9:23pm – The fire alarm goes off in the apartment hallway. Great now I gotta go out in the cold for some some stupid sensor tripping…where are my warm socks?
9:24pm – “I smell smoke.” F*ck, ok there is an actual fire somewhere. Stay calm – don’t panic. Move efficiently. Don’t scramble. Wallet. Keys. Phone. Wallet. Keys. Phone. Wallet. Keys. Phone. Jacket. Warm gloves. Cat. Toque.
9:29pm – Time to leave. Check the door – it’s not hot. I can see out the eye hole – the smokes not that bad. Open the door. Go down the stairs (12 flights is a lot of stairs).
9:35pm – Outside. Ok fire department is here…6 trucks wow. I don’t see any flames or smoke coming out of any unit. It’s likely contained. Someone is saying they pulled the alarm after seeing smoke coming out of a hole in their wall. There is nothing in the apartment that I can’t replace. I am ok. We’re ok. It will be ok. Thank goodness it’s not that cold out.
9:55pm – The fire is out but they have to vent a few floors…it’s going to be awhile before they let us back in. Everything is fine.
11pm – We’re back in bed watching Tik Tok trying to relax enough to sleep.
5:15am – Off to NP
5:43am – Meet Lazina. Set up the workout. It’s the phone number workout. “Let’s switch partners after every lap.” “But who’s number will they complete?” “Someone’s” “Ok let’s do it.”
6:48am – Back home. At least it doesn’t smell like smoke anymore…
For better and for worse my form of dissociation is intellectualization (to suppress any emotions and focus on facts and logic). I don’t do this all the time don’t worry; I still feel many emotions (movies/tv can still make me cry haha). As bad as this thought process can be, in yesterday’s context it helped tremendously. I didn’t feel stress and in the end everyone/thing I cared about was safe. The entire ordeal, outlined above, just felt like I was going with the flow.
In contrast, to the extremes of last night, this morning I had a workout planned but we shifted it due to the cold weather and while maybe it was different than what I had in my head, the same feeling washed over me – go with the flow.
I realize this may all be a bit of oversharing but my hope is that in articulating it I get to express how grateful I am to be safe and how grateful I am to all those (including from NP) that helped teach me to stay calm under pressure. I’ve had to wrestle with intellectualization throughout my life to make sure that I am not suppressing constantly (I did this as a kid) but I am in a good place with it now and have been for awhile. I hope that you take away the reminder that going with the flow and being present with your emotions is a really powerful skill to practice. It took me a long time to get both in balance. Yesterday ended up not being too extreme but I am confident that Ania and I would have taken whatever occurred in stride because I am confident in how I/we deal with pressure. Oh and also take this is a reminder to check/update your home insurance; I certainly did today.
I hope you enjoyed today’s workout! I loved thinking about the fact that you and your partners crafted someone’s phone number and that person will never know it. Maybe we should have tried calling the created numbers to leave “GOOD MORNING” voicemails haha. I hope the rest of your day was great and I can’t wait to see you on Wednesday :). Did you see our IG story from the workout? We were in the background of CTV’s live coverage doing hip dips haha.
Keep being awesome,
Rob
Announcement:
Wednesday – Royal Glenora Stairs
Friday – Walterdale Hill
Share via socials:
