Years and years ago, in a land far from here, I used to be young.

I did not know I was young.

In fact, I thought I was old.

 

 

 

I have some sympathy for that younger version of myself and her mistaken understanding of time.

That younger Colleen wore the responsibilities of our company like the weight of one of those dentist’s X-ray blankets, a dragging heavy lead poncho that made me/her feel like I could barely lift my limbs.

As well, my mom had died and besides my deep grief, I felt my mortality, her death a grim reminder that there was no longer a generational buffer between me and the great abyss.

Of course there was also the fact that our company veered wildly between making whacks of money to having the bank’s appointee sitting at a spare desk while we wrestled with bankruptcy.

As well, my father’s grief was immense. It reminded me of his first nervous breakdown, though we, of course, never referred to it as such. Things like that were simply not uttered.

Whatever the reasons, each morning I woke up with fingernail marks in my palm, my neck permanently seized and my teeth ground down into stumpy versions of molars.

In retrospect, I really was old.

And so, I did what any self-respecting West Coast woman would do, I took a self-improvement course. It was called The Pursuit of Excellence. So of course, it would manage my stress, direct me to my inner-truth and transform me into a super-being who could do anything.

For part of those five days of the intensive experience, I stayed in a Vancouver hotel. One morning, before the workshop began, I went to this new coffee shop called Starbucks. I ordered a coffee drink called a latte. This expensive coffee even came with cinnamon dusted over the top. Crazy!

I took my latte and sat at the window counter with my journal so I could work on the prior evening’s assignment.

All I truly remember from all that morning’s scribblings was one singular vision: more than anything, I wanted to wake up when my body’s clock told me it was time and then start each day with a coffee and my journal. I didn’t care if it was in a place like this Starbucks or if it was at home.

I simply wanted coffee and words and no bloody alarm clock.  Although I felt self-conscious, I kept writing page after page of thoughts and ideas, hopes and dreams. I knew that if I wanted this journalling business to be part of my life, I needed to start right then and there.

 

 

 

Flash forward a few decades…

Two weeks ago, I flew to Victoria for a weekend art course. Each morning, I walked to a nearby coffee shop and sat writing, musing, and sipping what must be by now, my seven-millionth cappuccino.

 

 

And it was there, in that little Victoria cafe, that I remembered my long-ago yearning for a life lived on my own terms. I remembered how I wanted to pursue a different life and how the one simple act of starting every day with coffee and my written thoughts seemed to be the embodiment of that wish.

Writing in that Victoria coffee shop, I realized, that without having consciously thought about that long-ago Starbucks moment, I have manifested exactly that.

I’ve scribbled while snugged in the sofa of our apartment in Vancouver and while gazing out over the ocean from our Coastal home. Notes have been taken in Estonia while eating decadent cake and creamy coffee.

 

 

I have written observations while perched on a skinny chair in some random cafe in Albania.

 

 

I’ve written in a mountain village coffee shop where I wondered if I could ever live in such a little town (spoiler alert: we can and do).

 

 

 

And I filled endless journals from the bed in our little RPod when we traveled across Canada in 2016.

 

 

Blessedly, there have been very few mornings where I set an alarm (unless it was to catch a flight to somewhere wonderful) and in these intervening years, I have accumulated stacks and stacks of wire-bound scribblers, some with blurry pages from tears that I thought would never stop, others containing too many pages of angry and bitterly ugly words. Still others hold sentences that are both beautiful and good.

It’s all there, for better or for worse, but there, poured out of me and safely held on a page where words live and breathe and help me understand myself and others. Blessedly, the worst of those words never see the light of day, instead expressed in marks that almost rip through the page, safe between the covers never to be read or heard by anyone but me.

I have no doubt that bleeding those messy sentences has saved me more than once.

As for that five-day course? It really did change a lot in my life. Kevin took it after me and we both agreed that it helped us figure out a lot about how we wanted to be in this world.  The Pursuit helped me think about who I was and what I wanted.

Turned out it really wasn’t about the pursuit of excellence at all. More than anything it helped me understand that I needed to find my own voice and live life on my own terms.

Strangely enough, all this writing hasn’t helped with my sense of time. It seems, that other than all the experiences and memories I’ve accumulated, I feel younger now than I did then.

Back then I was old when I was young and now I’m young when I’m old.

 

 

Maybe I missed a memo. Perhaps I should have pursued excellence after all…