Category: Work
Wednesday, Jun 24, 2026 | Adventure, Art, Big Thoughts, Confessions, Family, Library, Mothering, Organizing, Parenting, Peace, Poetry, Publishing, Spirit, Success, Work, Writing |
During the earlier years of my writing career, all life experiences were filed under “material” for future writing projects. This mindset helped me endure difficult times, and even the drudgery of caring for small children (which goes hand-in-hand with the joy) could be made to feel useful, as if I were collecting scraps that could one day be turned into a delicious writer’s stew.
A few years ago, during the pandemic, I recognized that all of my writing was therapeutic, including the literary writing I’d been calling my career and vocation. I did not like this idea at all. I rebelled and revolted against it, maybe because it felt exploitative, even of my own experiences (let alone everyone else with whom I am in relationship).
Lately, I’ve been feeling at peace with this discovery—that my writing is therapeutic, that I’ve practiced it with devotion out of necessity, as much as discipline. My writing has kept my head above water, while also giving me a sense of purpose and hope during dull or aimless or desperate periods of my life. Writing soothes and comforts me. Writing fiction has deepened my capacity for empathy, sharpened my curiosity to learn how others see and frame the world. Writing is a magnetic force that pulls me in its direction; yet writing has never quite become the organizing principle around which I can structure, to satisfaction, my energies and priorities. Is writing my reason for being? My purpose and calling? Or is it the practice that sustains my purpose and calling?
My life is structured around relationships. Connection is my organizing principle. I am a quiet interior person, yet I thrive on sharing experiences with others.
I recently did a time audit, tracking the minutiae of my activities throughout a week (valuable, because so much of my time is “unstructured,” at present). First, I noticed that I spend a lot of time being with others, focusing on the needs of others (and that this brings meaning to my days). The flip-side is that I spend a lot of time in self-oriented activities—going to the gym, writing and journaling, quiet time alone, walks with friends. Focus on self; focus on others. Fill the cup; pour it out. Experience; process the experience. Action; reflection. Sometimes there is overlap between these circles—for example, biking on an errand feeds my spirit while the errand may benefit someone else; a walk with a friend can be both an experience and a processing of experiences.
One more observation: I spend very little time “working,” when work is defined as as an exchange of one’s time and skills for commensurate financial gain in the form of salary or paycheque, benefits, pension, etc. When someone asks “What do you do?” they generally mean “What do you do for a living?” And for this, my time audit showed very clearly, I have no good answer. I’ve been writing poems all spring; does that count? I also spend a lot of time looking after my dad right now, trying to understand his needs as they change, keeping my siblings and wider family in the loop, connected, feeling togetherness, mutually supported. Is this work? It’s just life, isn’t it?
When my kids were little, I stayed home to look after them for close to a decade (while trying to find time to write). This was a hard time, in many ways, for many of the same reasons that now is a hard time, in my life. “What do you do?” I’m a writer, I would have said then; or not, depending on how confident I felt in that identity on a given day or hour.
Twenty years ago, I was writing poems too.
They’re in a stack of books and projects beside me now—a manuscript titled “Famous Love Story,” which was never published in full, and did not earn me a living, though it probably kept me sane and grounded. Reading those poems now returns me to the tones and textures and chaotic/serene inner life of early motherhood. (As in the photos above and below, when I was the mother of a six-month-old infant.)
Maybe poems belong to this strange between-time, when my identity feels threadbare outside of my relationships—mother, daughter, sister, spouse, friend. Thank heavens for friendships, the landing spot for safe ranting and commisseration and truth-telling and kindness. (Not that there isn’t respite and kindness and ranting inside those other relationships too, but friends are a different category of caring and reciprocity; side note, just finished reading The Weekend, by Charlotte Wood, and now I want to write a book about friends—maybe in twenty years or so!)
So. Poems. Self/Other. Making meaning, meaning-making.
Is my CV an incoherent tangle of part-time, contract, volunteer, temporary job-jobs? Or is it a fascinating but partial record of a person who has been a steady, creative, connective presence in the life of her family, for which there is no job title, no description shorter than a novel, and for now at least, no particular beginning or end? Probably both. That’s life.
xo, Carrie
Monday, Mar 9, 2026 | Big Thoughts, Books, Library, Lists, Reading, School, Space, Teaching, Work, Writing |
What’s a library for?
I wrote this reflection last fall, as I was preparing to “retire” from my school library job to return to writing fiction full-time. I worked in the same library for two years, at a relatively small elementary school (about 275 students), with a relatively small collection (about 8,000 resources, mostly books). The school was small enough that I learned every student’s name, and their borrowing habits, reading levels, likes and dislikes. My thoughts on how the space was used, and what a school library is for, changed and expanded during those years, as I had the privilege of observing and experiencing how students and teachers related to the space.
A library is many things.
It is a room full of books, tangible resources whose information can indeed feel out of date almost instantly in a digitally connected world; but whose resources nevertheless belong to a technology that has persisted across centuries. Of all the technology in this room, almost nothing is older and more lasting than the book.
On the fiction / picture book side of the library, there are classic texts that continue to speak across the years to readers young and old. And new and contemporary writers and illustrators have contributed to diversifying the cast of characters and variety of stories and perspectives that reflect the makeup of our school communities here in Kitchener-Waterloo. The expansion of graphic novel publishing makes rich, complex narratives accessible to older readers whose literacy levels have been impacted by the pandemic. So — the library is its books and stories.
The library is also a compact between the borrower and the institution, which represents the goodwill and goals of the wider, civic community. In my experience, this is its primary value, which underpins all the other benefits of regular library-use in schools. The library is a collective civic resource. Every student in the building may borrow books to bring home, share with family members, and then return so that someone else can read them next. This creates a circle of responsibility and care. Borrowing and caring for a book is a tangible means of expressing belonging to a larger community. Lending a book expresses the community’s trust in an individual’s capacity to learn how to take responsibility for communal goods. It’s an offering on both sides of participation — and it’s a rare example of reciprocity in practice, in our education system. The stakes are relatively low. A book is valuable, but can be replaced, though not easily (budget restraints are real). So, time is spent teaching book care, reminding students of their responsibility to look after the books in their care, and underscoring the importance of sharing resources with others — in a library, we actually get to see how that works, and practice our skills at caring for a communal good.
To be honest, reciprocity was not the element that immediately jumped out at me when I started working in the library. But I’ve come to think of it as being revolutionary and foundational. If the medium is the message, a library book says: this belongs to all of us. And what does that message mean to you as an individual? How do you relate to it?
But also — what does that message mean to the wider community? I think this is where politics have come in, and the wider community may have minority objections to the content being offered inside the books themselves; content isn’t neutral, even if the technology in some way is agnostic.
What I especially appreciated about my role as caretaker of the books was that there were many opportunities for repair, literally and figuratively. I promised the students that they could tell me anything — baby sibling ate a corner, Mom spilled coffee, I ripped a page, I think the book’s at grandma’s, etc. — and I thanked them for their honesty and explained that I would do my best to fix what was broken. I celebrated every “lost” book that was found. Learning how to care for something means making mistakes sometimes. Owning up to a mistake and learning how it can be addressed, even if not fully repaired, changes one’s mindset, at least a little bit. (Maybe this also sums up my parenting philosophy: to become/be trustworthy, you have to know/believe that you are trusted … even if you haven’t quite earned that trust yet.)
Other elements of library life that have stuck with me include
— the opportunity to share stories with students, including mirroring back experiences for students who may not see themselves and their experiences reflected in cultural material often
— the opportunity to invite deeper discussion of real-life issues, concerns and experiences (death, holidays that others celebrate, peace, war, indigenous stories and values)
— the opportunity to create a peaceful environment in which students can rest their minds and bodies
— an opportunity to connect the resources in the library to the larger world on a regular basis with displays and story-time book choices and selections for teachers
— an opportunity to provide a weekly mini-field trip within the school, a special time for students and teachers alike to get a break from the regular routine
— the opportunity to provide space for creative expression, crafts, book clubs, library helpers, etc (though that proved a challenge given the time constraints)
All for now.
xo, Carrie
PS Writing fiction full-time these past number of months has been AMAZING. And I miss the students and the library a great deal. Both/and … I am learning to accept that to do something I love requires surrendering to it fully, and that means not getting to do other things that I also love. Choice is important, necessary, sometimes painful, and I’m grateful to have the luxury to choose.
Sunday, Nov 23, 2025 | Art, Big Thoughts, Confessions, Library, Manifest, Meditation, Work, Writing |
What if you cherished yourself, I asked my reflection in the bathroom mirror at school, one day last month. It knocked me out.
I’ve been doing art therapy this fall with a new therapist. During our first session, I drew myself as two distinct bodies, each on one side of a river that flows between them, separates them. The one self sits in peaceful meditation, untroubled, calm, gently smiling, eyes closed, inward-looking but attuned, while the other self gazes at her, lying on her stomach on the river bank, also looking somewhat relaxed, dangling one hand in the river, but she’s frowning, her mind full of muddled thoughts, trying to let them go by placing them onto leaves that are floating by.
What I could express to the therapist was that I longed to be the peaceful self on the other side of the river. She could think clearly. She was untroubled by change. She represented an ever-ness.
The therapist wondered: What if you were the woman on the other side of the river? What would that be like?
I laughed. I couldn’t imagine it. If it tiptoed toward imagining it, I sensed that the muddled self would spoil the peace of that other self simply by attempting to unite them together. It was almost like whatever was contained over there, in that self, would be spoilt by exposure to the rest of me.
It reminded me of a habit I’ve had since childhood. I withhold whatever is most desired from myself. It’s difficult to convince myself to use something that will get used up. A favourite tea, for example, will stay in the box and I’ll brew a different flavour instead. I save things, hoard them. Others eat or consume them instead. Or I tuck away something that I want to enjoy, and never get it out again. I enjoy it by hiding it away. For example, as a child I would hide my Easter candy in my drawer, not sharing it with my brothers, yet never ultimately eating it myself. I could never find an occasion worthy of eating that special candy. Because if I’d eat it, it would be gone. Better to keep it till melted together and spoiled than enjoy it? Strange, right? Interesting. Curious.
Immediately after that vision in the bathroom mirror at school, I went back to the library and scribbled down these words in my notebook:
What if you were the woman on the other side of the river? What would you be like?
How would you treat yourself? What if you treated yourself like a previous vessel? A sacred vessel? An honoured presence?
What if I honoured my presence fully? What if I trusted myself? What if I could just write like it was normal life and not an existential crisis?
Okay, friends. That’s a big what if, but I’m going there. All week I’ve written like it was normal life. It’s been so enjoyable.
xo, Carrie
Tuesday, Nov 18, 2025 | Adventure, Art, Big Thoughts, Fire, Lists, Meditation, Peace, Source, Space, Spirit, Work, Writing |
Today is the first day that I’m not going into an elementary school (a library or a school office) in about three years. It’s wild to be out here and not in there. I’ll miss the kids in the library. I’ll miss them coming in and basking in the light of my attention. To thrive out here, I need to be sure that my attention pours onto someone else, something else, every day.
Why give yourself away? Because it returns to you, tenfold. What you give returns. So know what you’re giving, give with honesty, give what is true to your experience, and what you’d hope to receive.
Dear school library, thank you for re-tuning my focus. Thank you for healing my heart and mind.
At the library: I’ve learned better boundaries, I’ve learned the value of structure in trust-building, I’ve learned the importance of recognizing what’s holding me back (so often a blockage in my own mind), I’ve learned how to seek what I want. How to ask—wait, is this what I want? Or—how can I improve on this process? what’s not serving us? how can I set us all up for success? I know that I am part of a community, I am part of the larger world.
There are things that I don’t want to return to from my life and routines before this job.
Looking back, I see my own self-pity. I recognize a tendency toward self-inflicted martyrdom. If I could change anything about my past self, I would excise the self-pity. Tell yourself the truth! That’s what I say to myself often, when I hear myself tipping toward self-pity. I could pretend that it’s other people stopping me from speaking my mind; I could pretend that I have to work a “real” job because of financial concerns rather than it being a choice I’m making; I could pretend that I don’t have the time to write; I could pretend that an artist can’t be a “good person” and that’s why I don’t want to be an artist.
But I am an artist. Many people are, possibly even most people. (And why this obsession with being “good”? Still trying to figure that out.)
An artist is someone who seeks beauty and wants in some way to interpret it and preserve it and share it.
I’ve learned that it works just as well, if not better, to share my art with kids, to pin it to a bulletin board, to ask questions, to witness others who have found a voice in small part due to my being there to listen.
I’ve learned that it’s okay to want to publish—it’s one way a writer finds connection with the larger world, but it’s a way, not the only way, and that’s often confusing and the experience of publishing can feel really disconnected from the effort and play and experimentation that went into a project. So I like to think of projects differently.
I learned that every day there is the possibility that I will be connecting with someone else, in some way that feels meaningful to both of us. I hope for that, out here too.
Unconditional positive regard. I hope to walk with this into the world, into relationships, to the best of my ability, and when I can’t or when I struggle: box breathing, 5 breaths; a walk in the wind; music and watercolours; notebook, 5 minutes, what’s on your mind?; go to the gym; find a repetitive menial task; or cook a homemade meal and hope for lots of takers around the table.
xo, Carrie
Thursday, Oct 30, 2025 | Art, Big Thoughts, Drawing, Fall, Fire, Friends, Fun, Job, Library, Lists, Peace, Sleep, Source, Spirit, Work, Writing, Yoga |
This is a not going to be a polished post. I’ve been creating an inventory of my interests, needs, weak spots, strengths, etc., in order to articulate, or even just grasp or glimpse what I want to be doing with my days and hours — at this particular stage in my life, this time of aging and flux. So here is a list of goals, the aspirations that I am able to articulate and maybe, with hope and support and gentleness and time, move toward. I’m going to name this list as being things that I want, even though it makes me feel distinctly uncomfortable.
I want …
… a fine life
… relaxation and contentment
… ample rest, a quick and nourished mind
… sweat, adrenalin, endorphins, breath, balance, physical exertion, core strength
… treatment of pain, and ongoing healing for mind and body
… to model and recognize other’s choices that honour: presence, generative actions, creative play, fun and humour, healthy practices and routines
… strong rooted lasting friendships, to be a good friend (by listening, walking with, caring for, giving space to, allowing to be); to let my friends help me too, be honest with them, share my fears sometimes
… strong healthy bonds with my children and other family members, no matter my role (as mother, daughter, spouse, sister, etc.)
… to live with creative bursts without floating into self-indulgence and disconnection, without being self-serving
… to be someone people feel comfortable and happy spending time with; to put others at ease
… to inhabit and build inviting spaces where people get to be themselves, feel welcome to be relaxed, to come and go, rest, laugh, talk, eat good food (as at the cottage); cry, laugh; feel so held and loved—this is aspirational, but I’d love to be that person for others
… to conceive of, surrender to, and finish ambitious projects (like novels) – for the joy of discovery day by day, and for the sense of accomplishment when all the threads have been woven together; for therapeutic reasons, and to explore what’s underneath and otherwise invisible and unknown and mysterious within my soul and body and the collective life force, because it feels necessary and relieving and cleansing and satisfying and good, and because writing is my way in, the practice that I’ve practiced more than any other
… to not behave like a martyr or fixate on sacrifice; surrender is a different beast
xo, Carrie
PS The watercolour is my version of characters from The Day My Mom Came to Kindergarten, written by Maureen Fergus with illustrations by Mike Lowery, which I read to classrooms in September. Most every week, I add a new character to the library’s story-time bulletin board – from a book we’ve read the previous week. (See below.) This is a practice I’ll miss and be seeking to replace when I move on from the library job.
Wednesday, Oct 1, 2025 | Adventure, Big Thoughts, Driving, Job, Manifest, Meditation, Source, Space, Spirit, Work |
Leaving work, driving out of my school’s neighbourhood, I saw a woman walking, alone. She looked like she was walking for no particular reason, just because she wanted to. Envy. That’s what I felt. I wanted to be her. Instinctively, I tried to squash that feeling, crush it, shame it into disappearing; but like all feelings, envy is not bad or good in and of itself, it’s neutral, it exists, it’s information.
The woman was walking, alone, coming from a wooded trail, there was still a lot of afternoon left, the air was warm, the leaves on the trees sun-soaked. I’d already swerved swiftly, effortlessly into envy’s twin, self-pity. She’s so lucky, she looks so content and free, that’s not for me, I don’t have that kind of time. All of this happened — seeing her, feeling envy, swerving to self-pity, squashing down both — in approximately ten seconds while I was turning a corner to get onto the highway. I had decided to run errands between work and home, and my first stop would be the library, about a ten minute drive away. I was listening to a political podcast and quickly became distracted by an aggressive driver who tailed me onto the highway, then floored it to pass me. So I wasn’t thinking about the woman, or envy, or self-pity anymore, or not consciously.
But as I walked into the library, I thought, you could just go for a walk.
It was there for the taking — the very thing that had sparked my envy. There are trails near the library. I didn’t have to be anywhere in particular. I actually did have the time (self-pity wasn’t a reliable source of information; it rarely is). I could just go for a walk.
And I wanted to. I wanted to be outside, to see the trees and feel the sun’s heat on my hair, and hear the insects humming.
I wonder: without that flash of envy, would I have known that this was what I wanted?
Of course, it wasn’t simply about wanting to go for a walk. I wanted what she’d represented to me, what I’d projected onto her. In her ease, she looked free to me, content, autonomous, capable of giving herself time to enjoy this beautiful day. I wanted those things, and driving away from work, those things seemed inaccessible. But maybe those things were inaccessible precisely because I had not even known that I’d wanted them.
I was like a sleepwalker and envy was a jolt, a pinch, a pain, a mirror.
This seems a little messed up, now that I write it out. I’m sure there are other ways to identify my wants and needs, but the truth is that I don’t always know what I want or need. I often have no idea. My responsibilities as a mother are changing and I have more time, and I will fill that time mindlessly if I don’t know what I want. I am attempting to wake up in the middle of my life and in the process not become an asshole or a raging void or a restless narcissist or a frightened recluse. So I’m open to taking whatever prompts arrive.
I went for that walk. I walked and walked and walked — alone, for about an hour. My senses opened, my body relaxed, my mind softened. I had to remind myself continuously that everything was okay. It was okay to keep walking. You don’t have to be anywhere. You can walk a little further. It’s okay. No one needs you right now. You are free to do this. But those cues only deepened my contentment, because my inner voice was reassuring and kind, which is also what I want. I want an inner voice that gives me permission to enjoy my life.
On the way back, I said to myself, you should do this more often. But that didn’t sound reassuring or kind. A should do is not the same thing as a want to do. So I began to list alternative prompts. What do you want? What do you long for? What do you yearn to do? (These made me laugh, actually, they sounded more earnest than I was feeling.) What do you wish to do? What would you like to do?
Ah. What would you like to do?
That question sounds like an invitation to my ear. What would you like to do? I’m asking it now. I was asking it as I stared into space about half an hour ago. I picked up the travel mug of leftover coffee from work and came into my office, I sat down in my great aunt Alice’s tiny rocking chair, I opened this app and I began to write.
And now, I ask it again. What would you like to do? And will you do it? Will you tell yourself it is okay to do it?
xo, Carrie
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