on track

Today's date stamp should read true to label - I'm finishing writing this on the 7th in the wee hours, but I started writing it on the 6th. I am working on getting back to working in the Toronto time zone - the late nites and sleeping in is fine for a while but now it is time for me to do some earlier to bed and sooner to rise...

I'm also getting back to the exercise I enjoyed so much at the beginning of my sabbatical: tonite I went for a nice walk in the evening and tomorrow I'm joining up at the U of T gym which is (in my bizarrely and ridiculously awesome set up here) a short block away from my house, and I can cut along a driveway access and get there in about 2 minutes. They've even got a pool (actually 3 pools) and do aqua aerobics classes which I've been meaning to get into for ages... woohoo!

And I've been reminded today that even when I am struggling to make the right decisions around keeping on track, I'll get the signs I need. Early this evening I went to an amazing literary reading at First Nations House here at U of T, starring Lee Maracle (awesome amazing novelist, poet, playwright etc) and Waubgeshig Rice (lovely gorgeous spunky man who is a journalist in his day job but has released a collection of short stories). I went there, which makes heaps of sense in lots of ways... I mean, I am the Indigenous lit girl; this is what I love. I knew it was this afternoon (it was in my diary, on my wall calendar and under a magnet on my fridge) but when the time came to go to the venue (FNH is just upstairs from Aboriginal Studies) I was really nervous going on my own and decided to be too shy to go and so walked downstairs back towards the street even though it was starting in ten mins.
I told myself that if I saw anyone walking up to FNH as I walked down the stairs I would turn around and follow them back up, but even though two guys were heading up in the opposite direction I then decided still not to follow them. I stood outside on the footpath and felt awful for not going but tried to make excuses to myself for not going. I was shy. I felt sick. Who would know anyway, if I didn't go. Etc etc etc... Seriously, I was being my 15 year old self to a T. I wanted to ring my sister to see if I should go but I don't live in the same country as her anymore and I knew what she would say. Of course I should go. Hmm. I felt guiltier, but no more motivated than before.
I turned around, and saw an older lady standing beside me - and realised it was Whaea Jackie, the lovely woman who runs the library at FNH. We got talking and she asked me if I was going to the reading... and told me to go! Hahaha as I walked back up the stairs I was reminded that there are many ways we are given to keep on track... and in this case, she was one of them.
And the reading? It was fantastic. Of course it was.