(i.e. a rambling post about everything. Except anything useful. Though that does depend how you define useful.)

So, me and Photoshop have been getting to know one another. It’s a multilayered being, and I’ve been playing with Youtube to help me learn. As my friend was saying the other day – it’s a really powerful platform, but with power comes complication. Man, it’s so complicated.

Being the Lady McGuiver I am, and never ever investing more than twenty minutes into learning anything, I’ve been bouncing between photoshop, picmonkey, paint and occasionally powerpoint to design the elements for my new Claire Never Ending cover.

Geez, I love designing stuff. I love, love, love learning stuff and getting hands-on. But I just hate, hate, hate, studying. This contrast is a real flaw in my system of creativity.

Anyhow, all this internal jabbering to sayyyyyyy: The Cover is Coming Along!

Out there amoungst the papers on my desk is a list of TO Dos before 2014 ends. One of them is to finishing the Claire’s redesign. Another is to apply for Zsolt’s citizenship, although I really haven’t gotten that far yet in my productivity.

There are a couple other points, but I’ve completely forgotten them. Hmm. I’m trying to remeber now. Nope. Oh, crowdfunding videos! I remembered one more! I want to finished my crowdfunding series. That’s nearly done to be honest, and just requires a few more late, late nights or early, early mornings for editing.

YouTube is fun. This is another area where I don’t really want to study too much, but do really want to create content.

Where is all this content creation going? No idea where yet. J Zsolt says I need to make a business plan. “Make a business plan?” I asked him, like he was speaking a different language – is “Makeabusinessplan” Hungarian for “You are the best wife and I love you like crazy?”

Probably not.

He is right, actually, plans are good. Structure is good. Strategy is even better. And then, action. That should come along too at some point: Structure, Strategy, Action. Not my strong points, but probably useful.

And that is that.

Now for a story:

Last night I was lying in bed with the Zsolt Man, and he was relating the story of a business meeting he recently had – where he saw the fellows walking down the street, and it reminded him of being with the fellows at the ORC when they would go for lunch.

That got me thinking. Those lunches not too many years ago were a lovely daily tradition. So I began telling Zsolt why they were so lovely. Zsolt would come down to the staff club cafeteria for their lunch. Since I lived & worked on campus, I would very often join them. And after about 5 years of this, it was a comfortable, happy routine. We’d all get together, I’d get to kiss my husband, and then they’d talk about this and that – often around the stresses of being a PhD student, but not always. The conversation always ended on a very similar note, around the lines of: Let’s search it on Wikipedia. And they’d go back to their lab to look up whatever the heck they’d been discussing that day.

And through that group at the lunch table, I not only got to enjoy their company, but also the company of their partners who would arrive occasionally for the meal – girlfriends, children and wives. So we would pull two tables together, and have a great big lunch meal.

It was really nice. Friends, support and food wrapped up into one nice hour.

After I’d finished relating those memories, Zsolt asked me if I missed it.

So I thought about it. And you know what? I don’t miss it. I’m just very glad to have had it. I’m very glad to have been there then. I’m very glad to be here now.

And that had me thinking – several years ago, I missed everything. It was this deep homesick pit inside of myself. Something has changed. Maybe realizing you can’t ever have things as they were before. Or maybe it’s realizing that there are always wonderful people there somewhere to connect with. I don’t know. Maybe it was coming back to Canada – but I’ll tell you, this hasn’t been an easy transition either.

Whatever the reason. I didn’t miss anything in the sense of longing for those day. It was simply nice to have had them.

And that is when I realized, between Zsolt and I, we have friends all over the world. Amazing individuals who we’ve connected with at one point in the moving and travelling and life-living. None of them are congregated in a single spot, and we’ll never have again what we had before in those moments of laughter and friendship.

Even if all those people and all those moment are scattered across our past, and across the world – that is okay. It is better than okay – it’s awesome. Knowing each of them, doing all of that life stuff, has been a pleasure. We have this beautiful gift, and I’m grateful for it.

And I don’t miss them, because to me, they are still there somehow. Whether it’s in my memory, or on my Facebook page. They are there, doing well, and that makes me happy.

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P.S. Over on Ottawa Writes this week (in the process of being rebranded) we have an episode about quotes you stick on the front cover of books. There’s also a nice interview around writing and community. Listen here. This sideshow passion project is one of those things that could probably use a business plan . . .