Hello! My name is (Leung) Hafong alias Lily Leung. You always say the last name first….that is the Chinese way. That is my partner lurking behind me. Since this is my blog, I won’t mention his name. But this is a rather cool picture. You see me and yet you don’t…sort of the way I feel about myself most of my life. So this blog is a self-exploration, an archeology dig of some sort. My tools…..words of a thousand or so at a sitting. I will try for that.
I’m still here, wrapped in another day of grey. I’m taking my own advice, not fighting it and just going along with the ride. I haven’t been actively seeking ‘fun’. Didn’t do any stretches. Didn’t ski so I guess stretching wasn’t necessary. I thought I would just relax and wallow in what is just me. I think it is good to stay put. There’s always chores, you know, those shitty boring stuff that everyone hates, puts off and runaway from. But they are necessary for our well being and happiness. Good examples are brushing our teeth, cleaning our body, preparing food, doing dishes, doing the laundry. Pretty tedious stuff, eh?
You could say that I was disturbed into ease and silence by the band Disturbed and their rendition of Paul Simon’s The Sound of Silence. It was a bit different from Simon and Garfunkel’s version. I thought the guy was a bit off at first. I fell in love with it when he started growling. Here he is, live on Conan. The video is 6 years old. I wonder where I have been. I’ve just discovered him accidently as the soundtrack on a skate competition.
Grey days are not all bad. There’s always a silver lining. The weather app said there was a bit of sun today. I must have blinked and missed it. Let’s see what tomorrow and the weekend brings. There’s snow forecast for Sunday. I will have a break in my routine tomorrow. I start an in person drawing class in the afternoon. I am ready. My bad is packed with my supplies. I have a couple of samples to show the teacher.
Another day enclosed in the grey. I tried dipping my toes into my fun list this afternoon. I didn’t have any nail polish on hand. Otherwise, I might have had some fun. I used to have a couple of bottles laying around forever and a day. I could have used them today. So I had throwaway regrets. Next, I tried origami. I have a kit I bought when I was in Japan a million years ago. The instructions were diagrams without words. It was a bit complicated. Maybe I should have started on page 4 instead of 22. As a result, my tulip is a little too top heavy.
Next, I played a little piano. I was not engaging so I gave up after 20 minutes. It’s really no fun when I’m feeling so blasè. I had been reading Babel and it was interesting but in my mood, a dark fantasy about colonalism would make my mood darker. I thought about resorting to John Grisham’s The Client, but I got onto YouTube and found this. I was engaged, caught up in the music and movement of this couple ice skating.
It wasn’t really what you would call fun but I was at least distracted from my grey feelings for a few minutes. Perhaps I should not try so hard running away from these feelings/days. Just accept and ride/ease them through without a fight/struggle. Perhaps there’s a purpose for them.
Another morning. Another grey day. Another blank page. How shall I fill it? I’m off to a good start. Made that appointment with SaskEnergy for Thursday. It wasn’t hard. I wonder why I procrastinate, why it feels hard. I’ve been thinking about that word again all day yesterday. I thought about it driving to my exercise class. The traffic was a steady stream and all those piles of snow and the grey sky pressing down on us. I wonder how I managed all that stress driving the same route to work for over 30 years.
I feel grateful that I no longer had to get up at the crack of dawn. I am grateful that I’m not driving down College Drive in the cold and dark to spend 12 hours saving lives and emptying bedpans. I think I’ve earned my dues. I have to retire that hard word again. Put it out of mind and drive in the slow and easy lane. I don’t need any more challenges. I need more ease and more fun. I need to get my kicks on route nice and easy.
How to do it? I think I have to change my mindset. I have to dip my toes into the fun pool slowly, one at a time. It might take me awhile to get comfortable with fun. I’m a serious person. What other people consider ‘fun’ sometimes evoke pain in me. I have to give it some thought on what brings me just simple joy. I went online and google fun things to do. Here’s some possibilities:
Play an instrument
Write a short story
Do a crossword puzzle
Try origami
Try a board game
Put together a puzzle
Build a snow fort
Write a letter
Start scrapbooking
Bake cookies
Become a YouTube star
Unplug my devices
Paint my nails
I think this is a fair list to start on. I think I will shop for a puzzle and some nail polish. I have to remember this is to have fun and not to make it into some kind of challenge. To be sure, I know I will fall off my fun wheel and have to get back on it again time after time.
I think I’m apt to scream soon. Another heavily foggy day with no end in sight. No, that’s not correct. There’s a bit of sun forecasted for Friday. Though I am out and about, the grey is making me restless and antsy. I wonder how it is affecting others. Perhaps I should have made 2 rounds on the ski trail this afternoon. It would have tired me to calmness. Tomorrow is another day – of more clouds. I will have plenty of practice dealing with greyness and restlessness. I can save the screaming, too, for another day. At least I am not depressed.
So what can I do instead? I was going to do some tidying and putting away but I felt more restless and irritable just looking at my mess of things. I cancelled that idea. I’m really not in the mood to write a post but here I am, tapping away on the keyboard. I’m not soothed yet. Maybe I need to slow down so it’s more rhythmic. I think I need to dim the lights a bit. The brightness is stimulating me too much. I can feel my heart rate in my fingertips. I wonder if the weather can change our chemistry. It sure affects me.
I can make a list of things to do for tomorrow.
Phone SaskEnergy for an appointment for them to come and change the meter.
Deposit the cheque from the government.
Renew my driver’s license.
Meet the girls for breakfast.
Ski.
I feel a little calmer having made the list. Supper is soon. I will have a small glass of wine. Yes, I do feel better. No screaming necessary. I will let all that extra energy flow out through my fingertips.
We’re halfway through January. It has been a very strange time, so much snow and then so mild. And now so grey and foggy. We’ve already had at least a week of it and a promise of more to come. I’m not complaining, merely stating the facts. It is hard to be an energy bunny under these conditions. I try to be a ski bunny most mornings at the Wildwood Golf Course. By habit I am now always eager to hit the tracks. It was a slippery slope this morning. My skis were ready to slide away without me.
Suprisingly, I haven’t been blue or brooding. Perhaps it’s these morning outings that are saving me. It is really beautiful and wonderful skiing in what feels like a fairy tale wonderland – the grey lit up by the hoar frost on the trees. I never get tired of the scenery. I never get tired of snapping a photo. There’s always something different of the same. The light changes and the sky is never the same. I want to capture everything, even knowing I can’t.
My morning activity sustains me. Having stepped out the door each day is a testiment that I am still alive and vibrant. I can’t sustain it all day. Mornings are wonderful. Afternoons I droop and sag. I try to fight it but I lose. I give in to the natural rhythm of the day and my body. I can wait for the sun. Meanwhile, I can peck away on the keyboard, one letter at a time, a word, a sentence, a paragraph and finally a post. I will not worry about word count but will proof read for errors of all kinds.
I’ve made some progress on the book Babel. Though it is fantasy and not my usual genre, I find it quite engaging. Firstly, it is written by R. F. Kuang, a fellow Chinese. She is young, beautiful and very accomplished. She is very fascinating to me. The book starts in Canton which is near where I am from. So can you see why it holds a lot of interest for me? Anyways, it is a good book to get a little lost in while I’m waiting for the sun.
I wonder if you can write a book review when you haven’t read the book yet. I’ve started 3 books at present. I’m a John Grisham fanatic. His books, especially the early ones, have always engaged me. I’ve just started reading The Client when the library notified my request for Babel was ready. We had a discussion about Virginia Woolf at a bookclub meeting. I’ve read about her and had seen the movie, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. I haven’t read any of her books. I’ve added To the Lighthouse. Having only read a few pages of each, it’s difficult to write a review of any of them.
Of the three, To the Lighthouse is the slowest read. It does remind me of another lighthouse – the one in Cape Three Points, Ghana. Here’s my photo memory of it from 2011.
Getting through the day is not always an easy thing, especially when it is this Friday the 13th. There’s no black cats crossing my path. I didn’t walk under any ladder. I didn’t break a mirror. I didn’t stick my chopsticks straight up in my bowl of rice. No there was no bad luck involved. However, I might have been too over zealous with my skiing and exercise classes the last couple of days. Our warmer than usual January weather is also affecting me. I’m suffering the price of it all today. Regardless of how I feel, the beat goes on. It does not stop for me.
How do I manage? How do I go on or had I stop and let the music play on without me? I was tempted to be a couch potato for the day. Experience has taught me that had not been the best thing for me. Somehow a day could lead to another and another. Things will pile up. I will get behind and it will be struggle to work out of that inertia. What I do is slow down and work at a slower pace. I try not to look at the whole picture/job. I break everything into blocks/squares.
I’ve learned to do that working on my logcabin quilt. I couldn’t think of the whole thing at once. I built one block a day for a year. That way I wasn’t overwhelmed or overtired by the whole picture. I have all the squares, enough for a queen size quilt. They’re not all together yet, but they are on their way.
I’ve tackled this day in the same way – in small blocks, one at a time. I got through washing the dishes, one dish at a time. I made turkey stew with the leftover. It wasn’t easy thinking about it. I didn’t want to leave it any longer for the turkey to spoil. So I gathered my stuff – potatoes, carrots, beets, celery, turkey. Then I started to peel, wash, chop and threw it all in the Instant Pot and turned on the slow cook mode. 4 hour later – turkey stew. They’re portioned and in the freezer now for future lunches.
I’m really surprised that I got some of the floors vacuumed and is now adding the finishing touches to this post. And this post is built block by block. What a coincidence, eh, that WordPress thinks like me. I have amazed myself that thinking and working in blocks is so effective. It’s not terribly late but all the same, I shall not post on the daily thread. This is enough. I shall go to bed. Good night!
I overdid the skiing today, going twice around the golf course. I was aiming to increase my endurance. I know I cannot get any faster. I know I am a tortoise. I felt pretty good after my second round. No sweat! I thought even though I was quite sweaty. I was counting on relaxing and stretching in our mobility class at the gym shortly after. I didn’t count on our instructor changing things around. The mobility class was yesterday. Today’s was on upper body which was not stretching or relaxing.
I am physically tired but I am relaxed after a long soak with epsom salt. My brain is too relaxed and a bit mushy. I am not sharp or focused. I caught an interesting podcast whilst soaking on Tapestry. In this episode Karen Armstrong talks about the value of wonder in a despairing world. Give it a listen if you have time. It is very interesting. It made me think about this morning on the ski trail. I love snapping photos. I want to capture the magic to hold and look at again. It is impossible, of course, but I still try.
It was very foggy today. The grey of the sky was so soft and velvety and the trees with the hoar frost…I was gazing at it all. Then a woman glided by. Her jacket was a peacock blue, so bright and luminous. So beautiful. I tried to capture the wonder of it. She glided away faster than I can dig my camera out of my ski pants. I resigned myself to watch the wonder and beauty of the moment. It did occur to me that I might be just a wonder, too, in my tangerine red ski jacket. I felt awe by the wonder of it.
There are many wonders around us and in our lives that can give our spirits a boost. Sometimes all we need to do is to stop, sit, listen, watch and remember. I’m thinking back again to March of 2011 and my memories of time in Ghana. I’m remembering some of the wonders of that time.
Last Week – March 31, 2011
I’m on a countdown of my days in Ghana. In exactly one week I will be winging my way back home. Before I came, someone asked me if I have been in a Third World country before. I guess they were worried about how I will fare. Or maybe it was because they were surprised on their first trip here and wantedme to be prepared. And since I’ve been here, people have asked how do I like Ghana. Does anything about it resonate with me? Hard questions to answer. Well, not hard to answer on a superficial level. As a tourist it is easy to say that I love my stay here. I can hear the ocean from my bed and the breezes are warm and soothing. Everything is new to me….my physical surroundings, the people, the politics, the colours…..everything.
On a much more personal level, I am unable to tell what it is that I feel about Ghana. I have not been homesick the time I’ve been away. I have not missed my suspended life….the cold or snow. I have not missed my work. You can say that I am really away. I do miss my family and my Sheba. At times, I would really like to have free running clean water from the faucet….water that I can drink and to brush and rinse my teeth with in abundance! And I wouldn’t mind having hot water to shower or shampoo my hair with. So, I’m learning to really appreciate what a valuable resource water is. And I would be able to have that most of the time, had I been staying in an upscale hotel instead of an eco-lodge. I’m not feeling that this has been a hardship or a deprivation. It has been an experience. I have a very privileged life back home. And I can have a very privileged life here if I choose. The question, of course, is do I wish such? I have always enjoy hard work and being an independent woman.
One week left! Impossible to know if I will miss Africa till I leave it and see..….
January is starting to feel long and weary already. I’m not complaining, just stating the facts. It’s the end of the day. I’m feeling irritable and disgruntle. I think I will just keep it to myself. I slept amazingly well last night despite the 2 cups of coffee I had. I’m thinking a cup would pick me up now but I’ll just stick with a herbal tea, a deep breath and a good memory. It is getting into evening.
I was itching to go skiing again today. There’s always this challenge of improving my time and skill. I held myself in check. I don’t want to get obsessive about it. I already had an hour of workout at the gym this morning. I had a good ski yesterday. I can see why I could get hook on a good feeling until it isn’t. I still had groceries to deliver to my mother and I should stay for a little visit. So I packed her stuff and took a short walk over and back.
I always enjoy visiting and having a cuppa with my mother. She is good company, a good conversationalist and a good storyteller. She’s been talking and telling me stories forever. I’m her oldest child. I treasure hearing the history of our family and villages of her and mine birth. I was 6 years old when we left China for Hong Kong. I saw my first electric lightbulb enroute in a hotel in Canton, now call Guangzhou. Isn’t that amazing, that I remember the time before electricity?
I’ve long talked and often about writing a book on our family’s history. All I’ve managed is little bits here and there. Little bits are better than nothing. Here’s a little tidbit from coffee with my mother from 2011.
COFFEE WITH MY MOTHER– Sept. 21, 2011
I had coffee with my mother at Tim Horton’s after her eye appointment with her opthalmologist. It has been awhile since it was just the two of us. I always enjoy such times with her for she is a wonderful storyteller. Much of our family history and life wisdom have been passed onto me in this way…over coffee and in easy conversation. What wonderful gifts she has given me. I shall sorely miss her when she is gone. I do not know how I will deal with it at the time. So I am appreciating her in the fullest in the present moment. I am listeningto her stories, taking all her soups for my health, accepting the vegetables from her garden…….I am taking time for her.
I drank too much coffee today. I forgot myself and didn’t specify that I wanted a decaf when I ordered my breakfast. Since they’ve already poured it, I didn’t want to make a fuss. When I went for a refill, I forgot again! I’ve been a little jittery since I got home. I’m drinking hot water like mad to flush it out of my system. I hope I can sleep tonight. There was a time when I drank coffee all day long at work, came home and had a large mug of coffee before bed and never think of it. Of course in those days of when I was a nurse, I never slept much. I took pride in how well I functioned on how little I slept. I’m sure that I was brain damaged then.
When I retired in 2013 I crashed. The sleep deprivation, stress and everything that was suppressed by fatigue all caught up with me. It took 3 years to catch up all the sleep I missed and to flush the caffeine, the stress and anxiety I had absorbed working in a hospital environment. I also took pride in how well I functioned having crashed so totally and heavily. How foolish and vain I was. Perhaps it’s that Chinese trait of saving face in me. It would have been easier and healthier if I had just stop, curled up and rested. But I guess that’s not who I was/am. Today I am still taking pride in striving, but I am more moderate and balanced.
I haven’t drank this much coffee since until today. I think I will be OK. It’s only 2 medium cups whereas in my younger golden days, it was many, many cups. It was my way of staying awake and on my feet. I still like to be alert and on my feet but I don’t need the caffeine to do it now. It’s fresh air and exercise. I had plenty this morning on the ski trail. It was early and I was all alone in a white winterland. It was beautiful. It was wonderful. It was marvelous.
Hmm. I’ve had another cup of hot water. I think I’ve tapped out much of my jitteriness. I think I will do some stretches to further relax me. I’ve been sharing thoughts and memories from 2011 this month. I will carry on the theme. Today’s share is on retirement.
THIS THING CALL RETIREMENT – OCT. 1, 2011
Retirement has been on my mind for awhile now. It seems like that is what we should strive for….all our lives. There is this message to work hard so that one day in the far off distance, we can finally do what we REALLY want to do. I don’t hear THEM, whoever they are, talk about doing the thing that we want now. And why don’t we?
I’m feeling that it is not yet my time to retire from my profession. There is still things for me to do and learn within that framework. And to tell the truth, I still love what I do. I’m feeling power in that knowledge. I’m feeling a great sense of freedom….to do what I like and to stop when I don’t. I’m rethinking what ‘work’, ‘retirement’ and life mean. I don’t think one needs to stop working in order to have a life. One needs to do what gives him a sense of worth, a sense of joy, accomplishment…..to have a life. And of course, we need balance. Too much of anything, even a good thing like work or leisure time, is not what living is all about.
And do we ever truly retire…from life? I hope not. I hope that when I am ‘tired’ of, or not physically able to work my present profession, I will find another something or another that has given me so much in return.
onethousandandtwo 