Just a thought… Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. [Mark Twain]

As always, you can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.

So, thanks for coming by – and I have a few things to share with you. None of them is life altering, but in our house, they’ll be life-improving.

Rob and I are going away for two weeks starting today. Our daughter-in-law Brooke will be keeping a steady hand on my Facebook page, and I’ll have posts planned in advance to go for you daily. (If anything world-shattering happens between now and when I get back, you’ll understand why I haven’t reflected or commented on it on social media.) Just no journal until the 29th. I plan to shoot something when I’m away and tell you about our escape then.

For now, it’s just this: I felt myself starting to really crack and when that happens, it’s time for some self-care. Picture lying in a hammock and you’re doing just fine keeping comfortable and balanced, and then, say…a hippopotamus…jumps in on top of you. You end up with your butt dragging on the ground.

Since I first started working at age 17, Novembers have always been busier than almost every month for me, but this year, so was October, and I was doing it all with one hand tied behind my back because of my ridiculous computer troubles.

My social media accounts are all just like a ball of wool after a cat’s gotten to it, and I was hitting walls all over the place. Hard. So when we saw that there were two weeks that had only hockey on the calendar, we decided to keep those weeks free, not offering any options for meetings or rehearsals or writing or posting or recording, and to take some time away together.

You’ll still get new stories on Drift with Erin Davis every Tuesday, and free ones moved over to listen to for the first time. I’ll be honest: Drift has been a much bigger project than I thought, as I’m responsible for promoting it, getting new subscribers (both free and paid) and, of course, writing, recording, editing, mixing and posting. It’s a LOT. A labour of love, for sure, but a lot.

So, with everything all ready for you for the next two weeks, Rob and I are taking that time to reconnect. To breathe. To sleep and to relax. As I say, Brooke will be online to make sure everything’s okay and when I come back in a couple of weeks, I’ll have plenty of stories and experiences – positive but not in a “test” kind of way (we hope). So take care of yourself. Take it easy if you can, enjoy the daily posts at Facebook and Instagram if you follow and please find a way to breathe, to sleep, yes, to Drift and I’ll be back on the 29th.

And thanks for understanding as you always seem to do. You amaze me.