On June 29th, I wrote a blog called Take It or Leave It, in which I announced what may still turn out to be one of the most ridiculous ideas I've ever had: I want to get on my bike in Orillia and ride until I reach the ocean in New Brunswick. Why? Excellent question. I still don't really have an answer. The only explanation I've been able to come up with is that somewhere between here and there are people I need to meet, places I need to see, connections I need to make, and an adventure waiting to happen.
Apparently, I neglected to specify that I wanted the adventure to begin after I got on the bike.
Life took some creative liberties.
A lot has happened since that blog post. I managed to injure myself at the gym, because apparently lifting heavy things voluntarily wasn't already questionable enough. I was healing from that when I had an accident at work that complicated everything and added a herniated disc to the mix. Then, because my body clearly believes in teamwork, my carpal tunnel decided this was an excellent opportunity to flare up too. What started as one injury became a rather impressive collection of things that hurt, things that tingled, things that went numb and things I suddenly became extremely aware I had been taking for granted.
And through all of this, there was still the small matter of my actual job.
I clean for a living. —Which, as it turns out, is not an occupation particularly interested in whether your back, neck, arms or hands would prefer a quiet day.
So while all of this is going on, I was still getting up and going to work, cleaning, lifting, bending, reaching, scrubbing and generally asking my body to participate in activities it had already made quite clear it would like to unsubscribe from.
You would think that might have been my cue to slow down.
You would be new here.
Discomfort has always been a strange motivator for me. When something in my life becomes difficult, uncertain or completely outside my control, I have a tendency to create. Maybe it's stubbornness. Maybe creativity is how I make sense of things. Maybe my brain sees a body demanding rest and responds by saying, Fantastic. Let's start seventeen projects.
Whatever the reason, somewhere in the middle of all this I finished Book Two. Through the Sound of Silence is done and getting ready for its launch.
That alone would probably have been a perfectly reasonable accomplishment. Finish the book. Go to work. Heal. Rest. Maybe watch some television. Behave like a normal human being for five minutes.
Instead, I looked at Thea Marie Art and thought, You know what? I should completely rebuild this.
So naturally, that's what I did.
I started pulling apart everything I'd created and putting it back together in a way that finally felt like me. Not simply an art business. Not simply books. Not simply jewellery, paintings, candles, curiosities, textiles, photography or whatever other thing I happen to wander off and make next. I wanted one place where all of it could exist together, because I've finally stopped trying to decide which kind of creative person I'm supposed to be.
Apparently the answer is all of them.
Which meant finally taking the leap and building an online storefront. — Because of course it did!
And while I'm doing that, I'm also preparing for a market at the end of October. Products need to be made. Things need to be photographed. Labels need to be designed. Displays need to be figured out. Books need to be ready. There are candles curing, jewellery waiting to be photographed, prints being prepared and approximately eight thousand tiny decisions that somehow accompany the innocent sentence, “I'm doing a market.”
All of it, for the most part, on my own.
While working my day job.
While injured.
Jesus.
And here's the part I somehow keep forgetting when I start wondering why I'm tired.
My iron tanked.
Not dipped. Not wandered slightly below where we'd like it.
Tanked!
So apparently, while I've been bulldozing my way through life wondering why the hell I was so exhausted, my body has essentially been following behind me with the gas light on, wondering when I planned to notice.
This does explain some things.
And now, thankfully, something is finally shifting. I've had my first iron infusion, and I'm sitting here wondering what happens when my body finally has something to work with. Not again—possibly ever. I've spent so much of my life running low that I'm not entirely sure I know what a full tank feels like. Which, considering what I've managed to accomplish with the gas light permanently on, is a slightly terrifying thought.
And strangely enough, that's the part I'm most excited about.
Because through everything that has happened since June 29th, the strangest thing is that I haven't stopped thinking about New Brunswick.
I still want to go.
I still want to hop on my bike in Orillia and point it east. I still believe there are people somewhere between here and the Atlantic that I'm supposed to meet. There are roads I haven't travelled, conversations I haven't had, photographs I haven't taken, places I haven't stood, ridiculous situations I haven't gotten myself into yet and stories that don't exist because I haven't lived them.
But I think I understand something now that I didn't when I wrote Take It or Leave It.
I thought the adventure was waiting for me somewhere between Orillia and the ocean.
I'm starting to think I had that wrong.
Maybe an adventure doesn't begin when you leave. Maybe it begins the moment something inside you says GO, long before you understand where you're going or why. Maybe everything that has happened since I decided to make that ride—the injuries, the frustration, the exhaustion, finishing Book Two, rebuilding my creative world, working, making, planning, adapting and occasionally wondering what the actual hell I'm doing—isn't what happened before the adventure.
Maybe this IS the adventure.
Maybe New Brunswick is simply where this particular adventure is taking me.
I don't know.
That's rather the point.
What I do know is that after years of asking an exhausted body to keep up with a brain that apparently has no concept of reasonable expectations, there might actually be fuel going back into the tank.
Which, considering what I've managed to get myself into while running on fumes, raises a somewhat alarming question:
What the hell am I going to do when the tank is full?
I have absolutely no idea.
But holy crap.
I can't wait to find out.