My Life Is Good

I was in Vancouver and had just figured out my hotel didn’t have a restaurant that served breakfast.  But more importantly, it didn’t serve coffee, which was a problem for me…A HUGE problem.  So I pulled up the map and started looking for the closest place I could walk to so I could stop the withdrawals from happening.  Up came Footo Croissant, now having owned a bakery that specialized in artisan croissants, I tend to be overly snobby when it comes to the croissant, but I really needed coffee.

When I walked into this small shop with its burnt orange walls and wood floors, the one thing that stood out was that old familiar smell, croissants baking in the oven and then a buzzer and out came fresh croissants.  I almost started to cry, real tears of joy!

First things first, I needed a cup of coffee, now again for the aforementioned reasons, I tend to be snobby when it comes to coffee, but this morning there was no time for snobbery and I ordered a large coffee and a classic croissant.  It should be noted that for what had to be a 20oz coffee and a croissant my total came to $5.30 CANADIAN.  How could I go wrong?  I did not.

Over my croissant and coffee, I started to reflect on my life.  Life was good. I was, after all, sitting in a croissant shop in Vancouver.  I was here because my husband was wrapping up a tour he was managing and I came to play tourist.  I also came because I missed my husband.  I hadn’t seen him in just about three weeks, and that was a long time apart for us, and I missed him…a lot.

Over the last few weeks, I took a part-time job for a company delivering groceries.  It is actually a great job; I can work around my unconventional life and make some money. As I was driving to someone’s house with their groceries, I had the music on in the car; the sun was shining, and I had this overwhelming sense of calm.  A sense of calm I hadn’t felt in a really long time. My daughter graduated and already had a teaching job.  She was very excited about it, and I am still finding it impossible to believe my little girl is going to be teaching kids about English Literature.  Raymond is doing well, is happily married, and is really the same ten-year-old boy in a 25-year-old body, which makes me, his sister and Rob just shake our heads pretty much on a daily basis.

Also over the last few weeks, I had a small thought that I was going to take my blog in a different direction, a more commercial direction and I started a mentoring program and joined a load of writing and blogging Facebook groups. I all of a sudden began to stress out about my blog and all the criticism it was getting. I hated the feeling I had at the end of the day, and I came to the conclusion that wasn’t what I wanted.  It all had the opposite effect on me; I didn’t feel like I was growing and I even stopped writing for a few weeks.  Once I left all the groups and the mentoring program, my writing came back to me; words just started flowing out of me and onto my screen.  I was happy with my blog again and most of all I was happy writing again.

I’m a lucky girl; I have weathered a lot of storms in my fifty years, and I have managed to come out of it all a little battered and bruised, but not broken.  I have wonderful children; I get to travel around the globe with my husband to places I’ve never been before and see so many new things. Life is good.

*Photo cred:  Me