Keeping things in perspective

It is so important and yet so difficult to keep things in perspective.*  Again, this note is more for myself than anyone else, but perhaps it will be of some limited use to others.

I find that when I get more sleep (something I am generally in very short supply of), then things generally don't seem quite as bad as they did in the middle of the night.  I don't think it is an accident that so many people refer to the "dark night of the soul" as a trying time that one must awaken from (into the light).  And yet knowing this, I still try to get that little bit too much done and then pay for it later.  (Research has also shown that people that cheat themselves of sleep have an imbalance of melatonin and snack too much.  Definitely one of my biggest problems at the moment.  But at the same time it doesn't feel like one life is enough for everything I wanted to accomplish -- or even everything I wanted to read. Until I can identify what I am willing to give up, I won't change my ways.)

Anyway, there was some disappointing news at work about a big project that we didn't win.  There will come a point when if we continually lose out on these kinds of projects, then I will have to move on.  But that day is at least two years away, and there are a number of things I am working on to improve our odds of winning the next big project.

What is important is that I do not regret moving to Toronto.  I think it is fair to say while there are a few other places I would have enjoyed living, I have been trying to get back to Toronto for close to 20 years.  And here I am.

I am clear-eyed enough to know there are some things I don't care for here: the recycling plan and even moreso the kitchen scrap program which is basically a green-washing scheme that doesn't actually work, the traffic congestion and general lack of bike lanes, the general lack of investment in transportation infrastructure, but most of all the amalgamation that led to jerkish suburbanites controlling the agenda (to say nothing of Rob Ford).  I would so love to see Etobicoke and Scarborough hived off.  At this point, Toronto and York might as well stay together.  That would have been a sensible amalgamation.  Some of my beefs have to do with provincial and particularly federal policies, so they are unlikely to change, and I just have to put up with them.  However, on the whole, I am happier here.  I'm pretty sure that given the craziness south of the border that Canada is now the better place to raise children.** 

But aside from children and their social and cultural development, I have really been soaking in the culture here.  I've managed to see a play at Stratford and at Shaw, and I just saw a fun production of  As You Like It in High Park.  (I really went back and forth on whether my friend Annika and I saw Romeo and Juliet there.  I certainly don't remember it being so hard to get to, but apparently it was in High Park.  I still have the theatre program to prove it.  Maybe we drove it after all.  It was just under a year since my mom had passed away -- in many ways that year was just a blur.)

In general, I am being selfish and planning stuff on my own (though it won't be too much longer before we start testing out sitters).  In my own mind, I justify it because I do work such long hours, and the kids aren't quite old enough for most of it.  Pretty lame, I know.

However, I've decided to go a bit crazy and try to cram in all the big kid-friendly exhibits in 9 days (that's how the City Pass program works).  So we are going to do Castle Loma tomorrow, then Sunday will be a stay-at-home day to try to clean up the last of the boxes in the living room and upstairs (I am not committing to finishing the downstairs tomorrow!).  Monday is a holiday.  I want to get an hour or two of work in, and it happens that I work awfully close to the CN Tower.  So we'll check that out, and then ROM on the way home (a fairly short trip of the gem stones and dinosaurs and maybe the Egyptian stuff if it doesn't freak my daughter out).  Then the following weekend will be the Zoo and the Science Centre.  My conscience sated, I can then book my concerts and plays for the fall and winter season.  But seriously, I am trying to be a little more attentive when the kids want to talk to me, though it can just be so overwhelming, particularly when my daughter refuses to go to bed at a reasonable hour.  Oh for those days when they didn't know they could get out of bed...

Well, the main thing to keep in perspective is that this too shall pass.  Within only another year or two, she won't need or want to be tucked into bed.  They'll start outgrowing their stuffed animals.  And before you know it high school and then college.  And then I guess we will finally know if everything was worth it.  As much as one ever does at any rate.

* Just a short tangent back to Berlin on the "Russian Thinkers."  One of their chief characteristics was an inability to keep things in perspective and to extend philosophical systems past their point of utility -- and then to try to live according to absurd maxims.  I will say that the introduction to Russian Thinkers had some profound things to say about monism (actually a broad category of totalizing beliefs of which monotheism is one strand) and pluralism.  I'll have to return to this theme later, but it really resonated with me.

** There is no point in starting a flame war, as I won't publish the comments, but a respectful back and forth could be accommodated here.