January

It's January in this ugly wannabe city in B.C. Canada where I live. Blah. Days and nights on end of rain roaring down from the sky, pouring from the gutters, turning all grass to mud. Traffic on the street outside my apartment has a wet sound as though the road is actually a shallow river that the tires are rushing through. The window at the head of my bed rattles with every gust of wind and the single pane of glass cannot hold back the onslaught - I feel the cold shiver of wind over my body. My bathroom sink does not drain in half an hour. I imagine all the drains all over town, all the pipes and sewers and manmade conduits meant to rid us of this excess of water, backed up, clogged, glub glubbing pathetically as more and more rain pours down.

I'm bored. I'm lethargic and find it hard to do anything other than read. I lay on my bed and think about things I'd like to do - art projects I'd like to start, or finish. I get up and head for the pantry where I keep my art supplies, only to turn like a sleepwalker even as my hand pulls open the pantry door, and walk back to my bed and my book. I'm uninspired. I'm tired from too much inactivity. I'm boring. Better to lay on my bed and think about the things I'd like to do, the art projects I'd like to start, or finish, than to actually do them. January in this ugly wannabe city in B.C. Canada when the wind pelts the raindrops like birdshot against my frozen face and the sun is believed to be extinct. Blah.

I'm glad I have a job that gets me out of the house every other day. If not for that I would surely sink into depression. ...oh did you think I was already depressed after what I wrote above? Nope. Just bored. And boring.

I feel like this every year at this time. This is a difficult month for me. As is February. As is March. April is better, but not if it rains, as it often does in this part of the world ... all the way till ... ohhh ... June.

Blah.

It's not all bad news. I've painted a dull picture, but really, I'm feeling optimistic. Well I guess my optimism is a little stifled at the moment, under the drab, grey woolen blanket of my boredom, but it is there ... I'm sure it is.

I'm sure it is.

Anyway, I'm optimistic because I believe this will be the year I realise at least one, or maybe a couple, of my modest dreams. I think this will be a good year for me. I know for sure that one of my goals will be met within a few months. And I feel certain I will, once again, emerge from this horrible lethargy and do something useful - after all, I managed to find the energy to post this. (pfft .... don't laugh) And before you think I'm spending every off work day laying around with books - I'm not. Not every off work day, but I must admit, I do it too often these days.

I'm beginning this year in a much better position than I began last year. Last year at this time I was shivering in a one room cement block room. My neighbours were down and out (no offense to them, but it was disheartening). My window, which took up the entire fourth wall of the room, leaked from one end to the other, pots and pans and jugs and waste paper baskets lined the sill, catching the drips that suddenly turned to streams, then back to dripping again, the sound of it gradually changing as the containers filled up to their brims and I must empty them into the sink. The room could not hold any heat, it all fled through the window, or was stolen by the frigid cement block walls. For heat, I kept my oven turned on full, and opened its door. I sat with multi layers of clothing and a blanket and book, with my feet resting on the open oven door, listening to the unmusical notes of rain falling into my kitchen containers behind me. Adding to this dreary picture, I was unemployed. After three months of manic service to the cruel slave drivers at Sears, I'd been told I would not be needed after Christmas.

I didn't know it (thank goodness), but the rest of that year was not going to be much better. Actually the year really sucked in a lot of ways and I'm glad it's over. But I did make some positive changes. I moved out of that crappy apartment, and I finally found a job that I love and have no worries about losing (I've actually gotten a small raise already after only three months). I've created my little home business and have one client (hehe!) If you want to see the website I created for her, click my business website link at the side of this blog. When my site opens, click the 'website design' button on the first page, when the website design page opens, scroll down to the bottom to where it says 'website designed by ... and click the link to her site; called RRR's Consignment.

I'm still living in the same poor, infested neighbourhood, but not smack in the middle of it as I was before. In fact I've discovered some very cool places close enough to walk or bike (if the sun would ever come back out). My apartment is poorly insulated and difficult to heat, but I have a working fireplace, and soft, thickly padded carpets. The neighbours above me have a routine of jumping on my ceiling every evening for hours, but I have my piano. The hallways outside my door are littered with old lettuce and fastfood wrappers, and the walls are often punched through, but the management is quick to fix things, and the cleaning lady never fails to find any mess before long. For every negative there is a huge positive. It's a beautiful apartment actually, a real find, especially in this part of town. The building is huge, the hallways go on forever. There are several laundry rooms on different floors. It's a ten minute walk to get to the garbage bins. There are hundreds of tenants, mostly new Canadians trying to build a new life. My own suite has become a real home for me, very comfortable and cosy - as my apartment was on the Island where I spent 2005; the first year of my new single life. And so, this year I'm starting out in an optimistic frame of mind.

It's strange to be feeling such opposing emotions. I'm bored, but I'm interested in the process of creeping toward my goals. I'm lethargic, but my brain is turning fairly steadily as it comes up with more ideas for artworks I'd like to try. I'm blah ... unbelievably, extremely BLAH, but I'm excited too, because, no matter how lazy I'm being lately, I know that it will pass, as it always does as soon as the sun comes out. Even if only for a day. I have plans for this coming year. Some new plans, some old ones that will reach their conclusion in the months ahead. Some are simply a new twist on a tentative goal I set when I first left x ... new ways of looking at the picture and fresh ideas on how to come out on top when all is said and done. Or at least, to come out even with x. That would be okay too.

I think now I will bake some cranberry/apple muffins. That sounds like a good plan.