Stories with purpose.

Why is it when you fall out of a habit, it’s so damned hard to get back into it? I was shocked to see how long I let this blog lay fallow. But it’s a new year, and I’m determined to try to dust off this habit and write something useful—well that is to be determined by you—but after a year like 2016, let’s try and do this together. Meet here once in a while? Sure. If you’re willing, I’m willing.…

Why I should get this apartment

As some of you may know the real estate market in Vancouver has lost its proverbial mind. There are people selling shacks I would have felt sorry for as a kid for 3 million. It’s hard on those of us who grew up here and ran around barefoot in dusty lanes in Point Grey wearing our brothers’ hand-me-downs and riding used bikes. It was just a regular town that happened to have a stellar view of the…

Mother’s Day Isn’t For Everyone

A week after my son was born my mother called me and said, “Where have I been for the last week?” It was the beginning of a long letting go. Now, my son is 21 years old and has no memory of his grandma but knows, I think, that she was one of the greats. As in mothers. I tell him stories about her, try to bring her alive for him so he has a faint outline of her in his mind that can serve as a…

The Karma Abacus: Birthday Blooms

Another year. I used to think of it like it was over, like I’d just completed something, marking an X on the wall like I’d done time. I don’t know why; I just did. But this year I am decidedly feeling like it is a beginning. At some point in the last year I could see the trajectory of my life was not one my heart felt called to anymore. So, I threw a wrench into the works knowing it would insist…

Suspended in time, Love and Kissing the Year Goodbye

  (Photo courtesy of European Southern Observatory (ESO)) The short time between Christmas and New Years is like a plane ride—there’s really no one looking for you, asking you to do much or cares whether you are asleep, reading a book and snacking on salty chips. It’s a time of in between, when you exhale from over-indulgence and begin to turn your mind, ever so slightly, towards your life and…