Today was the sort of day where nothing is right. I slept later than I would have liked and didn't accomplish the things I'd hoped. I couldn't focus on a perfectly good book. I started three different blog posts and deleted each one. I am not bored, but I'm restless. I've spent a lot of days in a small space.

Tomorrow, though, I will leave the house early, and I will bring my camera and my journal, and I will drive my favourite gigantic truck and listen to the radio and spend time with nice people. Thank goodness for that.  

It has been a lovely break, really. I have spent it doing lots of quiet things - I've been reading and taking walks and a few days ago I started painting. Painting! I haven't really painted much of anything in years, but it's been so enjoyable lately. It's nice to have time for these things. In the process, I have been working my way through the Gilmore Girls (for the eighty-seventh time) and have given myself some mean neck-cramps, but it has been so very worth it. 

Today, though, I am restless. No attempts to read or write or paint or work amounted to anything, and that is driving me nuts. The nice part is that nothing I need to do is terribly pressing. The not so nice part is that I would like to scream into my beloved prairie abyss.  

And I suppose that is all I have to say. In six days I will be back on the other side of the country, and I'm okay with that.

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It turns out I like being in the middle of nowhere as much as I like being in the middle of a city. Or something like that. I was trying to explain yesterday that I’ve missed the way Alberta looks - but I don’t know if it’s really Alberta in particular or if I just like being out of the city as much as I like being in it.

I am back at home for Christmas. A few nights ago I went for a run—the sky faded from blue to gold as the sun set into a horizon that seemed to stretch on for years, and I wanted to throw myself onto my back in a field and watch the stars until morning. Home is its usual mix of challenges, but I have missed going outside and being sandwiched between little more than snow and sky.

Yesterday I went to visit my dad’s mom, my baba. She lives alone in a town about half an hour away from here. Visiting her is easy because she doesn’t like to chat much—she just likes to know you’ve remembered her. My baba can do many things, but setting a clock is not one of them. It’s a miracle she ever knows what time it is. I arrived at 2:00, but the clock on the microwave said 10:00 a.m., the clock on the stove said 4:00 p.m., and the clock on the wall was fifteen minutes fast. She made me instant coffee and asked me how I liked being away. I told her about library school and about the magazine and about riding my bike through the city (she cringed at that part). I helped her set the table for today's Christmas Eve dinner and listened to her while she listed off her holiday plans – her social calendar is far more impressive than mine, with Christmas parties here and New Year’s Eve dances there and hair appointments and dinners with neighbours strewn in-between.

And I took her picture. I’ve wanted to take it for ages, but my baba can be an intimidating woman and I’ve always been afraid to ask. Today I didn’t even ask – I just did it, and she seemed to be okay with it. (I used film, though, so I don’t have anything to show for it yet.) This summer it occurred to me that I didn’t know her very well at all. My grandma – my mom’s mom – volunteers information about her life and her past and her feelings quite willingly (which I kind of love), but my baba is a vault. But I am often afraid to ask her questions about her life because I don't want to pry. I see the look she gets when she thinks back to when her husband was alive, which is as far back in her history as I've ever seen her look, and I don't want to make her venture further into her memory than she really wants to go.

My baba goes by several names and I don’t know which one is “real” – or, I guess, she goes by several variations of the same name. Growing up, I always knew that her name was Jenny, and I had only ever seen it spelled that way: J-e-n-n-y. But the more I paid attention, I noticed that she spelled her name differently on different things. Sometimes it’s Jenny, sometimes Jeannie, and sometimes Genia, and I hear all three pronunciations from different people as well. I don’t know if there’s a “real” one, or a “right” one, but I have known this woman my whole, entire life and do not actually know her birth name. 

It isn’t that I think she’s, you know, the leader of an underground crime ring run by elderly Ukrainians. But I wonder what kind of childhood one has to have to come out of it not being sure which name is yours. 

It isn't uncommon, though. My sweet next-door neighbour who gives me pies over the back fence has always been "Molly" to me and to everyone else, but last year she told me that her full name is actually Melania, and that Molly was the "English" name they had given her in school. I suspect my baba's story is similar, and that any mystery is mystery I have added myself. But I'm still too shy to ask. 

On the drive home, I wound through side-roads and took photos and generally delayed my return. I can only spend so much time in this tiny little house. I’ve been reading a lot and drawing a lot. Winter tends to be when this happens most. I fill my journal pages with more doodles than words lately and look for small escapes wherever I can find them.

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I was going through old photos. These are my friends, and this was last March.

Right now, these pictures feel more like winter than actual winter.

It hasn't snowed yet and, although I never thought I'd say this, I sort of wish it would.

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These are summer trees. 

It isn't that the only things I think about are library school and autumn leaves. But I grow less and less certain of what to say here. It used to be that I needed a place like this to sort of shout into the universe. I've always both wanted to be heard and been afraid of asking anyone to listen, and writing here took away the fear of asking. Because I don't have to ask. If anybody reads the things I write here, it's because they choose to.

But slowly this has stopped making sense to me. I'm not afraid of saying real words to actual people and I like being listened to almost as much as I like listening. Sometimes I expect to be listened to, even. But I also keep a lot to myself. And I like real paper. And I guess what I am getting at is that I'm not sure if I'm cut out for this anymore. 

Which doesn't mean that Intend to stop. I don't intend to stop, at least not now. But I write less and less often here, and I feel like I always say the same things when I do. It isn't because that's all I have to say, but it's all I have to say to, you know, the whole world. I suppose I am apologizing for that. I suppose what I am saying is, I'm sorry all I talk about are trees. 

I think about a lot of things. I write about a lot of things. Tonight I filled my third journal of the year. But lately I am trying to work out what I am actually doing, and what for. And until I figure that out - figure out what all this writing, all of this quiet turning inward, is meant to become... if anything - I might only be able to bring you trees.  

They're nice trees, though, I think. 
 

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As of tonight, I have knocked off seven of the eleven assignments that have made up my November. I only have four more to go before the end of the term. In exactly two weeks, I will be halfway to halfway to being a librarian (thank you, g, for that way of looking at it). The perspective is a lovely thing. 

This photo is older - a weird accident that happened on a trip to Victoria I took this summer. I haven't taken many photos since coming here. I shot a roll of film in the first few weeks, but it's still sitting on my dresser, undeveloped. I'm a bit sad about it, because fall is very nearly over and the leaves, the leaves. I'm not sure I have a single picture of them.

This has been the most colourful autumn of my life: the red and orange leaves have been falling silently for weeks, like a long and solemn parade to welcome winter. When the snow falls I suspect I'll feel compelled to bow before it. 

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Today I booked my flight home for Christmas. I am going home on the 16th of December and I am really looking forward to it. This, for me, is a significant change in attitude, and it's hard to describe (on the internet, especially) quite what is different. But what I can explain is that I'm free. I have chosen every single aspect of this life of mine, and knowing that makes everything different. I am going because I want to go. 

My dad's visit - which feels like so long ago now - was good. I made him walk too much, I think. He took me to a hockey game and I showed him my favourite buildings on campus and we talked sometimes and other times just existed together in comfortable silence. I get that - my silence - from him, and somehow it's nice to know that. 

November continues to be a month of nightmarish amounts of work, but it isn't really scaring me. Every day a little more gets done, and soon it will be the end of the term. I wish I had more to say. I fill pages of real paper with my thoughts every day but most of the time I'm happy to keep them there. I am getting less comfortable with the internet in general. I don't think I'm cut out for modern life. 

I am sleeping more. I read. I am learning a lot but very little of it has to do with libraries. It's getting colder and there is less time for walks, but earlier this week I found the most spectacular tree. It has the sort of enormous trunk you see in storybook illustrations, with gnarled bark wrapped in knots of grey. It stood alone in a courtyard with its branches reaching out like the wide arms of a father gathering his children. If it weren't so cold outside I would sit under it every day. 

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I am weathering the storm that is library school in November by drinking a lot of hot chocolate and reading books that are good for my heart, if not for my GPA. I am sitting in the spare room on the top floor of the house, working at the sort of enormous wooden desk on which one would expect to write a manuscript. I have been camped out here since 4:00, cycling between work and not-work. And hot chocolate.

If I'm honest, my grades aren't high on my list of priorities. It isn't that I don't care, but that I refuse to care too much. I trust that I will not fail and most of the time that's enough for me. This shift in attitude is fairly new. What I am absolutely sure of is that I want to always know my soul better than I know how to design an information system or catalogue a book - and it is this that decides how I spend my time. 

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Every time my day ends, it's some unfortunate hour in the a.m.'s. Life is full and I am glad, but also tired. Tonight I would love to write, but even more than that I want to sleep - so I will leave you with this picture instead. It's one of my favourites. 

In exactly a month I will be finished my first semester of library school - I'll be 1/4 of the way to being a librarian. How odd, and how nice - and how I will nap when this month is over! 

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On Sunday morning I woke up to a text message from my dad, wondering if I was busy this weekend. He found himself with four days off and wanted to visit (he is very much a last-minute-plans kind of guy--I am not). I am busy, and I don't say that lightly. I don't remember the last time I went to sleep before 3 a.m., and the list of things I need to do that are undone is long (and I am not complaining--I signed up for this, and I mostly enjoy it, but it's all a very fragile balance). But I told him to come, because how do you say no to your father wanting to fly across the country to see you? 

I don't write about my family very often, and I would like to keep it that way. But for anyone who has been following, the last few years have been rocky for all of us. They are less rocky now, and I am less afraid, and while last year a visit like this would have sent me into total paralysis, this year I am kind of excited. (Fragile balance aside.) 

This summer, my dad called me every Wednesday to tell me the Joke of the Week from his weekly staff meetings. The jokes were always awful. The first time he told me one, I laughed for five minutes--not because it was funny, but because it was terrible and my dad sounded so gleeful on the phone and last year I could hardly talk to him and now he's telling me jokes and it's nice to hear his voice and I missed him. Miss him. He called with a joke once a week for the rest of the summer. 

A lot is different now, and better. Which is not to say that I don't worry--I do. But not like I used to. It has as much to do with changes in him as it does with changes in me.

Ultimately, I am looking forward to showing him my life here, because I am proud of this thing I am creating. 

3 a.m. bedtimes and all. 

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