You may recognize this road sign, which I have borrowed from the Ontario Ministry of Transportation’s helpful guide to common and not-so-common road signs. It means there’s a bump or uneven pavement on the road ahead. The yellow “caution” indicates drivers should slow down and keep control of their vehicles.

There’s a bump coming up in the road ahead of me, too. I’ve decided to go back to school.

Oh, it seemed like a good idea back when I applied to Royal Roads University earlier this year. This is kind of a “bucket list” thing; something I have wanted to do for a long time. My own children are close to completing their own degrees, and they are pretty self-sufficient. It seemed like a good time to pursue my own.

The degree I’m pursuing is a two-year online BA in Professional Communication. It’s set up so students “manage their education while maintaining work and family life” due to the “unique learning model that combines convenient web-based learning with short [three-week] on-campus residencies.”

So I find myself three weeks away from this on-campus residency, which is on the other side of the country in Victoria, B.C., up to my neck in work and wondering what on earth I was thinking.

I already have a stack of “work” work. Now I’ve added three textbooks to read and assignments to complete every week until I go. There are apparently 45 of us in this class of 2012, and we all had to introduce ourselves in three separate online discussion forums and comment on at least two of the other posts. We have to watch several videos and speeches and comment on those. My in-box overflows every day with an extra 30-50 messages because there appears to be no way to subscribe to the forums in digest form.

I’m having to work hard at not freaking out, too:

• I’m paranoid about missing an assignment because it’s up to the students to find them, and I’ve already discovered a forum I hadn’t subscribed to a week after it had launched.
• One of the first three concurrent courses is my absolute all-time least favourite, Public Speaking.
• Almost all the other students are quite a bit younger than me; one or two have children, but I’ll be the “senior stateswoman” for sure.
• My three weeks in residence will be in a typical tiny single-bed dorm room, with a shared bathroom down the hall.
• It’s been a long time since I’ve been in school and I can’t help but worry about keeping up.

All of this to say that there is very definitely a big bump in the road ahead. Part of my attempt to slow down and keep control of the vehicle is sharply cutting back my online life outside of Royal Roads. I’ll try to blog occasionally and share what’s going on, and maybe I’ll get on Twitter or Facebook once in a while.

So it may seem like I’ve dropped off the face of the earth, but it’s just off the radar for now. See you in September, maybe!

IABC/Toronto treated volunteers to a lovely appreciation event on June 16, a buffet dinner aboard the Jubilee Queen, a replica of a Mississippi paddlewheel boat. The weather had been iffy all day, but the sun came out as we lined up to board.

Having arrived early, my friend Donna Papacosta and I first toured the beautiful Toronto Music Garden. This charming space celebrates its 10th year this year, and I am somewhat embarrassed to say this is not only the first time I have visited it, it’s the first time I’ve even heard of it!

The space is the creation of renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma and landscape designer Julie Moir Messervy. The garden has six “rooms,” each an interpretation of the traditional dance forms featured in Bach’s First Suite for the Unaccompanied Cello. For example, Courante is “an exuberant movement” interpreted in an upward-spiralling path through tall grasses and perennials, topped by a Maypole (the creation of Canadian artist Anne Roberts).

It’s a lovely, calm, inviting spot, and a fine example of communicating meaning in unexpected and inspiring ways. Even better, throughout the summer it showcases free concerts in the Music Pavilion (created by architectural blacksmith Tom Tollefson) every Thursday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m., weather permitting. The garden is located at 475 Queen’s Quay West, between Bathurst Street and Spadina Avenue in Toronto.

A Maypole tops the Courante "room" at the Toronto Music Garden. Look closely and you'll see a visitor doing her own interpretation of exuberant movement!

In honour of Mother’s Day, here’s a quote that really speaks to me and sums up the feeling that took me by surprise when my first son was born, and of course continued with son #2:

“Making the decision to have a child — it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” – Elizabeth Stone

You wouldn’t believe it, looking at my office last week, but I am not a hoarder.

Hoarders, as displayed to the world in the A&E show of the same name, have “an inability to part with their belongings” that is so out of control, they are on the verge of a personal crisis. A crisis, of course, that they are proud to have on national television.

It’s not an inability to let go that causes my office to overflow with papers and stuff. It’s a tendency to keep a lot of things for reference, and a lack of disciplined and regular purging. Who has time for tidying, especially when you’re juggling multiple projects and meeting urgent deadlines?

So when I decided earlier this year to finally treat myself to a new desk large enough to hold everything I need at my fingertips, and a new bookcase to replace the shelves hung on wall-mounted brackets, I had my work cut out for me. Out went the old: desk, shelves and contents. Before anything went on or in the new, I had to review and purge, which explains the waiting pile shown here.

It took me several days to conquer the mess and end up with an office that brings a smile to my face rather than an involuntary shudder. Here’s how you can do it, too:

•  Get rid of old files, out-of-date software manuals and conference summaries. If you haven’t looked at something for years, or it’s obsolete, you don’t need it.

•  If you subscribe to magazines and newsletters, don’t keep the entire issues. Instead, cut out the appropriate article or section you want to keep and file it somewhere you can easily find and refer to it again. I used to have dust-covered collections that went back years; not any more!

•  If you keep hard copies of projects you worked on, put them in one place. I had binders of client work in three or four different places and couldn’t always find one when I wanted to look something up. Now they are all on the shelves over my desk, where I can refer to them easily.

•  Gather all your office supplies in one spot and put like items together. Doing this showed me that I had bought envelopes when I didn’t need more, among other things.

•  Fix the things that bug you. Why did I have duct tape holding together a binder that I referred to often, when I had a perfectly good almost-new binder I could have used? Oh, right, that binder wasn’t available because it held back issues of a newsletter that I never referred to.

•  If you have awards or other items that make you smile, put them on display.

I promise that my office will never get to its former untidy state. But it will be an ongoing fight against my packrat nature, so I can never let down my guard!

“If you can read this, thank a teacher.” This is how a post linked to by my friend and colleague Joan Vinall-Cox began.

While blogger Ralf Schwartz suggested that the best way to thank your teacher is to teach others “by further developing what your teacher has taught you,” I think an equally excellent option is to say thank you.

And so I found myself digging through old report cards to remind me of the name of my grade 7 teacher. Mrs. McLelland was also the school librarian, and she recognized and nurtured my own love of reading by giving me first dibs on incoming books she thought I would enjoy.

I found a link to the school, which I attended for just that one year, on my high school web site. From there was a link to an e-mail address for Mrs. McLelland’s son. I sent him a note, sharing my fond recollection of her kind actions and asking about her. He responded promptly, telling me that sadly, she died in 2001, but she “would certainly be happy that she had a positive influence in your life, which I think is the goal of all good teachers.”

He added that her own first love was reading, something she had instilled in him and his eldest daughter, who was now teaching grade school.

I recalled that one of the books I enjoyed way back then was Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Thinking I might like to read it again, I took the book from my library shelf and found inside, in the handwriting of that shy 13-year-old, a note that Mrs. McLellan had given it to me at the end of that school year. How cosmic is that?

My point, and I do have one, is that if you have had a wonderful teacher who succeeded in touching and making a difference in your life, please let him or her know. Say thank you. The best teacher gift is not a mug that says “World’s Best Teacher” but the heartfelt note that describes how you’re a better person for having been in that particular class with that particular teacher. I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to tell Mrs. McLelland that, but something tells me that she knew.

At 8:30 p.m. tonight, it’s Earth Hour. Turn off your lights, and get off the computer!

Critics wonder, what’s the point of turning lights off for an hour on one day when we abuse the Earth for the other 8,736 hours in the year? But I truly believe that the buzz around Earth Hour does a great job of making more people more aware that we all have the power to make a difference.

For instance, 400 cities were involved in 2008. Last year, there were 4,000 cities. I haven’t seen the numbers yet for this year, but with something like 170 countries involved, there have to be even more cities taking part.

And the difference is pretty dramatic, as you see in the before and after photos.

Of course, don’t just turn off your lights (computers, TVs, radios, etc.). Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Car pool. Take public transit. Walk. Bicycle. Shop locally. Bring reusable bags when you shop. Every little bit counts!

UPDATE NEXT DAY: There were 126 countries, more than 4,000 cities and towns, and hundreds of millions of people involved. For Ontario, the drop in electricity use was about 4%, or enough to power a suburb of Toronto. Here’s a gallery of this year’s photos. I just love the before and after pics (and these — click on the images to see the fade to the “after” shot).

Here’s what I learned from taking a week off and flying to Florida for my younger son’s school break:

If you’re looking for beach weather, Florida might or might not have it in February. We happened to hit a week of temperatures in the mid-70s, which was certainly warmer than home (and no snow!) but not warm enough to sit on a beach except fully dressed. We Canadians were obvious; we were the ones wearing shorts while the locals had long pants and coats.

Bring your own snacks and headphones. Oh, the airlines are happy to sell you both, but who really wants a $6 sandwich and cheap $3 headphones? You can still get free coffee or a Coke, though. For now.

Be prepared to pay to see a movie. You might expect Air Canada to have been the first to figure out this new way to make money (and I’m sure they’ll be all over it soon), but it was WestJet. I read a book instead.

You really don’t want to travel anywhere with more than a carry-on bag. Going, we  were in line a full hour just to check our bags, after already checking in online. Customs and security took another hour. Coming home, we waited 50 minutes for our bags to arrive, and only one out of three made it. The other two were delivered two days later. We’re grateful this didn’t happen on the front end.

Try to stem the e-mail tide. Before leaving, I went to all the lists I follow and changed my delivery frequency to once a week instead of once a day. I added a vacation notice to a client e-mail account and recorded voice mail that made it clear I wasn’t in the office all week. Still, I came home to more than 200 messages from five working days away.

Be merciless. Because I had 200+ messages to wade through, I did a lot of skimming and deleting, particularly those list digests.

Getting away for a break is well worth it. Just having no particular responsibilities (like a 6:30 a.m. wake-up call to walk the dog, or figuring out what to make for dinner) is a pleasure.

I’m back to reality now, complete with early morning dog-walking, which I actually missed. (The walking part, not necessarily the early start.)

The start of a new year always seems to prompt at least a couple of weeks of good behaviour. Yeah, this is the year we’re going to lose 10 pounds, learn a new skill, get organized. And so I found myself looking around at the mess in my home office over the holidays, thinking, “This has got to change.”

I started small, with a shelf of files and the desk drawer that is the equivalent of every kitchen’s “junk drawer.” Here is what going through them taught me to do differently this year:

• BUSINESS CARDS
  About 40 cards were shoved in a corner of the drawer in no apparent order. I spent some time sorting these out and filing them, noting that some had written reminders on the back of where I had met the person and if I had promised to follow up with something.
  To do: This year, I vow to deal with any business cards by first searching for the person on LinkedIn and asking for a connection. You could argue that once the connections are made online, I could throw the cards away, but for now let’s say I’ll keep them, entered in contact management software and/or physically filed. I will make sure to write on EVERY card where I met the person.
• STUFF
  I can’t tell you how many pens, shells of pens waiting for refills, stubs of pencils, bits of paper, calculators with no batteries, paper clips and labels were stuffed in that drawer. Clearly, I had long ago abandoned any semblance of order and at some point began just tossing things in there just because I didn’t have another place to put them.
  To do: This year, I am finding proper homes for more things and keeping them there. I am putting the pens that work in a mug on my desk, and throwing out more things.
• PAPER
  We never really believed in paperless offices, did we? And I sure don’t have one. Two areas in particular have been messing up my office. (1) When I interview someone for an article, I print out the notes and keep them until the article is published. This is helpful because sometimes I have had to refer to the notes during the approval process, to add more detail or clarify a point. But somehow the notes have been multiplying when I’m not looking. (2) I have active files in at least three places besides the actual filing cabinets. Sometimes the files there aren’t actually active any more and should be moved out of the way. And I almost always drop things behind or trip over one of these places.
  To do:  This year, I will return to the notes within a month or so and shred them if they contain any sensitive information, or recycle them if they don’t. And today I am picking up a few supplies I need to combine all three spots into one place for active files, getting rid of the one that trips me.

There’s more to be done, but this is a start.

How do you stay on top of clutter in your office, especially when you are busy meeting client deadlines?

It was still dark as I drove my husband to a 7 a.m. doctor’s appointment yesterday. Traffic was building on the highway, but at least it was moving. In another half an hour, cars would probably be keeping no better than a snail’s pace.

It suddenly occurred to me that in my former corporate life, this is where I would have been at this ungodly hour on a weekday. I would already be stressed out by being up early enough to shower and dress, get the family organized and get on the road. The radio would be on to give advance warning of accidents and traffic jams, incoming snow storms or heavy rain. A drive that takes just half an hour in ideal conditions — perfect weather, middle of the day, light traffic — routinely took at least an hour, sometimes even when getting on the road at 7, since plenty of others had the same idea of “getting a jump” on traffic.

I smiled and said, “I am SO LUCKY.”

Lucky to be able to do what I do best, write, in a home office. Lucky that I don’t have to be somewhere else at a certain time every day. Lucky that I don’t spend one or two hours on the road every day. Lucky that now I usually listen to weather reports with mild curiosity rather than anxiety.

Do you feel lucky today? Why?

Here’s some more expressive writing.

Love Letter is a public art project in Philadelphia consisting of a series of 50 rooftop murals painted by local and international artists. The project began in August 2009, and is described this way:

The murals, which are best viewed from the Market-Frankford elevated transit line, collectively express a love letter from a guy to a girl, from an artist to his hometown, and from local residents to their West Philadelphia neighborhood. Love Letter, which will be documented in two books, a film, and a gallery exhibition, speaks to all those who have loved and for those who long for a way to express that love to the world around them.

For example, one mural says, “Forever begins when you say yes.” Others say, “Miss you too often not to love you” and “Look look look look any way as long as it’s at me.” (See them all here.)

For writers, it’s a reminder of how the words we choose can say so much.

For the romantic, well, it’s another excuse to admire expressive writing (like Other People’s Love Letters)!

(Thanks to Patti Digh for tweeting about the project!)