This week, I have made some progress on personal issues and I’m feeling a bit more optimistic about things in general. I am also realizing that I have been putting a lot of pressure on myself with unrealistic expectations. Not a new thing, but new for me to accepting that I don’t really need to do many of these things that I am being self-critical about. It is a liberating feeling. I still have a lot of work to do on attitude, but it’s starting to go the right way. Success in the No-Comfort Zone is not always what we started out for it to be!

This week I am preparing for the Quebec workshop, which takes place next weekend. Nervous about it, yes. The instructor is a very well-known Canadian poet, and editor of one of the major national journals.  But so were the first two, Barry Dempster and Roo Borson. I learned a lot from both.

Looking forward to the opportunity, then, to work with John Barton.

Carol A. Stephen

This week was one where I focused on things I need for myself outside my existence as a poet. This is a proactive thing now, rather than the reactive way I have been dealing with things since being handed a severance package after 19 1/2 years with my last employer. In two weeks, I am having a major milestone birthday. I become official then on a couple of fronts: as a retired person and as a fully qualified senior. So it’s a come-to-terms-with it kind of birthday.

This one is a struggle, I admit. But I have a good support system in place. (why do we call our friends a system?) Sorry folks. I have a great group of wonderful friends and fellow poets, without whom life would be rather dull and boring. My biggest regret is that I did not find my poetry for so many years. I can’t really say the time was wasted, although sometimes that is how it feels. I had many years of amazing travel to so many places. When I think that most people don’t go more than 50 miles from home their whole lives, I realize how blessed I have been.

But also why it has been hard for me the last three years to confine my world to its recent limits of Ottawa, Carleton Place and occasionally day trips in the surrounding countryside. I miss the zest that comes with packing and heading out to new destinations or well-loved ones. Next month, I am going to take a trip to Massachusetts. I am nervous about this as it involves facing several personal challenges. I am going to be focusing for the next while on overcoming all that so I can be fully engaged with the writing I hope to do while there. I have taken the first steps. That is my No-Comfort Zone success for this week.

Carol A. Stephen

This week my challenge did not relate to writing or submitting. On a more personal note, I have been having some health issues and trying to deal with them on my own. This week, I finally decided to head to the doctor’s office. It is not a good thing to self-diagnose, for me anyway, because that doesn’t resolve anything for me. I continue to run scripts of “what if” through my head, or drive my friends crazy with the same worries over and over. But this is interfering with a lot of other things, so I needed to ask for help. One of my concerns has been resolved, and beginning this week I will be working to resolve the others. But since this tends to make me lose focus on writing and such, I need to work on the health issues first. I suppose you can say that part of the challenge for me this week was even posting about this!  Carol