I am honestly fairly drained from the events of this month, although I have a certain sane spring in my step again (intentional alliteration). December was s’posed to be great, I thought, but it went a little bit pear-shaped for a confluence of reasons. That’s okay. It all ended up working out for the better, and sometimes–if you believe in this sort of thing–events occur because they’re meant to, because they result in something that you actually needed all along…even if the experience was torturous.

Once again, I prefer to sum it all up in a YouTube video that I recorded quite early this morning. My lips are half-frozen and I start off slowly, but gain momentum as I thaw. These videos also give me a chance to analyze the way I speak when I’m off the cuff, and I definitely have some speech tics (“um” “kind of” “sort of”) that are interesting to listen to. I don’t speak that way in conversation, but in an improvised monologue, these need some work.

I’m almost starting to prefer doing this to writing, because–no, actually, that’s not true. Writing drives me up the wall, but once you’re in the zone, as we say, you’re lost, and the process is exhilarating. Time evaporates, and when you’re done, the feelings of satisfaction and adrenaline and pride overwhelm you so much, you have to walk it off (preferably to the grocery store for a hunk of red-velvet cake). Shambling around parts of the city with my camera phone, recording nonstop and chatting off the top of my head is pretty satisfying, pretty fun, but it’s not really a creative or disciplined process.

Then again, does it have to be?

My narration takes second place to the spectacular area in which I filmed, and I hope you think of it that way too. This particular location is extremely special to me; I’ve written about it many times. I hesitated to do this little project for that precise reason, thinking of my little slice of Valhalla as perhaps a bit too sacred, a bit too personal to sully with a camera phone and my improvised narration, but then I thought to myself: Tourists come down here every summer by the barrelful, clogging it up, crowding it up, getting in my way (hmph!), making a ruckus, taking nauseating selfies, and ruining it for poor, poor me. Therefore, the least I can do is share it with my readers during a very tranquil time of the day.

And I generally do whatever I want, really.

So I hope you enjoy this one. I won’t be writing before 2026, so I absolutely want to wish all of you a glorious New Year. No, no, that’s not the right adjective. It’s so trite, so meaningless. Let’s get real: I legitimately want to wish all of you a stable, healthy, grounded, self-reflective, disciplined, compassion-based, forward-moving, and surprising-in-a-good-way New Year in which you learn to love yourself even more than I do.

Two things:

…and we can’t forget this guy, because this song seems to, surprisingly, fit the entire theme of this video; and because it’s a rock-ass tune; and because Jack White makes me want to throw all of my panties into the garbage disposal and sit around, waiting for him to come home. To my place. In Vancouver. I’d be waiting for a very, very, very long time.

Love

Nadya

P.S. It’s my one-hundredth-blog-post birthday today!! 🥳