Month / January 2026

by Sandy Bassie

Identity expressed in names

I hope I’m not wrong messing with my identity by writing under my maiden name from this point forward. I don’t dislike my everyday name, but the majority of things I have written with it come from connections with a lot of trauma growing up, married, divorced, losing the love of my life I met late and had only a short while. I’m still Sandy to a few thousand people I love and see regularly. Inside, there is still a part of me that never quite was the person who hid below the chaos and didn’t follow an art degree, or a writing degree. She’s still in there. How do I let her take a role in what I do?

My question, today, do I leave my current blog under this name and just write certain thoughts here. Do I move it with the shift to ‘writer’s name’? A lot of what has been here the last five years is me processing grief losing Jack. I am 90% done the poetry chapbook I did the last two years on our relationship; grief, but also joy. I’m 40-50 thousand words into the memoir written around marriage and divorce I left in 2016 and start writing 2019. I can’t escape the sensitive places my children flinch over things written there, but one wanted me to go back to my maiden name at the time, and the other tenses over his part in some of the trauma. It’s complicated. But life is complicated and I never quite leaned hard enough into the name given me at birth. I’m curious.

So the question is what does a smooth transition look like? I have a few things written years back in allpoetry.com and have played with my name off and on there. It’s an easy first step. What next? Is it better to make a new email and website? I’ve been doing the blog here in WordPress since 2008 without letting myself get too deep in the weeds of writing beyond just whatever is on my mind. I have been checking the bottom of websites of people I know here and few other writing groups (as I follow WP in YouTube and learned you can use the program but host it elsewhere).

I don’t want to pay much yet to build a site. As I lean into retirement, I have several books and some art that I want to tie to a central location from the other apps. I am suffering quite a bit from oversleep and pain the last year. I don’t feel very productive. I write about and work within categories coming from abuse, trauma, mental health places in life that have me seeking identity and joy through a sensitive register. Will this shift or is this my field?

I’m asking others’ advice. Other than that, it’s take tiny steps and discover.

by Sandy Bassie

The Long Road

Two days ago, the decision, yes, I’m going. Weather has been distraction, playing over in my mind, pushing the word logic to the forefront, making me question it’s purpose and use. Of course there is logic to safety concerns, changes in plans during weather events. I followed online news and updates, official and off the cuff, called on friends and family to report back what they saw, but even so, weather shifts.

Is there really a way to align potential and definite? In the moment, maybe so, but time and distance give a lot of leeway. As much potential for error as success, and travel allows opportunity for distant factors. Life was like that so many years. One day’s promise becoming another’s remorse. If only there was a little remorse on the other’s part; or so I wished. Being the only one carrying the weight of decision and remorse is wearying. Those days are longer than the promise days, so much longer.

I learned this the hard way, through years of days given to promises often ignored, left unfulfilled.

Driving is much like any other relationship. There is promise, fulfillment, communication too fuzzy to be clear, silence turned into action, swift changes you didn’t see coming. Of the two, marital or vehicle, I tend to find the second more relaxing, more predictable, more defined. Even with similar flaws in communication, patterns are navigated on visual evidence for the most part. There is ability to see and predict, plan how to react, and given the worst, a certainty you will react in most situations. By the time marriage gets to needing to react to the visible dangers (because that is what I think of saying reaction to certainty) too much has been internalized as complaint, an excess of words we are told don’t do damage, knowing full-well that they do. Reaction becomes harder. Back bite, not movement. Questioning self as much as other, assuming fault will be assigned, and I’ll get the short end of the stick.

On the road, I had enough early practice to create certainty around my skill. The tests were designed to show comprehension and application, not tricks to undefine and unmake who you are. Driving, even with a punch to head or gut, gave me focus outside of the rage. Eyes still on the grey line ahead, defining space and purpose, a sense of composure I managed to maintain.

So deciding to go on an actual trip, with defined designation, stated purpose and plan, against this and the weather; I knew my skill and really only had weather and other drivers to anticipate. Taking a break, slowing the journey, having needed necessities and contact list, were all calm outcomes for issues that could come up. Snow, freezing rain, slushy roads, these things I knew and had navigated before. That left only the extra attention given to how others navigated the same conditions and whether anything I saw changed any of my own decisions.

Eight hours, two stops, an hour given to body recovery and basic needs. I was good. In a few days I repeat it all in reverse and hope it goes as well as the drive up. I know the road, the length of time, the conditions of this season, and my skills.

I wish I’d been as well prepared for the journey long ago I began and then ended abruptly when danger hit an indefensible state and divorce finally framed the outcome. Winter. Travel. It expresses itself in many ways.

by Sandy Bassie

5 X 5 and see it goes

I have the link to the photo prompt I mentioned in the last post. I meant to write on it yesterday after work, but somehow the hours between 12 noon and supper ceased to exist, at least from conscious memory. I’m learning that energy and its connection to both health and activity runs on automatic or maybe just autonomic. Every nerve has weight to it, pitches into things, like the keys on a piano. Low feels heavier than higher tone, and sound moves sleep and wake patterns like my foot on the pedal. I’m yawning again already when I’ve only been active since 9am today.

I wrote a poem to a group conversation around a YouTube stream. Playing with each other as we watched for patterns and expectations, all the usual happenings the group enjoys. The video was a discussion on Trinity; doctrine, not movie character. People of different viewpoints agreeing to disagree. I had fun watching for key words and opinions while playing my own game with words in poetry. The draft is done and shared with the friends in question. I may also read it to my writer’s group this coming weekend. I’ve promised them something to read.

Between listening and typing, I vacuumed two spaces, sorted clothes for keep or give away. And all that remains now is find art supplies and ask if I can trust myself to nap 10 minutes only before I log into the virtual class. It’s that or face down into pencil sketch. Even telling myself do things in 5 minute increments, I have a suspicion I’m taking on too much somehow. More than fibromyalgia and pain are coping with while trying to stay awake.

Better set two alarms and turn them up. Two peaceful hours of art, and see if I need more rest, or can continue the 5 by 5 minute game.

by Sandy Bassie

Yesterday, today

A note to a post in Canada Writes, the writers group in Facebook that I joined the one or two times I submitted to CBC. A photo prompt of a girl in a tree, laying along a branch. Time and timing of a thing that they did.

I didn’t participate in your contest during Covid. To me, Covid was a 30×60 foot fence made of self-check-out terminals, a wall of gum and chocolate, random interest items forming a laneway in, and the trapped emotions of rules and loss. It still sits like a snapshot of all that’s hard in my life. Wonder at how losing something good threw me back into trying to leave what came before, and how I dangle between the sanity provided playing in writing prompts and all the trauma that fills the broken frames that litter my memoir attempts. I’m copying this and adding it to my January blog days where I hope to put enough words to soothe the flow. The little things along the way that prod me along, working hard to convince me that sharing is not the end of the world. I’ve been telling myself a story my whole life and I’m still here. Yes, I need pills for my thyroid, where I held too many emotions, and my blood pressure that peaked 200 too many times, fibromyalgia and anxiety that hold hands with PTSD, coaxing it to try one more day. So I cry when I write. big deal. I cry when I don’t write too. And days like today, which are many, give me reasons to add words to a page, and like something that happened in the night that had me putting notes in my current journal, questions that pull reasons and thoughts already written in places in my memoir notes, one more approach to the stories I tell myself about what and when and how, the too many words and fractured lenses through which I see my life. The layers that get me in trouble with family who cope in different ways. It’s probably stupid writing all these things. It’s ok. People who want me to write have convinced me it’s good to share the things I share. It’s brave, not stupid, and it has opened me up to a lot of the brave things that keep me going. Talking about it gives reasons for others to look at their lives and challenges in hopeful ways, or at least to know they are not alone. So here I am, a photo prompt that isn’t what I wrote, but did contribute to what will go to my blog, and lets me one number past where I started on the clock the day, and one breathe past what went into my journal about head, gut and shakes. Hello day.

by Sandy Bassie

Another year, another start.

First day of January 2026. The morning is half done and that’s about all that is done. Time.

By afternoon, I did accomplish a few things. I visited the neighbours and when home, I dug deep into clearing out my bedroom. It’s been story boxes of papers, books and other things, but I’ve been saying for a few months that I need to clear them out and make it possible to remove the queen bed. In November I bought a twin frame and mattress knowing the smaller bed would allow me to use the space better for some of the art things I want to do. I need a place to set up an easel and be more consistent in creative pursuits.

I’m still struggling with exhaustion, whether from injuries that are not quite done healing, fibromyalgia symptoms, or winter patterns with plows in the night, this has been a difficult year for energy. The rotator injury I picked up in the summer, and the cut that had two stitches removed last Friday, are improving. I decided I will only work in five minute increments, resting as needed, and approaching the bedroom that way is seeing more movement than just trying to tell myself, push through all at once. I’m also allowing naps when I start to yawn; setting the alarm for 20 – 30 minutes. Just enough to let energy reset. It doesn’t feel like I’m achieving enough, but I am too hard on myself and if I’m going to survive retirement, I need to pace myself and be kind.

So, I’ll try notes the same way. Short and medium writing bursts. Let myself use prompts. Allow myself to stop and lay out as I feel my body start to swirl, circle the drain. Energy drains quickly now, and the challenge for the last third of life will be to learn new ways to navigate it. That being the case, I’m circling now and leg muscles are twitching. These signs have told me sleep since I was 30, and they say the same now.

I’ll be back with another note soon. If do well practicing this, maybe each day with the short ones. And see how I do with longer projects as I go.