This time tomorrow (12:00 ish) I will be on the train heading west. It all feels a bit surrealistic to me. It is as if I can hardly believe that I am actually moving, or perhaps because, at least in my head, I left so long ago that the time in between the thought and the actual physical move has just been time that is irrelevant. Or perhaps this fuzzy disconnected feeling is just the effects of the decongestants that I am taking to combat a cold that I seem to have picked up from my daughter or at least her house.
While I think I said good bye to most of the people that I wanted to, it still feels as if there are folks that I have missed. There were others to whom I said good bye to and who didn't seem to take my move very seriously. It was almost as if at least a few of them assumed that I would be coming back to Peterborough. I wonder what they know that I don't? I think for of a few of the folks that I spoke to - I had been so long out of their lives, sometimes disconnected because of my switch in careers - that they wondered why I was telling them. I suspect that my general aloofness perhaps discourages outward displays of feelings.
I never even tried to re-visit the various places that have been important to me. I may in the future regret that, but as I was driving through the three counties that have shaped so much of my adult life, all I could think of was - what have I forgotten to do and how bad will the snow flurries get as I pass through the next snow belt?
All of that stuff is behind me now. what has been done, has been done. What I forgot to do or just didn't get around to doing won't get done. Things that have to get done - will get done at the other end.
I am off tomorrow - the train if it is on time, will leave Sudbury Junction at 5:13AM. A long time ago, on CBC television there use to be a children's program called Maggie Muggins. At the end of each program she use to dance around and sing " and I wonder what will happen tomorrow" (or at least that is how I remember it 55 years later). It often feels as if that little ditty could be mantra for my life.
Saturday, December 26, 2015
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
Sleeping
I have not been sleeping all that well the past few weeks. Although when I think about it, throughout my life I have seldom slept well. When I was a director of a social service agency, or before that a supervisor and a front line worker I always worried in the dark hours of the night about the case load or about decisions that I was making. If there was no particular crisis to worry over, there were always a multitude of world problems that needed solutions. More recently there were classes to develop and students to worry about to keep my hyperactive mind awake. But for the last year my life has been relatively stress free. There are always the world problems that get solved so easily at 3:30 in the morning (with solutions just as easily forgotten by 7:30) but they don't keep me nearly as awake as they use to. However in the past month I have reverted to my old sleep pattern of falling asleep very quickly, sleeping for a few hours, waking up around 3:30 and staying awake. Sometimes I drift off around 7:00 but usually I just get up.
The only reason that I can think of is my move out west.
There is no doubt that this moving process certainly feels weirder than usual and I am not entirely sure why. There is nothing particularly unusual for me about this move. I have twice moved across the country, I have moved to places that I didn't know more than once (including twice to apartments that I had rented without seeing) and I have seen my stuff loaded into a truck and disappear down the road, never being sure that if I would see it again. It may be that this move feels more permanent than other times but I don't think so. I have always made my moves with the assumption that the move would be reasonably permanent. Clearly something about this move is causing more anxiety than normal. The simple truth might be is that I have spent far too much time in the past four or do months thinking about this move and all of its complications and ramifications. I may have over-thought this whole process. I may have been better off if I had focused on something else as opposed to spending countless hours worrying about the endless minutia of moving.
For example I could have spent a lot less time thinking and planning what to put in each box. I was worried that I would make boxes too heavy or too awkward to lift. I need not have worried. The movers carried down the stairs my heaviest boxes two at a time. The large boxes, the trunks or large totes at felt awkward for me to manouver were managed without any complaint or obvious difficulty. As I have had people carry my stuff up and down various apartment stairs before, I should have known that they would have managed just fine. In my more rational moments I am equally as sure that all of my petty worries will prove to be equally as silly.
I hope that within a week I will, if not be sleeping my own place, I will at least be in Duncan. That should ease any remaining anxieties and therefore perhaps I will start to sleep through an entire night.
Or it may be that long ago I developed some really terrible sleep habits and up to now I have had created excuses not to accept that. Perhaps I should.
There are of course, all kinds of other reasons for my distorted sleep patterns.
The only reason that I can think of is my move out west.
There is no doubt that this moving process certainly feels weirder than usual and I am not entirely sure why. There is nothing particularly unusual for me about this move. I have twice moved across the country, I have moved to places that I didn't know more than once (including twice to apartments that I had rented without seeing) and I have seen my stuff loaded into a truck and disappear down the road, never being sure that if I would see it again. It may be that this move feels more permanent than other times but I don't think so. I have always made my moves with the assumption that the move would be reasonably permanent. Clearly something about this move is causing more anxiety than normal. The simple truth might be is that I have spent far too much time in the past four or do months thinking about this move and all of its complications and ramifications. I may have over-thought this whole process. I may have been better off if I had focused on something else as opposed to spending countless hours worrying about the endless minutia of moving.
For example I could have spent a lot less time thinking and planning what to put in each box. I was worried that I would make boxes too heavy or too awkward to lift. I need not have worried. The movers carried down the stairs my heaviest boxes two at a time. The large boxes, the trunks or large totes at felt awkward for me to manouver were managed without any complaint or obvious difficulty. As I have had people carry my stuff up and down various apartment stairs before, I should have known that they would have managed just fine. In my more rational moments I am equally as sure that all of my petty worries will prove to be equally as silly.
I hope that within a week I will, if not be sleeping my own place, I will at least be in Duncan. That should ease any remaining anxieties and therefore perhaps I will start to sleep through an entire night.
Or it may be that long ago I developed some really terrible sleep habits and up to now I have had created excuses not to accept that. Perhaps I should.
There are of course, all kinds of other reasons for my distorted sleep patterns.
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
Transgendered Judges
This past week, both the Globe and Mail and the CBC news site announced that Canada now had appointed its first transgender judge. Good for us!! Considering that that great bastion of progressive human rights to the south of us have three publically appointed individuals who also have been identified as trans, I guess we Canadians can be assured that we are in the forefront of all things politically correct. How nice for us.
Please forgive the sarcasm.
Such an announcement raises two interesting and perhaps even important questions. One is why do we care? What makes this announcement even remotely interesting to anyone other than perhaps this newly appointed judge's closest friends and family? A corollary question could be: how long will it take until announcements such as this one are no longer considered newsworthy?
I appreciate that our judicial system needs to be in some way representative of the diversity of our population. I also accept that in the fairly recent past individuals who have expressed sexual identities different from the norm (as established by a puritan, conservative, judgemental and ethnocentric class) were not given a fair hearing in any of our pubic institutions including the courts. However to assume that the appointment of one or even ten transgender judges will do anything to correct the sins of the past or prevent such errors in the future is absurd. Just adding a representative of particular minority, underrepresented or oppressed group to the bench is not a guarantee of justice in the future. For example in spite of the fact that we have had women sitting as judges for some time and that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is a woman, a Canadian judge recently asked a rape victim is she could have just kept her legs closed? Clearly we have a long way to go in changing how at least some judges think. A single judicial appointment will have no effect on how the courts or in fact the public thinks.
The second question is why is it any of our business what this one individual has done to reconcile his sexual identity with his secondary sexual characteristics? Clearly there is none. While it might be interesting to know what sort of law this individual has specialized in, whether or not he has some standing in his community as a fair and honourable man or how engaged he is in the broader community, it is absolutely irrelevant as to what his sexual identity is. Furthermore, it seems to me to be an invasion of his privacy. While I hope this particular person is okay with being identified as a transgender person, we should never assume that everyone is as comfortable.
The bottom line is that I don't need to know and I don't want to know. The only conceivable reason why the story was deemed newsworthy is because it makes us look good. It makes it look as if we have done something noble or worthwhile. As a friend said to me - the really important news will be when we can make such appointments and not announce them as being something profoundly radical wonderful.
Please forgive the sarcasm.
Such an announcement raises two interesting and perhaps even important questions. One is why do we care? What makes this announcement even remotely interesting to anyone other than perhaps this newly appointed judge's closest friends and family? A corollary question could be: how long will it take until announcements such as this one are no longer considered newsworthy?
I appreciate that our judicial system needs to be in some way representative of the diversity of our population. I also accept that in the fairly recent past individuals who have expressed sexual identities different from the norm (as established by a puritan, conservative, judgemental and ethnocentric class) were not given a fair hearing in any of our pubic institutions including the courts. However to assume that the appointment of one or even ten transgender judges will do anything to correct the sins of the past or prevent such errors in the future is absurd. Just adding a representative of particular minority, underrepresented or oppressed group to the bench is not a guarantee of justice in the future. For example in spite of the fact that we have had women sitting as judges for some time and that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is a woman, a Canadian judge recently asked a rape victim is she could have just kept her legs closed? Clearly we have a long way to go in changing how at least some judges think. A single judicial appointment will have no effect on how the courts or in fact the public thinks.
The second question is why is it any of our business what this one individual has done to reconcile his sexual identity with his secondary sexual characteristics? Clearly there is none. While it might be interesting to know what sort of law this individual has specialized in, whether or not he has some standing in his community as a fair and honourable man or how engaged he is in the broader community, it is absolutely irrelevant as to what his sexual identity is. Furthermore, it seems to me to be an invasion of his privacy. While I hope this particular person is okay with being identified as a transgender person, we should never assume that everyone is as comfortable.
The bottom line is that I don't need to know and I don't want to know. The only conceivable reason why the story was deemed newsworthy is because it makes us look good. It makes it look as if we have done something noble or worthwhile. As a friend said to me - the really important news will be when we can make such appointments and not announce them as being something profoundly radical wonderful.
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