December days

December has come quickly and seems to be holding the same speed and busyness. This is the first time in over three months that I have had a moment to spare and I unfortunately feel like I should be doing something more productive.

School ended in November for me which was a welcome relief. Over 9 weeks I read roughly 2,700 pages and wrote over 30,000 words. How am I ever supposed to retain anything at that rate? I have one text book for next quarter that I have started reading but I am finding it hard to maintain the resolve to make it through the chapters. I found the courses entirely interesting and I am very excited about my next two courses as well.

This past quarter we focused on very foundational elements to counselling including basic skills and components of counselling, the makings of a collaborative therapeutic relationship, multicultural considerations and worldview assessment, and important elements of why counselling works. I am happy to have had time to examine these as I think they can sometimes be overlooked. Though it was an extremely busy quarter of learning and I felt like I had to be at top speed to keep up I strangely felt that I had the opportunity to slow down and examine my own foundational assumptions of counselling. I also recognize the importance of continually checking in and adjusting throughout life.

As winter comes I have dropped my expectations of jogging three days per week and adopted my winter regime of ice skating and hiking (it would be snowshoeing except we just had our first snow fall yesterday… and I don't own snowshoes). I have been skating close to twice per week and I as always enjoy learning a new skill and tiring myself out. This year I am working on transitioning to skating backwards, skating backwards, and stopping on my left edge. I have a goal to skate well enough to start learning to play hockey. I think I have a long way to go.

I have also been exploring our backyard. There is housing development called Wilden which surrounds a couple large ponds up the hill from us. It is a strange place. It motto is "Nature inspired living" which means that they use expensive beams for finishing the houses and that the proximity to a wooded area is close but the houses are gigantic and crammed onto tiny lots. Yards are small but pools are huge. It has a perfect walking trail that takes about 45 minutes to complete which I enjoy but I have been exploring the hills beyond.

I have been on a couple 3-4 hour hikes behind the woods and have discovered some interesting things. The first is a system of ponds that I believe were made to collect water to develop agriculture in this area. I recently read a newspaper article about the systems that were made in the early 20th century. This area used to be called "the valley of death" because of how dry it was. Now it is home to orchards and gardens… and the dump. I also discovered that we are only a few kilometres from the lake; maybe 3.2 or 4.8k (2 or 3 miles). So exciting…