A New Beginning

It's a time for a change for me now. This past year has been a bit of a gong show if you will. I had a lot of time on my hands this past week end and I guess my thoughts were all over the place. A lot of the blogs I was reading were talking about the Spring weather and the reawakening of nature all around. I wanted to share in these feelings also but my brain wasn't allowing me to do so. It was spending too much time thinking about what was in my life and not what is.

It was around this time last year that everything in my life was on the positive side. I was in a relationship that I was extremly happy about. My job, although challenging at the best of times, was keeping me employed and busy. It was also at this time that I was planning my summer vacation. What else could I want.

For a long time I wanted to visit the Province of Nova Scotia. I wanted to visit the small, picturesque coastal towns along the highways and biways and to feel the fresh, crisp air of the ocean breezes. To see for myself the colorful sunsets, feast on the seafood and scope out the architecture from a bygone era. And, I wanted to share this with that someone special in my life. The plans were in process. The town we selected was Shelburne. A small, if not quaint little town just over halfway between Halifax and Yarmouth. This would offer us an opportunity to travel around within an hour or so of other historic towns and see as much as possible without being constantly on the road.

We found a cute little cottage in Shelburne right across the street from the Marina and withing walking distance of almost everything. The plan was to leave on the Friday that my holiday was to start. No sense messing around. With only a two hour flight, I pre-booked a room at a motel near the airport because I was only able to get the rental car for the next day. And finally I booked another room at a motel on the way back to Halifax so we could tour around Peggy's Cove and Lunenburg. Everything was set. Now it was just the long drawn out anticipation of the journey.

Well, vacation was still months away and there was no sense wishing life away so, it was back to the grind. Then one day a couple of months later, everything began to fall apart. I guess to put it briefly, I got the, "It's not you it's me..." going away present. To say I was stunned would be a gross understatement. Like others, it wasn't like I hadn't gone thru this before in my life, but this stung. Hard. I didn't see it coming and it caught me off guard. I did everything I could to just stay focused.

For about the next five or six weeks I was just going thru the motions. We were getting to the end of our production season at work when bombshell number two hit. About a week before my vacation, I was told my services would no longer be required. I was being given eight weeks notice plus severance which would begin after my vacation ended. Nice touch. Have a nice vacation. As I found out, the reasons were benign. They were looking for a way to put a leash on me. I was doing my job and then some. The people I worked with were just as stunned. I was so angry it felt like I could chew rocks and spit out pebbles.

At that point, a couple of friends suggested that I just cancel my trip. But, like a dumb ass, I went anyways. It was almost like I couldn't get out of Dodge fast enough. The flight was uneventful, but I'm sure in my subconscious I was hoping the plane would take a nose dive. Didn't happen. With the help of a chatty limo driver, I found the motel I booked for the night. A non-smoking room which smelled like it was inhabited by a chain smoking monkey. I was already counting the seconds before the car rental office opened up. Believe me, it couldn't come fast enough.

Anyways, the next morning, I got the car, checked out of hell and was on the road to my next destination. It was a great drive. No traffic, smooth roads on what looked to be a brand new highway and gorgeous scenery everywhere you looked. About an hour and a half later I was driving around what would be my home away from home for the next eight days. Without much difficulty, I found the cottage.

I stepped up onto the small patio and noticed a gas BBQ, ironically from the company where I worked. There was a note welcoming me posted on the door which I hadn't notice right away. When I was sure I was at the right place, I opened the door, then stepped inside. And suddenly, I felt as alone as any human being could ever feel. Everything that I was feeling, or not feeling, for the past six weeks hit me like a 2 x 4. What the hell was I doing here, I wondered? The sick thing was I had this romantic notion that I would get a last second phone call but that didn't happen.

The cottage was cute and adequate for what I would need and the couple who owned and rented the property were great people. I occupied myself every day staying out doing touristy things as long as possible. And, considering I didn't want to drive around too much, I put around 1800km on the car while I was there. It was everything I expected and more. I took almost 600 pictures while I was there.

Would I do this again? Maybe......maybe not! This was a trip planned for two and I mistakenly thought I could handle it. I guess in a way I did. But at what cost and what was I trying to prove anyway? Nothing that I could think of. A lot has changed since last April when all of this planning began. Some good, some bad. I feel like something has kind of died a little and I guess I'm looking for the newness of the Spring days to rekindle my inner me. Perhaps, one day, I will look back on those photos and see something different than what I see in them now.

One of the things I read on the weekend was from the Blog, http://sixtyfivewhatnow.blogspot.com/. Lake Viewer (Rosaria) wrote, "Life is good. It isn't perfect. It never was. We always have to give up something in order to reach a new goal. Maybe that's one of the reasons I like Easter so much: it is a story of death and sacrifice, a story of renewal, a story of transformation. However we see the parallels in our own lives, the anniversary reminds us of the arc of our lives, the ups and downs, the constant push to be fully present and in resplendent ascension in our humanity."

Beautiful words from a beautiful lady and just what I needed to read to create the spark I was looking for. Like the old saying goes, "What doesn't kill you will only make you stronger". God, I hope so!