volume one hundred and ten
lockdown diaries (part 3)
📍Written and recorded from Seattle, overlooking Lake Washington with two big, cuddly, loving dogs asleep in the room with me.
✏️ This is part 3 of my lockdown journals. You can read part one here and part two here.
2020
July 30th: Thunder rumbled for over thirty minutes as the sky slowly darkened out of my window. I was on the couch reading and seeing it come in. It was so cool and slow. Then it hit! Rain!! Lightning! It was magic. When it all cleared the sky was pink, purple and blue fluffs of clouds and I teared up looking out at how beautiful it was.
August 5th: I miss my Halifax* friends. Grateful I’ll always have a home there with my family there!
*This hits different if you read last week’s volume.
August 8th: I had my first Life Coaching session and it completely turned my mood around. I am meant to be here. I worked so hard to get here! This time in our lives is only going to show me what I’m made of and I can’t wait! Whatever is on the other side of this is going to be my destiny.
August 10th: Spent 30 minutes on the phone with Nan and Pop today. I love it. Nan gossips with me and vents to me like I am her bestie and Poppy still can have a laugh and tell me he’s happy for me, even if it takes him a few goes. I told him he is so tough and he told me how all of his friends understand that he is just “getting old”. We laughed* because he went for coffee with friends this morning after the gym and he accidentally put salt instead of sugar in his coffee. I told him at least he is still a jokester always making people laugh.
*I miss when his dementia was as innocent as this and we could laugh about it together.
August 13th: Today in the mail, all the way from Dublin, I got my “Queer”* necklace. I am so grateful for the wonderful human who made it and posted it with such care.
*It’s a gold necklace and the half-moon-shaped charm has “queer” stamped into it. I still have it, wear it, love it.
August 22nd: Life coaching introduced me back to meditation today — which I loved. We discussed bringing my idea and version of spirituality back into my life and what that looks like for me. I’m really looking forward to speaking to a Higher Being in gratitude and in times of need.
August 23rd: I discovered a GIANT magical bookstore today! My new happy place!
August 26th: I love my family! I did [my IG series I did in lockdowns] with [my niece and nephew] tonight and it was just adorable. I am so proud of them. They’re such kind, funny, smart kids. I hope they never lose their spark of wild and weird like most of us do.
August 28th: I came up with a great podcast (?) idea today — My Dad Stole My Limelight — I’m going to take my time with this and think on it. I think this is the platform I’m destined to make my “thing”. As [a friend] told me today: Find the thing that when you do it, time flies because you’re enjoying it so much. Then make that the goal and focus.
September 1st: I’m constantly learning about my intuition and how in tune I am with it. I’m very grateful for my gut leading the way a lot.
September 5th: WHAT A DAY! I woke from a dream that gave me butterflies all day — manifesting a life I dream of during the daytime too — I can’t wait but I am also so happy about the here and now. My life coach session was amazing. The tarot, the methods and talks about boundaries, and me breaking down my barriers and properly opening up and crying and releasing and being open and myself is awesome and I’m so grateful for her.
…
We braved a patio. The first in 6 months. I was so happy and excited to feel a little “normal” again, while also feeling terrified.
September 13th: I was in bed for hours this morning: journaling, reading, manifesting, drinking tea…while it rained outside. The perfect day and the perfect way to spend a Sunday.
September 15th: I GOT A NEW APARTMENT!*
*Hi, I move a lot. It’s my thing. Now I am just becoming a Digital Nomad: leaning into my desire to move around without packing up a whole house every time.
September 20th: The last of the park hangs for the season and what a day it was.*
*I remember the weather was perfect, the rosé flowed, the snacks were galore and it was so joyful. I also remember there was the looming dread within me the entire day: “Winter is coming so our ability to hang out with other people is going to disappear as we all venture back inside”.
September 26th: I wasn’t going to as I felt uncertain and shy, but right in the last few minutes of our session it just came out and I told [my life coach] about my podcast idea* and she teared up and got so excited and that’s what we’re going to work on in upcoming sessions and it was so overwhelming to have such a positive, supportive, amazing reaction. We are going to set up pitches and she is going to connect me with folks she knows and I’m so over the moon and in disbelief and I’m SO GRATEFUL!
*Hi we are here, three years later!
Lovely reader, did any creative ideas birth themselves to you during the lockdowns? I would love for you to share them in the comments.
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here are three things I struggled with this week:
🕺 I have had so much to do for so long that spare time has just meant checking-something-off-the-list time. I am ready for the new era.
⚖️ Saying yes to some things and no to others.
🫠 The one million thoughts/questions/plans running through my head at any given time.
here are three blessings from this week:
🥨 Seeing a long line for a bakery and deciding it was a line worth joining. I made the right choice and enjoyed a fresh pretzel and mustard for morning tea and a divine sourdough loaf to munch on while in Seattle.
🥹 Very affectionate dogs.
🌚 My Vancouver home just faces a certain way and is surrounded by other buildings in such a way, that I have to walk a few blocks to ever see the moon. In Seattle, I saw her every morning on the morning dog walk and from the view in the loungeroom every night shining over the lake.
here are three goals for the coming week:
🌧️ I realised that while a rainy and cold day might equal a little seasonal depresh for me (and that is likely due to the fact I plan an entire day indoors which then usually equals just overloading myself with work), getting caught in the rain unexpectedly makes me feel wildly alive and happy. So maybe the goal is to not check the weather and plan my day as if it is always a good idea to go outside.
😌 Re-train myself how to be spontaneous again and how to use spare time.
☕ Write in coffee shops, work at a desk.
pics or it didn’t happen:
I love you. Now I am off to explore Nashville! On the day you have this land in your inbox, I am here! 🤠 I’m going to do all of the things on the list and enjoy all of the pockets of open windows meant for exploring and seeing where the day takes me.
With every lockdown diaries post I feel more compelled to yank some of my (very) old notebooks and seeing what horrors lie within them. They're not even diaries, more just full of short stories, but it might be interesting to see where I was as a writer/person a decade ago and compare it to where I am now (where I am currently in the midst of editing multiple sex scenes).
Speaking of the writer I am now, lockdown was exhausting in a lot of ways (that summer of 2020 when everyone realised they might be a little bit racist and made a big deal of proving they didn't want to be did actually cost me my relationship (no hardship long term) and at times my sanity) BUT I did make the switch over to Substack, it did encourage me to find joy in my literature and brought me back to romance books and it did give me an idea for a novel that I have actually finished writing and reminded me that I am a creative person at my core, there is a reason I have always been best with words.
“We will intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle us...” and that’s a promise! 😆
I truly enjoy listening to your flashbacks. I recently came across the journals I wrote in 1998, my first year sober, and--whoa. It’s astonishing how far we have come.