All this going to bed at 9 and not waking up until 6, then sleeping for a couple more hours in the afternoon has got to be a good thing. Seriously - I had no clue how exhausted I really was. Getting that rental van back on Saturday was the final task related to Vancouver. Now I feel fully suspended between lives.

Today, there will be a small bit of banking, and the fun stuff of going house shopping will begin. I might just buy a little house to live in, with a little yard. Weyburn is so incredibly safe I doubt I'll be in any danger. All my mom's friends are in their 70's, 80's, and they all seem to have a nice little cottagy house to live in, unmolested, with a little garden to keep them outside and active, growing fresh things that they cook and share with each other. They are doing great.. seem to be aging well and healthily in spite of bitter winters. Such great models for an almost-60 year old.

Made it.

Cleaned the last surface, threw out the last bit of trash, moved out the last bit of important computer gear, disguised as luggage, and put it in the front seat. There was only enough room for me left in there. I locked the door for the last time and pushed the key back inside under the door.

At 10:30 PM, got in the van and started it. Couldn't find the lights. Thought, well, they probably come on automatically. Let's just go. Drove out along the highway which was well enough lit. When I got further out in the country, I realized I didn't have lights. Stopped the van, opened the door, looked around, saw the lights, was ecstatic to see that when I turned the headlights on the dash lights dimmed - they had been annoyingly bright.

I got to Weyburn in two days with that first burst on Tuesday night, which had got me all the way to Merritt BC, well into the land of cowboys, sage and C&W music before I was too tired to drive. As I got closer to Sask I relaxed more and more. I could feel years of accumulated big city stress with all its attendant inner tension, drift off. The stress level went down in direct proportion to increase of blue-dome sky, lowering of the horizon, widening of the space around me, increase in highway visibility and speed limit.

Arrived in Weyburn yesterday afternoon. Today, opened a new account, monies are transferring, modem has been mailed back to the internet company, and at 2 PM (in about a half hour) I have a new set of two guys and a moving dolly organized to help me unload the truck in my mom's cousin's garage. It's all good. Tomorrow I drive the van to the airport in Regina, and get rid of another headache, take the bus back to Weyburn, look for a place to live.

Today in the Credit Union I was struck at how clean, civil and safe it felt. The public washrooms were actually public, and clean and no needles or broken crack pipes. The floors were spotless. The place was quiet. Lone tellers worked at isolated desks around corners from each other, completely relaxed. Clearly there is no problem of urban density/expensive square footage/repeated hold-ups here.

There is no graffiti anywhere to be seen. I even looked at a few nice little houses for sale within walking distance, two or three blocks, of "downtown", which is all of 6 square blocks. Yup, I'm going to like living here. There are even green trees here. But they aren't a shaggy dark overwhelming jungle, towering over the buildings, they are short and cheery. Big city amenities in a small safe town.

Tonight, tonight, won't be just any night

I just got back home with the van, and words cannot express how relieved I felt to learn that it's a Dodge Caravan with seats that disappear under the floor, and a bit more length than I was expecting. This is great - I can relax, all my worldly belongings should fit without any problem, big and bulky though the bags may be.

The phone has already been disconnected. I shall have to leave a note taped to the enterphone downstairs for the movers, but that's a small detail. Not that small details aren't important. Just that a big huge detail I was stressing over no longer exists and I can feel endogenous opioids. Life is good.

The final weekend

I can feel the end of life as I've known it for over 25 years. No matter how I've longed for this and worked hard to get here to this shift point, as I'm poised over the intersection between the life I've grown accustomed to and the life I will move into, I feel poignancy. I can't help it. It's inevitable.

As one moves through life, one must, gracefully as possible, continue to move one's life along consciously, through time, at the same time, and at about the same speed, in a mirroring fashion. The former happens anyway, completely non-consciously. The latter involves conscious reconnaissance, taking new bearings, re-navigating, making new maps of new shorelines.

A life, consciously lived, seems to involve putting things away and into the past, no matter how much one might have enjoyed one's interaction with them, and moving along willingly, consciously making room for new. This happens all the way along anyway. It happens biologically in the womb, as the developing egg leaves behind its egg "shell," its zona pellucida, it's first ever "blankie." Later the fetus has to leave behind its placenta, its second "blankie." Later, it involves letting go of toys, actual tattered blankets perhaps, stages of childhood, various levels of interactions with one's parents. Later still, it involves letting go of outgrown social roles, various constructs of self, beliefs one may have once entertained or even clung to fiercely, places, and people. It involves being left behind by those who die. Finally, it involves letting go of life itself, oneself, saying goodbye to that too. As gracefully and honestly and openly and with as few regrets as possible. All the "blankies" one ever projected solace onto. I totally get the idea in Buddhism about attachment/detachment. It's the main key to becoming and remaining contented, no matter what else might be going on.

I'm learning that the less material I have to deal with, actual "things" that take up time and consideration, the better my brain seems to be working and the more time and peaceful leisure I have for things like being on Facebook, exploring attachment on another level, practicing making a "group" and a "page" and "friending" people. It's all good. Then I'll be detached from that too, for a few days, as I wend my way through the mountains driving a loaded minivan, back to the land of nearly perpetual sunshine and big blue sky. That will feel good too, in its own way.

Aloft

I still have a week to go, living in a mostly empty condo, everything timed so that the TV and couch (my two remaining luxuries in life) will go out the door next weekend or on Monday, leaving me a whole day to put the finishing touches on packing, spackling, floor washing. I want to leave this place impeccable, and impeccably.

I still felt saddled by some large things I could barely move by myself, an old dresser and a bookcase, and few small tables, one lamp. I called 1-800-GOT-JUNK, made an appointment to have them come on Monday the 20th, just in case. However, meanwhile I managed to shove the two big pieces out into the hall, and put up a notice that they were free for the taking. This morning I was delighted to see they had been taken. Which means, I can cancel GOT-JUNK.

This is a big lift. It feels as if an updraft just caught my wings and I'm soaring effortlessly. The best part is, I still have an entire week to enjoy the feeling of being lifted effortlessly up out of the rut I had made, with all its "stuff," and grok, really grok this sense of freedom, memorize it, neuroplasticize it deeply into the chemistry set of my brain, so that I never forget how it feels to be light and carefree and effortless, letting the universe support my feeling playful.

The mental molt part is over. When the last big bookcase disappeared from the hallway, so did the last itchy spot in my sense of self.

The best part? We haven't even got to that yet! The best part is that I'm still here floating freely in Vancouver in my familiar surroundings for another whole week, able to still love them in this incredibly detached fashion, unbound by them, relishing my own anticipation of the week that is to come, the nice clean zen feel of it, the space of it reflected by the emptiness of my rooms, the carefreeness. THIS is the holiday feeling I need in the middle of my marrow. At last. This is how freedom is supposed to feel. It feels great!

A week from now, I will have to enact the actual move: from the high soaring place, from floating effortlessly on the updraft, I shall have to peer at the landing place, begin the descent: I shall have to take the sky train over to the train station where the mini-van waits to be picked up, deal with paperwork, drive it to my place, coordinate with the two guys I hired to load it, hope that it will contain everything satisfactorily, then actually drive myself and what's left of my life and stuff through the mountains to the flat land, where the sky is big and the sun shines almost all the time, every day. It will take two days to arrive, to touch down, start a new life cycle. Figure out, all over again, what I want to be when I grow up.

Mini-vans

The day before yesterday I chanced to look across the street to see a parked mini-van. I was a bit shocked at how small it was. I think I had been thinking of those big hippy vans from the 70's, perhaps, but with more windows. I started to get a queasy feeling in conjunction with a thought that maybe I wouldn't have enough room in the mini-van for the cubic footage of what I think I want to take with me.

This feeling built over the course of the day.

Yesterday I paid a visit to the company I'll be renting from, and one of the agents kindly allowed me to take a look inside a typical size mini-van, practice folding the seats down etc. It helped a lot. It is more apparent now that I, the basket queen, will have to let go of even more stuff.

Alrighty then. Chuckchuckchuck.

The silent auction continued

Yesterday evening a neighbour phoned and asked if she could bring her friend over to see some of the furniture I tried to auction off a week ago. I said sure. They came, they saw, they bought. The oak buffet, hutch, a large mirror, a carved wooden chest, and a table lamp have now found new homes. I sold them cheap.
Benefit to them: they get them way cheaper than I did.
Benefit to me: I get a little something, and do not have to pay to have them removed.

After giving the matter some serious albeit spattered attention, I decided yesterday to hire a couple guys and a dolly for an hour to come and load my van for me. It just makes good sense. I don't want to start a long road trip in a sitting position after having used my back in a manner repetitive and effortful. That's a recipe for back pain, which I do not need. It's not just the umpteen bags of heavy books I've packed and stacked, it's the heavy rug, 10x13, that I've decided to take with me since it's too big for anyone's space and therefore they do not want to buy it. I can't even lift let alone move that beautiful thing by myself. No way. So, in that I have to hire someone for that one item anyway, and pay them for an hour, I might as well keep them busy for an hour. If I'm organized, I can leverage their muscle power and get the whole job done.

This phase of the move is like second wind to a runner. It seems way easier than could have been imagined.

Friday

I was going to title this post "Friday Friday," but decided double naming days of the week was getting a bit old. It started because that Mommas and Papas song, Monday Monday, kept going through my head.

The weather here has been very very good. Beautiful even. It's as though Vancouver is giving me a lovely send-off. I must say, I really appreciate it. I can feel my energy improving, and my mood. I can hardly wait to go back to living in a place, where, although I was never any PollyAnna, how I felt or functioned was never weather-related. It was probably more age-related.

A strong image of myself came to me this week, a sense that when I moved here 25 years ago, it was as though a bow started to be slowly drawn back, and I was the arrow. I didn't feel it at all, all this becoming aimed at something. In fact I felt quite aimless much of the time. I could feel something sliding by however, and assumed it was merely time. It was the string of the bow, softly scraping me.

About a year ago, I started a bunch of activity that was new. Now I see it was the arrow-me, fully drawn back. Lots of tension. Unable to sense any movement. Having to create some. Get ready for something. Something that felt like it could be big. Huge restlessness.

Meanwhile, even as tension was buildingbuildingbuilding inside, outside, life proceeded calmly, containedly. I lost weight, got rid of a big albatross of a car, most uncharacteristically took a vacation. This past year has been all about me the arrow feeling pulled all the way back against the bow, then being held still by a Samurai, pointed toward a target. It's been about me knowing I was about to be launched at a target, trying to see what the target was. Is. It's me.

Now, from here, I can see that I have been the bow all along, as well as the arrow. It was not pleasant, or comfortable, it didn't feel good, it was painful at times, but it was also hopeful, occasionally exciting, and ultimately, necessary. Now, from here, I can see I'm the Samurai too. I don't have to let go until I feel one with the arrow-me, the bow-me, the target-me.

This is a calm time. The city is lovely. The weather is at the top of its game. I feel still on the inside, not especially busy on the outside. I'm getting caught up to myself. Things are coming together even as they are being pulled apart. I'm packing, organizing, deconstructing the life I allowed to build too big with stuff because I never thought I'd ever move again.

I'm letting go of the dream red velvet couch I enjoyed for 12 years, to a woman who has always dreamed of owning and enjoying a red velvet couch. She also bought my dream round oak pedestal dining table with lion claw feet, and I know that she and her partner will fill their home with many happy dinner parties. She bought my set of off-white dishes that will never scratch or chip because they're made of some amazingly hard substance. I was in it for the long haul, and loved these treasures for how they seemed to confer permanence and stability and quality. Now they will confer all that to her.

People are coming over to pick up the things they bought at the auction. I'm filling up the Chinese plaid plastic bags with the stuff I'm taking. I get tired so I take a nap. There's nowhere else I have to go, nothing else I have to do. I can pack in a manner truly luxurious, emptying out of existence anything that no longer serves my particular life, and keeping anything I want or really require. I can deal with the feelings that come up unexpectedly, as they arise. I can consider them fully, instead of setting them aside or pushing them away because of having too much outside life to deal with. I get it. I really get it now, how this is the best way to live a conscious life. Have lots of time and space around each thought, each feeling. Have lots of space, period.

Soon the arrow will fly.

Wednesday Wednesday

Happy Canada Day.

To celebrate Canada Day I did more coffee drinking, interneting, arranging with people for them to come by and take away their new treasures (my old ones, recycled). I got $225 today for household things, a framed print, a leather chair with ottoman, a table and rug. Not bad. I also hauled out 6 more loads of books and left them for whoever. (My book-lady neighbour did not respond to my note left taped to her door, and I've lost her phone number.)

I loaded up eight more large trash bags full of this and that for the Canadian Diabetes Association to pick up, in about a week. I carefully organized and packed a couple of those cheap strong plaid plastic bags, for moving.

I feel a lift under the wings. It feels like things have accelerated slightly. The apartment is emptying out, no books visible, pictures down, bare walls showing, floor space opening up. Empty bookcases. I feel so much more detached from all this than I did in February, when I had to dredge up the energy to start the process. Now, it feels like I'm nearly there.

Did I do anything special for Canada Day? No... not yet. My participation/connection to the rest of the human primate troop I belong to, now celebrating, is watching the festivities on TV. Later I'll be able to hear the boom of the fireworks outside over the water, whether I want to or not. Yay - happy birthday, Canada, my home and native land.

Monday monday

So, this is the start of the first week of the rest of my life.
So far, I've had a shower, some coffee, and spent the entire morning online.

Yesterday, I held a silent auction/ living-room sale/ house-cooling party at my house. It did very well - netted a lot more dough than an ordinary street sale would have. Wine was involved, and snacks, so that probably helped.

I managed to sell a few large pieces of furniture. Bidding wars did not take off like wild-fire, but I got reasonable bids/amounts of money for the couch, TV, table and chairs, bookcases.. no bites for the hutch or buffet. Oh well. The amount of money that did come in will pay for the removal of stuff that did not sell. Break even for sure and then some.

I am doing very well in the patience/detaching process, feel very even keel about it all. Am organized enough to feel that even as my material possession volume shrinks, it shrinks in a planned enough way that I will not be having to do without anything important.

On another front, that of hiring a vehicle to move me and my remaining bits of stuff, mostly heavy books, I learned that having a continuously paid-off credit card facilitates renting a car. I tried renting one on my own, but found that most rental companies do not rent outside the provincial border or beyond two. It's as though the world ends at the Alberta border. And these are supposedly national companies. I found myself talking to agents situated in the U.S. somewhere, even if the company I was calling was a .ca company. I found this amusing mixed with slightly shocking mixed with discombobulating.

Anyway - long story shorter - I finally called my credit card company to register change of address and learned that they would not only handle the car rental process, but that I had a bunch of points saved up that I had never even known about or used. OK. So, the credit card company (VanCity Visa) rented me a minivan, and applied the points. It took them no time at all. I think the takeaway point from this is that car rental agencies and credit card companies likely know and trust each other extremely well, and that if the credit card company says I'm a good risk, then the car rental company provides steep discounts. The vehicle rental cost, points aside, will be about half what I'd have had to have paid if I rented under my own recognizance. Live and learn.

Another tip for people transporting books, especially middleaged women who do not want to break their backs or gouge their arms: don't bother with cardboard boxes. Splurge and buy a bunch of those really cheap plaid plastic bags made in China. The zippers are crap and will break immediately, but the bags are completely weightless and incredibly strong. It's a lot easier to carry heavy loads in sturdy flexible containers with handles, and the arms down by the sides. Besides they are reuseable forever and fold to practically nothing for storing.

Final day at work

Final day of treating people, anyway.
It's not going to be my final day at work, however.. The workplace still has hooks in me - I still have ownership and therefore responsibility for the business itself. It's ironic that the part of the work I enjoy most is going to be the part I have to let go of first. Oh well. Such is life.

Tomorrow will be the first day of my new life.

I am wondering how that will feel.

My new life is going to cohere around deconstructing "precept"-ual fantasy wherever I find it. When I look back, I can see I've been headed in this direction for a very very long time already. One day, tomorrow perhaps, I'll wake up and see that it has become so.

Selling the practice

This is a very complex bunch of business, this whole 'selling a practice' thing. First of all, it isn't cut and dried like real estate. It's a lot more conceptual. It's also a lot more creative. One has to weigh and assign value to intangibles. As a result, there are no "agents" one can hire to shepherd the process. I'm nearly on my own. So, there are categories to consider.

"Hard assets" are the easiest category to deal with. I already have a list from last year when I divided myself from my practice, turned the "practice" into a "business" then sold the "business" the assets of the former "practice."

There is the little matter of 'location and venue'. I really have got myself into a peachy situation, in that there is no serious PT competition for miles, and in that I am ensconced in the only medically zoned building in the neighbourhood, with a handy sink, an elevator, wheelchair accessible office/bathroom, some free parking, climate control, nice blackout blinds that can open at the top or bottom. I have outlasted all competition that dared to set up. This has to be worth a few shekels to somebody.

There is the little matter of having found 'fabulous people' to work alongside of. These people come with the practice, namely a good well-trained PT who can't afford to buy the practice but who will gladly work there, a great receptionist/office-organizer person, a gracious and quiet roommate (half the rent) with her own practice which consists mostly of listening to people as they self-regulate in a sound-proof room. The landlord is in the office right beside ours. He is entirely accessible and unhesitatingly deals with any issue to do with the building, as he is also an occupant.

There is the not so small issue of a 'wide client base' gathered up over 15 years, about 20% of which is brand new every month, self-referred or referred by each other. These are people who expect to and are willing to pay cash. Cash! A fair bit of cash, too, in exchange for 3 or 4 visits to a person who will provide them with a reasonable, plausible, science-based construct to explain their pain to them, who will provide their brains with novel sensory-discriminative input in the form of manual therapy, seasoned with exquisite regard for their sensibilities and delivered in a carefully boundaried manner, and who will support their efforts to learn how to downregulate pain in all manners non-pharmacological. This is a well-trained client base. It comes with the practice. How does one put a price tag on something like this? I'm given to understand that some would pay mega to get their hands on a client list like this. I just hope I can "sell" this base to a person who will look after these people as carefully as I have attempted to.

Wish me luck.

I really hope I can sell it and disconnect completely from Vancouver. However, if I can't sell it in time to the right person at the right price, I may just hang onto it myself, try to run Sherwood PT from afar by granting somebody here in town power of attorney, learn how to run the bank account from Sask., let it continue to generate profit for me at a distance. I mean, if it is as good as I say it is, why would I even want to sell it? I could let it continue support me, and I don't have to be around much. As long as the headache factor is less than the profit factor, I would be fine, I think. As long as the tie doesn't bind too uncomfortably, I'm sort of OK with the idea of retaining a connection of 'owner' of a physiotherapy 'business'.

If I were a real entrepreneur, which I am not and do not have the energy to be at this stage of life, I could set up a string of clinics across Canada, all boutique-like in their service, but strategically innovative, in that each would take on a section of demographic in every city where the rent is reasonable, location is central, cash payment is expected, the client base grows itself through word-of-mouth only, and profitability comes from well-delivered hands-on service minus any hype or pseudoscience, and from keeping overhead down, way down. Bare bones delivery of science-based care for lasting relief of persisting pain, aimed at reducing overall pain suffering, one person at a time. No electrodes and no gym equipment. A clean space, fresh laundry in plain sight, nice freshly showered person with clean warm hands who knows how to use them and has a stripped down idea of why manual treatment is helpful to living human anti-gravity suit nervous systems and their embedded "I"-illusions, willing to answer each question fully from a pain perspective.

Letting go

I have been stressed out all week, fighting a bug which put me in bed all day Monday, made me cough (and have to wear a face mask) Tuesday, went into a lull Wed and Thur and came back with a vengeance Friday, putting me into bed directly after another face mask wearing day at work.

Adding to the stress of meeting immediate obligations while feeling sick has been the stress of trying to hold together a condo deal at the Weyburn end of this time of transition. It all climaxed in this same week, in the form of a time-sensitive binder full of complex legal documentation that I was required to read through, then initial off as having read and understood, and return.

I hit my own wall. I looked at page one, and realized that I was too stressed (too sick maybe) to be able to make any sense out of the written material. Which of course means that I'm too stressed to actually know if I do, truly, understand it, agree to it, and can sign off that I do.

When I get stressed, I get mad. How dare that real estate agent load me down with such a herculean task the very week I'm sick and have enough to do, trying to keep mere ordinary life on the rails? How dare she not be there to reply to my email or pick up the phone? (Seriously, someone who ignores one of each from me, AND a phone call from my notary... , well... , just what should one think? Just where should one place her on the sliding scale of slackdom?)

When I get mad, I get decisive. So I phoned my mother this morning, whose money represents the deposit on this condo in Weyburn, and is refundable up to the end of June. I told her my misgivings, told her how stressed I was getting about it, and that I wanted her to go get her cheque back and let the deal fall apart.

As I spoke, I could feel clarity reemerge into the dim dark recesses. I could feel certainty return. It's all relative of course; it might seem odd that letting go of something that's nearly in the bag would be less stressful than seeing it through, yet, that's how it is. I feel way more relaxed with the zen of Not Knowing, than I am with the stress of trying to pull something together that seems difficult and for which I find vanishingly small support to accomplish, but would result in a sure address to forward my mail to.

Instead, I'll just get my mail forwarded to my mother's address, until I have one of my own.

The stress level is down palpably. I'm breathing easier and I can focus on what's in front of me instead of feeling obliged to try to advance stick-handle what lies ahead.

When I leave Vancouver it will be like driving into the void. I won't have any preconceptions of where I'll be living, because I'll have no idea where it will be, for sure. I'll be more relaxed, with no time pressure on me about getting money transferred by a certain date. I'll be able to just leisurely open a new account, and have money sent from the old to the new, the old ones closed. So much easier.

Huge blue

I spent the entire past weekend in Calgary, at our national physiotherapy congress, some of which was keenly interesting to me, most of which wasn't, but it's all OK, because while I was there I got an email from my real estate agent saying that the subjects had been removed. Firm sale. I'm nearly outta here.

Meanwhile, I had this lovely view from my Calgary hotel room. What a sky. What a sky. My little digital camera could only capture a fraction of the expanse that was available.

When I returned to Vancouver, I again was reminded about why I am leaving it behind. Even though the weather is lovely right now, the summer and high temperatures merely bring another sort of "lid" to live under - the lid of haze and smog. Again, not enough clear blue light can get through to satisfy my requirements. Too hibernate-y feeling, even in late spring with high temperatures and long long days. I get it now. I really get it. I'm so glad I decided to bolt while I still have a chance, and before becoming too mired in by life and in no position to be able to bolt.

I have more details to deal with, like selling my practice and getting rid of the remainder of my stuff, renting a mini-van and loading my chosen books, computer gear, and a red rug I've decided to keep into it, but these are just details and lucky for me, my landlord is also a notary. He has agreed to help me out. Lucky lucky me.