Tag / writing

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

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.

by Sandy Bassie

Slowing down is hard

Lately, I talk more of retirement, exhaustion, pain. I can laugh at myself writing these words, knowing how many decades I’ve talked about pain in different forms and situations; mental, emotional, physical. In ways the physical is worse because it inserts itself so tangibly into every moment of every day. But that doesn’t negate the other types of pain. They cause their own distractions, and have become far too good at it over years. The one thing I appreciate is that I’m learning to distinguish between them and the ways they speak of themselves and among themselves.

This change of paragraph is an example. I look at the last sentence above and realize I sensed a change of topic or pace. But when I landed in the empty space here below, it was very empty. Inside and out. Too present in it’s form to express what the form is, or was, or felt like; and so I sat. My body tangible and aware of the couch on which I sit, the places that touch with various points of pressure, the shape of my body on the couch, not upright, but stretched out, one heel one and the other hanging over. More distressing is the internal awareness, almost a form of pain, where food in the gut, but emptiness in my chest and a slight wobble of head where I can’t tell if there is actual weight or simply a pause in thought staring at what’s going on below.

I’m not a fan. Not of the tightness in my shoulders, the burbling in my gut the clench in my lower abdomen or the way my brain or thoughts have begun flipping through pages; topic, last night’s dream. I’ve had a series of dreams this week. They share a similarity, some form of danger, shared venue for work or accommodations, and a call to determine what they mean. On waking, I am very certain I am supposed to know what they mean. They aren’t quite like the ones I had back in Acton, pre-divorce. But they do involves houses and backyards, people hiding or needing to hide. I’ve started to yawn, to float just above falling back asleep. I can’t. I have no time for more sleep. I start work in an hour. My body would choose to ignore that and push me back under the covers of dreams, make me take another look, another run at understand, at knowing the something I am to decide. Yesterday, I wrote long notes. Today, none.

Whether this is important or not, I do not know. I just need to finish this note, to dress for work, and to walk out the day, and let things wind down how they will. I’m looking into retirement, and a bit afraid that I’m going too slowly for the realities at work. Will I find myself without work soon than I’m ready? My system is humming, not with anticipation, but nerves, fear, disjointedness. I waste more energy on navigating this place. I’m fighting the fail, the fall into sleep, perhaps late again to work, and struggling against this all day.

I put water in the sink, dishes in the water. I came and sat down, just for moment, half an hour ago. I’m swimming in the thought, in the yawn, in the dream. Why do my dreams not go away when I wake? Why do they linger the next hour or so, hovering?

Tonight I will finish the dishes. I will make the same meal I’ve eaten all week. Two bowls of salad (cereal bowls) and three strips of chicken. A cup tea, coffee, or milk. Poke at some words, watch a YouTube, and allow myself to drift away. I’m sorry words, it’s time to get up. Put my feet on the ground, hold onto the wall if I need it, get out the door and into the air. Slow walk across the street and into the building where work waits for me. How brave am I this week? Will I make it official? Shift to part time? Next step on the journey? I don’t know, but again, I don’tr know what I want, when I want and how. I wish I had time to think out more words, but I really am almost falling asleep. I’ll stop for coffee on the way, and come back later and maybe get this done.

For now, slow steps. Repeat after me, I must retire. Slowly ease my way out, and ease my way into art and other things. Take the pencils to work. Draw.

by Sandy Bassie

life … and the kitchen sink

Good advice is easy to come by, and simple to apply, if you don’t overthink. This week again, I got good advice at physio. I spend enough time there for old and ongoing injuries; ones so familiar, they really shouldn’t be called injuries anymore. I got stretched, asked about a few exercises, launched into ways I thought I could remember them and again went home with a chuckle hearing, “Sandy, don’t think so much.”

I do over think, but my days off this weekend offer opportunities to enjoy. After a walk and signing up for a few writing events this weekend through Eden Mills Writers’ Festival, I decided I also needed to see local art friends I’ve missed working through our weekly get together. I had an early shift and nap, but made myself resist falling back asleep. By 7 pm I arrived at my friend’s house, pencil and paper in hand. Good call. Laughter, tea, a home-made chicken pie and deep reduction in the stress I’ve been carrying for months. They each worked on watercolour projects they have underway. I drew lines and circles I left incomplete in my sketchbook while I admired their work, took in words of wisdom, and remembered what it is to relax. I’ve missed them.

I don’t have a great excuse for not working on poetry, memoir, or art the way I wanted this year; a foot injury, flare up of neck and shoulder issues, overabundance of pain as distraction and cause for too much sleeping between work shifts. But I don’t count that as justifiable cause for too little writing, drawing or painting. My friends do. Their words refine my brief shrug at the issues of pain and frustration. I couldn’t find the bag of art supplies I brought a few months ago. I only have my sketchbook. That’s enough. My friends help me see the reality is a functional barrier, not just an excuse. They are happy to see me, and encourage me to come back next week again. Drawing circles is just fine as long as I am there. They too point at ways I overthink, ways I remonstrate myself for imperfections. Why I think I don’t deserve the good I find in words and smiles and moments shared.

They are good friends to have, and I am grateful.

I think back to last weekend’s visit from my son. How many times he made food, did dishes, suggested ideas for easy meals I can follow until he comes again. He’s patient with me. We had one emotional scuffle, the first day, but shifted more easily than we have into acknowledging it and moving on to things we appreciate in each other. I’ve promised to keep my fridge clean(er) and do dishes at least every second day. I’m poking through the excess of things I own. Things he may not need or want if life is shorter than I’ve been told. For some reason, family and friends see me thriving another thirty years. It’s a long haul to a steep age and may come about, but if not, steep better not represent the pile of things I leave for my son to sort. He’s been quite clear this is my mess and mine to solve. Knowing how kind he is in the day to day helps, I have to chuckle and agree I am working at it and will up my game if I must.

So today, as I finish this post, the kitchen sink awaits and a very small pile of dishes to fill it.

Wishing you smiles shared and a clean sink. 😉

by Sandy Bassie

Articulation

I’m sick. Not contagious, catchable sick, but it is sick. I can feel myself swimming almost to the point of passing out. Dreams. No sleep. This is an ugly place.

But I work today; 9:30 and hour or two from now I’ll be on my way. I told myself I will make art. A collage of images creating form. Structure and the like. Articulating.

I’m shaking. I hope I make it today. Tonight, I will go to bed early. Miss my class. Let myself pass out. Hopefully not wake in the night again. That’s what I did last night. Asleep by 8pm and awake at 10pm to watch people talk, a reading mostly. Interesting.

Maybe they’ll let me start early, 9am leave early. It isn’t much.

This place scares me. My head swimming from exhaustion and chocolate. Did I mention the chocolate? Punishment I bought. I know it’s not reward. It isn’t even help. I did eat supper, a can of stew. I’m still in the place where eating is off. How many years has it been? No words. No words. I need to move, relax myself. And forget the rest, how walking soothed abuse. One pattern, then the next. Changing pace, changing steps, changing direction I walked, the side of the road. Little distractions, then sleeping at the church. Because it was quiet, because it was safe. I had the key from three different groups, and well still used benches rather than chairs. I could lay down unseen on the hard wood surface, curl into myself. An hour, maybe two, sometimes three if middle of the day and kids not coming or going to school.

I’d sleep on the floor, on the steps at the front. Same deal, same idea. Out of sight, out of mind.

Writing this shakes. Shakes aren’t allowed.

Articulation is hard, both verbal and movement. Pushing words past my teeth, over tongue, out of lungs. Not easy at times. And still, they may or may not articulate. I stretch when I can. Sometimes I can’t; not allowed say my words, unspoken but heard. Not aloud.

What will I make? What will I draw. Frames and framing and framing the frames. Too silly by far. I am silly, I think. To move’s what I need. Get up and go. If I lay out paper and glue and magazines and scissors, will I do it when home? Will I make the scene?

I need to do it for my own good. I built a YouTube channel and three short talks, so I’m thinking of topics and words and ways, things we frame, what we think, how we think and how we frame it in telling and retelling. So I want to create, images, thoughts. Something to stare at when I talk to the screen. Or I talk to the people I talk to there. Articulate thoughts in better timing and better shape, better frame and frame of mind.

Articulate.

I’m two and half days past physio this time. Edging along. Moving to pain.

Get up, go to work, get food, go to sleep. Repeat and repeat. Oh, and write out more words. Almost 2,000 in the memoir yesterday. Borrowed and created from pages of thoughts. If I don’t muck this up and can get them to form, I may have a book. I have people to read. People are important in so many ways.

Falling back asleep if I sit here too long. Getting dressed, getting coat on, getting boots, getting gone.

I’m a mess, but I’m learning, what I fear, what I don’t. What I fear until I do it. What I will do regardless of fear. Apparently a lot. So I’ll share a little listening for those who don’t yet know, and I’ll think of what it looks like now and as I go. Mixing in the people from wide connections and wider space. Articulating as carefully as I can, as honestly as I can, as politely and with grace. I hope all of that is true and that it comes through in what I say. 

Let me know what you think. If you like, you can follow. It may be a mishmash.

I will write and may share little pieces and thoughts. It’s a challenge to myself to express things I love, things I hate, things that scare me, things I avoid. It’s one tactic I use when I’m struggling to move on – extend the road, redraw the line, increase the time and journey but take a step. I hope this works.

And I’m sorry to the people who think I’m naturally brave. I’m not. I just fake it and keep going. Sometimes it costs me sleep and dreams I’d rather not have then I face myself and the world and keep moving. It’s uncomfortable, you may not like the journey so feel free to opt out. If you hang in there, I’ll try to engage, but I overload at times, quite frequently in fact.

My thanks to those who love me regardless of the mess.

I am slowly building life around me. And I’m glad.

by Sandy Bassie

Does AI Overload?

Was sure I hit ‘publish’ but maybe I dreamed it.

Three days into an overdue vacation, my mind still turns to questions: How are they doing at work? How far behind are they? Who is looking after returns?  My body looks the other way. Immediately seeking my bed, illusion of rest. Eyes fixed on the ceiling, I abandon hope of sleep and give in to playing games, matching pieces, learning words, pretending I will do some cleaning when I get up. 

There’s a gap somewhere between responsibilities I’ve taken on and those I own. A glitch in the system holds me in place. Almost. When I’m very quiet, I feel the tremor, nerves, muscles, something else return, return, Some imagined starting line that made sense but has no place in memory. Disturbing. I like when things line up – dot to dot, puzzles edges, a ruler line that doesn’t slip. 

The weight of this week does not compute. I see the days, the dates, the times. I coloured things by categories, try to work inside these lines. What a laugh. I ended up with ten days off rather than five because my lines don’t work, did not line up. Ninety days of saved up hours became five days with time on my hands and another five for family and friends. 

Silence may be golden to some, but it spins my wheels with nowhere to go. There is plenty to do, I haven’t done, and only three trips to blue box down the hall. Four carboard boxes sit in my car, waiting. If I fill them, we can take a run to the local Thrift, and another stop for outside and trees. Uncomfortable. I don’t know why. 

I’m wasting time, not yet into the day, wondering if a list would help and if I asked it, does AI overload?

by Sandy Bassie

Gratitude

I came away with questions for myself. Looking back from this week at ways I’d interact. Look slowly and kindly. Allow I had my faults. Not the ones screamed at me, but choices, habits, fears sit close upon memory and I want to look at them. Mainly because I’m writing. Memoir. Pieces of myself, my story. They are part of it, the story.

Sometimes I think my main goal must be to see how many unused drafts I can stare at in my Drafts folder; fifteen so far. The small paragraph above is one of them. Dated January 9, 2022, it resonates hope. While I have no recollection of the week in question, my encouragement to myself in these words is to look at and look past faults, choices, habits and fears., reasons I have used to let things sit, because doing so is who I am and moving beyond is breaking a terrible rule.

February brought an email accepting a poem for a local publication; online this year again as pandemic changes brought about more blog than paper publication of items. March brought another opportunity for essay to be included in an anthology on Gratitude. That one was hard. I fought with it as I fought the topic the past two years in memoir, struggling with what to say. You can’t always repeat thoughts of pain and sorrow. After a while they get wearing even to the writer. Time, as they say, bring change, allows perspective, optimism or hope. I don’t like flogging that last one either. The whole topic reminds me of days in very good mental health groups as both participant and support where I’d struggle with our common leave-taking. Expression of gratitude.

I love the gratitude of walking among trees, sitting by streams, icecream in two flavour stacks on a double cone. The tangible moments that tug at my heart, add colour to the day, draw out my senses, calling like echoes of remembrance to places within. Words are not needed for gratitude, and though I talk to the wind, the sky and the birds, it’s not required by any of us. My favourite memories are smiles and looks that share some moment of grace. The world open up and suddenly a space holds its breath, allowing the wait. Yes, these are the moments I value the most.

And this, at best, is where I sat two silent months waiting for what, I did not know. Some call it writer’s block. Perhaps, at times. But I found so many words bursting within for other places, nowhere at all. They just didn’t fit, and I’ve learned not to force them, though it is hard to sit. My time increased at work, just touching 28 hours. Enough to keep me full-time. Not enough to keep me afloat. I think perhaps writing stalls in the places of loss, where I haven’t chosen career, haven’t braved the risk of siren’s call ‘Monetize Your Blog – three easy steps.” No. I’m pretty sure it’s more than three, and nothing wrong with doing so for those with a plan to earn a living in this way. I’m a bit off topic, but connected still.

Readiness – to write, to paint, to aim for a career – it may need more gratitude than I’ve let myself feel. I joke with fellow writers, once again ‘this year’ is the year I will risk, will submit, will step past the barricade and allow myself to be .. what? There lies the issue. I don’t know what, and a lifetime of habit has taught me to be small, and not even that. One ongoing conversation a decade back questioned the reasons within relationship, to significant other, I fought the judgement I was too big and too small. Not significant enough, but too high and mighty for his daily mood. A bad fit. A poor example, a multitude of labels, and ultimately as my mother assessed it, just the wrong personality for him.

Gratitude. I learned something this year. Looked it up. Not just in my favourite etymology site, which simply defines it as ‘pleasing, thankful’, but in heart’s home, curiosity. This time wanting to know how my love saw it, what it meant in the good places I’d found recent years, encouraged to find myself and grow, being loved as I did. And so, I asked our favourite Google how gratitude was seen in the Hebrew meaning. I found myself among trees, sitting by streams, letting memory ache with the longing of joy, places I’d touched, but not this past year. Places I need to go again, to listen to the wind, let water bugs curl in the waves by my feet. Let this place speak to me its words of tender care. A moment of grief in a lifetime of love.

I am not stuck. I may not always move forward well, but slow, like a turtle or the snails I sat by two summers past, I will get where I’m going. In writing. In life. The moments of connection with present memories allow space for me to listen and to learn. The Hebrew form of gratefulness, like I found with my love, who worked hard with me at relationship, and announced it with a smile, “we worked through some tuff stuff and built a strong relationship”. Yes, Jack, we did, and celebrated it along the way with simple smiles.

Gratitude. I looked it up. I found the Hebrew meaning in several sites, two words ‘hakarat hatov’ with their translation into English. Something beautiful to read. I like the phrase and I like the story I found in one site giving more, an example that touches my heart. Harakat hatov ‘to recognize the good’. It is a gift I will hold onto and learn to live well. And the story, possibly urban legend, about a performance by Itzhak Perlman used to demonstrate what it means.

It seems to be that year, gratitude wants to smile. I’ll wait, I’ll listen and know the good is there. What else is there to say, but thank you for this day.

For those who wish to read the story, I’ll link it here. Enjoy if you will or just wait for your own moment of gratitude, your example, your breeze.

https://jewishcamp.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2017/04/Gratitude_-_Mussar_Institute.pdf

by Sandy Bassie

Imperfections

February’s been a rough month. March too. I ping between okay and ‘oh so over it’. I’ve hit the wall. All I have left is to write about it.

On one hand, I have a small box called apartment. It’s crammed full of left over bits of past life and the one I’m trying to live now. Creativity wages war with it daily; art and writing supplies, music all fight for space.

I write regularly, paint occasionally. Mostly my keyboard and guitar cower against one wall, asking me to practice. I paid for a month of guitar lessons, tossed a penny into the well of expectation and hope it brings good things. Last week, encouraging words from my teacher assured me that regardless of my frustration with ‘only’ practicing one song and one scale, I have done a good job. Okay. I’ll bite. I’ve done well. Now believe it.

I want to improve my art. Create paintings I love and learn to part with them. To do that, I need a better grip on money and budgets both for home and sales. Even if it’s just for fun, I’d like enough to replenish supplies, I need to let myself learn the basics of give and take, hobby or business.

I want to release things I’ve written. Send them further out. Not just the one or two places I know who are open to it. I want to push past the barriers and broaden my reach.

What scares me about writing? People tell me I’m good, I have a raw way of writing. It draws people. They see it in pieces I’m doing for a memoir. Say, I have a strong, staccato style to my poetry. I read a list of possible literary magazines suggested to me. I probed their online offerings and re-read. Decided to write a cover letter and choose some poems to send.

But then, a tangible restraint on my arms. typing has weight. sleep falls upon me, passing out like with a migraine. and less obvious shut down, internal, my body folds in on itself, origami folding into invisibility. impossible. i need to move. i need to …. submit …. ringing past intentions, rules that bind. breathe swallowed up within lungs that strain hesitation.

Words. They lean towards poetry. They leap at opportunity, but cringe at expectation. Dear words, can you help? I want you to know full expression. I hope this year to let you fly.