Sheds Happen

It’s Monday. The last Monday of the year, I do believe because the computer tells me so. 2025 has been a year that hasn’t been easy. From a distance looking on with eyes that are not my own, maybe. And not apocalyptical by any means. But the inner workings of 2025 had grandeous endings and beginnings that were arrows through the heart and kicks in the pants as much as they were celebratory. Life kept squeezing me like an orange until there was nothing but rind and pulp. But with trust in myself, I knew I could make things with that. I’m not a fan of uncertainty. I like to challenge the “un”. But uncertainty exists and must be dealt with or lived with.

The biggest ending was the decision to retire. It was a hard one, and one that I made at the beginning of the year. Despite the turmoil that followed, I stuck with it. I was lucky to have a career I absolutely loved and I wanted to leave it while I still liked it. I was fortunate to be able to do that.

I held some writing retreats, virtually and in person in our home in St. Bride’s. I wanted to do that in my retirement so 2025 provided a practice period. I liked it. I had good results. Not only did it help others write, but it inspired me to continue my writing.

Then I started Seaweed Publishing as a way to be more creative, in charge of my own writing destiny, and true to myself as a writer. Another beginning to counterbalance the retirement ending. I have rules imprinted on my being for myself and anything that goes through the workings of Seaweed so I can stay the course. Maybe I’ll soften over time as I learn. Maybe I’ll be stricter, I don’t know. But the daring in the intention is what I hope will guide me well. So far, so good. With all but writing. I know that will come because I want it to.

I also have to tell you a story about a shed by way of lesson learning and letting go and an ending of sorts that I wasn’t expecting. In 2025 my husband became disabled. I won’t go into details, but he went from a healthy working man to somebody who can’t easily get around, can’t drive for the time it takes to get to St. Bride’s, spent time using a walker, spent time in massive pain, etc. His life is being lived differently, and by way of being married, so is mine.

Leading up to his complete crash, as his health was going downhill but his hope that it would be rectified was strong, he had designs on building a shed in St. Bride’s. When I say he, I mean we. So, this past spring, he mentioned if he had the holes dug for the foundation, that would be all he’d wish for in 2025. The holes got dug. Then, if he only had the blocks in the holes, that would be all he’d wish for in 2025, and so on and so on. I warned him that the year before, every time we went to St. Bride’s we were killed from working at the house and property and I didn’t want 2025 to be a dread. He assured me it wouldn’t.

But he continued to wish. His wishes had to be granted by me and others for two reasons. One deals with his lack of prowess in the carpentry department, and one was his growing impairment.

On my days in St. Bride’s, I’d end up putting the floor down, building walls and trusses, putting on the plywood, siding, etc. This also had to do with at least two reasons. I didn’t want to see him struggle and I didn’t want to see him struggle, the answer to both his reasons. However, I refused to do the roof because I wasn’t getting up on no scaffold and perhaps stumble or fall and then I’d have to deal with things differently. But I did go for stuff, hand stuff up, etc. In other words, I didn’t get a “free from the shed day.” By September, through hard work and the grace of others, we had a lovely new shed. I had to admit it was worth it. Even my writing retreaters got involved and helped us put in windows.

I was grateful it was built. (Though he says he wants a bike shed next year and that he’ll build it himself – I don’t think so 😊 but I digress.)

But shed story is not finished. I must swoop down into September first. September came in like a smack with the back of its hand. Our daughter go married in Botwood. That was one of the amazing things of September. I retired three days before the wedding - another amazing September thing. However, same day, we had a water leak. All the kitchen flooring had to come up and be thrown out. We cut a hole beneath the sink to find it, shut off the water while we went to Botwood and left with a big mess waiting for our return. Came back to hauling out more flooring, some of it down for fifty years. Layers upon layers, even tiles stuck down with something that was still sticky. By evening the day after the wedding, my husband was unable to walk.

The drive to and from the wedding, the activities with the water, flooring etc. became his undoing. Ambulance to the hospital, unable to sit, stand, or walk, his life existed in a lawn chair on one side of the exterior door to a lawn chair just on the other side. A three-step land of complete pain. I stayed with him and left the St. Bride’s stuff, which was now little stuff, until things got better.

Slowly, they did. But his driving was much more limited, and he couldn’t accompany me anywhere, and he couldn’t lift anything. Friends came with me to help restore the floor in St. Bride’s but because of the time span, before we could get the hole under the sink fixed, the mice got in. Another battle on our hands.

So shed was kind of forgotten. It had been the focal point of our trips to St. Bride’s and now it was the house – the floor, the mice, the clean-up. But the shed wasn’t finished with us. It said, “don’t forget about me.” During the windstorms of the last few weeks, the shed decided it didn’t like where it was built, and it moved off the foundation and settled four or five feet from where it was constructed.

There is a lesson in there somewhere.

Sheds happen.

Focusing on one thing so hard that you lose sight of things much closer or things more imminent or more important, or something like that, I suppose, could lead to things shifting and needing further work.

That led me to this blog which is about letting go of what I can’t control. That’s hard, no doubt. I have to learn to live differently. More fulsome and big picture-y and around sheds and injuries that are not mine but impact me.

I have to ignore distractions and get out of that crazy whirlwind that could consume my time and me. I have to trust my instincts, I have to plan around the uncontrollable and shift where and what I can, and wait out what I can’t. Years ago, when I had brutally difficult sore throats, I counted between the swallows to get through. I find myself counting through other things now. And I’ve started another novel using that philosophy.

So maybe in 2026, there will be times when I have to count between the swallows or maybe trust the lessons I learned in my 61 years to veer me around obstacles and through challenges. Or at least, let me deal with them appropriately as they come however differently it impacts me.  

If sheds happen, they happen. It is not about the shed, it’s about what I do around it. I am blessed that my shed is actually a physical shed, and not even my own, when others are dealing with sheds of greater proportions. I can veer when others can’t. I hope I always look to the lesson, learn from it and grow. No matter how old I get, or how retired I get, or as an afterthought, how many books I write.  

I hope I haven’t confused you. If I have, veer around me. I can take it.

If 2026 comes with sheds – big, tiny, enormous - attend to them however you must. Find your lesson and move on. Bear in mind the wind. If it shifts you, go with it. Find your lesson, be grateful for it, and move on. Life is truly about moving on and evolving into it or around it or co-exist in both – a different, stronger, more resilient you.

Remain kind, remain ready for the wind, trust you can do it, no matter what that it entails. 2026. We got this. Sheds and all.