Good friends. Cousins. Good food. Great music. Home.

I am sure that most people have a place that they go to where they immediately feel at home. For me it is here in the Maritimes. Of course I was born and mostly raised here so it is familiar, but there is more than that. It’s the salt air. It’s the friendly chatter at the Walmart. It’s the cadence of the language and the stories in the songs. It’s the laughter and the smiles and the people that share them with each other.

I had a chance to attend a show at the Tidnish Community Hall this week. “The Elderly Brothers” was a story and concert performed by local musicians and actors worthy of the Jubilee Auditorium in Edmonton. The Everley Brothers would have been proud of the harmonized vocals, the guitar riffs and the gently told story of their life.

Everywhere in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and PEI talented people play to small audiences on a regular basis. For twenty dollars you can be thoroughly entertained. For another twenty you can have an absolutely magnificent lobster meal, chowder and all you can eat muscles and salad bar and a medium sized lobster. Don’t forget dessert. Pies and crumbles to die for.

Today it is time to go home, back to Alberta, back to my family. I am taking with me wonderful memories that will sustain me until next time. When I return it will be familiar again. Not much changes here and I am glad it doesn’t. The ocean waves, the wind in the trees will be here forever calling those of us who have had the experience back for more.

The Territory is more, much more than the Map.

My girls and I are back on the big island for our mother daughter trip. It is beautiful here. It is relaxing and each time I come I feel more at home. My goal is to learn a few more hawaiian words this trip.

We head home today. Those of you following my girls on face book know we had a great time. WE hunkered down for Iselle but aside from a little wind and rain this side of the Island was spared any damaging impact. It wasn’t so bad. I learned a new card game.

It isn’t just the beauty of Hawaii that calls me back. it is the feeling in the air. The negative ions I have written about before. It has the right recipe for relaxation … equal parts sunshine, salt water and air, palm trees and a sprinkling of birds.

This week provided a stark reminder of what might happen if the weather changes. The south side of Hawaii got hit. It reminded me of last year in Calgary. People without power or water living in shelters. I wish a shorter recovery time for the Hawaiians. I know that many people in southern Alberta are still licking their wounds even a year later.

Sending Aloha to everyone.

Last year I turned sixty. Today I am older again. Where does the time go?
So much has happened in the last 12 months. Its hard for me to imagine that I would be living in St Albert full time with a beautiful cottage at the lake. I am happy to be back in northern Alberta with friends and family although there are special people that I miss in Calgary.

It has been a beautiful month here in St Albert and at the Lake which is only 40 minutes away. The weather has been great and I have been very busy with the move of furniture etc from Canmore to Lac St Anne. My new writing centre is now within driving distance. Work on the books in progress is actually progressing!!

Golfing with friends and family, birthday celebrations for grand kids and children, gatherings around the back yard fire pits and wahshooo tournaments has made for a relaxing and fun filled summer so far. I love being where my daughters and their families can drop in or request help or invite me for lunch.

Next week my daughters and I take our annual trip. Last year we went home to Halifax to celebrate my birthday. This year we head back to the Big Island for a week of mother daughter sister bonding. I love our time together each year. It means a lot to me. This year especially I understand the importance of creating memories together. We lost my mum this year which was hard on all of us.

Birthdays are an opportunity to look forward and back and assess where you are on your journey. I am where I ought to be and headed in the right direction … reason to celebrate. Thanks for all the wonderful wishes.

I bought a cottage at Lac St Anne. I have been here for one week. I love it.

Moving is always stressful and busy but you know when a move is right. I have been so very relaxed since I got here that I don’t really know how to explain it.

At the moment I am sitting at my breakfast bar watching a family of geese float by on the lake. It is quiet except for the birds and the breeze in the poplars. WOW.

For the past couple of mornings I have been working on the new book on the deck. It is so great to have a place to do that and the energy and motivation to work. The work is somehow easier to get to and easier to do.

The history of Lac St Anne is also fascinating. St Anne is known as a healer and this lake attracts pilgrims from all over western and northern Canada to walk in the healing waters each year at this time.

As I write my book “Mapping the Space Between Us” I am reminded that a change in place can mean a change in perspective and I am encouraged to continue, to finally complete a manuscript that I have been working on for almost five years now.

Although I still have a place in St Albert, this place already feels like home. Please come and visit sometime.

I have been blogging now for six years. That is hard to believe. I do want to apologize for the inconsistent nature in the timing. Like most people I resolve to blog once a week but ….

I find the ideas come in waves and when I am riding one I can blog. When I am not it is better to keep my thoughts in a journal.

I have to admit that it has been a difficult 6 months for me. I lost my mum and I still have waves of sadness every day. And somehow I feel as if I have lost myself. I am relocating to St Albert on a more permanent bases and I have purchased a Lake Property near the shores of Lac St Anne. Here, further north, I am surrounded by close friends and family and I feel very grateful everyday to be a part of their lives. I missed a lot in the years I was away. Four years in Grande Cache and fifteen in Calgary is a long time. I did visit often but it is not the same as living here amongst them.

Establishing a routine when you have basically been a gypsy for so many years has its own challenges. I miss my Calgary people for sure and I do hope they understand my need to be here. The upheavals of moving again and losing a loved one AND turning 60 have taken their toll . What a year!
So who do I want to be when I grow up? That is a question I have been asking and answering for a lot of years. The answer is always author.

Here I go giving that one more try. Looking for a publisher and an agent. Two great books in the works. One is “Mapping the Space Between us” non fiction sociology based. The other is a novel set in 2025. It is a quest for meaning with a technological whimsy that can only happen in speculative fiction. It is entitled the Dylan Story. It will be the first in a series of “Love stories”. It is not really a love story. It is just a story written by Love.

Have a great day and thanks for your continued support these last six years.
Thoughts and comments always welcome…..

When I was in high school I was a cheerleader. Our team was the warriors, the Western Warriors. When I took Andrew’s advice and read The War of Art, which I highly recommend by the way, I heard again the language of the warrior. We, as artists, are at war with something that Pressfield calls Resistance. It is that urge to do something else that comes from self doubt and takes the form of distractions. It is a powerful force willing us NOT to do what we must do as artists … create. It is a war against ourselves, our ego. The ego seeks immediate gratification and attention. Pulling ourselves back to the work is a tug of war.

At the same time I am reading “The Places that Scare You”. It is written by a Buddhist Nun in Nova Scotia. Pema Chodron also writes about the warrior overcoming the ego and attachment. The six activities of the warrior she lists as generousity, discipline, patience, joyful enthusiasm, meditation and an open inquiring mind free of judgement and attachment. The path to inner peace is to be active in these ways.

I just want to write, to become a pro. Pressfield talks about becoming a pro. He describes it as accepting the art as a profession, something that you work at daily, something you are dedicated to and proud of like you would be at any job. It is also something you work at mastering. That has helped me. I am a writing warrior a Western Warrior from my alma mater.
So is a professional warrior a mercenary? It does make sense. I want to be paid for my warrior activities and part of the resistance I feel comes from that notion. The self doubt is debilitating. The apparent lack of humility as we press our words to the paper leads us to skirmishes on the battlefields of our minds, bodies and souls. The apparent arrogance that is required to create clashes with the activities of the warrior to overcome such arrogance. And so we struggle.

Pema talks about the three kinds of lazy that I now recognize as resistance a la Pressfield. Comfort orientation is the first kind of lazy. Guilty! I seek comfort. I sometimes demand it and it does take away from my working on my projects. Loss of heart is the second kind. I have these sudden waves of hopelessness that put me in my chair in front of the TV. I watch for hours wondering why and helpless to get up and do something else. “Couldn’t care less” is the third kind of laziness and that one can lead to clinical depression. It is beyond the loss of heart to the loss of self. You can lose time to resistance or you can lose yourself. And so we struggle.

This struggle, this internal waging of war is tiring me out. I am done. Surrender is on the horizon. Surrender to what? To Buddha? To the Muses as described by Pressfield? Where do I go to surrender so this war with myself can be over? I surrender to the need to finish these books. I surrender to the need to put the books first for a while to treat them as a part of the career I love and that others value. I surrender to the work. I surrender to the art.

 http://youtu.be/XvhAsJPXj1M 

This is my 301st post.  It is hard to believe that I have been finding things to share with you over the years and it has added up to this.  A lot has happened since I began in May of 2008.  Six years of seasons and changes have brought PULSE back to where it was then.  PULSE is finding water and moving to form new rivers and streams of interest and income.  I am enjoying the monthly webinars and working with new clients and I am hopeful and grateful at the same time.

And as for me, I have changed too.  Older can be wiser.  It can also be more experienced.  Sometimes I do feel that I am repeating lessons from the past.  Life is like that.  If you don’t learn the lesson then you get to have the experience again.  For some reason we don’t see it coming.  The route is familiar so we continue until … bang … there it is the same old road block we hit once before.  If we are lucky we find the way around over or under, around or through this road block with resignation that the journey is ours to travel and no road block can stop us.

I recently read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.  It is a fable about a boy who finds his treasure where his journey began.  the twists and turns are great and the lessons are clear.  Many journeys have detours and we sometimes get lost and go in circles but in the end you have to follow your heart, listen to your heart and find your way to your personal treasure… to complete your own personal legend.  Everything and every one has their own.  Finding it requires listening … with both ears.

Part of my legend is to write.  I love it.  It feeds my soul.  I am so happy to be able to continue to write my way to my personal treasure and circle back as the boy in the book did to where I began to write again and again until I get it WRITE.

Join me tomorrow at 10 MST for a free 40 minute  webinar broadcast on the GHOST protocol. Here is the link  http://pulseinstitute.adobeconnect.com/ghost/

Learn a simple five piece puzzle for getting conversations right.