Holiday Planning (Plan B)

Well, any plans to go up North for a brief sabbatical have gone up in smoke, quite literally. The last entry I made about the fire risk situation was purely speculative. The reality of it happened the day after I posted it. I hate that I'm not only right in seeing the chain of cause and effect of disaster scenarios a little too vividly, but the severity of the situation is hitting too close to home, even though the real action is happening 400 kilometres away. The next day, I woke up that morning to find this whole city enshrouded with smoke that drifted in from forest fires around Lac La Ronge and area. Weather maps are showing the smoke extending and drifting right down to the US border. The air quality is bad here, and undoubtedly gets worse as one heads northward. This is the worst I’ve ever seen it around here for smoke accumulation from northern wildfires in all the years I've lived in the province. It’s so thick that I can’t even see the river valley from my place anymore; which is only a block and a half away. The weird, mad scientist, side of me was wondering and curious to know how long it would take for a slab of pork belly to cure and turn into a side of bacon if I hung one on my balcony. I better just keep writing before I start following up on an impulse to experiment with such crazy ideas.

The rain that was supposed to come today to help settle this didn’t come. I suppose I just have to comfort and placate myself with thoughts that align with “it could be worse”. As in: it could be worse . . . I could have reserved and made a financial commitment for a campsite up there earlier this year, and not be able to use it, or went up there earlier before this happened only to be forced back with an immediate evacuation, or it could be worse . . . I could be like the poor devils who are stranded up there losing their homes or property. As much as I’m complaining and agonizing about making a decision as whether or not to get away from here for my leisure, I’m at least not in a place where I have no choice but to evacuate, and forced to leave my home and all my possessions behind, with the sense of dread and uncertainty as to whether or not I’ll ever see them again. I would suppose that’s naturally what’s happening to the people in any one of the communities located near where any one of the hundreds of wildfires have been burning now in this province during this season.

So, my holiday plans have changed again; it’s not like any were set in stone anyway. Every place within all the corners of the “land of the living skies” is now fully immersed in a gagging, sun-blocking, dull, grey, haze. So, now it is pointless to go anywhere for a driving daytrip if this doesn’t clear up soon, because it is now all encompassing and there is just no way to escape it. After all this enduring and working through it, I’ve just nicely started regaining the full use of my lungs after struggling for six and a half months. I’m not going to now start sabotaging myself or foolishly sacrificing all that time of my progress by spending extra time outside camping and downscaling my shelter by tenting around and inhaling unbreathable air, alone at a place far away from medical aid. The risk versus the reward scenario kind of sours onto the side of the negative. It looks like it might be a staycation after all*. The onus is on me to try to somehow find those moments, make them count, and make things fun and interesting.

I almost forgot that I keep other lists and notes of ideas for times like these, and dug through stuff I wrote out on paper and digitally. My bit of recreational therapy theory is this: to get the most out of the time off, one has to directly substitute one’s typical work shift hours during the course of a day with only leisure activity, no exceptions! Since I work evenings, that relegates me to maximize my leisure time between 3:00 PM and 11:00 PM. I suppose it’s an opportunity to have some sort of social life like everyone else. That alone is both enough of a novelty and culture shock for me nowadays. Like being air dropped into the middle of some country where you don't speak the language, naked and without any money, and being expected to make something of yourself. 

It might be a good time too to try out something that I’ve never really adjusted well to: being pampered. Living alone, training with a soldier’s discipline and a monk’s patience with running, enduring and dealing with afflictions and injuries alone, constantly working to achieve self-sufficiency and independence, and being the sole provider for oneself with a sort of hunter-gatherer/survivalist mentality: it kind of sways and steers one far and clear away from that opposite end of the spectrum where anything involving “getting pampered” is found**. I’m sure it would be like a weird and alien experience for me.  I don’t know yet what that would even specifically entail the context of a vacation or holiday (which I could speak candidly about).

After reviewing, here’s what I’m thinking to do for myself thus far:

·         Continue with following my running and cross training program in the mornings

·         Do absolutely nothing that looks like work or chores after 3:00 PM

·         Book a massage, just for the sake of preventive measures (as opposed to opting to get one after getting physically buggered up)

·         Make a theme with an objective, for example, trying out the craft beers in all the brewpubs in this town

·         Take some kind of daytrip once the smoke clears, and hightail it out of town like I was on a jailbreak

·         Make no further effort to blog or post about the experiences along the way. Be less concerned about using precious time for writing, recording, and composing, and try just living for a change. This stuff will be just for me.

*- It does seem a little clearer now, and I smell less smoke; I wonder though if it’s because it is actually dissipating, or if my olfactory nerves have just become so saturated than I can’t detect it anymore.

**- There is about a 7% chance that Ella might fetch me one of my socks for me while I’m dressing if I ask her to. That’s about as good as pampering gets for me in my place.

Post Summer Solstice Holiday Planning

It is Saturday evening of the first weekend after the Summer Solstice. The Jazz Fest is on, but 12 kilometres of running in today’s heat left me a bit too weary to check it out tonight. It’s still too hot to sleep, so I’ve been sitting outside trying to cool down with a refreshing libation, and doing some self-assessing. It finally feels like I’m at least approaching the threshold of my fitter self. I’ve made a stronger commitment to train for running and to eat better since this month began. Maybe I don’t yet look it, but I’m finally starting to feel leaner and a bit lighter. I was comparing notes of the way I was close to this time in the season last year in another entry with how I’ve been feeling now, and I suppose also to find and remind myself of some motivators (Re-Motivating for More Clicks). By their comparisons, I still have some more healing and work to do.

As it is now, one small thing of novelty that I’m enjoying, and that is motivating me while I run, is a new set of Bluetooth wireless headphones. I love them. I bought them with a gift card I won in a draw. Knowing that I got them for free also puts a spring in my step. Listening to my progress stats, podcasts, and music without a bothersome cord dangling and tangling all around me admittedly is a nice liberating convenience. The only other bothersome thing to lose that’s flipping and flopping in front of me is whatever gut and man-boobs that I have left that were starting to sprout up after such a miserably idle and crippling winter/spring. Sorry for that tidbit of TMI, but in another couple weeks at this pace they’ll hopefully be absent as well. The more pressing need now is the conditioning and improvement of performance of my lungs and heart. If I don’t get those back, all else is in vain. They do seem to be getting better though, thankfully.

My other technical indulgence that I’ve been really liking is my new tablet computer, which I’ve been noodling around with and using to write this entry. I don’t know why I didn’t think of getting something like this sooner. It’s weird that my non-tech-savvy parents have had one of these long before I did. It is that perfect thing for times when lugging around a laptop is too cumbersome, or when a smart-phone app seems too miniscule and straining to my eyes. I also really hate typing with my thumbs. The touchscreen stylus mode it has is quicker and easier for me to interface than typing. When I get too bogged down by the wretched task using of my hunt and peck style of typing it limits and impairs my flow of thought and natural expression. I’m amazed to see that this thing can even decipher my chicken scratch! I’ve tested it to the degree of trying to fool it with using special characters [$, €, ¢, £,] and it seems to know its shit. What it doesn’t register very well though is accent marks, like umlauts and various others (á, ä, å, â, etc.). It is exactly the gizmo I’d want to have with me should I ever wish to commit to exploring the other grand things I’ve been scheming.

The scheming I’m referring to is a result of a harsh realization. Last week, on a day reserved for cross-training, I took a long walk up to Nutana, and made time to rendezvous with my friend for coffee. The last thing she asked me about in our conversation was how I was going to spend my holiday time for the year. I honestly had no answer for her about that. I was embarrassed to admit that I had already cancelled some vacation time I had booked off to attend some other Union affairs. I started to get uneasy thinking about it. The whole downhill slide with my health has been no doubt due to a failure to look after my own interests and needs. Constantly sacrificing my personal holiday time and energy for fixing problems and other things I see as bigger than me, or not making an effort to do anything meaningful with time off is all part of the same pattern. I realize that even after a serious brush with something nearly fatal months ago hasn’t really smartened me up to make better choices and use of my free time. I suppose (know) I was trapped in a malaise of not feeling my personal best to really find energy and stamina to do other such things beyond work, but now as this is starting to change; so is my attitude. I already snuck into a couple travel agencies to piece together some sort of package for stuff related to the sorts of things I noted in The Dream Circuits entry. That’s for a long term plan; right now I’m trying to plan on something more immediate for a getaway.

Canada Day is coming soon, and I have a week off for holidays. Both instinct and desperation are telling me to hit the road for a while, even if it’s just a daytrip to some place novel, now that my car is fixed and more roadworthy. As tempted as I am to stay put and save up more money for a proper flyaway vacation, I realize that’s just another way of squandering away precious time.

As for now, my compass needle is still spinning. I still don’t know where it is that I’ll be heading to; I do know I won’t be crossing the border to the states. It also seems senseless to plan to do any camping up North with the fire bans and random evacuation warnings happening because of the wildfires. There is still no rain in the forecast for that week, so the risks are just increasing as it gets drier. There are plenty of other crazy little sight-seeing objectives to target within the province that I haven’t seen yet. However, they are scattered all about. So, it’s unlikely that I’ll know what my tour plan will be until the last second before I leave.

On the bright side, spontaneity always makes things interesting.