Honorary Keepers of the Lighthouse!

Being married to an artist definitely has its perks. For me, one of the greatest parts of being the Less Creative Other Half to a Creative Genius is getting to accompany my beau on some stellar “art research” excursions. We’ve been invited to experience the inner workings of a chocolate factory before, got to hang out at a micro-brewery when Marty’s custom-designed beer bottles were being filled, and most recently, we were whisked away to a nearby island to be Unofficial Keepers of the Race Rocks Lighthouse for 24 hours! It’s a tough job, but somebody has to be a tag-along bride! 😉

Race Rocks: Our new home away from home!

Race Rocks Lighthouse is one of the two oldest lighthouses on Canada’s west coast, and it can only be accessed by boat. (Fisgard is the other oldest lighthouse, and both have been in operation since 1860.) Marty and I had been by Race Rocks Lighthouse before (en route to see the Super Pod of orca whales, natch!), but we never imagined we would ever get to set foot on the sacred island, let alone spend a night at the Lighthouse Keeper’s house! (As Honorary Lighthouse Keepers, even!!) So what if the beacon itself has been automated for decades? Allow me to take a single night’s worth of credit for keeping the passing ships safe… 😉

Don't worry, ships passing in the night-- you're in great (albeit inexperienced) hands!

How on earth did this happen? How did the chance to hang out at Race Rocks Lighthouse fall into our laps?

I’m glad you asked! Last autumn, Marty was asked to donate an item to a charity’s fundraising auction here in Victoria. He generously donated a custom painting of the winner’s choice, and we were thrilled to bits when the auction winner requested a piece of the Race Rocks Lighthouse! Even better was the fact that the winner had actual, physical ties to Race Rocks and could arrange for us to spend an evening there, for “research purposes” obviously. Hanging out at the Race Rocks Lighthouse is not an opportunity that comes along very often or to very many people at all, so you can bet that I dubbed myself Marty’s “Art Manager” ASAP and insisted that I accompany him to the remote island when the invitation was extended. 🙂

I'm the manager. I go everywhere Marty goes.

Getting ready for our journey, I fretted about what to pack and how to prepare. What, exactly, does one wear to be a Lighthouse Keeper? How much food does one pack, especially if there’s a chance of being stranded on the island? Should I bring my own toilet paper? (Was there even a primitive toilet there?) Would I need a book to read? Would I get any sleep at all? (Race Rocks is home to a substantial bunch of migrating sea lions during many seasons of the year and is a notoriously loud and stinky place while they are there. Thankfully, the sea lions weren’t basking on the surrounding rocks during our visit, so we didn’t need to use our ear plugs or hold our noses for 24 repulsive hours!)

We were told by the auction winner to “bring a sleeping bag and food” with us– in addition to our signed waivers, of course– but I had no idea what to expect from the accommodations. Would we be roughing it on a rustic wooden pallet on the floor? Would we be crammed into a storage closet-sized ‘room’? Would there be heat? Could we cook? Call me naive, but I’d never been an Honorary Lighthouse Keeper before and had no idea what awaited me. (For the record: I resisted the urge to prepare all of the remaining food items we had in our fridge and pantry for a 24-hour stay, and instead packed enough food to last us 2 days, just in case. The weather forecast looked promising for a timely exit from the island, so my OCD kitchen tendencies were kept in check.)

On Wednesday afternoon, we met the official Lighthouse Keeper at the docks of Pearson College with our overstuffed (and impressively heavy) expedition backpacks on hand. We were wearing our most rugged hiking clothes, vintage PFD jackets (on loan from the college), and we had warm and dry clothing reserves waiting in our sacks, just in case our very small and otherwise exposed transportation boat left us soaked and freezing before we even pulled up to the jetty at Race Rocks. Luckily, the sail there was dry and mostly warm, if bumpy and a little nerve-wracking. (Did I mention I don’t know how to swim? Heh.) First hurdle: cleared!

On our way!

Our first surprise was encountered right at the jetty, where we were supposed to dock and make our way onto the island. Blocking our only pathway to the island was a moulting (read: cranky!) female elephant seal, who snorted, hissed, and generally threatened to bite us when we made even the slightest move towards her.

Race Rocks is a protected ecological reserve site, so one of the first and most important rules for guests is to not disturb the animals, at any cost to themselves. (In realistic terms, this means that regular visitors to the island have to stand back and witness the normal life cycles of resident animals, including mating, birth, death, abandonment, starvation, disease, stand-offs, etc.) This female seal showed no intention of moving off the jetty, and there was obviously no way for us to move her ourselves, so we ended up having to creep around her while grasping to the outside of the protective handrails on the jetty. Welcome to Race Rocks!

I was terrified as I scaled the very outer edge of the jetty, knowing that a sharp drop into still-tumultuous waters awaited me if that female seal lunged in my direction. (The group consensus, made before we exited the boat, was that it would be better to let go of the rail and fall into the water rather than risk being bitten by a moulting seal– if it came to that, which hopefully it wouldn’t. For the record: this is much easier said and done by people who know how to swim. Luckily, I scrambled past the seal without being bitten or plunging myself into the icy waters. Welcome to Race Rocks, indeed!)

Once we were safely past the Unofficial Race Rocks Guardian, we met our next animal friend around the corner– a gigantic male elephant seal named Misery who had taken up residence mere feet from the door of the Lighthouse Keeper’s house.

Meet Misery. (We are smiling in this pic but we are secretly afraid of waking the beast).

This particular Misery does not enjoy company (as evidenced by his continued maiming and killing of rival males and young seal pups), so we tiptoed gingerly past him while he slept, sending furtive prayers to the universe to keep him snoring until we were safely inside. Thankfully, the universe obliged. (I don’t know if I could have handled two seal antagonists within mere minutes of arriving at Race Rocks, especially one of the 1000+ lb, Alpha Male variety.)

But the lighthouse! Oh, the lighthouse!

Race Rocks Lighthouse by day

I was blown away by the actual light tower! A giddy grin affixed itself to my face and refused to budge or wane for the next 24+ hours. I was overcome by all sorts of romantic notions about lighthouses and spent most of the time on the island either admiring the light tower, photographing the light tower, thinking about the light tower, climbing the 98+ stairs to the top of the light tower, or enjoying the spectacular views from atop the light tower. Marty and I took occasional breaks inside to make tea or grab snacks, but the majority of our time was spent outside appreciating the magnificence of Race Rocks Lighthouse!

Race Rocks Lighthouse by night

The weather was perfect for the outing– not raining, not too windy, and we visited there the night before the Full Moon, too. We stayed up as late as possible, watching the sunset first and then witnessing the moonlight playing on the light tower several hours after our camera decided it could no longer capture the magnificence of the setting digitally. (The brightness of the full moon enabled us to keep a sharp watch on Misery, too. God knows we wouldn’t want to accidentally trip over him while we were skipping around like fools on the island! Antagonizing a male elephant seal in the dark would have been a definite– and probably fatal– Race Rocks FAIL.)

What did I tell you, fools? I OWN THIS ISLAND!

After what felt like a very short sleep, we crawled out of bed in time to catch the sunrise. (Would we have missed our only sunrise at Race Rocks Lighthouse? Never!!)

Breathtaking!

(In total, we snapped over 1150 photos in less than 24 hours on the island! Our first sweep helped us whittle this down to 500. It was nearly impossible to “just” pick 20 or so for this post.)

If this is what it’s like to be a “starving artist”, sign me up please! 😉

Final notes and details: The Lighthouse Keeper’s residence at Race Rocks is actually pretty classy and modern. (The Lighthouse Keeper offered us freshly baked cookies right out of the oven, which came in stark contrast to my idea of the house as a tiny, uber-drafty campsite.) There is no flushing toilet on site, but there is a primitive, indoor-outhouse-type toilet that more than suffices, especially when I was bracing myself for a day of peeing on rocks. There’s electricity, heat, a fully-equipped kitchen, and even wireless internet access there! (I decided not to bring our laptop with us, though. Contrary to popular belief, I can last for a day without checking my e-mail.)

Fortunately, the moulting female seal left the jetty during the night, so we didn’t have to deal with her menacing presence on the way back to the boat. Our return trip was delayed by a few hours due to wind and sketchy water conditions, but we had more than enough food to tie us over and the delay just meant more opportunities to take excessive amounts of photos! 🙂

What do you think, dear readers?

Was that an adventure or what?

Was the story worth the wait?

PS: A big thank you to everyone who visited Lake Superior Spirit on Thursday when I had the honour of guest posting in Kathy’s absence! Apologies for being a shoddy guest and not telling you I was even there until after the fact. What can I say? I was lighthouse keeping! (Please feel free to check out Kathy’s blog when you get the chance. She is one of my favourite stops each morning, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to guest post there.)

The World’s Most Interesting Man

Yacht races: what could possibly be more glamorous, luxurious, and filthy rich-sounding?

If you answered “nothing”, you would be correct! After all, Nothing sounds more rich and high-rolling than a yacht race.

The proof is in the picture!

Whenever the Memorial Day weekend hits the United States, we– the citizens of Victoria BC– are hit with a yacht race: the Swiftsure International Yacht Race, to be more specific. At the end of May each year, hundreds of luxury yachts cruise into the Inner Harbour and prepare to race up to 140 nautical miles in the Juan de Fuca Strait. Visitors pour into our humble city in the hopes of snapping some impressive photos of the yachts in action, and the locals are whipped into a frenzy as well, either because they love a good yacht race, too, or because they can’t freaking find a solitary parking space downtown, for the love of god!!!

Anyway. My dear husband– artist, entrepreneur, and general Man of Mystery– created a new, yacht-themed painting just in time for this year’s Swiftsure Race. It featured the race’s most prominent, recognizable, and well-decorated catamaran: the Dragonfly. We had it on display at our booth this weekend, and guess who scored an invitation to be an honorary crew member on a yacht because of it?

Yep: Marty!

Marty was invited to grace the Legend 45 with his handsome, interesting, and hopefully-not-seasick-prone self for the shorter of the Swiftsure races– not the full 140 nautical mile race (obviously), because that would involve suspending his better judgment for 24+ hours. The Legend 45 needed an extra crew member for the inland race, and what better crew member to recruit than a man who had never been sailing in his entire life before?

At least he can *look* the part!

“Do you have any boating experience?”, the skipper asked my dear husband.

“Nope” came Marty’s honest answer.

“Well, do you know how to handle ropes or tie any nautical knots?”

Again, “Nope” was the answer, offered with utmost sincerity.

“No matter– we’ll see you at the docks tomorrow morning at 8:30 am!”

I was pretty excited about Marty’s upcoming sojourn on the sea. How glamorous! How exotic! How luxurious! I pictured my suave partner donning a gold suit and ultramarine dress shirt for the race, his (rather short) hair whipping in the wind to the delight of his fellow 80s band crew members. There would possibly be suggestive hip-juttings and sultry poses on board as the yacht sliced through choppy waves at blistering speeds, but these questionable antics would all be in the name of High Fashion, Glamour, and Princess Diana’s Pop Music. (Hey– the only mental image I have of yacht races comes courtesy of the iconic Duran Duran video, Rio– what can I say?):

My dear husband: stand-in for the fabulous Simon Le Bon?

I could have been the Exotic Other on board, but I declined the invitation to be the Token Female amidst a bunch of crude, middle-aged sailor men. 🙂

Marty was a lot more nervous about the Swiftsure Race, however. His mental images of boats at sea were drawn more from disaster movies like A Perfect Storm and perhaps also Jaws, so he worried about getting tossed overboard into dark and churning waters or having his hands get mangled by ropes as he furiously attempted to secure something-nautical-or-other on deck:

"Watch the hands!! I need these to paint!"

Both of us agreed on one thing, though: the Swiftsure Race would be fast and the winds would be furious— our opinions only differed on the degrees to which we assumed (or even hoped?) that expensive gold suits and ultramarine-saturated dress shirts would be involved. 😉

Imagine Marty’s utter deflation, then, when this year’s race turned into a dreaded “Driftsure”– a weekend of little to no winds. The starting gun fired, and instead of hurtling forward in a dazzling display of coloured sails and skilled seamanship, the Legend 45 drifted backwards. Verrrrrry slooooooooowly. The entire inland (short) race was expected to take between 4 and 5 hours to complete, but the Legend 45 required a full 4 hours to make it back to the starting buoy— so much was it struggling against tides, currents, and a decided lack of breeze!

(Clearly, the whole point of the race is to sail, not to use any motors to power the yachts forward. The sails were up, but the wind was definitely down.)

I was at the Harbour this whole time, daydreaming about Marty’s unexpected promotion into the upper echelons of class and wealth. Marty! Sailing! Yacht race! Richness!! (I chose not to dwell on the skippers’ professed love of beer swilling in these fantasies and mentally substituted any real-life crassness or crudeness with Simon Le Bon hair and velvet 80s vocals, respectively. Her name is Rio…)  I was quite surprised– nay, shocked– to get a phone call from my dearest a full hour after he was expected to return to the Harbour, confirming that the real racing was just getting underway. Driftsure, indeed! He ended up docking at 8 pm, which meant a full 10 hours were spent at sea.

Cheap green anoraks are the new expensive gold suits, don't you know..

Luckily, the experience was not entirely for naught– Marty captured some great photos of the race and the colourful sails that he would never have been able to get from our station at the Harbour (when all the sails are down). He also got to cross “Race a Yacht” and “Re-Enact a Classic 80s Music Video” off of his Bucket List. And as for me? I had that stupid What do you do with a drunken sailor? song stuck in my head all day, and it miraculously ceased when my dizzy but victorious sailor set his sea-legs back on dry land. Thank goodness! 🙂

Half A World Away

Believe it or not, today marks the 5-year anniversary of my escape from the Ivory Tower. (Well, I didn’t so much “escape” from university as I “successfully defended my Master’s thesis”, but the fight-or-flight hormones were pumping all the same that day!) I am so far removed from the person I was in grad school that it’s hard to remember even being there. Ever. Some of my friends like to tease me and say, ‘Hey! If you weren’t such a quitter, you could have finished your Ph.D. by now’, but I can’t imagine having spent the past five years still in school. Talk about torture! 🙂

Hmmm... five more years in university or a World Cup soccer game viewing in Old Town Square, Prague? Decisions, decisions!

Going to university after I graduated from high school never seemed like an option for me, and by that, I mean I always just assumed that I would go to university. (In retrospect, I’m glad I felt this way, but my parents would have loved me all the same if I announced I was going to take up semi-professional karate after Grade 12. Their love for me is the very definition of ‘unconditional’.) But yes: There was no choice involved in me heading off to post-secondary school– it just was. It was almost as though I believed that getting an undergraduate degree was as mandatory as attending K-12. So I got a Bachelor’s Degree in Communication Studies and then applied for a Master’s Degree in the same field, because WHAT’S ANOTHER $15,000 and 2 YEARS DURING THE PRIME OF MY LIFE when you’re already in that game? 🙂

Me (via dramatic re-enactment in Prague): Gee, I might as well keep hanging out here...

Well. My lifelong love of school and my mad academic skillz were put to the extreme test about 2 days into my MA studies. Listening to one of my peers babble on and on excitedly about some “critical issue” or another in my COMS of Biotechnology class, I realized with a mixture of surprise and boredom: Maybe I don’t love Communication Studies as much as I thought I did, and Perhaps I’d rather die a slow and grueling death than be a university professor in the future. This was not a fun (or timely) discovery to make, seeing as I had just started the graduate program, so I resolved to “give it some more time” and, failing all else, to force myself to graduate. Unfortunately, time did nothing to soften up my bad attitude, so I ended up undertaking, writing, and defending a 100+ page thesis, hating everything the entire time. I was a smart girl, and I was not a quitter. I would earn those “M.A.” initials behind my name if it killed me!

And it nearly did.

My personal Coat of Arms during my Master's Program. (Actually, this is inside one of the chapels in Kutna Hora, Czech Republic.)

During the 17 months it took me to complete my coursework and write/defend a 105-page thesis on women’s experiences with various methods of contraception*, I transformed from a positive, life-loving young woman into a anxiety-ridden, majorly stressed-out basket case. I carried a gigantic burden of PAIN and SUFFERING with me the whole time, and every. little. thing brought me to ugly tears. I remember my dad phoning to wish me a happy birthday after my first year of grad studies and not knowing how to react when I responded to his cheeriness with high-decibel wails and frustrated sobs (probably about discursive theory or something equally rage-tastic).

I couldn’t help myself.

Me vs. Me

I developed a considerable case of first-time depression during my MA program, and I worried constantly about alienating my remaining friends and even worse: losing my still-new marriage to Marty. (Poor man had a rough go when his blushing bride morphed, almost overnight, into a screeching banshee!) I became hyper-vigilant and continually monitored my behaviours and thoughts, which only made me become more robotic and Not At All Fun To Be Around. I should have more fun. Why am I not having fun? I’m no fun to be around. Why would anybody want to be with somebody so un-fun? I will lose all the friendships I’ve ever had because I’m not fun. BEING NO FUN IS NO FUN AT ALL!!

I can’t pinpoint exactly what it was about Grad School that caused me to become such a horrible shadow of my former self. Was it the workload? Was it the forced classroom dialogues over issues I could care less about? (Foucault again? Really?) Was it the extremely rocky relationship I developed with my former supervisor? The subsequent fallout I had with my former supervisor? The fallout that effectively burned a gigantic bridge between us and precluded me from ever using her as a reference again, forever and ever amen?

In any case, once I became so stressed out and apoplectic about everything, I had a very difficult time recovering. Marty would try to take me hiking on the weekends so I could have a few hours of *not* thinking about my thesis. Of course, the entire time, my panoramic views of the Rocky Mountains would be obstructed with thoughts like “I should be working on my thesis. All of my classmates are probably working on their projects right now. I feel guilty for not working on my thesis.” I’m not even exaggerating the extent of my awfulness. Somebody else from the Legitimate Science Department could have undertaken a quantitative study on “The Degree of Dana’s Horribleness During Her M.A. Program”, and the objective, hard data results would have come back: 98th Percentile of Terrible.

After months and months of withering away into a toxic, shriveled-up crisp of a person, the day finally came for me to defend my thesis. I was the first in my cohort to bring my thesis up for defense, and boy oh boy, was I a wreck! (Aside: I was not the first in my cohort to use academic-sounding words like “cohort”. Not a chance! I just threw that in there to sound smart.) Anyway. I had developed a severe stutter the night before my defense, and as I tried to rehearse my opening speech beforehand, I had poor Marty’s ears panicking (and probably bleeding). C-c-c-critical f-f-f-em-in-in-ist dis-dis-dis-course. I kept telling myself: Three hours and then it’s over. Three hours and then I can have my life back. Three hours of PAIN and SUFFERING and then everything can go back to normal… if I pass. (For the record: failing my thesis would have been soul-crushing. It’s rare for students to fail a defense, unless they plow ahead with the exam against their supervisor’s better judgment. Me? I had tickets booked to Europe for June, so I needed everything done and behind me before I left. PASS OR DIE!!!)

For the record: a nice, long trip to Europe cures any/all school-related blues.

I had allowed my exam to be “open”, meaning that anybody could come and watch. Yes, anybody! (The alternative was keeping it “closed” but risking tougher questions from the panel, who wouldn’t have an audience to hold them accountable for their meanness.) I ended up with an audience of about 5 people– Marty included– plus my panel, which consisted of my supervisor, the Department Head of Qualitative Psychology, and the Department Head of Women’s Studies. Tough. As. Nails.

I managed to get through my opening speech without stuttering, which was a miracle in itself. Then all I remember is saying “discourse” and “discursive” about 8 billion times over the course of a few hours. It was a blur of discursiveness. Marty watched on politely the entire time, trying not to let his eyes glaze over with the residue of Academese. What a champ! The tough questions came to a close. My panel conferred in private. It was announced that I had passed. Just a few revisions needed to be completed on my thesis, but then my program would be over and I could officially have my life back.

WHEEEE!!! Let's go and BE GYPSIES for a few months!

It took me a long time to fully recover from grad school. The program had pulverized my soul and heart with dramatic, overzealous kicks and stomps, so the transition from She-Beast back to Ordinary Woman did not happen overnight. I still have a difficult time staying out of my head, so to speak. It’s natural for me to analyze and over-analyze everything, and as much as I detest debating for the sake of debating, occasionally I find myself making a gigantic deal over nothing, just because I can. (I’m always so ashamed to catch myself doing this!)

If you can believe it, I seriously considered pursuing a Ph.D. in Sociology soon after I finished my Master’s Degree. (Yeah, a Doctorate in Delusional, maybe…) It wasn’t because I wanted to do it, but because I felt I should. My supervisor, channeling a Greek chorus, told me that I belonged in the university and that I could never escape my destiny, and for a while I believed her. But then my paltry iota of Street Smarts finally (FINALLY!) kicked in. I didn’t want to be in school for another 5+ years, and then possibly for the rest of my life!!! I wanted to travel, to work at a ‘real job’, and to just plain old live for a little while. Screw the Ph.D.! I would dig a hole out of my so-called destiny and chart a new path!

My starring role in "The Shawshank Redemption". Just like Tim Robbins, but with a darker tan. And only one leg in this shot (??)

Looking back, I feel okay that I pursued my Master’s Degree. It still doesn’t feel like the *best* thing I could have done with those two years of my life– and I definitely wasn’t rendered any more intelligent or competent by real world standards because of it– but then again, what would have been the best thing to do during that time? Take up semi-professional karate? 😉 I take comfort now in believing that I am taken care of by the Universe, even if I don’t understand the bigger picture at any given point (or at all– let’s be honest here).  Part of me also secretly believes that an opportunity will present itself one day and will demand a Master’s Degree (in COMS, no less) as a pre-requisite. Then, won’t somebody be glad she went through hell and back to earn those silly initials behind her name…

Anyway. This was a really, really long way of saying Happy Five Years Of Being Out of Grad School to me! I’m happy to be sharing the more cheerful version of myself with all of you, but I’m certainly not above signing this particular post off with the initials that rendered me decidedly less cheerful than I am now:

Dana, B.A., M.A 🙂

Inadvertently looking smug. I am the Master of Smugness.

*Don’t ask me how this topic relates, in any way, to Communication Studies. My logic: People spoke to me about their experiences, and Speaking = Communicating, therefore I win COMS thesis writing!

There’s A Hole In My Bucket List, Dear Liza

I’ve been hit with a serious case of gratitude lately.

I love my life, I love my husband, I love my job, I love my city, I love my body, I love the food we eat, I love the clothes we wear, I love the springtime sunshine, I love the delicate fragrance of cherry blossoms in the air– there’s really not a whole lot I don’t love and feel thankful for these days!

Watch out, dear readers: I’m pretty sure this condition is highly contagious. You’d better be careful, lest you suddenly break into song whilst reading this post at your cubicle. (It’s like a computer virus– you can catch it from the Internet, especially if you’re reading infected posts like this one!) Spontaneous dance routines are also a noted side effect of 3rd-Degree Thankfulness, just so you know. I wouldn’t want you to become alarmed by your involuntary toe-tapping or anything. Don’t worry: The uncontrollable urges to get your groove on can all be explained by Extreme Happiness and an Abundance of Gratitude. Dr. Dana to the rescue! (You’re welcome.)

Strangely, all this thankfulness has got me thinking about pastures lately– you know, those patches of greener-seeming grass on the other side. Hint, hint. It struck me that I am smack-dab in the middle of where I’ve always wanted to be: I have a fabulous partner and neither of us are tethered to a desk in some random, soul-sucking Office Job. We’re both healthy (aside from Marty’s stubborn case of bronchitis and my pesky affliction with gratitude). I get to work out and run errands (or blog!) at times when other people are at work. I can cook all day in my galley kitchen if I so choose. I make excellent food that renders my body fit and happy (sketchy experiments with almond milk aside). We live in the most gorgeous, oceanside city and are blessed to call the amazing country of Canada ‘home‘. In sum, we have the greatest existences and we have already been granted nearly everything we’ve ever asked for!

I can't take credit for actually making these sprout wraps-- a farm on Salt Spring is responsible-- but I CAN take credit for slicing it up like sushi and arranging it so artfully on a plate!

But.

That’s when I came to the unnerving realization that my Bucket (List) is full of holes.

I’ve become so comfortable in this cushy lifestyle of mine that I’ve neglected to keep my canister of dreams and lofty ambitions topped up. My Bucket List has leaked considerably! My plans to travel the world have slipped out of my rusty bucket and have formed a puddle just out of reach. I’ll tend to that puddle when I have more time and money. My dreams of writing a book (or two, or three, or four) have been washed away by my familiar, busy routines. Who needs to write a book when everything is great already? My goals to master entire new languages have all but evaporated out of my bucket, leaving a more modest sediment sloshing around near the bottom: I will learn a handful of new Czech words. If I feel like it or get around to it. Jsem líný. (<– I am lazy.)

Inadvertently stumbling upon a pilgrimage route in the Czech Republic.

How did this happen? When did I resign myself to a Bucket List filled with sludgy, mediocre dreams? Everything is so wonderful in my life right now that I will never need to Dream Big or Have Grand Ambitions ever again. Goodbye, Bucket List– I won’t be needing you anymore!

I don’t think so.

It’s time to amp up my dreams again and fill up Ye Olde Bucket List once more! After all, how horrible would it be to somehow end up back in an Office Job in the future, without having traveled for long stretches of time when I had the chance? And what’s the point of only setting knee-high type goals– the easily, embarrassingly attainable ones– when you can set that proverbial bar way higher? Come on, everyone– let’s fix that hole!

Number One on my new and improved Bucket List is to travel. There is so much to see in this wonderful world of ours, from far-off places like India, New Zealand, and Malaysia to the distant corners of my own country: Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and let’s not forget Quebec. I would love to do a Lighthouse trip and travel around North America in search of beacons, and despite my considerable fear of bears, I would love to visit Alaska again. (This time, we will make it to Mount Denali.)

All this travel will require at least a working knowledge of some other world languages. It embarrasses me that I can only speak my native English, and having to pronounce the few French words I do know out loud is like bludgeoning all ear drums in the vicinity with a dull razor blade. I’m way better at Spanish– No comprende— or even Czech– Nemluvim Česky. My new Bucket List will have a much more international flavour. It will be like the U.N. of Bucket Lists.

Then there’s the issue of Those Books. I love to write. I love to have people reading what I write. I love books. I love bookstores. And I would love love love to write and publish a book (for the bookstore!) Then I’d love to write and publish another book. And possibly even another book after that. So my revised Bucket List will be like the U.N. Library of Bucket Lists. 😉

There are a ton of other things that I can put into my U.N. Library Bucket List. Some of them seem a little far-fetched (like becoming a nutritionist, almost-vegan chef, or having my own, low-budget cooking show); some of them will require some serious work on my part (six pack abs, baby!); and some of them are a wee bit personal to be broadcasting over the World Wide Web. It’s an important realization, though: knowing that it’s possible to be both grateful/comfortable in your current life -AND- hopeful and ambitious for your future. ‘Feeling thankful’ does not preclude ‘Still dreaming’, right? The Bucket List will always have a place!

Oh, travel! How I miss thee!

Is your Bucket List well-maintained, or have you let it develop leaks and holes?

What are you thankful for?

What would you still like to accomplish?