Another Page … the view from my trailer

Today is Canada Day, July 1st, 2015, as good a time as any to begin writing this new blog.

I am at the trailer, near Kincardine, Ontario, and have just spent the first two hours of the morning drinking coffee, reading, playing a CD I borrowed from the library, Mozart’s Adagios, listening to the rain on the roof, watching through the trees as the mist swirls and dissipates over the lake. There’s a greyish tint to the light, but we’re promised the rain will end by noon and the temperature will rise again to a mild warm, but not the levels I’m used to on the Bequia verandah.

I don’t mind though as I’m feeling comfortable already in my new space with a solitary routine that suits my frame of mind at this time of my life. It struck me just now, and this is why I felt compelled to begin writing my new blog today (even though I’ve already given it a great deal of thought over the past month) that I now have world enough and time, the room of my own, without constant distraction, nagging from the internet, to be able to think, first and foremost. To think clearly, to get to know my own mind again, to learn to live with myself and decide what matters most to me – and just do it. I’m reading more, listening … really listening! … to music I enjoy, I’m watching the birds and the rabbits and chipmunks and even a bold red squirrel, as they go about their business before the rest of the park’s human inhabitants wake and begin driving cars and bikes or walking dogs along the road in front of my trailer.

My reading can now be deep and more directed than it has been for a long time. I truly think about what it is I like or dislike about a book and I will not waste time on any that don’t encourage me to keep reading (although I do give each a fighting chance before setting them aside and beginning a new book). I still will not write reviews of the books I read, but I am compiling a list of the best I’ve read so far this year that I will post to my main blog, just in case anyone is interested in my opinions.

It dawned on me this morning too that I have reached a point in my life when I feel comfortable with learning for learning’s sake. I have no need to accumulate knowledge in order to perform better in a job and make money or to show off facts and information that have lodged in my brain. What I now have time for is pure learning, for interest sake. Not because I will use it for anything other than my own personal enjoyment. This is what I wish school had been about all those years ago. Instead of training students to make money and work at a job for the rest of their lives, I wish we had been encouraged to be curious and become life-long learners. There is so much, now that I have world enough and time, that I want to know and experience, and I can do that right here in my trailer, or on my Bequia verandah while I’m there during the winter months.

Then there’s my writing … While I haven’t actually “written” anything new in this past month I’ve lived here, other than a short piece for Carin Makuz’s Litter I See Project, I have put a lot of thought into my second novel, my unpublished novellas and short stories. And I’ve made lists and checked them twice. They do say that thinking is writing, as is gazing out the window at the lake … which is what I am doing right now.

And I realize, as well, that I now have the premise behind this new blog. I will write about what I am doing and thinking and planning here in my trailer and on my verandah. I hope there will be something of interest to my readers, that you will consider subscribing and following, and will pour yourself a cup of coffee or tea, or a glass of wine, should you prefer, to join me here in my place so we may catch up, discuss, relax and enjoy.

You are most welcome here! Enjoying the view with me from my trailer or verandah.

Susan