This is the second week of our UK holiday and we’re in the lovely Cornish town of Penryn. Why Penryn, you ask? I thought it would be brilliant, in local parlance, to see a bit of the countryside, after a week spent roving London. As we planned the trip, I had mentioned Cornwall as a...
Author: Vivian Lee (Vivian Lee)
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Spring Musings
Sitting outside on a chilly morning feels very different in May than in October. The promise of spring makes it seem warmer, happier. The nip in the air is softer, and pretty soon you can peel off the scarf around your neck. The trees are popping their baby green leaves and buds. The willow tree...
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LIFE with Buster, Continued
Having a young dog, it turns out, is way different from owning an older one. I guess I had forgotten, it’d been so long. As you may know from reading previous posts, we bought a Boston Terrier puppy a year ago, and have been waiting for him to calm down ever since. He’s now 15...
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Sound the Flute!
Spring is about possibilities. I was walking Buster around the neighbourhood on this truly magnificent spring day, spying the crocuses blooming, the tulip leaves just showing their tips, even the beginning blooms of the forsythia bushes and I almost wanted to break out into a run. Almost. I hate running so I restrained myself, but...
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The current crisis
I’ve been very touched by all the comments and messages concerning my previous post about Imposter Syndrome. Thank you to everyone who wrote and shared their own experiences. It’s hard to write about these things, but it helps to know I’m not alone and I see that many of you share the same feelings. ...
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Mental Health, Part 3: Imposter Syndrome
I’ve been procrastinating on writing the 3rd in my short series about mental health. Not because I don’t want to write it, but because I’m in the middle of several other projects and I have other ideas of posts I want to write. Also, these days, with the news about Russia invading Ukraine, everything else seems...
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Grappling with mental health, part 2
Before I start in on part 2 of my mental health series, I want to mention how grateful I am for all the responses to my last post. I was touched that it struck a chord for many people. However, I think some readers may have been misled by it. I got many very sympathetic...
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Grappling with mental health, Part 1
Trigger warning: I’ll be discussing bulimia in today’s post. I’ve been thinking of different topics I could cover this year and one idea that keeps returning is to do a little series on mental health. During most of my life, mental health was almost a taboo subject, along with sex and money. Even now it’s rarely...
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Life, simplified
I’ve been noticing lately that all the advertisements and articles that are directed at people who are overly busy, stressed out, working too hard, and never have enough time to relax, etc, more than ever don’t apply to me. In my early years with the orchestra I had two small children who kept me very...
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Grandma Love
A good friend asked me a disconcerting question the other day. She had heard from other friends that when they became grandmothers they felt a “love they couldn’t explain” for their grandchild. A love that surpassed any other that they’d ever felt. She wondered whether that was the case for me. I considered the question...