This fall, Air Canada had a crazy, unbelievable sale on tickets to Paris from Ottawa, like, less than $400 return.

My fantastic, beautiful, wonderful friend DoubleBias sent me some links. She said, “You deserve this.” She said, “You’d love it there.” She said, “You need this.”

And she also provided me with a full itinerary based on her own recent trip there, and many inspirational photos, and frequent pep talks, as I am not a confident or experienced traveller.

So I was left with a decision: what kind of person am I?

Am I a person who jumps on a last minute flight deal to spontaneously jet off to Paris? I have to admit, that does not fit the picture of Historical Lynn. Historical Lynn is careful, nervous, requires a long lead time to the new, lots of planning and panicking in advance.

But maybe Historical Lynn isn’t who I am anymore. I recently had a great chat with an old friend who also recently went through a divorce. He said that it seemed to him, lately, that those who knew him as a teenager or young adult were the ones that really knew him; that he was rediscovering those friendships and finding they made him feel like his true self.

I’m not sure I was a fully formed human back then but I see what he means. Back in the days before I knew how to conform, how to be responsible, how to present a pretty picture to the world, I was a little rougher, a little (LITTLE) more spontaneous, a little (LITTLE) more daring.

So in a nod to Prehistoric Lynn, I did it. Little Miss Sunshine (not so little any more) came along for the ride.

We had a marvelous time.

Coincidentally, we went during the week of my 53rd birthday. It was a banger way to celebrate, gotta tell you. Coming full circle, integrating the past Lynns, and figuring out what that means for the future – it’s been a good year.

The other day I was visiting a friend at their house for the first time. This house was clean.

Not just in the sense that it was recently dusted and there were no dishes in the sink. That, but also no clutter. The kitchen counters were bare (how?). The living room looked like a magazine shoot – not just elegant but no knickknacks, no magazines. The family room TV hid behind a cabinet and the blankets were folded in a corner, the coffee table a smooth shining expanse of nothingness.

It was some kind of miracle.

The next day I was hanging out with my cousin and his wife and they got to talking about how retirement is looming, so they’ve been aggressively cleaning out their house. Garbage bags full of stuff on its way out, their basement emptied and ready for house showings. The possibility of living abroad or travelling with literally everything they owned a real possibility.

I admit I was envious of both.

My house is in need of a cleaning on the surface level, and also underneath. Everywhere I look there is clutter – bank papers waiting for me to magically understand them before I can somehow find space for them in the filing cabinet, counters covered with an assortment of 50 types of tea and vitamins I’ll forget to take otherwise. Puzzles overflowing the so-called puzzle nook, waiting for my attention, and books – so many books! – stacked beside beds and family room chairs and next to bookshelves that just cannot accommodate them.

Oh, to live life clean, to live life with such focus and direction that you wake up each day to a clean slate and can decide what to think about, instead of having a million thoughts thrust upon you.

But the truth is, that’ll never be me, because I’m a scatterbrain, and I honestly don’t mean that in any kind of negative way. My brain scatters to the four winds at all times. Plans for tomorrow, next week, next year all live in there at once. It’s a tornado of creative projects and words coming in and words coming out and new thoughts and forward motion. It’s this but also that and that as well, and did I mention this other thing?

To me the world is so full of so many amazing things, so many experiences, that I want them all (cue Barbra Streisand: the world is juicy, juicy, and you see, I gotta have my bite, sir). And if my house is a visual representation of the inside of my brain – colours swirling, silly trinkets flashing, every outfit I tried on this week that didn’t quite fit and so lies discarded like a parade of who I was and who I might be again lying on the bedroom floor – then that’s maybe not so bad.

October was a hard month.

It’s been more than a year now that I’ve been doing the separation dance and we’re still not agreed, which seems like madness. There were some tough meetings and events in October and for the first time this year, I felt it.

The sadness of being The Bad Guy.

I am not one who sees the world in black and white. There are many sides to every story and my own point of view is just that, my side of things, one perspective only.

I’ve always trusted that over time, others will come to see me for who I am, will form their own truths and get to the heart of things. But I am learning that is not always true. Those that shout their own point of view the loudest are often rewarded with the Truth Label.

I have to admit it does all seem convincing. I’ll wear the Bad Guy label if it helps actually move things forward.

I cried a lot in October, alone, in my house, and one thing my World of Greys point of view tells me is that I have my own learning to do, my own growing to do. Maybe I’m not the Bad Guy, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have some changing to do, as the main character in this life.

One thing I know I don’t do well is share. I don’t share my joys, I don’t share my sadness, even with people I’m closest too. One feels too much like bragging, the other feels like too much of a burden for others to carry.

But I’ve been invited out lately by a few old, dear friends I haven’t connected with in a long time and I’m learning to say yes, yes to coffee, yes to movie nights. I’m daring to trust them with my sadness and to share. To actually admit to it being hard and me being weak, to be vulnerable.

Not gonna lie, it’s quite scary, but I’ve been assured by many online therapy sites that it’s the right way to build a community and move forward. To share my World of Greys with others and stop feeling like the world will only ever see me as the Bad Guy, to quietly spread my own truths.

I am changing, my life is changing, the world is changing, and I feel like the key thing here is to take the wheel and drive it forward in my own way, on a better path, towards a better me.

See you all there.