Category: Books

Talk about premature publication. That previous post was published accidentally, when my train lurched forward and my wrist hit a button. Seconds later WordPress informed me, “Congrats! You’ve published a post!” and I had to rush around the Net doing damage control on my post already posted to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr…

It proves my point a little though, doesn’t it? So I decided to keep the original post, which was meant to be longer, as is.

I was trying to talk about how rarely we allow ourselves time to do absolutely nothing; time that is ours and ours alone, where we aren’t obligated to be anywhere, doing anything.

I watched my daughter and her friend having a snowball fight in our yard yesterday, and it hit me: children have that freedom. (Later, the snowballs hit me, because I went outside and joined in!) Okay, children don’t always have that freedom, because sometimes they’re loaded down with homework, and activities, but in my home, our daughter rarely has to be anywhere except the dinner table when we call her.

I’ve been given that rare kind of day today: I’m headed to Kingston to speak at the Ban Righ Centre – but I’m speaking tomorrow – and on Saturday, I’m speaking at the Queen’s Media and Journalism Conference (I’m also doing a book signing in Kingston and one at Chapters Kanata – please check out my Upcoming Events listed here!)   The train just had a delay, and we sat on the tracks for about 10 minutes, and that’s when I decided to write a blog post. That delay was a gift. Besides, I had nowhere to be anyway.

When the train stopped and I stared out at the vast field of snow out my window, it hit me that I’m at my happiest when I have nowhere I have to be. Responsibilities really suck most of the time, don’t they? They’re a fact of life, however, it doesn’t mean we can’t set aside some time every few days where we don’t have to be anywhere, or do anything.

Stop yourself in your tracks, and just be. Give yourself a childlike day again. Just don’t forget to pay your Hydro bill…

Heather 🙂

P.S. If you are interested in seeing the visuals from my presentation “Career Magic,” below is the handout with the QR codes! You can use your phone or iPad QR scanner on the QR codes to access my presentations at Prezi.com. Tomorrow and Saturday, I’m hoping some people will Tweet out some of what I say (@hgracestewart) , but the visuals are there, and my presentation So You Want to Be An Author has also been made public. Enjoy!

Thanks to my technical genius guy Bill Stewart for the great help creating the QR codes. 🙂