Spring Garden Tour Video & life stuff

May 6, 2025

I recently posted a garden tour video to YouTube.

If you’re reading this in email you’ll have to click through to the blog to watch it. Or head straight to YouTube.

This one is all about the gardens on the property. What’s happening in them and my plans for them.

If you’re noticing a lot of video notifications on my blog that’s because I’ve been making more videos.

After submitting my 51 page essay for the completion of my master’s program earlier this spring I’ve been putting some of the energy that I had been giving to that project into video production.

Video production is a much easier lift and less mentally taxing for me compared to academic writing. But, my video-making skills and production value fall short compared to the level I aspire to achieve.

I think it’s a good practice (though it’s not something I treat like a life checklist item) to be working at something, some skill, that I don’t feel very accomplished at doing.

I don’t set out to learn new skills as a personal growth project. I think it’s just a very human thing to try new things, learn new things, gain new aptitudes.

Interest, desire, curiosity, or some goal I want to achieve leads me to the threshold where I’m ready to step out of what I know and what I feel confident doing and into the discomfort of doing and trying new things.

Video is one of those for me right now. I feel like a bumbling idiot a lot of the time. Similar to how I felt when I started my master’s degree. If nothing else, I appreciate the humanizing/spiritual benefits of doing things you don't feel accomplished at. It's humbling.

I will add this about doing new and potentially embarrassing things at this age. I care less and less about how I'm perceived by others which frees me up to put myself out there. I suppose I have professional considerations to think about - don't do anything that makes me un-hireable, for example. But I don't think anything I'm doing on YouTube would constitute that kind of content. (Some of my political and philosophical positions on the other hand...)

Video is the main form of content I’m working on right now. In other words, not a lot of long in-depth writing happening. I need a break after the intensity of my studies. I do have some drafts (always drafts!) and a series on work and career that I really hope to return to. But we’ll see… the spring and summer train is leaving the station and I have a strong feeling that the next 6 months are going to be busy.

Brienne just arrived for a 12 day visit. We picked her up at the Halifax VIA rail station last Saturday night. Her arrival and visit kicks off the spring and summer traveling season.

As is always the case I have a strong desire to document the activities, tell the story of the doing, whether in writing and photography or now, in video. But the most important part is the actual doing and appreciating the experiences.

Feeling the pull between these two objections - living and documenting/telling the story of my life - is a familiar tension. I don’t anticipate it ever resolving as I keep endeavouring to do both wholeheartedly.

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