Exploration walk

During our lunch break yesterday, my awesome friend Christy and I decided to go for a walk. We had been talking about taking better care of our health. So we decided to start walking. Since I’ll be moving in the next few weeks, we decided to walk with a purpose of exploring my new neighbourhood.  

It turns out that I’ll be a nice little walk away from Ottawa’s Chinatown. That’s excellent! My daughter’s interested in Asian culture. And on Somerset Street, I saw a few little cafés, restaurants and shops we’re sure to enjoy discovering. One of the cafés was announcing some sort of comic book group where people get together for discussions and to draw. I think she’ll be interested in checking that out. She’s a pretty good artist and has real talent for manga drawings.

I must say, I’m quite excited about my upcoming move. It feels like it can’t happen soon enough! The commute to and from work has been almost unbearable lately. I know it feels that way because it’s almost over. I’m the kind of person that when I want something, I want it yesterday. I get very excited about new ideas and new plans! Although I’m very eager, I know that having to wait for certain things can help in its appreciation.

As we were walking along, I mentioned to Christy that I’m a little upset that I didn’t figure out before that I’ll probably feel more at home in the city than I’ve ever felt in the suburbs. She said that I may not have appreciated the experience as much if I’d done it before, and that all things come in due time. She’s a wise one that Christy! ;)

Even though I do realize this, I still wish I’d figured it out before. But, I can’t change the past (obviously). I can only enjoy the present and maybe dream a little about the future. And boy oh boy do I have dreams for the future! Small simple dreams though. For instance, I think we should pace ourselves and try a new café or restaurant no more than once a week. Otherwise, it might end up being an expensive and unhealthy lifestyle.

I also have plans for my Instagram account. I have a feeling that I will be filling it up with many new photos of my neighbourhood explorations. Just today, I saw things I wanted to photograph, but I didn’t. I want to do it intentionally instead. I want to go out with the specific purpose of capturing the scenery.

At the beginning of the week, I was feeling a little unsure (already) about my writing. I’ve been reading a book of writing advice by John Scalzi called You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Bring Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop. He’s quite funny! In it, he says it took him about 4 years of writing his blog before he got to a couple thousand views a day. I felt a little overwhelmed about this at first. I couldn’t imagine having 4 years or more of things to write about. Can I really sustain writing so much for so long? Do I have what it takes to be a writer? ...

Of course I realized that I don’t have to come up with 4 years’ worth of writing material now. Life will hand that to me in due time. When you’re living life, you’re constantly inspired. And as my awesome friend Christy said, if I’m starting to struggle to find things to write about, it probably means I have to up the ante in my life experiences.

Being overwhelmed and seeing the task as an all at once type of thing (like 4 years of writing as a complete package instead of essay by essay) is another tendency of mine which I’m sure is related to my wanting it yesterday personality. (How do you eat a whole elephant? One bite at a time, right?…)

 

So, after talking with Christy and going for the exploration walk yesterday, I must say that I feel much calmer about it all and very inspired! Stay tuned for more!