The plan was simple: drive to Montréal, stopping at various André-Gagnon-related points along the way and taking video footage of attractive and interesting scenes. I had the camera, the tripod, a big-ass SD card loaded, and I was ready to rock and roll. I also had my new iPod touch and was psyched to do some on-the-road video blogging.

Well, you know what they say: The best laid plans… and all that.

Don’t get me wrong. It was a fantastic trip. It just didn’t turn out quite the way I expected.

First off, we had to rent a car, which was prohibitively expensive. Scott, my brother, took care of that arrangement, and we got a great vehicle, but adding the extra kilometers onto the base rental meant that we could only afford it for three days. So, we had to pack in as much as we could.

Secondly, having not been through Québec in some years, I had only a vague recollection of how far the cities and towns were from each other. You can definitely drive to Montréal in a day, but you’re not going to make many stops en route.

I wanted to make some stops along the way.

Ergo, we did not make it to Montréal.

Add to this the fact that I, as navigator, misread my map of New Brunswick and got us on the wrong road for a couple of hours, and you end up with a very late arrival at the Québec border.

Question for later: How in hell do you misread a map of New Brunswick?

Anyway, none of this matters. Scott and I both needed to get away for a bit, and it was a great opportunity to spend some quality brother-bonding time. Changing plans and destinations were ultimately immaterial.

We left Halifax on my birthday, Wednesday August 3rd, and made it to Rivière-du-Loup (Wolf River, if you’re into translating place names), which is just over ninety-clicks from the New Brunswick/Québec border, at the point where the Trans-Canada highway takes a sharp left and starts running along the Saint Lawrence River.

The original LP cover of “Le Saint-Laurent”

Ah, the Saint Lawrence. I was so looking forward to taking in its majesty. It has played such a pivotal role in my experience of André Gagnon’s music that I could scarcely dissociate the two. His 1977 album, Le Saint-Laurent, is easily my favorite of his works, and the title track, a twelve-minute ode to the mighty river, is a three-movement piece that conjures up images of flowing water and stunning scenery and has stayed with me since my first hearing.

The morning of August 4th, we awoke, breakfasted and set off. I was presented with many amazing glimpses of the Saint Lawrence, and for some of those, we were able to pull over so that I could take some video shots. In the distance, across the river, were the mountains of Charlevoix, in a view right off the cover of Le Saint-Laurent. It was a region I hoped to visit soon. It would not happen this trip, but that was okay. We only had three days.

One important stop we did make was at Saint-Pacôme, the town where André Gagnon was born. It’s a small, quiet place, and as with many rural communities, the church is the most prominent landmark. We stopped near the town’s main intersection, and I took a few video shots, but, alas, we really didn’t have time to explore much, so we drove around a bit and then headed back to the highway.

I didn’t even notice the historical signs for the tourists.

(And that, dear friends, is called foreshadowing.)

We made it to Québec City by lunchtime, and I cannot begin to tell you how glad I am that we made that stop. It was not on my itinerary, but we knew by this point that we were not going to make to Montréal, so we decided to stop, have lunch, and take a look around.

I hadn’t been to Québec City since high school, when I went on a Grade Ten trip in February for Carnaval. All I remember from that trip is the dizzying height of the fortress cliff, the insanely cold temperatures, and people on the street drinking alcohol from long plastic tubes. Needless to say, I needed a refresher.

Old Québec is simply stunning. I fell in love immediately, and vowed to return at my earliest convenience. I walked around with my head craned upwards, marvelling at the architecture, the views, and the atmosphere. It was like wandering around an old European city.

We had lunch at a place called La Pizz, a nifty little pizza place tucked into the corner of Place Royale, which is, not to put too fine a point on it, the birthplace of French civilization in North America. Samuel de Champlain began constructing this courtyard area in 1608, and walking into it is like stepping back in time.

And then there was the Château Frontenac, easily the most photographed hotel in the world. It sits atop the fortified cliff and is visible from just about anywhere in the old city. We walked along some of the charming shop-filled streets in the lower city before taking the funicular up to the courtyard around the château. The view from up there is incredible, and the hotel itself is massive, tall, imposing, and utterly photogenic.

It was a shame we could only stay a couple of hours, but we wanted to see how far south we could get before having to turn around and head for home.

While Québec City was not an André-Gagnon-related stop, it reached into my soul and deepened my connection with La Belle Province, a connection I’ve been aware of most of my life.

A connection with my father.

More about this trip in the next instalment. Stay tuned.

Much has happened since that early August rumble down the highways of English and French Canada. The summer was good, filled with adventures and moments galore. It was a vast improvement over the previous summer, which saw me changing jobs twice in as many months and watching my mother go from hospital to transitional care to nursing home. The Summer of Stress, as I have dubbed July and August of 2010, doesn’t have quite the hold on me it once did, but it lives on in memory and serves as a reminder of how fickle life can be.

What a difference a year makes. Summer 2011, which I think I might dub the Summer of Synchronicity, was jam packed with warm-weather goodness. July 30th saw us (my wife Vanessa and I) traveling to Moncton with our friends Rebecca and Ian to see U2 perform. The day was wet, but it cleared just before the opening act (Carney) started to play. Arcade Fire followed them, and then, just after sunset, out came Bono and the boys. It was an experience not to be missed, and it blew us away. We were nearly sucked into the earth by the mud as we made our way off the grounds after the show, but it was well worth it.

Present Laughter poster designed by Terry Coolen

July and August were jam-packed with creative juices. Rebecca and I (yes, the same Rebecca mentioned above) co-directed a production of Present Laughter by Noël Coward for the Theatre Arts Guild. We actually held the auditions on June 26th and 27th, with the rehearsal process running from July 12th through September 20th and the show opening on September 22nd. We had a cast of ten and a production team of nine, and it was a pleasure spending time with every last one of them. Everyone got along incredibly well, there were a lot of laughs, and we ended up with damn good show. I was proud to be a part of it.

Having two directors was a good thing, as both Rebecca and I took time off during the rehearsal process. I managed to get away twice, once with my brother Scott in early August (about which more later) and once with my wife Vanessa and her mom in late August, for three nights at Milford House, just south of Annapolis Royal. It was an incredibly relaxing three days, puncutated by a Saturday morning trip to Upper Clements park, where three firsts occurred for me: My first roller-coaster ride, my first time in a flume, and my first time on a zip-line.

The rest of August and most of September was do-or-die time for the play. We moved from the rehearsal hall to the main stage, got the set finished, the lights and sound in place, and the costumes finalized. Then we opened, then we ran for three weeks, and then it was over. Cast party, hugs, goodbyes, and memories. Props and costumes put away, and make way for the next production.

So, knowing how the post-production blues do tend to kick in, it was good that I had something else to look foward to, a special something that happened just this past weekend. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First things first. I want to talk in more detail about that early August road trip to Québec.

And I will. Next blog entry. This was just the preamble. Turned out kinda longer than I expected.

Big surprise.

Keep pushing forward.

–Eric

Wow, another blog entry only five days after the last one. And another video blog, to boot. I must really be jazzed about this upcoming road trip.

Okay, so the sound on this video sucks the big one. I’ll have to learn how to reduce wind noise on the iPod’s microphone if I want to do anymore outdoor video blogging. But it sure was fun talking into the camera out at Peggy’s Cove. It really was a fabulous day.

So far the footage from the day looks good. I haven’t transferred everything to the computer yet, but I like what I’ve reviewed so far. And in putting this video blog together, I learned about a few more features of iMovie that I hadn’t looked at yet.

Video editing is just major fun.

Counting down to the Québec trip.

Stay tuned.

The video pretty much says it all, but I do want to clarify one point: I’ll be using the iPod touch for video blogging while I’m on the road, not for taking actual documentary footage. I have my Canon PowerShot SX20IS for that. Plus, I’ll be taking a Zoom H2 digital audio recorder with me for capturing additional audio.

We’ll be stopping in Kamouraska (André Gagnon’s birthplace), Verdun (in Montréal, where my dad was born), Lachine (also in Montréal, where my dad grew up), Ville Émard (also in Montréal, from the title of André Gagnon’s song “A Ride to Ville Émard”), Forges du Saint-Maurice National Historic Site (from the title of André Gagnon’s song and album “Les Forges de Saint-Maurice, written for a television series of the same name), and Charlevoix (from the title of a movement of André Gagnon’s three-movement piece “Le Saint-Laurent” called “Devant Charlevoix”). I’ll also be taking footage of whatever strikes my fancy along the way. I’m particularly looking forward to visiting Trois-Rivières, a town I’ve heard of many times but know next to nothing about.

Did I mention I’m jazzed?

More updates as planning proceeds.

[Aside: Would we call a string of linguistic bits a linguine?]

[Aside Followup Fact: The word “linguine” literally means “little tongues” in Italian.]

I have on occasion been accused of the crime of pedantry in the sphere of language. I will confess to bouts of nitpickiness bordering on pedantry, but as to full-on pedantry, I don’t think I have the qualifications for that. One thing’s for sure. I need to loosen up a bit. While I’m not prone to fits of letter-writing when I read or see something that is grammatically, punctuatively, or orthographically incorrect, I do often cringe, and I do often complain about it.

The English language is going to evolve and grow whether I like it or not. It doesn’t need, or even know anything about, my permission. I might just as well try and stop the tides from going in and out or ask the moon not to change its phase quite so often. That would be sheer lunacy. Pun intended.

I do, in a rather informal yet wildly egotistical manner, consider myself a defender of the tongue. A staunch defender of the tongue, to be ridiculously specific about it. I don’t like lazy language, particularly in written form, and my hackles near scrape the ceiling when I encounter obvious carelessness in wording and phrasing.

But there’s medication for that.

My uptightness was brought home to me in no uncertain terms two days ago, when my friend Asheyna (who often comments here) sent me a link to a YouTube video in which no lesser a literary luminary than Stephen Fry takes the pedants of the world to task for their pedantry. I’m embedding the video at the bottom of this post. Go and watch it now if you want. I’ll wait.

Uptightness aside, I do care about the written word and language in general, and I would no more discourage someone from learning the craft of writing than I would discourage them from blinking at appropriate intervals. Communication is the essence of our humanness, and the better and more clearly we can communicate, the better off and happier we’ll all be.

So, for the aspiring writers out there, I’d like to submit a little list I recently put up on Protagonize, a site I’ve mentioned many times in my blog posts, and one to which I have recently returned. Coincidentally, it’s also the site where I first met Asheyna, who may well be now blushing as she reads a second mention in a single post.

Another Protagonize user started an exercise called “Ten Things You’d Tell Yourself Re: Writing”. I added a page called “Ten Fucking Things I Keep Fucking Trying to Learn About Fucking Writing”. Except I used “@#$#%&” instead of the expletive, as the exercise was not flagged “mature”. For some reason I feel compelled to use the actual jarring word here on the blog, perhaps simply because I can. And get away with it. Maybe.

Anyway, here’s my list as posted on that exercise:

1. Keep writing.
2. Don’t stop writing.
3. See # 1 and 2 above.
4. Do not stop to edit. Editing is a separate undertaking. Stop worrying. In other words, see # 1, 2, and 3 above.
5. Learn the rules. I’m talking spelling, punctuation, and grammar here. If you don’t know the rules, you can’t break them intelligently when the story calls for it. There’s a big difference between breaking the rules for a reason and breaking the rules because you’ve been too fucking lazy to learn them.
6. Don’t let anyone tell you what to write or not write about. It’s your writing.
7. Let the humor come naturally. Don’t force it. If you force it, it will be lame. There is no way around this.
8. Let the muse speak through you. You are a vessel for the creative forces of the universe. Don’t edit the fucking muse. In other words, see # 1, 2, 3, and 4 above.
9. Contrary to what others have said here [in the exercise], there is nothing wrong with fan fiction. It can be done well. It isn’t often done well, but it can be done well. And playing in someone else’s sandbox can be a lot of fun. Go ahead. Prove ‘em wrong. Write a really good fanfic. Just deal with the fact that you can never publish it for money.
10. Don’t be verbose. Don’t use more words when less will do. I mean it. Seriously. For reals.
11. (Bonus point) Have fun, for cryin’ out loud!

And so we rumble towards the end of the single most expletive-ridden blog post I’ve heretofore written. If you’re cringing at my cavalier use of “bad language”, understand that I do it with intent and for effect rather than gratuitously, and please, whatever you do, do not go to YouTube and search for Samuel L. Jackson’s reading of the recently published Go the Fuck to Sleep.

Just sayin’.

Here’s the video I mentioned above. It’s mildly mind-blowing.

What I will touch on, however, is a little bit of insight into this whole blogging process, and what I’ve recently discovered about it.

Well. Ahem. As many of my readers know, I started this whole blog thing just under two years ago, with the intent of writing a post every day. Every. Single. Day. Which I did. For about seven weeks. After that, it became spotty. Sometimes an entire month would go by without a post. I didn’t like this, and it made me anxious and ill-tempered.

The solution would have been to start blogging regularly again, but oh, no, I couldn’t do anything quite that simple, could I? I had to ruminate and cogitate and every other –ate word you can think of—and some I wish you wouldn’t—in order to figure out what my problem was.

Feh. Enough of that. I’m done with beating up on myself. It is what it is. And if I blog, I blog. And if I don’t, well, geez, guess what? I don’t.

But that’s not the best part. You want to know what the best part is? Don’t pretend you want to know if you really don’t, okay? You’re not just humouring me, right? Okay.

The best part is… I’ve figured out the problem.

Yep. Gone and done figger’d it out. I’m pretty pleased, actually.

You see, I’ve been viewing this whole blogging enterprise as something way more important than it really is. I guess it’s understandable, really. Especially at the beginning. Brand new blog, new domain name, getting ready to launch, wanting it to look good, making sure everything’s just so. Yeah, why not be anal about it? It was my new baby, after all. I wanted to bring it up right.

But somewhere along the line, my blog post formula turned into a self-imposed expectation. All my posts had an embedded image and a YouTube video at the end. They all clocked in at, on average, eight-hundred to a thousand words. I had a process: Write the post in a distraction-free text editor (like WriteMonkey or WriteRoom), copy and paste the post into WordPress, find an appropriate image (usually with Google Image Search), then find a video on YouTube to complement the whole thing (or at least not be completely off-topic). Save draft, preview, tweak, save draft, preview, lather, rinse, repeat.

It became onerous. (Aside: I had to look up “onerous” just to make sure I was spelling it right. It just looks odd).

What I have come to realize is that this thing doesn’t have to be perfect. Hell, I’m not perfect. My blog sure as hell doesn’t have to be. Why not use it to just tear off a quick opinion about something? Or fill folks on some project I’m working on? It doesn’t have to be a bleedin’ magazine article every time.

Often times Twitter and Facebook are ideal for just spouting off. But sometimes you need a bit more room. Why not use the blog?

Makes sense to me.

So, on this occasion, inauspicious as it is, I’m forgoing the image and the video. I’m just spewing and venting. And typing directly into WordPress.

So There.

As you can see from the video above, I’ve done a complete, one-hundred-percent turnaround with regard to Apple. I know there’s at least one internet friend out there who is going to seriously take me to task for this, and there may be others as well, but all I can say is… what’s done is done.

I can’t fight it anymore. Mac has what I need, and I’ve gone and gotten it.

It’s going to make my creative life one helluva lot easier, and I’m going to be able to do some serious editing when I finally capture the footage I need for my documentary. Yeah, the one I’ve been saying I’m going to make for at least a couple of years now. The one about my father, music, and André Gagnon.

The documentary is moving closer and closer to becoming reality. All the signs are pointing to it coming together within the next few months. I have my new camera, which takes HD video, and now I have a kick-ass video editing tool.

It all bodes well. Now I just have to organize a road trip to the wilds of Québec and start a-shootin’.

It will happen.

Mark my words.

Let’s keep it real out there.

You know, sometimes I think I take myself way too seriously. I mean, I do have a pretty decent sense of humor, and I can definitely poke fun at myself, but I also spend an awful lot of time inside my own head, dwelling on my own problems and trying to figure out what I’m doing wrong.

I’ve also shared a lot of this with the blog-reading public. I’ve written about my personal journey and challenges, and I’ve been most gratified by the fact that readers have commented on these posts and actually encouraged me. That’s part of the reason I write these things. I want to connect with others, and I hope to somehow make a difference in someone else’s experience.

But at what point does public journaling cross the line and become public posturing and whining? At what point does “This is me” turn into “Poor me”?

I hope I haven’t crossed that line, but something way in the back of my head tells me that I’ve come perilously close.

I need to face the fact that I’m a very self-indulgent person. I’m an approval-seeker of the first order, and all those comments I mentioned have been very nice ego strokes. I mean, yes, I know everyone wants approval; everbody needs validation once in a while. But seriously, when you refresh your Facebook page umpteen times to see if anyone has commented on your status update, you know you’re in serious trouble.

So, it’s time for me to—as they say—get on with it. Instead of doing tiny little things and looking to see if anyone noticed, it’s high time I took some of those big things I’ve been thinking about, mulling over, talking about, tweeting about, and blogging about and actually start doing them.

I mean, how many times have I mentioned this documentary I “need” to make about my dad and music? How long does it take to get through another draft of my novel? When am I going to continue the Voices of Reason project and get another interview up on my blog? When am I going to stop sulking about my precious pantomine script and get back to my involvement with community theatre? There are so many things I want to do, and I am doing none of them.

[Okay, I actually am working on the novel. It just seems to be taking a long time.]

I guess you could say I’m fed up with myself. I’m tired of blaming everything on my “inner saboteur”, as I like to call him, and citing all the wounds and traumas I’ve experienced in the past as reasons for my lack of action.

It’s time to take my personal journey and repackage it. Instead of using it as ashes to spread on my face, I need to turn it into fuel for my creative vehicles. And, yes, there are a quite a few of those vehicles parked in my mental garage, but believe me, there’s more than enough fuel for all of them. I just need the right mix. And then… whoosh!

I don’t mean to minimize everything I’ve been through. I’ve fought hard for my mental health, and it will always be an important issue for me. I just think it’s time to move up to the next gear and honor my journey by making better use of it.

And, hell, I’m a creative person. I can think of a few ways to do that.

Let’s keep it real out there. (Time to take my own advice, eh?)

With yet another gaping chasm in my blogging pattern now evident, this time due to a bout of procrastination brought on by simple forgetfulness paired with a massive viral infection, I’ve decided to abandon the post I’d been considering—which was to be a heartfelt rant about the establishment inspired by a fascinating if abbreviated experience at PodCamp Halifax—and turn my typing fingers to a touch of time-traveling. Musical time traveling.

It’s something I enjoy doing. When I’m not constructing lengthy, single-sentence paragraphs.

I’m currently revisiting the early albums of Chicago, my favorite band. Their career has been an interesting one, to say the least. Many people can’t stand them. They’ve certainly had their sour moments, but I’m sticking with them. They’re amazing musicians all, and they’ve produced some incredible music over the years.

I discovered the band when I was eighteen. The timing was pretty bad on that, actually, because they’d been around for nearly ten years already, and they’d just lost their guitarist—to a fatal, accidental gunshot wound. Hell of a time to become a fan.

I’d been aware of Chicago, of course. Their songs were on the radio pretty regularly, and I was familiar with many of them, but I didn’t know much about the band, it’s members, or it’s history. They were just part of the sonic landscape of the time, and I didn’t really pay much attention to them other than to note that I liked this or that particular song.

All that changed the week of October 16th, 1978. Chicago was featured on the cover of People Magazine, and not only did the world get a good look at the faces behind the music (their album covers are famous for not showing the band members, just their elegant logo); we also got to read about the tumultuous events of nine months earlier, when Terry Kath accidentally shot himself, and about the band in general, how they came into being, and how they were trying to keep it together in the face of tragedy and grief.

I was intrigued. I knew some of their music, and I liked it. To put names and faces to the voices and instuments was nothing short of a revelation, and the incredible drama of the story caught me up. I decided, immediately upon finishing the article, that I was going to delve deeper into this band and really find out what they were all about.

Their new album at the time, entitled Hot Streets, had just come out. It was a departure for the band in a myriad of ways. First off, despite the fact that they were still dealing with Terry’s death, they needed a new guitarist, and after many auditions, they hired Donnie Dacus, who had just recently worked on several projects with Stephen Stills. Secondly, they had fired their longtime producer, James William Guercio—who had guided them from the very beginning but had become overly controlling—and had brought in Phil Ramone, who was well known as producer of many of Billy Joel’s albums. Third, they had decided to actually name the new album instead of numbering it. Fourthly, but by no means finally, a photograph of the band is featured on the album sleeve, with the venerable logo taking a secondary position.

Even knowing all this, I decided not to purchase the new album right away. I instinctively made the decision to experience the group as it had been before I listened to their reworked lineup. I intended to purchase all eleven of their previous albums before completing the set with the twelfth. I was oddly energized and excited by this prospect, and I found I suddenly had a mission: Catch up on Chicago.

I don’t know what it was that inspired me, but I was instantly fascinated by the group, and soon I was venturing out to purchase not one, but two of their albums. Yes, two LPs. In the same trip to the record store. This was highly uncharacteristic behavior. Let’s face it, despite my having heard some of their songs on the radio, this was essentially a new band for me. To buy two LPs, sound unheard, was nearly unthinkable. But I did just that. I purchased Chicago X (the chocolate bar cover) and Chicago XI (the map cover) and gobbled them up.

I’ve always loved interesting combinations of musical instruments. In the previous incarnation of this blog, I wrote a post about the Alan Parsons Project, a group that combined rock instrumentation with a full orchestra. I also enjoy artists like Mary Jane Lamond, who combine traditional Celtic instrumentation with modern guitar, bass, and drums. So it is with Chicago, a rock band with a horn section. Their influences range from jazz to classical and back again. The founding members of Chicago, the horn players especially, are all classically trained musicians who studied their instruments in a university setting. Their musicianship is top-notch, and their creative talent abundant and prolific.

I caught up with Chicago in a very short time. I did suffer a bit of confusion with regard to Chicago IV, however. I basically couldn’t find out anything about it. I kept seeing references to a box set of four LPs entitled Chicago at Carnegie Hall, but I could not find out anything about Chicago IV. What I finally realized—and it took me a ridiculously long time to finally get it through my head—was that the Carnegie Hall set was the fourth album. It wasn’t a separate entity set apart from the others. It was part of the sequence. That bit of stupidity dealt with, I completed my set and went on to purchase Hot Streets.

I’ve been a loyal fan of the group ever since. They’ve put out some great stuff and some not-so-great stuff, but schmalzy lyrics and power ballads notwithstanding, I’ve always loved the musicianship, and I’ve always loved the horns. And looking back to the early albums over these last few days has been a real treat.

Hard to believe the original members are in their late sixties now.

Let’s keep it real out there.

(And here’s a live performance of one of Chicago’s signature tunes. I like this clip, because Robert Lamm introduces the rest of the band. This particular lineup was stable from 1995 to 2009.)

The truth of the matter is that I blog for myself. The fact that other people have commented on some of my posts and given me encouragement is a bonus. I can’t blog for other people, though. That kind of thinking sets me up for failure. If I try to make my blog into something that will please a certain type of person, or a certain group of people, then it’s not authentic. The blogging has to come from my true self, and if other people connect with that, then the blogging experience is enhanced for both writer and reader alike.

So, yes, it’s a brand new year. I’ve mentioned on both the Twit thing and the Face thing that I’m not into making New Year’s resolutions. It’s just not something I do. I feel it’s over-hyped and that it’s a thing that people do because it’s a thing that people do. (Sorta like Paris Hilton, who’s famous for being famous.) It’s kind of a collective mass-consciousness phenomenon, and it rarely turns out well, because people set the bar too high for themselves and ultimately fail in their attempts to make changes in their lives.

Okay, so, I’m a party pooper.

Anyway, despite the fact that I’m not making any resolutions, I am trying to make changes in my life. There is, in fact, one very large area of my life that I have decided has to change, and I’ve been focussing on it since the fall.

It’s called “present moment awareness”.

I can state categorically that this past summer was a roller coaster ride of stresses and changes. I experienced two job changes in as many months and my mother went into hospital and then very quickly into the queue for nursing home placement.

The stress turned into fear, and I quickly became aware that I was in a constant state of dreading what was to come. First it was the short-lived coffee shop job, then it was trying to find homes for my mom’s cats, then it was training for the new job at the financial institution call centre and facing the prospect of going out on the phones.

My system could barely handle it.

What these experiences brought me to realize was that I have for most of my life lived in a state of looking towards the next thing or looking back on some past thing. Very rarely, ever, in my life, have I been in a state where I could simply enjoy what I was doing and be “in the moment”. It has happened, but not very damned often.

The stresses of the summer simply magnified the situation and shone a tremendously bright light on what I now see as an intolerable state of affairs. I realized that I could no longer continue to live my life the way I have always done. I cannot live in a state of fear and dread, and I cannot tolerate the level of stress the summer months brought my way.

So, I decided to make a change. I decided, back in September, when my training was nearly over and I was about to join my team on the phones, that I had to start living in the present moment and stop living in the past and future. There was no alternative for me. If I was to enjoy life at all, if I was ever to feel comfortable in my own skin and step away from the fear and dread, I was simply going to have to be more consciously present.

I read Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now a few years ago, and I found it both enlightening and empowering. The focus of his book is exactly what I’ve just been talking about: living in the present moment and escaping the trap of constant, unwanted thoughts that drag us into the past or propel us into a nonexistent future. The way it’s written actually caused me to shift my perceptions as I was reading it.

So, back in September, I started rereading the book. I also had a copy of his second book, Practicing the Power of Now, and his fourth book, A New Earth, both of which I had started but never finished. This time around, I not only reread the first book but also moved immediately to the second book. I also purchased a copy of his third book, Stillness Speaks, just before Christmas, and I’m now reading that one. When I’ve finished it, I’m going to start reading A New Earth again. And when I’m finished that one, I’m going to go right back to the beginning and read The Power of Now a third time.

It’s important to me that I keep this stuff in the forefront of my mind. I can’t allow myself to go back to the way I was. That way lies madness.

I’ve also started meditating. I have a book called 8 Minute Meditation, which is written in a light and accessible style and lays out a pain-free way to work meditation into even the busiest of lives. It’s an eight-week program wherein you meditate for eight minutes each day, and since I started it, I haven’t missed a day yet.

I have so much to say on this topic that I find myself typing rapidly as I write this. I try to keep my blog posts to less than a thousand words, however, so I’ll finish off here for now.

There will be more. I feel the need to go into more detail on what I consider to be a very important area of my life.

Let’s keep it real out there.