Memories: you are never sure when you have them. You are never sure when you make them. Unexpected, often; they just happen.
It doesn’t seem to matter when they occur, you simply remember. It may have been years (or decades) since the event took place, but the predicament, the people, or the places come back to you fresh, from your memory.
Memories come to you from photographs, in conversation, from music, or sounds and scent. Memories are as inspired as they are inspiring.
The older you get, the more memories you have. Sometimes you talk, or write, about them. Other times you just let the glow of past days settle in your sub-conscious.
I am planning a mid-year trip to the other side of the world. I’m only now researching where I will go, and how I will get there; a destination I have long imagined.
My current passport expires in a matter of days. I spent time yesterday morning at a government office providing particulars of my life, ensuring renewal of the document, well in advance of the trip.
A passport signifies the intent to travel and, at the most primary level, is proof of whom you are and where you are from. It is yet another government-issued document explaining your citizenship and where you belong.
I am Canadian.
I have lived in this country all my life. My renewal application lists a change of address. Home is not now where it once was but is the home I expect to be living in for as long as possible. It is more than an address.
As part of the application, I was required to provide two identical compliant photographs to accurately represent who I am at this time. Expressionless, without my eyeglasses. Without my corrective lenses, I cannot clearly see the image that represents me.
I was also required to provide references, two of them, to validate my existence. I even had to think about how long I had known these particular friends. How long has it been? Certainly, I have known each friend longer than I knew my last passport, or the one before that.
My planned trip, right now, involves travel to at least two foreign countries. Likely, on this trip, there will be more. I’ve never been to that side of this world; there are a lot of countries. How many will I visit this trip, or the one that follows?
A passport is a formal document issued to one of a country’s citizens. It allows exit from and re-entry to your own country, but also to foreign countries in accordance with visa requirements. I can only now think of the possibilities to see other countries, cities, and cultures.
A passport provides not only the opportunity to travel, but also the chance to dream of where you would like to go next.
It’s not that the keyboard feels foreign beneath my fingers; they simply haven’t had the opportunity to wander across the letters for quite some time.
With 2026 now a current reality, I’m coming off a self-imposed year away from writing. As exciting for me as it is, it is also overwhelming.
I made the decision in 2024 to allow myself a sabbatical of sorts. Then on the cusp of a move back to a city where I have spent most of my adult life, with eye surgeries scheduled and a recovery process I was unsure about, and a soon-to-be new home which would require all sorts of renovations or redecorating, I sensed 2025 would not allow the time (or mind-set) to continue with a practice that has been a part of me for as long as I can remember.
I was one who took my ‘write every damn day’ motto to heart, and 2025 was to be my gap year.
To keep this website running last year, I posted daily entries from the previous decade. A review of sorts, each essay and poem, or point of view reminded me of my commitment to my written words. While I did maintain a journal (a habit that goes back even longer than this website) through 2025, it wasn’t with the persistence I usually exhibited. Even my personal letter writing was less than sporadic and, up until a couple of days ago, I hadn’t written a poem in well over a year.
So, now, it’s time. It is, after all 2026. For the past several days, I’ve been trying to get back into action. I’m not struggling, but it does take a while to get back into the habit.
There is so much to catch up on. I’ve got a notebook full of ideas, or concepts, and a couple of scattered stanzas that will (or should) find a place in a poem. I’ve also got a couple of manuscripts that need to see the light of day; they are incomplete and deserve attention.
I’ve got a lot of stuff in various stages of undress, and it is time to take them through to completion. That is my intention.
This is the year to devote my attention to my intentions. This is the year to finish what I have started.
We have just come out of the traditional season of excess where far too much has been jammed into a week or two of celebrations and get-togethers.
There has been little time to yourself and, for the most part, you enjoyed it that way.
Yet, it always seems so rushed.
As we catch our collective breath, it might be time to come to the realization that slow is a better way to go. It goes against society’s will or want to keep things moving; all of us always looking for the fastest way, the shortest route, or trying to squeeze the maximum amount of anything into the little space we call life.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
For years now, multi-tasking has been heralded as a superpower when, really, it means doing a lot of things at once. Nothing seems to get the full attention it deserves. Wouldn’t our time be better served by doing one thing at a time and doing it thoroughly to completion?
Devote time where it needs to go and do it wholly; do it slow.
If it is something you enjoy doing, why not take the time to do it right?
