Yep, one more Frank Turner lyric, and that’s officially cemented the fact that some of his words are going to be added to the sleeve next time around — not those specific ones, but If Ever I Stray had a great message, as did Glory Hallelujah and The Road, and I love his spirit of persisting through knockdowns and the eternal determination to get back up, moving forward, and kicking ass. (Anyone got the new record? Full of the heartache and the gut-wrenching honesty of a relationship breakdown, but portrayed with upbeat rock and roll, Donnie Darko and Rocky Horror references and a cheery piano that will drag you back onto your heels and up to face the world again. I love his ability to declaring that things royally suck in a way that’s ridiculously uplifting and kind of demands a punk rock dance party.)
I digress – today’s lyric kind of reflects a bit of a theme that’s arisen lately, and it called me back to a list I made almost a year ago of things I was going to do before 30.
“You shouldn’t wait for something terrible to happen before you decide to grab life by the throat and live it to pieces (thank you Frank) – but that being said, when something terrible does happen, you do kind of realise that life is short, and it’s probably better off not to spend it on crap you’ll either forget or regret when the end is drawing near. […] Two of the biggest things I’ve learned are that a) time is short, that every second should be spent wisely, and that trivial things should never be prioritised over what ultimately means most in life, and b) shit happens, but the only way it’s going to stop happening is if you decide to take action rather than whine about it.
Blogging about my goal list over the course of the last two years is hands down the reason I kept going. Once you put something out there for the world to see, you feel like you owe it to them to follow through on your promises. And you owe it to yourself to stay accountable, and not look like a lazy bastard.
[…] So I’m going to make a 30 Before 30. When I made the last list, it wasn’t just a bucket list of stuff I thought might be kind of neat – it was a list of things I was terribly afraid of, but things I was desperate to be able to do (but that most people probably checked off by the time they reached puberty). I want to challenge myself, grow, learn new things, throw myself outside what’s comfortable and hope for the best. I want to learn to stop giving a crap about things and people that don’t factor into the big picture, and I want to focus only on the things that do. I want to learn to accept my weaknesses and faults, and actively try to change them. I want to learn what is most comfortable, and spend some time nurturing that as well as trying what’s not. I don’t want to get to the end without any scars. I want to get there knowing I did something, and I want to know more fully who exactly I am. I think once you’ve figured that out, it’s pretty much time to kick the bucket, but I think there’s enormous value in exploring yourself, learning to be comfortable with what’s there, and challenging yourself to be even more. I think it was good to have tried things I was afraid of, but I tend to give myself a hard time for not having done them perfectly – my goal wasn’t just to attempt them, but to do them fearlessly, and in that respect, it’s hard not to focus on shortcomings. But on the other hand, I think points are generally given for effort, so I think as long as I keep trying, maybe I’ll learn to give myself a bit of a break. It doesn’t matter what direction you’re going or if you even know where you’re going, as long as you’re moving forward. And move forward I shall.
[…] I have two years left of my twenties. I still have so much to learn, so much to improve, so much to tackle and so much to try. I have so many goals I want to throw out there into the universe and make sure I always keep working on. I have activities I want to experience, moments I want to share, places I want to see, and project I want to complete. And I want to spend every day focusing on all of them. Nobody, they say, gets remembered for the things they didn’t do. So here goes.”
Life has been such a whirlwind lately that I don’t think I’ve actually checked in with this list, but looking back on it now, I see the first thing on the list was to do with music.
“I want to lose the awkwardness, the terror at the thought of singing in front of a single person, learn to have some sort of presence, and actually not kind of suck at something I actually really enjoy.”
When I wrote that I think I had a handful of lame YouTube videos up, ones in which I’d tried to sing and play but definitely wasn’t doing it to the level I wanted to be. It was like my fear of being heard for what I really am was physically stifling my voice, and I sounded like a little mouse. I so wanted to not be that quiet, whispery singer who only does songs in her bedroom when nobody’s home. I so wanted to sing Big Songs and not be afraid to do it in my own home. I so wanted to prove I could do it, for myself, and eventually, for other people.
So it’s been 9 months. I’ve invested in a lot of music equipment (Psych 101 taught me that the brain will convince itself to make use of things if they’ve been a bit investment), and I can record with a mic and an amp now. I’m still recording off my phone, but that’s not a big issue. I took a series of piano lessons (which didn’t come back as naturally as I’d hoped), and I think I started getting braver in what I was singing and posting to the internet. And then something magical happened. First, I stopped cringing so much and started feeling a tiny bit proud of myself. Second, somebody in a real band told me they preferred my voice to their own singer’s. And thirdly, somehow I joined a band. (More likes = more accountability!)
The first few jamming sessions were scary. Tonnes of fun, but scary. I think even proper singers will say it’s harder to sing in front of one or a small group of people than a big crowd, because all the attention is on you. But after a couple of practices, I’m actually starting to feel more comfortable – and slightly excited at the thought of performing. In two or three weeks. Yep, I figured if I was going to do this, I wasn’t going to wait another nine months sitting in my bedroom mustering up the courage to do it, so I’m making it as public as possible so I have to stay accountable. It’s just going to be an open mic, but I have a couple of weeks to get my arse in gear, stop fretting, overanalysing and psyching myself out, get excited, and sing like I’ve always wanted to. The topic of why, as an introvert, I want to do these things, is something I’m trying to answer in my head. I think it has something to do with avoiding regret, maybe something to do with proving myself (to whom, I’m not sure), something to do with always becoming more (or at least trying)… but I don’t have a good answer yet. Maybe I will when the idea of performing doesn’t make me want to throw up so much. 🙂
Right now, I’m sitting at about 15% excitement and 85% pure terror. It’ll be interesting to look back in a few months, or a year or two, and see if anything’s changed. Wish me luck?
My coworker sent me a link today that stopped me in my tracks. I took six minutes and thirty seconds out of my workday (sorry, boss) and watched the video that I made a note to write about the second I had a chance. Well, I just got out of the bath (that I got bored in because I could have been writing this), shoved my dirty dishes aside for later (sorry, Mike), and sit here with sopping wet hair because I have to get this out.
I realise this is geared more toward women, but are we kidding anyone if we say men don’t suffer from feelings of low self esteem too? I watched this and it brought tears to my eyes because I know had I been involved in this, mine would’ve been on the drastic side. I imagined myself going in with my best friend and both of us taking part in the experiment. I imagined the portrait resulting from my description of myself, and the one resulting from hers. I know mine would’ve been ugly. It would’ve had a big nose with an ugly bulb on the end, a pointy chin that juts out so much you can physically hold it, bags under my eyes and hair that refused to look clean. If it were a full length portrait, it would’ve had an exaggerated pear-shaped frame, with no chest or shoulders, enormous hips and thighs twice the width of the torso. It would’ve had crooked teeth and eyes that were differently sized from each other, and in between deep-set laughter lines far more carved than they should be for my age, would sit an awkward, lop-sided mouth. My self-described portrait would look like a character from a cinematic adaptation of a Neil Gaiman novel.
Did you watch the video? This will mean nothing to you if you didn’t. Here.
“The video features an FBI forensic artist, who sketches portraits of women based on the physical descriptions they give to him of themselves. He never sees them during the session.
The same women were also asked to spend some one-on-one time with another participant. Afterwards, that person also gives the artist a verbal physical description of the woman with whom they met.
At the end, the women are confronted with the two sketches, side by side. In every case, the sketch created by the artist from their own description is harsher and less attractive than the sketch he creates based on the description given by the other party.” – Maclean’s
My friend’s description of me would look wildly different. As the experiment proved, all the flaws we see as such a huge part of how we look are invisible to others. Even strangers. We may think ourselves the most awkward, disproportionate, skewed version of what should be beautiful, but in reality, nobody sees it but us. My description of her would be the most beautiful of them all, but I’m afraid hers would be just as self-critical as my own. Because we all do it to ourselves. 96% of us, anyway.
Isn’t she beautiful?
The experiment states that only 4% of women consider themselves beautiful. The experiment, though brilliant, is also only measuring physical attractiveness.
In a strangely timed coincidence, as I was taking a (let’s say coffee break; I’ve been working like a packhorse these last few weeks) few minutes, I was also having a conversation with a friend about my fears of performing. I remember talking about my blog, and why I started it in the first place: because I wanted the world to see beyond my projected insecurities and into the heart of who I really am. This blog has become a journey of goals and dreams and struggles and hopes and challenges, but most of all of determination. A determination to get what’s on the outside to match what’s on the inside. And vice versa, as the situation may present. We were talking about singing and performing, and I’d just been left with a new message, ending thusly:
PS. I saw your video of the Damien Rice song. I love hearing your voice, and seeing you play!! Thanks for sharing that. I think you’re getting better. Or maybe more confident. Could it be both? Yes, I think so.
Watching my YouTube channel back from when I first picked up the ukulele is kind of embarrassing. I struggled so much with the thought of anybody hearing me that I’d make this weird effort to be as good as I could… while avoiding the risk of being heard. Anyone who does music knows this is as ridiculous as going ghost hunting in the middle of the sunniest day of the year somewhere in the Mediterranean. I was going through the motions but my nerves held me back from diving in headfirst. I wanted to be a good singer, but I was too scared to practice in a building where there might be other people. I still struggle – we all remember the throwing up incident after I performed at an open mic for the first and only time – even last night, I made everyone would be out of the house for a good couple of hours before even attempting to sing. But then I did, and it was in an actual house, and I didn’t feel afraid, because there wasn’t anybody there. (Except the cat, but she’s a fan of pretty much anything in the world.) I let what came out on the outside actually be what I felt capable of on the inside. It’s still not great, because I don’t exercise the vocal muscles in a way that might make it good – but the end result was a match. A match between where I thought I could be right now and where I actually was.And wouldn’t it be incredible if Dove could conduct an experiment that showed the difference between how we view ourselves mentally and how we come across to the world? To illuminate the discrepancy between self-imposed distortion and how everybody else sees us?
I remember doing a writing exercise once where the instruction was to write a description of yourself from somebody else’s point of view. It could be a friend, lover, family member, or complete stranger. I remember being in tears after I was done because I realised how distorted my self image truly is. I don’t know why, but this experiment has shown me just how normal it is to degrade ourselves. We are never good enough, beautiful enough, confident enough, or smart enough. I thought it was something I dealt with alone, but this proves that most people see themselves as less than they actually are. And that’s horrible.
So today, if you’ve ever struggled to see yourself as anything but wonderful, maybe try one of those exercises for yourself. Let go of the unrealistic perfections you set for yourself that nobody else expects of you. If you’ve ever felt less than attractive, try describing yourself as another would. If you’ve ever felt too scared or shy… if you’ve ever let your own self-definition hold you back from what you want to be (and what you probably actually are)… listen to other people, and just for a moment, try to believe them.
The proof is in the brilliance of demonstrations like this.
Now, completely unrelatedly, and because everybody deserves at least one laugh a day, I discovered something amazing about the voice control capacity of my new car this afternoon. I can’t wait for everyone else with a new Fiesta to discover this too. Enjoy 🙂
It’s kind of ironic I sit here today writing about happiness when recently, I’ve felt so sad. I’m sad that every day I feel I’m running at a thousand miles per hour just to achieve the tasks assigned to me and feel myself slipping under the tide. I’m sad it’s all had such an effect on my wellbeing – I find myself doing, doing, doing, just to do what’s right and what’s needed – with the side effect of having lost all appetite for weeks, being unable to eat breakfast, not having time for lunch, and eating something quick and full of crap in the evenings if anything at all because I am obsessed with always needing to be doing. Since February, I now find myself at 104 lbs. And I feel it.
I know everyone says you need to take time to nurture yourself if you’re going to have any chance at functioning as an optimal human, but I can’t do it. I know I need to relax. I need nothing more than a good night’s sleep, a few hours and a glass of wine to do some reading or writing, an empty apartment so I can sing my heart out, or an evening free tasks and chores and fretting to just do something I love. Apparently I’ve started grinding my teeth at night “with such intensity it’s a wonder the teeth didn’t fall out”. I looked it up to see if it had anything to do with the jaw pain I’ve developed lately – it hurts to open my mouth wide, affecting chewing, singing, yawning – minds out of the gutter – but apparently this is something that happens with stress. And it’s affecting some of the things I really love to do. That video I posted last week? I was so excited to try out my new equipment. But it hurt like hell to just get the words out.
I know, attractive, right? I want my other vampire tooth back!
I’m going to stop whining and being such a bloody sad panda here because I said this was a post about happiness – though it’s more a philosophical one than one relating to my own. Despite this manic busy-ness that I’ve either stumbled into, taken upon myself or had thrown at me (I’m really not sure), I still have time to think. And there’s always so much going on inside my head.
Two happiness-related questions came up in conversations recently:
1. If a person lost their altruism, stopped caring/doing things for others above themselves, and became utterly selfish, would they be happier?
2. Is it better to live in ignorance of a certain knowledge or truth if it means being happier?
I think with both these hypotheticals, there’s a difference between day-to-day happiness and longer term, “ultimate” happiness. There’s also the defining factors of happiness that fit in as well, but I’ll get to that in a bit. If I remember.
The first question really stopped me in my tracks. I know my tendency to always put myself at the bottom of the priority list should be a good thing in a person, but lately it’s become harmful. I can’t take a bath without getting out after five minutes because there’s dishes or ironing to be done. I cancel social obligations and plans with friends if there’s an important deadline at work and I can take an extra few hours in the evening to work on it. But my problem is that I see everything else as a priority. Everything. In the moment, this is causing me harm – I’m becoming more anxious, losing weight, skipping meals, losing sleep, and feeling overwhelmed – because I insist on putting everything above my own wellbeing. But in the end, I’d hate myself if I did anything else. Taking an evening to do nothing but get a takeaway, read a good book, or go to the movies is a foreign concept to me right now because there is so much that needs to be done. I’d feel like I was letting everyone around me down if I took that time to “self-nurture”. For the first few weeks at my job I’d feel guilty going to the lunch room to get a glass of water or some lunch because it might look like I have the time to do it. I’m fully aware this is crazy. Short term? It is. But long term… even if this is wrong (and you can tell that somewhere, I know it is)… I think it makes me happy. Knowing I did everything I possibly could for others gives me a sense of enormous wellbeing. But in the current moment, I’m burning out.
I think back to the question and think of examples of people I’ve encountered who were exactly the opposite. They put themselves first in every situation, took two-hour lunch breaks, charged every fancy meal to the company, and manipulated and bullied others to get them to do what they desired. And they were completely content with living this way. Yes, to many they came across as selfish and arrogant, but day to day, they seemed perfectly happy with their life, because they get what they want.
I spoke to a friend recently who makes an incredible impact on the world. A lot of you will know who this person is and will probably have spoken with this person numerous times. This person is an incredible soul whose life consists of doing enormous things to change people’s lives for the better in the biggest ways possible. This person’s entire life is comprised of efforts of continually making the world a better place. But speaking to this person, there’s a sadness. This person has no time to for self-nurturing, or spend time doing the things they love. But this person keeps doing it anyway, because (and I’m guessing here), of a similar personal value system. Leave the world a better place then when you found it, whether on the smallest scale of doing errands for somebody you love simply so they don’t have to, or by organising global fundraisers to help those in desperate need of help and making headline-breaking news in doing so.
From a study I was reading (a backwards take [does happiness result in selfishness, not vice versa], but still an interesting read:
Does temporary mood influence how fair or selfish we are in interpersonal situations? These three experiments predicted and found that when people have the power to allocate scarce resources between themselves and others in the dictator game, positive mood increased selfishness, and sad mood produced greater fairness. In a public setting (Experiment 1), happy persons kept more raffle tickets to themselves when making allocations, and Experiment 2 confirmed this effect in the laboratory. Experiment 3 showed that mood effects on selfishness were strongest when the external norms for fairness were relaxed. The results are discussed in terms recent affect-cognition theories, suggesting that positive mood recruits more assimilative, internally focused processing, while negative affect promotes more externally oriented, accommodative processing and thus greater concern with social norms. The implications of the findings for everyday interpersonal decisions are considered.
I will always advocate for altruism, maybe at the expense of immediate happiness, but with the hope that ultimately, it will make me happy. I’d feel like a terrible person if I did anything else – even if it does seem that selfish people are generally happier on a day to day basis. I just need to learn to figure out how to fit my own immediate happiness into the equation. (I kind of want to go off on an evolutionary tangent on why altruism is part of our programming in the first place, but that’s a discussion for another day.)
As a certain Ms. Keller once put it: “I would rather walk with a friend in the dark than alone in the light.”
2. So, onto the second thought – is it better to be happier in ignorance of truth, or be aware of your entire reality, even if it lessens happiness? I had this debate with a friend last night, and I – now, at this point in my life – am firmly on the side of always being informed. I’ve lived life in the past believing things and keeping myself in the dark because I knew reality would hurt, and I liked believing something I didn’t quite question, but generally made me feel better. Coming to the conclusion that there is no cosmic, divine force or afterlife hurt, but ultimately, it’s made me happier. It’s made me value every minute of every day. Blissful ignorance goes against the value I place on knowledge and education. Again, there’s an element of short-term happiness and long-term in play here – and it comes down to a matter of how much weight you place on what you value. I imagine a scale of knowledge versus happiness existing in the present moment – there are so many things I’m certain I’d be happier not knowing – but if you don’t know about the things that could potentially upset you, then you can’t do anything about them. You can’t grow as a person unless you keep learning and experiencing, and I don’t believe hiding knowledge at the expense of happiness is a good thing.
This discussion came about as a result of informing people about his condition. He’s a very private person, and I think the main reason he didn’t want people to know was because knowing would equal them worrying and being less happy. But if it were you… if someone you loved and cared about hid what life was really like… wouldn’t you want to know, so you could do something – even if that did mean a temporary decrease in overall happiness (purely from the knowledge that someone you care about is suffering)? I thought back to some past relationships, and some of the things I found out after they ended. Yes, they were tough things to learn – and at the time, I felt a fool, I felt stupid, and of course I was unhappy – something I thought was real for a period was most definitely not the whole picture, and it made me sad – but ultimately, the learning experience has led to personal growth, experience, and ultimately, strength… all resulting in my being a more informed, and thus happier, person. Maybe short term pain really does translate into long term gain. As long as your intent is never to actively hurt someone for the sake of hurting them, educating and informing is always worth more in the end. I think.
I’m going to wrap up this philosophical stuff and actually end on a few happy notes. The darkness, after all, defines where the light is, and there haven’t been days without some pretty awesome positives. Firstly of which, I suppose, would be my new car!
After talking with a good friend, who’s actually visited me at my new job, my work location also came into play. I’ve worked in dodgy areas before, and it’s not like I haven’t had hobo snotrockets fly into my actual mouth (welcome, new friends!) as a result – but I’m back out of the corporate world and into another area of downtown that isn’t exactly the most… comfortable, and it’s a ten minute walk from the bus stop. (Okay, there was a pile of poop and some vomit at the corner of the building for three days last week, and the streets are scattered with zombie-like street folk on substances half the time.) She affirmed my necessity of a vehicle – if not just to be able to see people, but to decrease my likelihood of actually getting mugged (or thrown up at) on the way to work.
After one god-awful experience with my first ever dealership, I went somewhere recommended – and it was amazing! No pressure, completely friendly and respectful – it was like going to visit old family friends more than salespeople. After much budgeting and deliberation, it was decided – I was getting the car I literally squealed at when I first drove into the lot. Oh, and it matches my lime green handbag exactly. Hello, Being a Grown Up!
I’ve also re-taken up (there’s a real word for that, I’m sure) an old hobby of mine I always enjoyed: photo shoots. I’ve developed a love for the more creative, conceptual shoots moreso than any other – pictures that go beyond the norm and tell an entire story. I’ve met some amazing people in the process, too, and already have some dates planned for things that evoke more of me… including a neo-goth type runway show sometime later in the year!
I’m also going to see my favourite band in the whole world next month. Around this time last year, I took a road trip down to Minneapolis to see another excellent, excellent band, and it was the most fun ever. I’ve already seen Mumford and Sons, but it was in a tiny venue before they’d even released Sigh No More in North America. The electric feeling of absolute eagerness and anticipation was indescribable – those couple of hundred people, if that, all gathered in one place to experience something magical together. Passion is always best when shared with fellow enthusiasts, and this time there’s going to be thousands of them. On top, I discovered I had enough travel points accumulated through my Visa that I scored as three nights in an extra-fancy hotel, minutes from the stadium, for absolutely nothing. And this time, it’s domestic – meaning we can take his medication. Last year was a risk. This year – as with anything, really, may still be a risk, but that reassuring factor at least is there. It’s going to be one of those life-changing, soul-stirring, breathtaking experiences I’ll never forget, and I’m excited beyond words.
And lastly, I can’t go without addressing the generosity of friends, family, colleagues and complete strangers. I wanted to do something big for The Professor as a result of our recent situation – a fundraiser of some sort, but he was having none of it. “There are people who need help much more than I do, and if I can make it work on my own, then shouldn’t they be the ones to receive it?” Boys. I understand the pride component. I’m generally horribly awkward when it comes to even borrowing money from people, and I can’t imagine how uncomfortable it would be to have an entire group of people just giving it to you – I wouldn’t know how to thank them, and I’d feel, probably, a certain degree of embarrassment – so I understand where he’s coming from. But at the same time, I couldn’t do nothing. So I signed up for the Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada’s Spring Sprint, with the intention of power-walking my way across 2.5k (really, can you imagine me running?) one day in June and maybe getting a little financial support along the way to go toward the charity. It’s kind of exploded – and I now have a team of fellow runners, and we’re sitting at almost $1,000 thanks to the incredible generosity of some of those we’re lucky to have in our lives – and from people who read the story and spread the word in their communities, retweeted, etc. and felt compelled to help. I do wish the fundraiser was going to have a direct impact on him, to get him the medication and to allow him to come home – but knowing that in this way, I’m kind of honouring his wishes, and that in some way, maybe the funds raised will go toward the kind of research and programs that will help people like him – and those others affected by this monster of a disease.
To read the story of why I’m doing this, to join our team, or simply to make a small donation, please click here. Anyone who helps in any way at all is an absolute rock star.
So yeah. Sadness… happiness… philosophy… life. Forgive the stream of consciousness.
“There’s always going to be bad stuff out there. But here’s the amazing thing — light trumps darkness, every time. You stick a candle into the dark, but you can’t stick the dark into the light.” – Jodi Picoult
This post is going to be about atheism, but I promise it’s going to be the most uplifting thing I’ve written in a long time. I was doing a couple of shoots this weekend, and was thrilled to be told by each photographer what a great and positive attitude I had – and I realised my blog may have not been projecting that lately. I do always tend to try to be uplifting, even in the face of difficulty and uncertainty – but sometimes there are just Things That Need To Be Talked About, and those things may not always fall into the happiest of categories. I apologise in advance if I offend anybody, as it is not my intention. But I too, am often offended by the ignorance and downright bigotry I see posted in the name of religion all over the place, and I feel I have the right to speak my feelings too, especially when they come from a place of genuinely wanting to rid the world of something so harmful.
I never was religious. I tried, I really did. I went to Catholic church with my ex husband and I attended devotional series through my former faith-based workplace. Looking back, I have to ask myself why – was it to fit in with those closest to me and avoid personal discrimination? Or was it simply to find an answer to the hopes I’d had all along – that after this life, after we are parted from those we’ve loved with all our hearts – that somewhere we’d get to see them again? I’ve learned so much over the last couple of years, and the toughest pill to swallow has been the lesson that just wanting something to be true doesn’t mean it is. There is something inherently uncomfortable about letting go of a hope guised as a semi-belief, but something so much more assuring and secure when you shift your beliefs toward evidence-based truth. Because with the realisation that this one life is all we have, there’s a push to live the absolute crap out of it, soak up the universe and spread joy and education and build infinite memories and be an instrument of positivity and integrity and leave this planet a little better off than when we found it. To build the minds we were equipped with and actually use them to take control of our own lives. To learn to think, solve, communicate, learn, and better the lives of those around us. That, I believe, is our purpose. Not to follow blindly in fear and hope for a reward while allowing others to suffer.
The first point I want to address is the struggle with hypocrisy when it comes to so-called believers. How many church-goers dress up on Sundays and head to their place of worship, driving right past the homeless or needy on the way there? There, they are asked to give money to support the “work of God”, when they could instead be spending that money in the real world making a real tangible difference. I can count the number of times I’ve been to church on one hand, but I’m assuming the “pass the hat” goes back to the days of tithing, where people would give one-tenth of their income to a religious organization as a divine ordinance and obligation of conscience – despite the Christian Bible stating “you tithe mint and rue and every edible herb but disregard the important duties of the law – judgment, mercy, honesty and love – yet these you have neglected, and ought to have performed.” I’m mixing my Mathews and Lukes there, but the message holds true today: why does the church still ask for all this money and not use it to lessen the suffering of others? Goodness, even for non-believers! We are all apparently created equally, after all. TIME magazine states bankers’ best guesses about the Vatican’s wealth are between $10-15 billion, and of this, Italian stockholdings and investment in banking, insurance and real estate run to $1.6 billion. Why blindly put money into a hat on a Sunday because you feel guilted into doing so when you could donate directly to a charity where it will actually have some tangible benefit in the world? I know many churches do some charitable work with the money. But it largely goes to religious organizations. Why not skip the middle man and give to where it’ll make most of a difference?
On the subject of hypocrisy, a lot of this stems from personal experience. Nowadays, I have a great relationship with my mother, but as some of you may remember, from about 2006-2010 we barely had a relationship after my parents’ separation, which largely stemmed from a drastic character shift following my mother’s religious conversion experience. I witnessed someone quoting the Bible and refusing to attend events on the Sabbath (including performances of my own) and proclaiming we needed to be saved, yet simultaneously being downright spiteful to both my father and myself. I remember it being the biggest reason I had to move out on my own as early as I did, being unable to take the discrepancy between something that was supposed to revolve around love and forgiveness and being spoken to and treated like a piece of dirt. I feel bad writing this now, as after a long and painful journey of reconciliation, we’re now in a good place – but this was definitely a contributing factor in my stepping away from religion.
Then I met, dated, got engaged and eventually married to my now ex-husband, a devout Roman Catholic from a very traditional, Franco-Manitoban family. We all know the story there – family begs son to leave his fiance because she’s not religious, family refuses to speak to the couple following the wedding, and family instills so much guilt into son that son quits his job with no notice, disappears into the country for three weeks, comes back with a shaved head, wild beard, mania and insistence of having “spoken to God” the whole time, lasts a couple of weeks becoming progressively stranger, and then finally leaves for good waving a crucifix around in the air. Oh, and then witnessing via remote webcam his entire troupe of family and friends emptying my house of all my possessions while I was at work. (Movie deal anyone?)
The thing is, I knew our relationship wasn’t how things were meant to be. I knew I was unhappy, I knew we disagreed on so many fundamental things, and I knew we didn’t even enjoy the same things in life. But things weren’t horrible, and I figured, just like anybody else, that this is what life is all about. Fairytale soulmates exist in movies and stories, and it’s through a lifetime of hard work you try to make things work with the one you end up with. (Sidenote: I cannot believe after this ordeal, I was shown otherwise, and I will forever live a lifetime of awe and amazement at how I got so lucky). We did try. I remember a plethora of discussions on our views with regards to religion, and the one thing I could never understand was how someone could proclaim so publicly to be of a certain religious denomination while at the same time disagreeing with much of the Pope’s teachings and actions, disagreeing with some of the Bible itself, and actually placing his own wife and family beneath the almighty God (“I’d be okay if you all died, because I would have the Lord”) – really? How do I even begin to debate this logic? I remember his family begging him in secret in the weeks leading up to the wedding to leave me, his chosen bride, the one he had committed to vow his life to “in the eyes of God” because I would lead him away from his religion. I remember his infinite struggle between trying to be a “good Christian son” and a good husband. The two led to his mental breakdown, a shitload of trauma, and all for the sake of “putting God first”. When it came to the family – again, judge not lest…? (You should see the absolute mortification plastered across their faces in all the pictures. It’s hilarious. It kind of looks like they just lost their son to a Heaven’s Gate indoctrination – somewhat relatedly, this music video is pretty great.)
Now, to address something a friend of mine e-mailed me about when she heard I was writing this post: judgment. I had messages coming in before I’d even finished writing this. The Bible apparently states something along the lines of Judge not, and ye shall not be judged, condemn not and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven” (Luke 6:37). My (Christian) friend emailed me a story about how he has found himself “living a life of fear and judgment” due to his heart belonging to Jesus. He compared his experience to one of his own friends, who has “lived a life of that same judgment and downright misery through being gay.” He talked about his own experience of hatred for Christians in the same vein as that that exists for the LGBT community. That he would never judge someone “for their choice” and wished he could receive the same respect. At this point, I didn’t really know what to say. I love this friend dearly, but I was speechless Yes, it’s awful for anyone to experience persecution – but religion is a choice. Sexuality, race, or anything else you’re simply born with is not a choice. Religion is a choice to believe without evidence or critical thinking. It’s a choice to ally yourself to something that claims to stand for peace and unity but instead causes probably more division, judgment, and harm to the world than anything. Look at what Romney was fighting for last election. Look at the masses of “Christians” claiming God would judge America for abortion and gay marriage. Yet that same God doesn’t judge America for its murderers, rapists, and allowance of abuse, intolerance, disease and poverty? Religion is a choice to believe blindly. It’s not the same thing.
Really?
What about God supposedly never giving us more than we can bear? I hear this a lot from people either going through difficult times themselves, or trying to offer some form of encouragement to someone who is. “I’ll pray for you”, they say. Can we stop for a second and see how much prayer has actually affected the outcome of something in the real world? I’ve had people offer to pray for The Professor as a result of his recent situation. The legal system in place to provide assistance to those in dire, life-or-death need, is such that he has to leave our home and live alone just to qualify to have medications covered a little more than they already are. Medications he needs to stay alive. It’s heartbreaking, and wrong, and I’m sorry, but prayers are not going to take away cancer. Science is, medicine is. Homeopathic remedies and words uttered into the void aren’t going to make this stop. “God never giving us more than we can bear” is a crock. People get dealt shitty hands in life sometimes. It’s statistics. To personalise them and say “God did it” is childish. I get it – it goes back to the idea of hope. To place hope in something that doesn’t exist I guess may lift some of the anxiety from the reality – especially when countless people across the world are doing the same thing. But if we’re going to invest time and thought and energy into something that’s never been proven to actually accomplish anything – can’t we instead begin to invest in things that actually help? Your life would look very, very different were it not for science. I don’t know if I can say it’d look much different without God.
One of the last things I want to address is the issue of religion in schools. This could be a blog post all of its own, but (and you’ll have to excuse the irony here) – holy crap. Something that is a choice of lifestyle and has no base of fact or evidence does not constitute an education. I know people who went through private religious education emerging as fully grown adults having no concept of procreation. Genuinely believing that nothing more than “loving each other” and trusting in “God’s right timing” was al that was needed to produce a baby. These places have no right being called schools. They dilute the world’s knowledge base by injecting it with blind faith, ignorance, stories and prejudice and teach the vulnerable that it’s fact. They teach new generations not to think for themselves or seek out knowledge, but to rely on an invisible creator as the driving force behind everything that happens in their life. With this mentality, as a species, we will go backwards. Schools are in desperate need of classes on critical thinking, on debate and philosophy, of scientific advancement in health and astronomy. On how to be a fucking decent human being. As Douglas Adams once said, ““I’d take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.
A religious “education” is a fear spread to the children of theists at an age where they are not capable of fully forming their own opinions, teaching them to ignore logic and fact and brainwashing them into accepting something with no evidence as truth. It promotes division, not equality, and is based on a system of fear and punishment. Where is the good in a human being if that good comes not from a place of strong morals and the desire to be a good person, but a place of desire for reward and fear of punishment instead? I don’t think I’m going to burn in hell for not believing. But I’m going to keep trying my damnedest to be a decent person anyway.
I’m at 2,600 words here. I’ve got to wrap this thing up. So I’m going to leave you with a quote from the ever-brilliant Ricky Gervais:
“Science seeks the truth. And it does not discriminate. For better or worse it finds things out. Science is humble. It knows what it knows and it knows what it doesn’t know. It bases its conclusions and beliefs on hard evidence -- evidence that is constantly updated and upgraded. It doesn’t get offended when new facts come along. It embraces the body of knowledge. It doesn’t hold on to medieval practices because they are tradition.”
I think I’m a pretty fucking awesome person without God, but I might be a little biased. When I was agnostic, I kind of always suspected that if there were a God, this was all some colossal game of his own devising, and if there did happen to be a heaven, the ones who’d end up there were the ones that had the guts to use the brains with which they were equipped, to question the stories, to forge their way in the world with the knowledge and the universe that surrounded them. Not the blind servants who accepted without question tales of talking snakes and promoted human division and repeated empty phrases and built structures in his honour and sucked the hell up to buy their ticket in. I think there’s the making of a good story there.
I apologise if I’ve offended anyone. It really, really was never my intent. But if – and there is such a thing as “religious freedom of speech” – then if the intent is simply to state why I believe what I do, and who I am, with the genuine intent of opening minds and raising questions that may lead people to a better way of life… then all I ask is that even if you disagree, you’ll be respectful in doing so. Ironically, religion sometimes has a way of bringing out the worst in people. Whether you believe in a God, many Gods, demi-Gods (I’m getting a bit Doctor Who here), you have a brain. My only hope is that it’s put to good use in this world – this world that could be so, so much better if only more brains were used in a more practical, moral, and logical way.
I’ve spent most of my lunch hours this week working on something that, as I mentioned on Facebook, is guaranteed to offend at least someone, but prefacing it with the caveat that my intentions were coming from a good place. I was going to post it this weekend, but something passed my way this morning I couldn’t ignore, and had to write about immediately.
I know people (myself included) are generally pretty crappy at watching videos linked on a blog page, but this is too important, and I feel every soul in the world should take the seven minutes it’d take to read a couple of stories in the Metro and actually pay attention to something important. Because this affects everyone, and something small that may have happened twenty years ago can twist and distort someone’s mental well-being, confidence, and view of themselves all these years later. We need to change the norm that bullying and intimidation are just “part of life”. We need to stop being told the answer is to develop thicker skins, or that some people are just mean, and that we should brush it off. Because for some of us, we can’t. It seeps into our very selves and tangles its way around the fibres of our own psyche, resulting in what’s often a lifetime of damage and distortion.
Bullying was part of the norm when I was a kid. I think it’s pretty much a British institution in all parts of the country. I remember being picked on as a younger child of ten, maximum, for my “monkey arms”. I wasn’t allowed to shave my legs until 12 and I remember secretly shaving my entire arms with my dad’s razor every day and wearing long sleeves to PE classes for years afterward. The words of a handful of small boys evaporated from their worlds the moment they left the playground, but they burrowed their way into my self image well into my teens. I was different and ugly. The fact my mother chopped all my hair off because I wasn’t good enough at keeping it untangled didn’t help matters, and neither did an unfortunate incident of an inadvertent whack to the face from a fellow schoolmate trying to catch a ball – which knocked out my two front teeth and had them grow back – well, like this.
When I arrived at senior school I was gawkward. I was desperately trying to grow out the haircut and had fourth less teeth and a fresh set of nineties braces in my mouth. The ones you had to rub wax all over so you didn’t end the day looking like some kind of vampire fresh from the kill. In most British schools, there’s a time-honoured social hierarchy. At the top are the popular kids. These are the bullies. At the time, I though it had everything to do with looks and social life, but looking back, some of those bastards (mostly girls) were some of the ugliest people externally as well as inside I’ve ever known. I think it had more to do with knowing the right people, and behaving a certain way. Do like us, and be one of us. You’ll be immune. Then there was the other side. The bullied. The more intelligent kids who got picked on for reasons ranging from acne and unusual face structures to being too clever (and nobody wanted to be a boffin) or, heaven forbid, carrying a rucksack with both straps. Then there were the handful of kids who tended to attach themselves to either side – but weren’t full on bully or bullied. The ones who’d go around with the popular kids, but never actually take part in the instigating, or the ones who’d stick with the other side, not actually bullied themselves but firmly allying themselves to the right side. That’s where I was. I wasn’t bullied, I think because I was kind of a sweet, if awkward kid, but it broke my heart to watch my friends have things thrown at them, called awful names in class and publicly humiliated, racistly joked about or lock themselves in a toilet cubicle for hours they were crying so hard. Some of these people remain very good friends to this day. I guess something about shared pain building bonds, or something.
It was interesting that at this point in my life the effects hadn’t fully taken root to the point of damaging my own self image. I was able to function normally; I took swimming and figure skating and ju-jitsu lessons, I went to stage school, and put on Spice Girls shows for the neighbours. At that age, I still managed to be a relatively confident kid.
I moved to Canada at fourteen and was blown away by the world of difference in school culture. Kids weren’t divided into good and bad; kids were divided into a hundred types of person and style, and I couldn’t believe how welcomed I was into so many lives. I joined the IB programme, hung out in the physics room at lunchtime making science puns on the whiteboards, performed at a punk show with a studded collar to a drama hall full of students, marched in a fashion show and went on Shakespeare trips in snowy cabins. But amidst that, I think the seeds of self-doubt were sown – in addition to ones I hadn’t realised had begun to take root many years prior. My one insecurity in high school was my accent. Yes, people seemed to love it, but I’ve always been softly spoken. I remember in my first year there having to give a presentation in history class, and the teacher stopping me part-way telling me in front of everyone how I was talking too fast and too quietly, and how nobody could understand a word I was saying. I was different. Those words became branded onto me and led to years of terror when it came to speaking in front of other people. In a post from 2009:
[I’ve felt myself slipping. I see opportunities for me to grow and contribute as a person, yet feel crippled by the fear of what other people might think about me. What if I’m too quiet? What if my accent’s too strange? What if I speak too fast? All my flaws one high school history teacher had pointed out in front of the class during a presentation one time come flooding back, and I feel paralysed by anxiety. I can’t go for promotions or new roles at work, because they all involve speaking in front of others, or giving presentations, or talking at staff meetings. Heck, I can’t even give a coworker a goodbye speech after organising a group gift and making a big goodbye card. I’ve stopped going to devotions at work because I’m afraid I might get asked to speak. I try and avoid sitting at the back of the bus so I don’t have to use the back doors for fear they won’t open and I’ll have to yell “back door!” in front of a bunch of strangers. It’s ridiculous, and awful, and I can’t get over it.]
Not only was I exposed to the world of bullies throughout childhood, but I was exposed to words that stuck. At home, I could never compete with my younger brother. I was never as good or, in my eyes, as loved. At times I felt downright hated. The idea of not being good enough stuck well into my adult life, and affected every aspect of it. At work, I’d break down in fits of tears because I thought I was being judged poorly, or because I didn’t feel I was meeting standards – I believed the impossibly high standards I set for myself were equivalent to the substantially more reasonable ones set by those around me, and continually felt a failure. I felt for years that I was never good enough as a friend because I was different – I wasn’t into the popular stuff that most people enjoyed doing. I played video games and read books. I didn’t go to the mall on weekends and I didn’t go to parties on Friday nights. Everyone else did, and that meant everyone else was more exciting than me. Everyone else would rather be friends with someone more normal. More exciting. The tumultuous events of my twenties led to several people cutting ties with me, and that only fuelled the idea I wasn’t worthy of friendship.
[“It sounds like things are really looking up for you and that you’re happy in your life right now and I think that’s fantastic. It took a long time to find what you were looking for, including relationship abuse, a divorce, a partner’s stressful family, coping with a boyfriend who has a debilitating condition and then when things got too much, what happened in December. Up until the very last point, I was with you every step of the way, but at the end of it all, there was just nothing left to give. If you have friends now that you know will stick with you through thick and thin and are the rocks at the bottom, that’s wonderful and it makes me really happy to know that you’ve found those people. With that said, I just can’t be that friend – I just don’t have enough in me to be what you need. I’m happy to see you if we run into each other and catch up, but that’s all that I have right now. I’m sorry if that hurts your feelings, but I respect you enough to be honest. I still think that you’re a good person and I’m genuinely happy that things are looking up for you. Thanks for understanding and I’ll see you around.”
But in the past couple of years, I really have found those rocks. And words cannot express my gratitude for those people.
I’m getting off topic here, but I want to summarise the main message and post this video again, not just because it does an infinitely better job of getting it across than I just did, but because it needs to be fucking watched.
We all have the capacity to change the world, to be mindful of what we put out into it, and to remind ourselves that no, words don’t die the moment they’re uttered. They just begin to live that day. And if they’re the wrong ones, they can eat away at self esteem and potential for years, and the long-term damage to a soul can be catastrophic. Don’t take part in what the “norm” has been for as long as I’ve been on this earth. Don’t let your children tease others, or tell them they need to toughen up if they fall victim to schoolground cruelty. Don’t give up doing what’s right for the sake of fitting in, whether at school, at work, or in your social group. Don’t sit by and watch it happen to someone else, because sometimes our silence can be equally as destructive. Don’t accept the way things are. Be aware of what you’re putting out into the world. And always, always stand up for the right thing.
I haven’t been writing here half as often as I used to. I’ve been spending most of my writing time on fiction for the last little while (enormous thanks to those darlings who took a peek at my recent short story!), and when I’m not doing that, I’m making various endeavors to learn to play musical instruments, getting more tattoos, and decorating for my cats (seriously, this is in a frame above their food dishes. It is important for me to chronicle this life of mine through writing, but lately I’ve found it slightly hypocritical to do so without actually spending it living. Still, I’ve been taking lots of pictures and recording lots of videos (which I’m sure will come back to haunt me in the not-too-distant future), and connecting regularly with some really awesome people.
But recent life hasn’t all been smooth. I’ve always maintained the importance of eternally moving forward, no matter in which direction, but for a little while over the few months leading up to Christmas, I felt myself being pulled toward a dangerous destination. A place where old, distorted ways of thinking wrapped their way around the progress and masqueraded as reality. And that called for action.
From late 2011 until about spring 2012, I started to see a counsellor. I also started taking medication for my anxiety for the first time in my life. I went through a ten-week course with the Anxiety Disorders Association of Manitoba, I did my homework, and after a few months, my case was closed. But toward the end of 2012, I found myself immersed every day in what felt like a pool of toxins that began to insidiously creep in and distort my entire mentality. No longer was I spreading my wings on the vast ocean of possibility, but I was becoming caged, torn between my own vision of capabilities and the person I had to be in order to comply to that environment’s standard. I’ve always been motivated by achievement and surpassing others’ expectations, but when your wings are clipped and all you’re left with is a dream of what you could be doing, you begin to question the capabilities you had in the first place. Everyone around me told me what a huge, positive difference I’d made. But those with authority over me saw nothing but someone stepping beyond their role, taking on too many “extra-curriculars” – necessities, in my mind, for a successful operation – and pointing out all the places things could be done better. I was someone who didn’t fit the corporate mould.
“I’m too good for that, there’s a mind under this hat;” words to a favourite song come to mind. “I speak because I can to anyone I trust enough to listen; you speak because you can to anyone who’ll hear what you say.”
I mean no malice in writing these words, but I have to be true to the reason that led me down the path of old habits and distorted imaginings, things that led me toward the place I used to be. I started feeling that if all my achievements, hard work, creativity and dedication to bettering something meant nothing, then maybe the same held true for myself as a person. Maybe the same held true for my friendships and relationships; maybe I personally felt I was doing all the right things but maybe I had it all wrong. So I started looking for signs. And in doing so, I saw my insecurities manifest from thin wisps of possibility into a corporeal monster that tore away at everything I held dear. Something had to be done. Something had to be done now.
So I went to see a psychiatrist. Re-opened my case with my counsellor, who, after a session, recognised where I was and wanted someone who specialised in mental health to help me. I’d been on the medication for about a year, but I apparently should have been getting infinitely more benefit from it than I was.
The assessment consisted of a one-hour booking which turned into a near two-hour session with me, my counsellor, and a young psychiatrist. I think I threw him a little by being so on the ball with my own mentality, and after an extensive fleshing out of my childhood, my cross-continental uprooting, my traumatic experience of a “marriage”, my amazing but heartbreakingly ill partner and my increasingly toxic work environment, he decided I “didn’t fit any one mould.” I learned that within classifications of the various mental illnesses any one person could have, there were “cluster A, B and C trait” characteristics, each subsequent one being less common than the last, but still possibly present. I didn’t have a textbook anxiety disorder. I definitely didn’t have social anxiety, which explains why I felt so out of place in the ten-week program I attended a year ago. I didn’t have generalised anxiety either, but I did have B- and C-cluster traits of a “non specified anxiety disorder”. Additionally, I had the same for borderline personality disorder. He made it very clear I didn’t have BPD – but my heightened concern about others’ perception of me being “good enough” and continual fear of abandonment fall into that realm.
The fact that I didn’t fit neatly in one box didn’t surprise me. I never have in any area of my life, and only recently found peace with simultaneously being a fiercely passionate creative with a love for arts and language and an enormous sci-fi, psychology and science nerd with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. I never have been typical, and this plagued me for most of my life. But I think I’ve learned to embrace the uniqueness – and so the diagnosis, as it were, didn’t upset me. He recommended a change in medication, some mental exercises, and to check in with my doctor and counsellor regularly over the next couple of months.
“There is nothing less romantic, literary, or lyrical than the language of pathology, diagnosis, symptom checklists. As I read through these checklists over and over again I was struck by the harshness, the crudeness of the terminology. And once the evaluation process began, more and more distinctly unpoetic terms were added to the lists, as the problems quickly grew in scope and seriousness.” — Priscilla Gilman
It’s hard to put this stuff out into the world, to admit that you’re flawed, but I want to remember the journey. I’m not scared of being judged for it because I know I’m really doing something about it. And I tell myself that makes me brave. On top of that, I am so much more than a diagnosis. I’m someone who takes action when things get sucky, I’m someone dedicated to bettering myself, I’m someone who makes goals and follows through on them, and I’m someone who feels the fear and goes ahead and tries anyway. I’m someone who sees beauty in the universe and feels so very deeply, and I’m someone who’ll be a brilliant friend if you’ll let me. I am so much more than a diagnosis, and this is merely a stop on the map that will lead me to where I believe I’m supposed to be. I know a lot of people are reluctant to turn to medication when it comes to issues of mental health, usually due to the strange notion that becoming dependent on them is both terrifying and bad. Is it so terrifying when one has something as terrible as cancer and “depends” on medication for a better quality of life? Why the double standard when it comes to issues of the mind?
So it’s been a couple of weeks. The first night I began the new meds I was promptly knocked the hell out for a good fifteen hours, and struggled to stay awake past 8 PM for the next few nights. But that very first day, I was blown away by how quickly I felt so much better. It felt like I’d been living with my heart in a vice that had finally been released and allowed to breathe. I felt free, and it felt strange – it felt like the continual physical tension and weight of anxiety and worry I hadn’t even realised was there was gone. I was just about to go into a brand new job, and I found myself excited, without a trace of fear. It was beyond bizarre. But I couldn’t be happier. This freeing has left me with a sense of urgency – to dive into the world around me and do all those things I’d set out to do, knowing how much easier they’re all going to be. Knowing that the joy and adrenaline will finally outweigh the fear. My first week at work is going swimmingly, and the plan is to get up and perform at an open mic within the next two weeks (without throwing up afterward).
I started writing this book in January, and as of now, I’m sitting at about 25,000 words. Not bad for something written mostly during lunch hours, but still not close enough to where I’d hoped to be as 2012 wrapped itself up with the rest of the year’s gifts. I’ve always loved creating the atmosphere of a story, but I’ve always sucked at coming up with things with which to populate it. Most of my creative writing involves solitary characters who never encounter anybody and thus never have to speak. Their stories usually go on for a few pages and though by the end the reader can fully visualize the environment and feel the character’s emotions, most of the action takes place in the character’s own head. Heads can indeed be scary places, but you can’t pump out a novel where nothing actually happens outside of them and expect to do well. Especially if it’s horror. Unless maybe those heads start falling off.
One thing I’ve been wrestling with since beginning this process is the magic balance between literary fiction and mass-market appeal. I know the horror field. It’s ruled by one Stephen King whose stories have sold over 350 million copies and have been turned into movies, comic books, TV series and quilted toilet paper. He also cranks out 2,000 words every day, and I suppose when you’re producing that amount of material, your chances of something striking a chord with the general public are infinitely (well, I suppose about two thousand times) more likely than had you spent all that time perfecting the one novel. This is why I could never, ever do NaNoWriMo. I’ve tried quantity over quality, and it usually results in something I want to throw into the proverbial fire.
But then again, some people value story, others value style. Maybe I stick to the latter because I struggle so much with the actual ideas. Maybe those who can crank out five novels a year are brilliant when it comes to imagination, but find themselves lacking in the delivery. But maybe it doesn’t matter. I remember in writing class sitting next to a guy whose style couldn’t have been more different. His favourite author was Nick Hornby. His stories covered entire days in a single paragraph. He could convey character, setting and plot in a sentence. He was brilliant at something I couldn’t do, and though I didn’t dislike it, I didn’t – for lack of a better word – respect it in my personal sense of what constitutes good writing. To me, writing is all about building an atmosphere and planting the reader firmly inside a character’s head, where they are carried not through events but through emotions, noting the world around them as if transformed into nothing larger than a field mouse, every noise in the night or rumbling of the street far bigger and more sinister than it should be. There are people who’ll put a book of mine down after the second page because they’ve read 500 words and all that’s happened is someone’s gone down a flight of stairs. (Okay, yes, that’s in my novel, but I promise it’s the most interesting trip down the damn stairs you’ve ever read.)
But no matter how shiny the prospect is of one day having a book of mine sitting on a Barnes & Noble shelf, I can’t bring myself to effectively “dumb it down” for the masses. I was thinking about this last night in the bathroom. I’m going to go ahead and say I can’t remember what I was doing in there for the sake of moving on quickly. Most of the people I know share a similar stance as me on the music industry: the artists that win the awards, get cardboard cutouts of themselves stuck in every store and have their own line of dog food aren’t the ones who put something creative out into the world. They’re the ones who deliver cookie-cutter tunes and fit into the molds that best reach the mass demographic: young people with disposable incomes who haven’t yet developed an appreciation for artistic instrumentation or lyrical mastery. The music charts are ruled by those that cater to the mass demographic, picking their songs from the cauldron of guaranteed hits and wrapping them in formulaic, predictable, easily digestible packages. That doesn’t mean they’re bad – even I can’t resist a bit of David Guetta every now and then, and I think I once covered a Britney Spears record – it just means the level of talent is equal to the level of genuine respect and appreciation. And thinking of it like that, I don’t care if it takes me an entire week to perfect a single page. I don’t really care if my story is never picked up by a publishing giant. I want to strike a chord with those who value well-crafted sentences and imagination. I want to write something I personally respect. I know horror and poetic prose may not appear the best of companions, but I’ve fallen in love with the idea of fusing two worlds I’m so passionate about.
People are always surprised when I tell them I’m writing horror. I don’t look particularly troubled, I live in a turquoise room strung with white fairy lights, I play quite possibly the least badass instrument ever, Halloween means dressing up as superheroes, not vampires, and I own cats. Not ravens. I subscribe to science magazines, bake cakes, drink tea, cry when animals get hurt, and am quite possibly the most hopeless of all romantics. So why the attraction to the dark side?
It’s a dark world we live in.
Because in darkness, there lies the strongest hope. With all genres of fiction, the reader is invited to play a role. With mysteries, they must hunt clues, question characters and solve problems. With fantasy, they must suspend their disbelief and immerse themselves fully into worlds different from our own, accepting all their strange rules as reality. But with horror, readers must feel, imagine, and create these worlds themselves. After the pages have been turned, they are left haunted, questioning their own reality, secretly wondering what may lurk behind the bathroom door or what’s really making those noises in the hallway. A very real sense of uncertainty is developed through turning the familiar upside down. That’s the sign of great art, I always thought. Creating something so strong that genuine emotions are stirred within the viewer or reader. Making something that tangles itself around its recipient’s thoughts and makes them feel something real.
When situations are most dire, emotions are strongest. Fear usurps all other senses, but hope is magnified exponentially. Never does one realise how much their world is worth until it’s threatened with extinction. The reader is left with a changed view of whatever their situation may be; an unsettling disquiet lingers long after the chapter has been closed. Through horror, perhaps the strongest of all emotions emerge: hope and fear. These are the things that drive our most steadfast of actions, thoughts and convictions. And after all, only through being dragged through the deepest of darknesses can we truly appreciate the light. And creating that, I think, is quite beautiful.
My first short horror story was published today. Visit Amazon or MagCloud to download a digital copy, or e-mail me for a PDF!
I’m only in my second week of the new year and my life has already turned upside down. I say that in the best way possible.
The change began over the Christmas holidays, over which I couldn’t get the nagging little thought of work out of my mind. I’d had my annual performance review right before buggering off for two weeks of hot chocolate and Every Christmas Episode of Everything Ever (Community in claymation was the clear winner of the awesomeness category), and it hadn’t gone as I’d hoped. I’d submitted my self review about a week prior, and finally felt proud as I handed it in, seeing real achievements listed throughout. I’d built a network that spanned across the country, initiated and developed regular newsletters and communication pieces that engaged people, managed a social media presence, become chair of the global LGBTA steering committee, spearheaded a regional employee recognition campaign to promote organizational values, and been chosen as one of only fifteen worldwide colleagues to represent the company at a 3,000-strong attendee summit for corporate diversity. I’d been told they’d never had anyone like me, and I handed in my review (along with several areas for improvement, of course) with a real sense of pride. I’ve always had issues with self-doubt and feelings of not being good enough, but I was confident this year, I’d made some pretty big strides.
But apparently not. In 2013, I was to be spending less time on communications and more time on filing and learning the Canadian pension system, studying handbooks and learning the legal terminology needed to draft complex invoice schedules. I was to be more passionate about clerical duties and less about issues that are important at a corporate level, but have been lacking at a local one. I was to stop bringing forward new ideas and remember my position. And that haunted me for the next two weeks.
I’ve known for a while there’s been a discrepancy between my values, passions and strengths and the ones expected in my current position. I’ve tried desperately to bring forward what I believed was valuable and much-needed change, but there’s only so much you can do from an entry-level position. Everyone around me has always told me I need to be somewhere creative, somewhere that plays to my strengths and allows me to do what I love most of all: writing, design, social media, communications, and building a culture of respect, diversity and inclusion.
So over Christmas, I tried to find one. I found a position I felt would be perfect, but didn’t hold my hopes too high. Everyone and their dog makes the new year’s resolution of finding a new job, and the market would be saturated. It also asked for a professional qualification and several years’ experience in an industry I didn’t really have, but I applied anyway.
Then I was asked for an interview.
Then I was asked if I was interested in an even more ideally suited position: Communications Manager at a magazine/publisher. I spent 45 minutes talking with someone who saw everything I stood for, who was on the same page when it comes to relating with a team, building a culture of respect and creativity, who valued my efforts as key communications ones, not administrative “extras”. We talked openly about my anxiety and how I was continually trying new things to tackle it. We talked about psychology – he’d been researching the Myers-Briggs personality model hours before my interview because he, too, felt people work better together when they understand each other. I may have done a happy clap at this point. The next day I was called back and offered the position. I was told told one of the main reasons for the decision was because he’d read my blog the previous night. This very one right here, where I write about my struggles, my goals, my dreams… ironically, this very blog which a current colleague had forwarded to my supervisor in attempts to get me into trouble became the very reason someone else wanted me around. It was everything I’d ever wanted in a work environment.
So I accepted! I gave three weeks’ notice on Monday, and was blown away by the plethora of e-mails from people all over the world telling me how much of an impact I’d had. How integral I’d been to people and how much I’d done to stand up for what’s right. I had people in other countries I’d never even met telling me how much they’d miss me. And on a day where I felt scared, nervous about taking a leap into the unknown and questioning my ability to live up to what I hope to be, it was exactly what I needed.
via [http://gigiare.tumblr.com/]
I start the first week of February, leaving me a whole day off to transition. But that’s okay. I didn’t want to leave my girls here in the lurch, and I wanted to leave in good faith, despite the challenges over the past eighteen months. Because this place gave me opportunities. I met lifelong friends and I got to travel and be surrounded with thousands of souls committed to making the corporate world a better place. I got to put Winnipeg on the map, and I learned truly what I should be doing. And as if to solidify exactly what that is, I received an e-mail this week informing me I’m going to have my first work of fiction published in a literary magazine!
I can’t wait for this next chapter. I’m terrified, but I refuse to let that dictate my actions and mentality. I’m incredibly grateful, and more than anything, I’m excited. It’s kind of what I’ve wanted my entire life.
The evolution of New Year’s Eve is an interesting one, isn’t it? I remember as a kid going over to one of the neighbours’ houses and spending it crammed in a bedroom with my younger brother and the neighbours’ kids. I’m still friends with them today, all these years later. I remember spending hours taking turns playingPrince of Persia (2D!) with them until midnight hit and going downstairs to find both sets of parents absolutely loaded, and being completely mortified. That night was probably the reason I didn’t drink a thing until I was in my twenties.
I remember New Year’s Eve 1999 and all the excitement everyone around the world was sharing. I was 14, and I dressed up in the sparkliest silver dress I could find. We went to an out-of-town party in a big place where they had several halls, one designated for the under 18s. I can’t remember what was in it, but I think it was a fun time.
I remember New Year’s Eve in university, being 19 or so, having my first proper “group” of friends all come over for board games. I remember my parents coming home after their party and my dad joining us for a few rounds of Taboo. I think we played charades, too. I remember the feeling of pure content being surrounded by a group who simply adored each other’s company.
I remember New Year’s Eve newly single, sitting in my dad’s study writing out my resolutions for the upcoming year and chatting with an old friend overseas, comforted by the triumph of human connection over several time zones and thousands of miles.
I remember New Year’s Eve in Palm Springs, California, with a group of people I thought were going to become my family. I remember New Year’s Eve newly married, sad, scared and worried, because those people wanted me gone.
I remember the only time I ever ventured out on a Proper New Year’s Party. Tickets were $75, including cover and all drinks (which nobody could get anyway with the queues permanently thirty people long), but it was probably the worst one I’ve ever had. Someone had rented the Art Gallery and transformed it into an amazing venue with different themed rooms, DJs, even music on the roof, but their coat check volunteers had abandoned ship halfway through the night, and the holding space became a free-for-all looting session. Everyone was stealing everybody else’s belongings, and I remember sitting on the floor crying amidst the riot with my coat and camera missing. The police ended up getting called. I waited freezing for a good three hours before finally being able to get a cab home.
I remember last New Year’s Eve, going out for dinner with a splintered group of people who huddled in small clusters around a long table. I remember the lemon soup being the most delicious thing I’d ever had, and I remember being extremely thankful for a few people there, but more worried about being judged by the rest. I remember being new. I remember the excitement as 12:00 rang in a six-month anniversary with my boyfriend and running off on our own down empty snow-filled streets, setting off fireworks before dashing inside to warm up and drink peach champagne.
But I think this New Year’s Eve is going to be my favourite. I get to spend it with a handful of some of the best people I’ve ever known. If 2012 has taught me anything (well, it taught me a lot of things, but perhaps more so than anything else), it’s the value of actual love. Not just romantic love, but platonic love, too.
They say your real friends know you inside out, all the bad as well as the good, and love you anyway. But this year I actually saw that happen. I put my friends through a lot of crazy this year. I lost a few people because of it, but a handful were there through it all, all the tears, all the panic, all the worry and all the downright insane. There are things I put people through this year that I don’t even understand. They certainly didn’t, but they were there anyway, with hugs, reassurances in the middle of the night, and the occasional bottle of wine. They’ve shown me the meaning of the true human connection – when love outweighs absolutely anything else.
Friendship is a pretty amazing thing from a scientific standpoint – investing time, emotion and energy into a relationship without any evolutionary gain. The capacity to care is beautiful. It’s also pretty incredible when those relationships are completely open. I did some things this year I’d be embarrassed to write about here, but when you know someone is truly there for you, those things don’t become embarrassing because they’re crazy, they become embarrassing because you feel you let the other person down. Because they think you’re awesome, and sometimes, you’re not. 2012 was the year I realised with some people, I truly could be exactly the version of myself I am right now, and I didn’t have to worry about being judged. And for that, I’m simultaneously sorry and grateful beyond words.
I’m not going to make resolutions for 2013 – I have a pretty good 30 Before 30 on the go, and I’ve always maintained that you shouldn’t wait for an excuse like the turning of a calendar to start making things happen. I look back on 2012 with a deepened appreciation for those dearest to me, and I make them a hope and a promise: that they will always know how cherished they are, and that for their sake, I will always remember what I’ve learned, where we’ve been, what we’ve shared… and use that to be the best possible person I can be.
And for anyone reading these words, Happy New Year. I hope your 2013 brings introspection, courage, adventure and education. I hope your understanding of yourself and the world around you deepens and with it, an appreciation. I hope you chase your dreams, even if you’re afraid, because every day in this upcoming year is another chance to do something amazing. I hope that even if you screw something up, there’s something to be said about people that try. Besides, with the biggest cock-ups come the biggest lessons, and lessons are awesome. I hope you learn great things, read great books, and hear songs that set your soul on fire and make you proud to be part of the human race. I hope you remember small kindnesses and compliment strangers, and I hope, at least once per day, you find one thing to smile about.
“…because nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff. Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can’t-control-yourself love it. When people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is ‘you like stuff.’ Which is just not a good insult at all. Like, ‘you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness’.” – John Green
Last year’s Cannes Lions award winners were nothing short of brilliant, and 2012 didn’t disappoint. Here are my favourite examples of human brilliance from this year’s International Festival of Creativity:
This hilarious ad for New Zealand, the “most creative country in the world”, made me want to move there:
Dads in Briefs: A campaign for why you should buy an air conditioner
Gandhi Bookstores: A fun invitation to keep reading
Courageousness calls for a Carlsberg:
DirecTV: SO many LOLs, especially the last one. Don’t wake up in a roadside ditch. Stop taking in stray animals. Don’t have a grandson with a dog collar. Don’t have your house explode. And don’t re-enact scenes from Platoon with Charlie Sheen. Get rid of cable – get DirecTV:
Coca Cola Security Cams – had seen this floating around earlier in the year, but a nice reminder that humans can be pretty decent sometimes:
And my absolute favourite ad of this year’s bunch: Zonajobs – Grandmother
The local run is almost over, but Winnipeggers can catch the festival again at the WAG in March 2013 🙂
I’ve been wanting to post about this for a really long time, but I wanted to wait until a little more progress had been made than after my initial visit. One of my 30 Before 30 was to get a text sleeve: I’d seen a handful of photos online that I’d fallen in love with, and have always been drawn to typography tattoos. At the beginning of July, the day finally arrived, and I proceeded to have paper pieces of literature strewn across my arm and shoulder. It wasn’t going to be a quick one – the longest I’ve ever sat for ink in one sitting was three hours, and this was going to be upwards of ten – so, because reality leaves me far less badass than I like to imagine, it was going to have to be done in stages.
Five hours later, I emerged with a decent start. I had Tennyson and parts of Kerouac immortalised on my skin (though the stencil for the latter decided to abandon ship halfway through, leaving a rather amusing “plodin’ across the stars” there until next time), and a giant red immortality from the pen of Emily Dickinson. I was nervous going in – I cry at Pixar movies, and I didn’t want to look like even more of a baby than I usually do day to day crying about this or that (“but it’s so beautiful!” CHOKE) – but I ate Maltesers and had such good conversation with the artist that it went way quicker and easier than I was anticipating.
Before I continue, I have to take a minor detour through crazyville. I hadn’t told many people I’d planned on getting this tattoo immediately, and so a little shock was understandable. But I think downright judgment and public disapproval is more than a little rude. I had a lot of love for the first picture to hit my Facebook wall, but intermingled were a few rather irritating comments in the vein of “whaaaaaaaat”, “WHY” and “dear lord”, followed by something that really made me want to punch somebody:
Crazy!! Why Em? WHY? You are a BEAUTIFUL woman. You really did NOT need this. I apologize if I seem to be old fashioned. Do you wonder what it will look like when you’re in your 50s,60s,70s? You gorgeous wonderful girl. I feel gutted.
Let’s stop for a second and think about passing the same kind of comment on somebody who decided to go for a nose job or shave all their hair off. People make all sorts of big, appearance-related decisions every day, and they do it for very good reasons. They do it for art, for self esteem, and for expression. And nobody has the right to judge or condemn them for it simply because it’s not what they’d do themselves. I find it equally audacious when people tell me I need to “eat more” and stop being so skinny. Why is that form of judgment acceptable, when telling someone to put down the burgers is seen as cruel?
It’s been about five months since I got the first chunk done, and I think after a few more sittings in the new year, I’ll be done. I’ve fallen in love with it (and my amazing tattoo artist who puts on BBC radio, bundles me in blankets, gives us Christmas decorations and burns awesome TV shows for me) more and more every time I go, and I can’t wait for the finished product.
I suppose I should elaborate on my choice of text a little: The first excerpt across my shoulder is from Ulysses, and talks of the evanescence of the strength of youth, but also of the immortality of the strength of heart and will:
“Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
Around the corner, across the top of my arm, is an excerpt from Jack Kerouac’s On The Road:
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”
Beneath, by Emily Dickinson, is one of my favourite quotes about love. Not an everyday kind of love, but a love that burns brighter than any dream imaginable… a love that transcends words, life, time and death:
“That I shall love always, I argue thee that love is life, and life hath immortality.”
The next phase was probably the most painful – the difference between being tattooed on the outside of the arm and being tattooed on the skin inside is indescribable!! This was the only time I cried, and unfortunately this was also the only time nobody was available to come and hold my hand. Not fun, and this one hurt for a good couple of days afterward, too, but thankfully the worst is over! This quote was about writing, and on how beautiful it is to watch the words “tangle with human emotions.”
After this, I had two terribly sciencey quotes added, along with a brilliant splattering of ink across much of what had already been done.
“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known,” (Carl Sagan), and “ad astra per aspera” (through adversity to the stars… I believe at one point, this was used by NASA).
I have a few strands of text still to go, a couple of stray words and one full-size quote (below), and then, for now, I’ll be finished! The thing I love about this isn’t just the immortality of so many sentiments that mean so much to me, but also that as I grow and evolve, so too can this.
“As I see it, life is an effort to grip before they slip through one’s fingers and slide into oblivion, the startling, the ghastly, or the blindingly exquisite fish of the imagination before they whip away on the endless current and are lost forever in oblivion’s black ocean.”
Love, science, imagination, language, strength and stars now walk with me through life, and I couldn’t be happier with how it’s taking shape. Once this is done, I’m certain I’m going to finally finish the back piece. After all, if the body is a temple, why not decorate the walls?
Edit: Updates since include adding on to the Carl Sagan quote with “to be known” overlaying the already existing words; knowing another soul and simultaneously being truly known is one of the rarest and most beautiful things in the world, and something I have an insatiable desire to build with anyone I hold dear. I say build – if they’re dear to me, chances are it’s something we probably already share, and for those people, who’ve allowed me in to explore the most hidden depths of their souls, baring their histories and hopes and fears and dreams… allowing me to do the same with them… and giving unconditional love built on that safety, that trust, that knowing… I am incredibly blessed.
Another: “Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.” This one was Neil Gaiman, who I love very much. Tales and dreams, emotions, lyrics, hopes, explosions of the heart, and stories of imagination are the things that bring such joy to life. Feelings. A memory told only with facts can sound quite ordinary, but when told with the colour of how it felt, prefaced by the promise of all its potential… these tales bring magic, and they truly are the things that will endure.
Well, I’ve been back in Winnipeg for about three weeks now since heading to Baltimore last month. I was pretty scared to go to begin with, and the hurricane didn’t do much for alleviating that fear, but the fact that I’m here writing to you should be a good indication of my not dying or getting whisked away to Oz.
The Out and Equal Workplace Summit was pretty incredible. I joined 34 other colleagues from offices across the globe along with close to 3,000 individuals all committed to workplace equality. I don’t even know where to begin – it was such an energizing week full of shared education, experiences, strategies, struggles and hope, and being part of such a large group of like-minded people was nothing short of inspirational.
I attended numerous workshops put on by big companies and learned about things like The Trevor Project, designed with the hope for a future “where the possibilities, opportunities and dreams are the same for all youth, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.” They are determined to end suicide among LGBT youth. Acceptance and inclusiveness are part of their mantra, and they are rooted in the belief that everyone should be treated like a human being. It Gets Better is another fantastic project started in 2010 in response to the suicides of teenagers who were bullied because they were gay.
I also had the chance to attend a session delivered by Google on LGBT issues in a global workplace. Part of their mission includes many diversity and inclusion efforts: “in addition to hiring the best talent, the diversity of perspectives, ideas and cultures leads to the creation of better products and services.” I couldn’t agree more. Throughout the workshop, I found myself simultaneously inspired and saddened. It was encouraging to see such a large company have strong Employee Resource Groups, strong local leadership and support from the executive level to ensure their colleagues are treated with the same respect as their clients – but it was also incredibly eye-opening to see just how much work there still is to be done. I sat behind a representative from a company in Singapore, and had to jot down his awesome comment: “It’s a very restrictive culture there. And I’m all about tearing that shit up.” Yes, we may work in restrictive, conservative cultures, but that doesn’t mean conformity is the answer. Nobody should feel pressured to hide who they really are, and personally, I believe it’s ultimately to the detriment of the offices that foster that sort of environment. When people feel afraid, judged, or reprimanded for bringing their true selves to the workplace, motivation goes out the window.
I also had the chance to attend an interesting workshop put on by Straight for Equality and PFLAG on navigating religion and LGBT issues in the workplace. As a straight atheist, I was highly intrigued to hear how these seemingly mutually exclusive topics could coexist, and actually left quite inspired. I’m not going to go into my feelings toward religion right now, but it was nice to hear of some churches actually taking steps away from judgment and exclusion and initiating things that promote equality for all.
As one of my colleagues stated, “as with every civil rights and equality issue, it’s only when the many come together that we achieve the power of one. There are no women’s rights, gay rights, ethnic minority rights or religious rights… there are only human rights.”
People at work are often afraid to speak up about LGBT issues, despite the fact that 8 out of 10 people in the US know someone who is LGBT. Reasons can range from being afraid of controversy, being opposed based on religious grounds, and being afraid of being thought to be gay – as was my experience when I hung the Pride flag in my office! Again, it was saddening to see these issues so horribly rampant, but somehow comforting realizing you’re not alone.
There are many anti-LGBT arguments out there that simply don’t make sense. Workplace benefits, the right to marry, and adoption legislation should be equal across the board. When they’re not, you’re effectively stating that some people do not deserve the same rights as other human beings. And the fact that this is considered an argument worthy of debate is beyond ridiculous. These are real people who live, breathe, work just as hard and love just as much as everybody else, and to deny them the same basic rights based on who they are is a form of discrimination no different than sexism, ageism or racism.
Before I left, I had an unsettling talk with one of my superiors about the discrepancy between some of the company’s values and the lack thereof existing at the ground level. I am proud to work for a company that promotes diversity, respect, innovation and inclusion, and I am even prouder of all the work that the LGBTA group has done for health and welfare benefits and US tax legislation. But there’s a difference between talking the talk and walking the walk. When I pointed out the incongruity, the response was a disheartening “you can’t change people”. Is that what people struggled against back in the day when fighting for race equality? Maybe deep down, it is difficult to change people, and maybe it’s not my place to do it. But you can change behaviour, you can promote strong values, and you can lead by example. That’s why we need to keep fighting the fight and standing up for what’s right. (I swear I didn’t mean for that to rhyme. I’d be a terrible rapper.)
The summit concluded with a glittering gala celebration, hosted by comedian Kate Clinton who reminded us of the safety and acceptance we all deserve in our workplaces. Guest speaker Brigadier General Tammy Smith, the first openly LGBT officer of flag rank in the US Army, shared her experience of successfully rising through the ranks while struggling to remain true to herself. Her resounding remarks illuminated the importance of each individual’s presence at Summit and future equality efforts. Addressing all attendees, sponsors, volunteers and staff, Tammy said: “If I am able to stand here as a soldier and as my authentic self, it’s thanks to you. Don’t stop, don’t even slow down in creating equal workplaces. I am in your debt.” I sat next to someone who recognised my name as “the one who’s done so much for the gays.” 🙂 And Sister actual Sledge performed!!
I spent much of the remainder of that evening crying instead of packing. If you know me personally, you’ll already know that crying is about as normal to me as breathing (I just feel really hard!), but that closing night, I couldn’t help but sob. It was a mixed bag of feelings – gratitude for having been given such an incredible opportunity, sadness after hearing so many stories of injustice and discrimination, fear of being too small to make the amount of change so desperately needed, inspired by the inclusion and diversity efforts of so many organizations out there, and the blessing of having met such an amazing group of brilliant world-changers.
In the words of a colleague and friend: “the conference sneaks it way into your heart and slaps you awake with its true relevance. Empowered by the passion and energy for human rights, educated and armed by workshops, panels and discussions, I am reminded of the privilege and duty I have to keep evolving as a man… as a gay man. I was touched spiritually and prayed with strangers in an exhibit hall. I was brought to tears more than once hearing others’ stories, witnessed true strength and courage of those that have formed friendships that fill a void left by families, and recognized the enormous sense of family and community. Thankful for the opportunity and the blessing. My love to all those who touched my heart this week and entered into my life. May we continue to empower each other.”
As of next week, I’ll be flying to Baltimore, MD (home of the grave of a certain Mr. Poe!) for a work trip to attend the largest LGBT corporate conference in North America. Close to 3,000 LGBTAs will be in attendance, and I, a little Winnipeg Administrative Assistant, was somehow chosen as one of fifteen colleagues from across the world to go. This wasn’t without its challenges – Administrative Assistants don’t usually get to travel, aren’t really supposed to take on extra-curriculars, and definitely don’t have corporate credit cards. When I was asked, the immediate response locally was a hesitant yes, on the condition that I did all prep work for it on my own time, and earned the hours in advance to cover the travel days. Nobody else had to do that. But because of the unusual circumstance of somebody at my level being offered this opportunity, I did. Which I reluctantly decided I was okay with – I wasn’t going to miss out on something this awesome just for the sake of having to work through lunch hours!
Something I’ve struggled with throughout my career are the limitations determined by job title. Possibly appearance, too, but I’ve talked about that before. I have a pattern of entering organizations at the administrative level – reception, admin assistant, etc. and quickly expanding the role as much as I can to reflect my actual capacity. I wasn’t given a brain to answer phones and file papers, and I’ve proven myself more than capable in writing/marketing/graphic design, social media, group facilitation, and all sorts of communications functions. At my last job, I initiated, designed and delivered entire curriculum for a series of workshops, gave corporate presentations to promote services, wrote radio/print ads, and managed two corporate videos from the ground up. Yet my title was not permitted to reflect how much more I brought to the role. I always suspected it was due to looking young, but now I’m experiencing it again, I’m certain it’s the case.
I’m 27 years old. I still get asked if I’m 18 and told how young I look. People joke that it’s a good thing – and I’m sure one day when I hit forty, it will be – but in the meantime, it’s a curse. People judge you based on what’s on the surface. They don’t take the time to read over your accomplishments or look at your work ethic. They don’t spend time investing in hearing your ideas or asking your opinion. They see someone who looks new to the workforce with an entry-level title. Someone inexperienced and therefore unworthy of being heard. I’ve come up with countless proposals, ideas and process improvements, I’ve expanded my network, I’ve initiated communications and social media strategies that have gone national. I’ve been asked to be part of a global steering committee for a corporate diversity network. Outside my office walls, I’m recognized and valued. But locally, I get the sense I need to stop thinking outside the box, get back in it, and stay there. Consequently, the flame on my desire to do more is waning. And how is that good for a company as a whole?
In addition to titles and physical appearance, I’m sure some of this is generational. I always have been one of the youngest members of the office, and it is hard to “teach old dogs new tricks”. But how do you get those tricks to be acknowledged when the very position you’re in is the obstacle? I’m struggling a little with this trip. I’m going as a corporate ambassador, to promote the company and how it encourages diversity, respect, and innovation. I am proud to work somewhere that supports these values – I just wish there was something I could do to help them become more of a priority. Still, I am incredibly excited (and nervous!) for this trip. I’m going to be meeting colleagues from across the world I’ve been getting to know and befriend over the last few months. I’m going to be surrounded by people who have the same values I do, who share the same passion for equality in the workplace. It’s going to be incredibly inspiring. But I’m nervous about how to get my learning heard when I return home. I have felt disheartened – but one of my US colleagues encouraged me recently to keep doing what I’m doing. Keep standing up for what’s right, doing everything I can to promote inclusion, diversity and equality. He reminded me that I may only reach one person – but that that in itself is one more person touched than had I given up. I’ve tried to take that message to heart and keep it there for when things get tough.
At the end of the day, I don’t want to look back and say I was defeated. I want to stand strong, though perhaps having taken a fair share of knocks, perhaps a little scarred, and perhaps slightly saddened by the discrepancy between how the world is and how it could be. But I want to be able to say I never gave up. I know my capabilities, and I refuse to be caged by others’ resistance to change and innovation. And I know my intentions are always to better things around me. It’s hard, sometimes, when your efforts are stifled and quelled, but I think that’s where personal accountability comes into play: it’s easy to become the product of other people’s expectations, and it’s alarmingly more so to believe something just because it’s continually reiterated – but you have to find your own truth, stand your ground, and remember the wise words of Albert Einstein:
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.
I’ll update again soon – this summer/autumn have been incredibly eventful, and I have stories of tattoos, space parties, new kittens, love, ridiculous Halloween costumes, music, bookwriting and flesh-eating diseases to share, along with a post-conference update on how brilliant Out & Equal was. Oh, and why am I going to a giant LGBT conference anyway? No, to answer the colleague who asked my boss if I was “coming out”. I’m going because I’m proud to be an ally, and I want to do everything I can to change the corporate culture to one of equality, where people can feel comfortable, unafraid, and free to be their true selves.
Stay strong, stay real, and see you on the other side!
Edit: In a case of fantastic timing, I saw this article posted by a friend of mine today: When did Gen Y become Gen Y-Can’t-We-Take-You-Seriously? “I hate that adage that youth is wasted on the young. It’s so defeatist, and it comes with a whiff of patronizing bitterness and jealousy. Usually, it’s uttered by people who are older, who somehow resent the young – the beauty and possibility they possess, and the fresh intelligence that threatens those in positions of authority.”It seems I’m not alone after all.
I did something emo recently. I posted a vague, ever so irritatingly melancholy status on Facebook without referencing what the hell it was about. I don’t know if anyone read it, but I felt I owed it to anyone who did to elaborate a little. And to myself, as a reminder to never be One of Those People again.
Of course it’s a Neil Gaiman quote. When I die, I really hope I can be a ghost that can not only move through walls but also through all the barriers of human anatomy, through the great divide between the physical and the intangible, and haunt the inside of that man’s brilliant head. I want to live inside his imagination, but I’d be content just to be a passenger for a day or two, and observe what comes out of his mouth. He’s just so damn quotable.
The instant I read this, I was transported back to an early conversation I’d had with a boyfriend when we’d first started dating. I’d ended up in tears through being unable to unlearn something that has completely stolen a lifelong hope. We’d been discussing ghosts and the supernatural. A bit of religion was probably thrown in there too, but that’s definitely a topic for another day, and conversation had moved to the idea of existence after death.
For my entire life, I’ve clung to the hope that this isn’t all there is. My mum went through all sorts of spiritual journeys growing up, and I remember learning about everything from chakras to the Dalai Lama, but one thing that captivated me as a child was the idea of reincarnation. I didn’t know if I necessarily believed it was actually possible, but I hoped desperately that it was. She taught me that we’re all reincarnated in groups of about fifty, I think she said, and that the people who have the biggest parts in your life are because their souls have always been incarnated with yours, just in a different form. She taught me things like that maybe in a previous life, I’d been her mother, and the idea always fascinated me when it came to love, relationships, best friendships… Did this mean that it was possible to always find your way back to these people over and over again throughout all of eternity? That no matter what happened in life, somehow true love, whether for family, friends, or someone else, would triumph across all of time and space, even death? The idea wasn’t just reassuring. The thought of every relationship with someone you care so deeply about ending after a handful of years on Earth seems such an incredible waste. For friendships and love and bonds to burn so brightly for such a short time, only to be extinguished by life’s ephemerality. I couldn’t bear it.
But over the last year, my beliefs have come to rely more and more on empirical fact than on hope – I realised that one reason a lot of people hold on to religion not because it’s real, but because it gives them hope. A crutch, a lifeboat upon which to sail through stormy seas. But just believing in something because it made life more bearable kind of goes against what I value. I value proof, questioning, searching for evidence, and discovering the truth before simply accepting someone else’s. And the notion of human connection’s immortality beyond death cannot ever be proven. And that makes me incredibly sad. I think logically, I’ve come to accept that in all likelihood, this really is it. But there’s a tiny sliver somewhere in my heart that holds onto the hope that these infinitely unlikely bursts of brilliance will happen all over again. I guess it’s a sliver that not just inhabits my heart: part of my newest tattoo includes the words of Emily Dickinson, who believed that “love is life, and life hath immortality.” More updates on the ink later.
That took a bit longer than I thought to explain, but I guess I’ve just been feeling a little sad lately. The past has been weighing heavily on my heart, I suppose triggered by continual reminders of what used to be. People I was once incredibly close with cut me out of their lives, largely as a result of who I am. I have baggage. I worry. I get overwhelmed by emotion, and I am subsequently too much to deal with. Over the last couple of months I’ve seen photos of parties, celebrations, and weddings I always imagined to be sharing with people who instead turned their backs. I’m not blaming them. My insecurities, anxiety, emotional extremity and pent-up esteem issues made me a pretty shitty person to be around. It just sucks that I’ve put so much work into dealing with it, managing it, and being a better human being, and it’s still not good enough. People would rather move on or actively tell me, as was the case a couple of weeks ago, that they’d rather keep their distance. I feel lost and torn: I desperately wanted to get my issues in check so I could be a better person to be around, and so I could reign in my tendencies and alleviate some of the worry and heartache – but I don’t know how much is something that can be fixed, and how much is simply how I was made. I want to be true to who I am, to wear my heart on my sleeve and to see the good in how much I feel – even if it does mean bursting into tears after reading a news story about a local tiger cub dying at the zoo, or getting myself into a teary-eyed panic while waiting for a loved one’s test results – I’ve battled with my emotional tendencies my whole life and hated who I was because of it, but lately I’ve tried to embrace it – not see it as such a bad thing because it’s not usual, but see the good in it, that it’s because I care so damn much. But then if I think of things in those terms, I set myself up for failure – people left my life because of who I was. So I don’t know which way to turn.
“But the lonely are such delicate things, the wind from a wasp could blow them into the sea with stones on their feet, lost to the light and the loving they need…” – The Shins
The lives I watched continue without me on Facebook have made me feel very lonely lately, so I did delete a large chunk of people from Facebook. I was confident it would make me feel better if I didn’t see it all the damn time. And I suppose, in a way, it did – but it also served as a huge reminder that I have lots and lots of free time now. I used to be terrified of coming home and not having plans. I figured it meant that nobody wanted to do anything with me, and that I was always last on other people’s priority list. Since I started seeing a counsellor and taking medication to get the anxiety under control, I really have learned to switch how I see free time, and in most cases I’m now able to see it as a luxury with which I can enjoy a good book, make photo albums, catch up on EastEnders or crank out another few hundred words for the book. But with all these reminders lately, I’m starting to get scared again. Evenings alone are spent suchly because everyone else has other people to be with. The freedom of time alone isn’t something to cherish any more. It’s a terrifying place in which your mind can go into overdrive, reminding you of all the people who once wanted you around, of all the plans you’d had, of all the doubts you have about yourself. Time alone allows your thoughts to take control. And when those thoughts start in a place that feels a little lonely, the destination can leave you feeling completely abnormal and thoroughly abandoned.
”Isn’t it funny how some thoughts and cherished memories can become your worst enemies? The ones you loved to think about, the memories you wanted to hold up to the light and view from every angle–it suddenly seems a lot safer to lock them in a box, far from the light of day and throw away the key. It’s not an act of bitterness. It’s an act of self-preservation. It’s not always a bad idea to stay behind the window and look out at life instead, is it?”
As down as I’ve felt lately, the universe has made a pretty huge effort to let me know I’m not alone. Literally seconds after I received one text confirming someone’s decision to cut contact, I received two more – one from a wonderful new friend I made through Fringe Festival this summer, with whom I instantly clicked and spent several hours telling our entire life stories to each other, and one I hadn’t seen in years, who’d just found my blog and wanted to reconnect, and to let me know that if I ever needed a friend, I had one. I really do believe that one door closing generally allows another, better one to open, and honestly, that very much has been the case this summer. The people who’ve come into – and the people who’ve continued to be – in my life are people with whom I never have to worry about hiding my emotions, or how long they’re going to stick around. They know everything, and they still want to be here. And that means more than I could ever express.
I’ve been listening to this song a lot lately. Yes, it gets stuck in there for days and days, and it does sound like some sort of bizarre fusion of country, The Lion King and Cecilia (you’re breaking my heart), but for some reason I love it. And it seems kind of fitting for right now.
Some nights, I stay up cashing in my bad luck Some nights, I call it a draw Some nights, I wish that my lips could build a castle Some nights, I wish they’d just fall off
But I still wake up, I still see your ghost Oh I’m still not sure what I stand for, oh What do I stand for? What do I stand for? Most nights, I don’t know any more…
This is it, boys, this is war – what are we waiting for? Why don’t we break the rules already? I was never one to believe the hype – save that for the black and white I try twice as hard and I’m half as liked
Well, some nights, I wish that this all would end ‘Cause I could use some friends for a change And some nights, I’m scared you’ll forget me again Some nights, I always win
But I still wake up, I still see your ghost Oh, I’m still not sure what I stand for most What do I stand for? What do I stand for? Most nights, I don’t know…
Ten years of this, I’m not sure if anybody understands This is not one for the folks at home; I’m sorry to leave, I had to go Who wants to die alone all dried up in the desert sun? But man, you wouldn’t believe the most amazing things That can come from some terrible nights…
I’m a little down, but not a moment goes by where I’m not incredibly grateful for the people I have. I guess by writing it out, I just needed to remind myself of that again. I’ll be back to positivity again soon.
So it’s been a full two years since the 26 Before 26 – which turned into a bit of a 26 before 27, but I think I just about got there in the end. Last week I turned 27 (and got a SWORD from my amazing boyfriend!), and, seeing as I think that officially puts me into the “late twenties” category, I’m going to go ahead and do it all over again. This birthday, I’m going to make a 30 Before 30. I’m going to become Jack Nicholson, except without portraying cancer as a fun adventure leading to some sort of clichéd (and rather irritating) epiphany. You shouldn’t wait for something terrible to happen before you decide to grab life by the throat and live it to pieces (thank you Frank) – but that being said, when something terrible does happen, you do kind of realise that life is short, and it’s probably better off not to spend it on crap you’ll either forget or regret when the end is drawing near.
Yes, some pretty rubbish things have happened over the last year. My ex husband disappeared, went crazy, and came back a different person who left shortly afterward for good waving a crucifix around in the air. My anxiety got to an all time high, which resulted in a lot of crying, a lot of damage, and a lot of people sodding off. I lived in a hobbit-sized apartment with a git of a landlord who almost lost my cat, charged me almost $1,000 a month, and let my ceiling remain pretty much collapsed for two of the coldest months of the year. I got into a car crash and totalled my boyfriend’s car a week before my driving test. And the man I love is incredibly sick, and I can’t do anything to take it away. Many of my real-life friends are fully aware of the prognosis and day-to-day details, but it’s not my place to broadcast the details across the internet. But it’s really, really hard. So it hasn’t been the easiest year, but it has put things very much into perspective for me. Two of the biggest things I’ve learned are that a) time is short, that every second should be spent wisely, and that trivial things should never be prioritised over what ultimately means most in life, and b) shit happens, but the only way it’s going to stop happening is if you decide to take action rather than whine about it.
Blogging about my goal list over the course of the last two years is hands down the reason I kept going. Once you put something out there for the world to see, you feel like you owe it to them to follow through on your promises. And you owe it to yourself to stay accountable, and not look like a lazy bastard. Blogging’s taken a bit of a back seat lately because I’m spending most of my free time working on the novel. But it’s still important for me to keep some sort of record of 2012, even if it’s only every month or two. To continue to immortalise life as it is, life as it was, to look back on and remember how everything felt exactly as it happened. My words are my legacy, and I’m not going to abandon them. That’s another thing I’ve learned – we all have the same amount of minutes in every day, and complaining about “not having time” for something important to you is incredibly defeatist. If it’s truly important, you make time.
So I’m going to make a 30 Before 30. And this time, it’s not going to be lame! When I made the last list, it wasn’t just a bucket list of stuff I thought might be kind of neat – it was a list of things I was terribly afraid of, but things I was desperate to be able to do (but that most people probably checked off by the time they reached puberty). Reading out loud and speaking to people on the actual telephone don’t make for the most exciting of reading material, and I think I’ve taken enough of the small steps to move onto the bigger ones. I promise it’ll be more exciting this year. I want to challenge myself, grow, learn new things, throw myself outside what’s comfortable and hope for the best. I want to learn to stop giving a crap about things and people that don’t factor into the big picture, and I want to focus only on the things that do. I want to learn to accept my weaknesses and faults, and actively try to change them. I want to learn what is most comfortable, and spend some time nurturing that as well as trying what’s not. I don’t want to get to the end without any scars. I want to get there knowing I did something, and I want to know more fully who exactly I am. I think once you’ve figured that out, it’s pretty much time to kick the bucket, but I think there’s enormous value in exploring yourself, learning to be comfortable with what’s there, and challenging yourself to be even more. I think I’m on the right track. I think it was good to have tried things I was afraid of, but I tend to give myself a hard time for not having done them perfectly – my goal wasn’t just to attempt them, but to do them fearlessly, and in that respect, it’s hard not to focus on shortcomings. But on the other hand, I think points are generally given for effort, so I think as long as I keep trying, maybe I’ll learn to give myself a bit of a break. It doesn’t matter what direction you’re going or if you even know where you’re going, as long as you’re moving forward. And move forward I shall.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to truly “conquer” anxiety, or not be a worrier. There’s a fine line between habits and innate personality traits, and hard as I work at changing behaviours and thought patterns, I think there’s always going to be something there that’s simply part of who I am. I think it would be a terrible thing if we could easily change who we are, but I think with enough effort and determination, we can change habits that may masquerade as personality. I know I’m always going to be sensitive, and I’m always going to have introverted tendencies over extraversion. I know I’m always going to cry when I think of animals being mistreated (even in Pixar movies) or losing loved ones (also even in Pixar movies… yes, I just finished watching Up), or when I feel like I’ve let someone down. But I just have to look at these things and instead of eliminating them, maybe just working on getting them in check, – maybe trying to see the positive side of them is the way to go. Yes, I hate that I’m so incredibly sensitive and cry so often. But I’m proud of the fact that I feel with the absolute maximum capacity I have, and care so deeply about what’s important to me. And if weeping like a Shakespearean B-lister every night is the result, then I think it’s a small price to pay.
I have two years left of my twenties. I still have so much to learn, so much to improve, so much to tackle and so much to try. I have so many goals I want to throw out there into the universe and make sure I always keep working on. I have activities I want to experience, moments I want to share, places I want to see, and project I want to complete. And I want to spend every day focusing on all of them. Nobody, they say, gets remembered for the things they didn’t do. So here goes.
1. Become a proper ukulele player (i.e. learn more than six chords), and learn how to play guitar. I love that I can play – not well, I might add – something whenever I have the desire to spontaneously burst into song, and I love that I’ve made enough lame videos to not be so self conscious about people other than the cat hearing me. But I want to lose the awkwardness, the terror at the thought of singing in front of a single person, learn to have some sort of presence, and actually not kind of suck at something I actually really enjoy.
Thanks Corey for sharing this gem
2. Finish the novel. All 100,000 words of it. Get it published, whether self or through a publisher, and see just one copy for sale in a local bookstore. I’m about a tenth of the way through my first draft right now, and I’m addicted. I love the premise. I love the poor, twisted characters. I love that I have enough fuel from real life stuff and my own mental meanderings to create such a creepy world. Thank you, everyone who’s ever been a psycho!
3. Go an entire month without crying. Right now I think it’d be pretty accurate to say I cry every two or three days. Not because I’m sad or lonely or depressed, but usually about things I care so bloody much about. I cry because of loved ones in pain and me being powerless to do anything about it. I cry because of how lucky I feel to have such incredible people in my life. I cry at the thought of never having met them. I cry when I think about animals in pain. And I cry because sometimes, the chasm between where I am and where I want to be is bigger than I’d like, and I feel like I’m letting people down. I’m not a miserable person by any means, but I feel things with enormous emotional impact. I’d just like to be able to get the physiological consequence of that under control.
4. Do whatever I can to travel home to England or to see more of Europe. I haven’t travelled far away for a few years now, and I miss it terribly. I did take an amazing road trip back in March though, which was pretty amazing – if I can’t go too far, I’d really love to do another one and make it all the way to SF Comic Con. 🙂
5. Get a text sleeve. Or a partial one. I saw this forever ago and absolutely fell in love with it. Now I’m not going to go as big as my entire arm – initially I wanted to go with the same spot as my other arm tattoo, but then I figured a) it’d probably look like I’d been in prison, and b) it’d probably look like I’d been in prison. Plus I’ve never been one for symmetry anyway. So I think I’m going with my other arm, maybe along the back of the tricep, or over the shoulder. I’ve compiled a few of my favourite quotes and hacked them out visually to get this sort of effect. And I can’t wait.
6. Stop picking my damn thumbs. Is this what giving up smoking feels like? Instead of rotting away my lungs I’m mutilating my hands at every opportunity. It makes NO SENSE. I look nervous, it’s gross, it hurts, and it makes my hands look they they’ve fallen victim to the Vidiian Phage – but for some reason I can’t stop digging my nails into my thumbs and peeling them until they bleed. It’s the most disgusting habit ever. I’ve tried fiddling with hair bands, getting manicures, and putting plasters on them… but logic and willpower are disappointingly weak little buggers in comparison to the ridiculous compulsion. I mean really?
7. Become a more active astronomer. Be able to recognise more planets and constellations without Star Walk. I may accomplish this once my Space Room is completed next month. Painting’s already underway – now to map out constellations on the ceiling, string up hundreds of fairy lights, and make a DIY solar system. I live in the most wonderful and nerdy place in the world, and I love it. I also really want to learn to capture the night sky in a photo.
8. Completely pay off my debt. I’ve started with small things like bringing canned soup to work and taking caffeine pills so I don’t have to spend on downtown lunches or Starbucks (I swear it’s healthier than the ten sugars and colossal amounts of syrup I need in order to get the stuff down). I’ve started eating bachelor food at home, I gave up my gym membership (it takes a good ten minutes just to walk to the kitchen and back), and date nights include building forts and writing by Dollar-store candlelight instead of going out. But one thing I’ve learned in my working adult life is that sadly, you are worth what your job title says you’re worth – not what you actually do. That doesn’t stop me stepping outside the box. I love stepping outside of boxes. This probably stemmed from getting stuck under my bed as a child and being terrified of ever being in one again. My resume may say I’ve been an Admin Assistant for the last six years, but I’ve been a writer, a marketer, a graphic designer, a social media expert, an office manager, an accountant, a curriculum developer, a teacher and a coach. And that’s just in my last two jobs.
I’m all for the sentiment of being the creator of your own destiny, but when it comes to dreaming bigger, that’s not the problem – it’s being financially unable to break the poor cycle in order to do it. Yes, I could take classes in the evenings or on weekends to get myself some sort of certification that says officially on paper that I can do all the things I already can. But there’s always going to be a part of me that refuses based on sheer principle, and there’s no way I can invest thousands of dollars and 100% of my waking time to something that may get me a better sounding title (and subsequent pay package) – that’ll take another decade of being poor in order to pay off. I really, really like the job I have right now. I like the people, the place, and the progressive responsibilities I’m being given. I’m managing okay-ish financially, but for now, it’ll have to do. I know it’s going to take a couple of years to fully tackle my debt, and in the meantime it’ll mean a few sacrifices. But hopefully by thirty, it’ll be under control.
9. In relation to the above, there’s nothing to say I can’t add one based on sheer hope and wishing really hard. By thirty, I want to have a more impressive (and accurate) job title. I have a big goal in my current job, and I’m really hoping that one day it’ll be a possibility.
10. Read 25 books. (I know it doesn’t sound like a lofty goal, but I’m being realistic.)
11. Skydive. Next month I am hosting a party celebrating humanity launching itself up into the sky, and I think it’d be terribly exciting (if predictably list-worthy) to launch myself back down from it. I can’t think of a bigger adrenaline rush, and it’s good to be utterly thrilled every once in a while. I want to jump out of a plane with someone I love, and share the memory for the rest of our lives. (Almost relatedly, I also really want to go zorbing with someone.)
12. Take an incredibly out of character class, like hip hop dance, burlesque, theatre or pole dancing. Just to say that I did.
14. Give a public speech. That goes well.
15. Stop injuring myself and getting bizarre afflictions. I don’t know how, but bizarre afflictions seem to keep popping up that are just downright embarrassing to explain. Last year it was the joints in my hands. It ended up being a few RSIs as a result of living in the pre-Smartphone age, but it got to the point where I couldn’t use my hands. I couldn’t grip anything – couldn’t do dishes, carry bags, hold a pen or straighten my hair. And when people asked what I’d done – I didn’t have a cool bad-ass answer. I didn’t break my hand punching ninjas, I had a random injury I couldn’t really explain.
Since September, I’ve had a weird skin disease that I’ve managed to keep under control with topical steroid creams. Which I learned last week cause a dependency/addiction to be developed – which I already knew, since every time I stopped using it, it would come back – so I’ve just switched to antibiotics and a non-steroidal gel. The withdrawal is absolutely horrifying. The skin around my mouth, nose and eyes has exploded in an itchy, flaky, red, sore ugly mess and I look like I just had a vat of acid thrown at my face. Apparently this is normal, and goes away within a couple of months. I’ve spent all weekend hiding in the dark and I’m dreading facing the world tomorrow. Why couldn’t it be on my elbow or knee or somewhere I could cover up??
Also, this year, I had to have a toenail removed. And in what I can only explain via best guess, the subsequent walking funny did something to my whole foot, and I haven’t been able to put proper shoes on or walk without my foot taped up for the last three weeks. What did I do? I have no idea. I don’t know if it’s torn ligaments, a hairline fracture or a voodoo curse. But I feel stupid not being able to walk and not having a reason why. I suppose the only way I can accomplish this is taking better care of myself. Getting more sleep, eating more vegetables, and doing more exercise. And maybe some more wishing.
16. Learn to be concise. This goes for blogging, writing, e-mailing, even conversing. Nobody has several hours at a time to devote to my two thousand-word ramblings about things that could be described in bullet points. And more importantly, nobody’s going to want to read a book that takes seven pages for a character to leave his apartment and go down a flight of stairs.
17. Go to Vegas, or spend Christmas/New Year’s Eve seeing musicals and ice skating in New York.
18. Stop worrying about things I can’t control. I tend to work myself up into fits of tears over things that often only exist in my head. I need to learn to stop worrying, and have my first instinct to calmly talk about things rather than internally catastrophise them and react accordingly.
19. Focus on quality over quantity. I think part of what they call “growing up” is learning the lesson that it’s not how much crap you have, it’s how awesome your crap is that actually matters. But even though I’ve been putting a lot of effort into embracing my introverted tendencies, things like birthdays still get me down. Last weekend I threw a get-together and must have invited at least fifty people. Knowing this was a Facebook event, I knew that in all likelihood half wouldn’t respond, and maybe a third would come. I convinced myself that even if four people came, it’d still be great, because as a Grown Up, it doesn’t matter how many friends you have, it matters how great they are. But as the event got closer, I kept getting those damn notifications. From people (a lot of whom had sodded off after the events of December, but with whom I still had hope) declining without reason. This shouldn’t matter – it’s Facebook, I’m not hitting a milestone, and grown-ups have things like children and weddings and vacations and evening jobs and all sorts of other obligations. But it still made me really sad and really lonely. It ended up being lots of fun – we had a gathering of a dozen or so, drank lots of wine, listened to good music and played lots of board games (including 12-person Balderdash with Monopoly and Chess pieces), and I think everyone had fun. But I still felt really down about all the people who not even just declined without saying why, but the giant chunk of people who didn’t even bother to respond.
Before thirty, I want to learn to not be so devastated by things like this that are perfectly acceptable and normal, and in no way equal me unequivocally being a giant loser. I have amazing friends, who do amazing things every day, and they mean more to me than I could ever say. I am determined to stop giving a crap about people that really are more acquaintances than anything, and remind myself all the time how lucky I am to have a few absolute stars in my life that made my actual birthday one of the best I’ve ever had. The number of wishes from people, the cards with words that moved me to tears, the incredibly thoughtful gifts, the surprises… I felt like the luckiest person in the world at the end of the day. So next year: no birthday party, or trying to organise something big on a Saturday night. Just a handful of loved ones enjoying each other’s company, and celebrating being here on this Earth together at the same time.
20. Embrace my natural introversion, but do what I can to quell the assumptions that go along with it. Not just those around me, but my own, too. I’ve definitely been learning that it’s okay to spend time in your own company, and not fight my cravings for evenings with no plans like I used to. I’m actually rather enjoying time by myself where I can read or write or play music and not feel like I have to be socialising (and that there’s something wrong with me because of it). But there are all sorts of misconceptions about introverts, and I want to set the record straight. I think it’ll make me feel better, and hopefully make like-minded others feel a little bit better. If you feel like we might be in the same boat, here are some interesting things I learned about introverts from Psychology Today and Cracked – my two go-to sources for understanding the human race.
21. Hug a tiger. I’ve hugged a dolphin (and given him a high five) and it was hands down one of the most joy-filled ten minutes of my life. After my dolphin experience, the trek back to my tour bus included stops at a seal show, petting sweet little birds, and watching tigers clean themselves. JUST LIKE GIANT VERSIONS OF KITTENS. Having a socially accepted and completely content pet tiger would probably be the best thing ever, but since that’s about as likely as scientists discovering a nutrient at KFC, I am more than happy to settle for a simple hug.
22. Learn to swing dance.
23. Have fantastic nails all the time. My appearance has changed an awful lot over the last year. I used to feel the need to tan, have hair extensions, continually be made up, and getting manicures every other week in order to be attractive. But the people who’ve been in my life for the last little while have shown me that none of that matters – not to mention the exorbitant amount of cash it all adds up to. I no longer tan, I box dye my hair, I can go to Safeway without makeup on, and I save myself $45 every three weeks on nails by doing my own. I’ve fallen in love with Poor Person DIY Nail Art – it’s cheaper and more fun than boring old French manicures anyway.
24. Do something big for a good cause. I try to do things as often as I can to make my little corner of the world a tiny bit better. I donate to charities, I sponsor a child, and I’ll buy a sandwich for someone with a cardboard sign if I think they’re genuinely in need of it. But it’s not enough. It breaks my heart that every second there are people losing babies, husbands and wives, diseases taking over and killing amazing people, animals being kicked or thrown into dumpsters or over bridges, people being tortured or exploited or abused, and it along with feeling absolutely devastated and incredibly useless, sometimes it genuinely makes me horrified to be a part of the human race. I want to do something bigger, something more, something that will really do something significant. I don’t know what yet, but I want it to happen.
25. Perform at least three songs at an open mic – with an instrument – and without throwing up afterwards.
26. Change my inner monologue. They say we are what we believe, and perhaps one of the reasons I’m finding it so hard to shake some of my insecurities is because going through the motions without internally believing you’re successful in your endeavours is never going to address the root problem. My thoughts are still a problem – I’ll sit down to write something and tell myself it sucks when I’m finished. I’ll play a song for the Internet and watch it back cringing, telling myself how stupid I look and how bad I sound. If I’m home on Friday and Saturday nights I tell myself it’s because everybody has someone more exciting to be with. Getting this skin infection left me crying and sitting in the dark for days because I repeatedly tell myself I’m not as attractive as others, and this has made me even more hideous. I might be able to carry off being confident by at least doing the actions – but I’m never internally and genuinely going to believe it as long as I keep telling myself otherwise. I’ve started a little exercise – writing down three things I like about myself each night before bed. I haven’t been as diligent as I probably should have lately, but I think it’s a step in the right direction in learning to create my own self image, and not continually relying on others’ assurances, or tearing myself down. The only person that can bridge the gap between how I see myself now and how I want to is me.
27. Be mentally, physically and financially ready to settle down and have a family. I don’t think this will happen by thirty, and as I am right now, I don’t particularly want it to – I’m just learning to love life and tap into what it can be like when you learn the right lessons, and practice the right attitudes. I have so much to see and do and so many memories to make before that time comes. A lot of people my age have now already been hit by the baby bug – I see all the time Facebook statuses about it coming completely out of the blue, and being subsequently unable to think of anything but having a child. I’m not there. At all. In all honesty, the only reason I considered it after I just got married was because the timing made sense. I am so incredibly thankful it didn’t happen – if it did, I probably would’ve been stuck in a meaningless, loveless cycle of settling, disagreements, and obligations. I never would have known what life could be with the right people in it. And now that gift has been given me, I want to live it to pieces with those people. I do want to have a family one day – I believe raising excellent humans is the best thing you can do for the good of the rest of the planet, and it’d be incredible to see part of your soul embodied in somebody else – but I’m not there yet. Hopefully by 30, I’ll at least want to be.
28. See the northern lights. For someone who loves the night sky as much as I do, I still can’t believe I’ve never seen these. I was blown away by the sight of a real, unpolluted meteor shower last summer and I’ve been enchanted ever since. I can’t possibly predict it, but I hope one day in the next couple of years I’ll see the lights dancing across the sky.
29. Inspire someone to change their life. I don’t really blog for traffic any more. But when I first started, the biggest thing I wanted was to be able to be real, and put my hopes, fears and struggles out there, in hopes of finding other people who felt the same things I did. My biggest goal wasn’t to eliminate my fears. It was certainly one of them, but moreso, through taking small steps at a time, I hoped to inspire somebody else to challenge theirs, and live better because of it. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’m determined to help someone become more.
30. Learn chess and win a game. I want to learn all the rules and be able to plan fifteen moves ahead and stop losing all my little soldiers and take that damn king. But more (and rather more nerdily): I want to build more neural pathways in my brain. Like life, what’s the point of having one if you don’t at least try to reach its full potential?
Making this list took a lot of time, mental energy and reflection. I didn’t want to make a list full of things like getting degrees, learning languages, or running marathons. These are the sorts of things you put out there to impress others, like new year’s resolutions, that you never truly intend to make happen – going through the motions of being passionate about something without actually feeling any. I don’t want my list to be full of empty actions. I want them to check off everything on this list and be able to give a genuinely good answer as to why it’s on there. I want experiences, not accolades. I want to do things that require courage and bravery, that will lead to growth, or will yield incredible memories I’ll be able to take to my deathbed. I don’t want it to be a checklist of things to experience before the end, but a list comprising the person I want to be. I want it to be challenging, fun and terrifying – the things I was most scared of on the last list resulted in the most growth because, before doing them, I couldn’t imagine ever being able to. I want it to expand the limits of what I am capable of. I want it to lead me to becoming more than I am. And if the opportunity for one of my less realistic goals arises on the course to 30, all the more awesome. Just saying. #TimeTravel
“Anxiety is love’s greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.” – Anaïs Nin
It’s been a difficult couple of weeks. You know, one of those annoying splotches somebody spilled on the canvas of the life you want to lead. Have you ever looked at your life as a nice, freshly baked pie? Rhubarb, perhaps, because it’s the best kind of pie. (It should also probably be noted that I’m writing this at lunchtime, having forgotten to bring something to eat, and trying desperately not to spend on the exorbitance of downtown dining.) Have you ever mentally divided that pie into sections – work, home, friends, love? And have you ever delved in only to find that somebody’s eaten it all up? A vacuous dish you expected to be filled with deliciousness, but instead filled only with an ugly mess of scattered crumbs and regurgitated leftovers somebody decided they didn’t like all that much after all. It’s slightly alarming when you look to your plate and instead of finding things neatly in place, everything is all wrong. I’ve felt a bit like that over the last few weeks, and when that feeling hits, it’s hard not to look to the common denominator and feel that you must be the problem. But can it be you, if you genuinely feel inside that you try desperately to be a good person and do the right thing for every person and in every situation? Or could it be that your intentions become warped somewhere in the transition between your heart and the world outside, and you, simple medium, are oblivious to the final product?
A couple of issues from various areas have surfaced as of late and I’ve been left feeling powerless as to what to do. Take a blast from the past friendship, for example. A few of you may know that December 2011 was a pretty rough point in my life, and the build-up of only partially really dealing with my anxiety effectively led to me doing something awful that resulted in many people in my life wanting to distance themselves. It was a very sad and lonely, but I had no-one to blame but myself. Since then I’ve been determined to right the wrong, and have dealt with it in the best ways I can think of.
I went through a ten-week program through the Anxiety Disorders Association of Manitoba, and began seeing a counsellor. I started medication and increased the dose so I could get to a point where I wasn’t crying all the time. I did assignments every week and learned the enormous thought distortions that accompany an anxiety disorder. I learned to separate reality from distortion, and reshape my thinking and subsequent reactions to things that before would have had me in tearful hysterics, spouting my twisted imaginings onto those close to me and believing them to be real. I was a horrible person to be around, but the catalyst for really getting better was the self-inflicted isolation. If I wanted friends and loved ones to be around, I couldn’t treat them as I had been, and had to learn new and healthy ways of relating to people. Learn to be independent, to not catastrophise and assume the worst, to stop reading minds and seeing the world solely in black and white, and to stop blaming others for things my mind had invented. I’m in a much better place now, but I’m still not there yet. The slow journey is one that sometimes doesn’t sit well with my impatience, but I know it’s the only way to truly get there.
A handful of people stuck by me six months ago. A small handful of people who wanted to understand why it got to the point it did, and wanted to be there to support me as I got better. To let me know I wasn’t alone. I wish I could re-write the dictionary, add a second volume of words or maybe even add another twenty letters to the alphabet, to conjure up a whole new lexicon of emotions that express the true extent of how deeply thankful I am for those people, and how the amount of love for them I have fills my heart up so full it could almost burst. But a larger number of people turned their backs. People I’d invested heart and soul and love and vulnerability into told me I “needed more than they were able to give”, and went about their happy lives without being weighed down by a friend in need. It stung. A lot. But I couldn’t blame them.
I reconnected with one of these people recently and we chatted about how things had been since December. I had thought that devoting myself to all the things I had to do to rectify the way I’d been acting may result in some of these people coming back, but I received this message earlier this week:
It sounds like things are really looking up for you and that you’re happy in your life right now and I think that’s fantastic. It took a long time to find what you were looking for, including a divorce, a partner’s stressful family, coping with a boyfriend who has a debilitating condition and then when things got too much, what happened in December. Up until the very last point, I was with you every step of the way, but at the end of it all, there was just nothing left to give. If you have friends now that you know will stick with you through thick and thin and are the rocks at the bottom, that’s wonderful and it makes me really happy to know that you’ve found those people. With that said, I just can’t be that friend – I just don’t have enough in me to be what you need. I’m happy to see you if we run into each other and catch up, but that’s all that I have right now. I’m sorry if that hurts your feelings, but I respect you enough to be honest. I still think that you’re a good person and I’m genuinely happy that things are looking up for you. Thanks for understanding and I’ll see you around.
I think, six months later, I’ve earned the right to feel it’s good to know who your true friends are. The reason for putting so much work into getting better wasn’t to win friends back, it was to be a better person – a better one for loved ones to be around, one who was more equipped to see things in a positive light and not cause undue stress on those I care about more than anything; a better person at work, who wasn’t preoccupied with worry about things that were only an issue in my head; a better person for myself, to have my thoughts and actions be in harmony with my values and what’s most important to me. So I’m not disappointed – the last six months have been spent with a few people who really have become those rocks, as well as learning to be independent, do the things I’ve always wanted, and be more of the person I really want to be. But when life gets overwhelming, I have a terrible tendency to revert to the stranglehold of old thought patterns and behaviours.
When life seems to be beyond your control, it can lead to feelings of despair. I spent many a night alone in my little apartment in the weeks leading up to Christmas sobbing into my poor little cat’s fur, wishing for things to be different. But if I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that nothing is going to change unless you take the action to do something about it. If you don’t like something, change it, don’t just sit there crying and playing the victim of the world’s wrongdoings. If everything seems out of your control, focus on what you can control. Your own actions and attitudes, not the thoughts of others.
The mind can become a sinister place when eclipsed by the shadow of anxiety. Every thought is wrapped meticulously in a dark veil of uncertainty, every hope and ounce of positivity choked tightly until all that remains is a core of steadfast fear. Friends become liars, who must be masquerading care and concern. Lovers become impostors, saying the right words but surely secretly wishing you were different. Acts of kindness and affection are drowned before registering as ever having existed at all, and you are left feeling alone, lost, and abandoned, wondering why everyone is suddenly giving up on you. But as real as it may seem, it is a fantasy. A dark place that exists solely in the imagination of those affected, their world becoming distorted as if by some sort of intoxication. where everyone is an enemy. Trust nothing, no-one. Become blind to reality and see the world only through a distorted lens of neglect and fear. It’s terrifying, once safely on the other side, to look back and see yourself helpless to an attack of the mind – to have studied psychology and read all the ins and outs of anxiety, yet once in a while still be powerless to its brute force. There have been a few of those attacks recently, and I’m upset with myself that I still haven’t 100% beaten it, but I have never been more determined. The big difference is that before, I believed my thoughts to be completely justified. Now I can see that they’re not, but every once in a while, I still can’t seem to escape their grip.
I need to learn how to better deal with life when it gets overwhelming. I need to learn how to channel that energy into something positive and productive, to remind myself continually that crying and victimising yourself is the complete opposite of how I want to live. I pride myself on taking action to better things when there’s a problem, not sitting there whining about them. I think I’ve made a lot of progress, but I want it to be always. I don’t want there to be relapses, however few and far between. I want to be better permanently. For me and everyone around me.
But enough of the nervous ramblings. If we’re friends on Facebook, you may have seen there are an awful lot of fantastic things happening in the next little while, and having that to look forward to is my shining light. Soon enough, problems won’t seem so large, work will be caught up on, and all that will be left is awesomeness. In five days (touch wood), after a year of waiting, my divorce will finally be granted. In just over a week, an amazing new friend and roommate will be moving in with me, someone I am so glad to have met – a fellow INFJ with an incredible story who loves reading and musicals as much as I do, and – be still my heart – Moulin Rouge! 🙂 Not long after that, Winnipeg seems to be having a festival celebrating pirates, steampunk and the Renaissance – I can’t wait to get costumed up, watch jousting and dance around to one of my favourite Celtic bands. Then for a night of fancy board games for my birthday, a Space Party to celebrate the anniversary of humanity launching itself into the sky and landing on the moon, and then FRINGE, where the city turns into an enormous celebration of culture and creativity, and old friends come to visit from across the globe. The last few weeks have had their fair share of win too: a 1920s themed, swing dancing games night, being given the captain’s chair on creative projects at work going across the country,and a giant party in the park put on by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, surrounded by fellow space nerds, watching a partial solar eclipse. Summer really is shaping up to be pretty wonderful. And for now, I must focus on the positive. Focus on what’s important, and what’s a priority. Focus on catching myself before I fall, and focus on making the most of every moment I am lucky enough to have been granted. I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. And I’m determined to show just how much I really am.
Though the stars had retired and the sun had officially staked possession of the day ahead, the apartment remained dim. Ash liked it that way. Fragments of light continued their efforts at conquering his living room, each racing its neighbour in vain endeavours at domination. He was used to this, and rest assured in his trusty fortress, protected on the outside with shields of haphazard, overgrown ivy, and shadows from its tall turrets. The building rose from the foundations like a haunted house, by night, a symphony of creaks and moans and things going bump in the night; by day, a voiceless misfit casting long shadows across the otherwise exuberant street outside.
– Description of my building (an excerpt from the story I’m currently working on)
And so I have made the move to my giant, sprawling, thoroughly creepy new home. It’s a building that’s captivated me for as long as I can remember after moving to this city, in the heart of the recently declared Greatest Neighbourhood in Canada. It houses the oldest copper cage elevator in the country, an inner courtyard with light wells, glass-canopied walkways and bridges, and twisting staircases that mislead their visitors, taking them to nothingness. Voices from elsewhere in the building are carried perfectly through the strangely designed ventilation system and faint music from bygone eras can be heard through ceilings. Some of my belongings seem to have picked up strange powers over the course of my move and have transformed into mediums; voices in another language can be heard through electronic devices even with the power off. Footsteps can be heard in bordering hallways, and doors are seen to open and close with the force of an invisible hand. It’s the setting for the novel I’m working on, and it’s as deliciously sinister as I’d hoped.
The first two weeks were a little difficult – I’d moved in mid-month, and though some of the departing occupants had moved into their new homes personally, most of their belongings remained until this week. This meant I had to live out of boxes for a little while, but it kind of worked out because it forced me to get all the painting and renovating out of the way before settling my stuff in. First stop: my bedroom. One of what could theoretically be five bedrooms, it had enormous windows, hardwood floors, a huge walk-in closet, and solid cement walls through which you could hear absolutely nothing. It was painted a bit of a dismal brown, and I’d had my heart set on fashioning a rather more dreamy, modern, romantic space with deep turquoise walls, a canopy bed draped in sheer organza and fairy lights, empty white picture frames hung above my writing corner, and vines adorning doorways. I started painting the day I moved in – while the bedroom was still half-full of someone else’s furniture, and with no thought as to what my layout would be. It was kind of funny in its Jekyll and Hyde stage, but a week later, it had been transformed, and I’ve never had a room I love more. Coming home to an evening without plans used to terrify me, but now I’m excited to delve into my retreat, read under Christmas lights or write under vintage frames I like to imagine have seen all sorts of things over the years.
Forgive the crappy quality of the pics – haven’t found the box the camera is packed away in yet 🙂
There are two living rooms, both incredibly large, one bordered by a sun room overlooking the Village. Over the next few weeks we’re going to convert it into a Space Room – yep, an entire room painted navy with constellations on the ceiling and lights strung from wall to wall, with a life-size TARDIS and fully operational telescope calling it home. I don’t think a room could be any more perfect. The living room has dark wooden panelling on the walls and huge bay windows; a fireplace over which hangs a mantlepiece and a large, antique clock. The second living room is just as enormous, and after spending hours on hands and knees scrubbing the floors to a sparkle, I painted the upper part of the wood-panelled walls a rich, deep claret. Attached to the kitchen is an entire room-sized pantry, and there’s even a “maid’s quarters” which we’re using for storing bikes and decorations and all the other stuff I haven’t organised yet.
Now all that’s left is to find a third flatmate, and we’ll be set! After some of the royal winners I’ve lived with in the past, I really want to find someone nice, conscientious, and above all, normal – I’m hoping to get someone in for June or July, but until then I’m just enjoying being in such an opulent, character-filled, wonderfully creepy space 🙂 Fancy moving in with us or know someone who might be interested? Let me show you around!
I’ve been meaning to write since getting back into Winnipeg on Monday, but said arrival was at about 3:30 AM and the last few days have been a whirlwind of playing catch-up to all the paperwork I didn’t do while I was gone, and all the sleep I didn’t get on my big American adventure. I’m still working on the latter. This past weekend’s trip was something I’d tossed out to a few friends a few months ago, primarily as One of Those Things you’d really love to do, but logistically would likely never happen – you know, stuff like travelling through time, solving a murder, raising your own ninja turtle or having David Tennant’s baby. So when it actually happened, it was pretty much the equivalent of waking up one day and finding out you’re Batman. Actually, let’s go with SuperTed, because he had cool rocket boots and a best friend voiced by the third Doctor.
This weekend, my best friend, her man, the Professor and I headed to Minneapolis to see my favourite band in the whole world. We got to the US border and were met by a typically burly and angry looking guard who proceeded to stand in front of the car with his arms crossed, not saying anything. Not having travelled by land to America in the last ten years, and definitely not having driven there myself, I had no idea what his problem was. He apparently had a series of problems, namely my Britishness, the fact that we had “lots of antiques” in the boot from the photoshoot (if a Dollarama decorative trunk that cost all of $2 and the complete works of Shakespeare count as antiques), that we didn’t know his silent frown clearly meant he wanted our passports, and most impressively, that we’d gone to the wrong border and didn’t have a map. We’d borrowed a GPS, not having realised you could choose between routes (shortest distance, fastest time etc.), and had followed the directions on the setting we’d presumed was the default. (Why would anyone want anything other than fastest time?!) It then took us an additional two hours driving through an endless time loop of several kilometres on US59 followed by a right on US59, a continuation on US59 and another left on US59, then a few more turns down the road on US59 (seriously, I’m pretty sure the name of certain area in the middle of a southern Nevada desert was a typo), but after heading due west to the Interstate, we finally made it to Minneapolis – two hours before show time!
The show itself was phenomenal. There’s nothing in the world like being in a room of people who share the same enormous passion for the same thing you do, enjoying the fact that people who make music that sets your soul on fire are ten feet away. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited in my life. We bundled our way near enough to the front, and I took hundreds of photos and a few videos (on my new iPhone – why did I not get one of these before?) and then ran off to the side of the stage where they were packing up after the show. This was the part where I became possessed by the spirit of a twelve-year-old fangirl, lost the ability to voice anything resembling coherence or sanity, told them all how amazing they were and reached out to stroke the lead singer’s shoulder. What a creep! But my creepiness paid off, and after my friends interjected and showed that we actually were quite normal, we spent the rest of the show watching the other band, standing with my favourite band, talking about how they met, the fact we’d driven ten hours to see them (they felt awful!), and just music in general. I even had a photo taken with the whole lot – something I’m sure will rocket its way to the top of my list of Best Moments Ever and crash land there permanently. We all wandered around afterwards in a giddy euphoria, ordered the most amazing burgers I’ve ever had (delivered straight to our hotel room!) and collapsed in a happy exhaustion.
The next day, we checked out at noon and headed for the Mall of America, and learned that in America, speed limits mean absolutely nothing. First of all, they were in miles, and secondly, people seemed to add twenty to whatever the sign said showing no regard in the slightest for the safety of fellow humans. When we finally made it, we spent the day (yes, the entire day, and not the three hours that would’ve had us home before midnight) running around the indoor theme park, exploring shops made for writers (I want a dress made of stationery!) and sipping smoothies under the starry skies of the Rainforest Cafe. It was absolutely wonderful.
The ride home was faster, but pit stops to toilets in the middle of nowhere (in the dark), the GPS guiding us off the road onto a grass hill surrounded by sleepy little houses that looked like the set of a horror movie (in the dark) – and then into a solid rock wall, added to high speed wakes of very large, very fast vehicles made it a little unnerving – but we made it back after hours of great music, plotting, copious amounts of sugar and a very bright Venus in the sky to guide us home. We arrived at about 3:30 AM thoroughly exhausted, but it was so, so worth it 🙂
Now onto more adventures: in a couple of weeks, I shall be leaving Hobbit House and moving into a giant, sprawling, thoroughly haunted and brilliantly post-Victorian building. The apartment is the biggest I’ve ever seen – with three bedrooms (potentially four), two living rooms, a sun room, and a hallway longer than a bowling lane. The building has a courtyard inside (!) and is full of staircases leading to nowhere, doors opening onto brick walls, and it houses the oldest and creepiest cage elevator in the country. It has gorgeous wooden panelling halfway up the walls, an actual fireplace, and the bedrooms are probably bigger than my whole suite. I’ve already begun dreaming up evenings spent with typewriters and Merlot, covering my walls with the words of Shakespeare, and watching thunderstorms over the village this summer. It’s beyond perfect, and within a fortnight, it will be my new home 🙂
Hope you’re having a wonderful long weekend – and learn from my mistake: using pink icing in butterfly cakes unintentionally pays tribute to the whole fertility side of the Easter holiday, and may render your festive treats slightly NSFW. Oops!
So… remember about a month ago when I wanted to finally man up and sing in front of an audience? And went into it shaking harder than a cheap hotel bed and came out the other side throwing up? Yep. Fun times. But amidst the terror and the vomit was a tiny sliver of accomplishment – and an enormous desire to be able to learn an instrument (if only to give me something to do with those damn arms), lose the nerves, and be able to Perform Properly. I’ve never been able to play the guitar, so I decided on a ukulele. Less strings, and a way better fit for my hobbit hands. And only $25!
Naturally this first proved a lesson in patience. I wanted it to be in tune, I wanted to know the fingerings of all the chords, and I wanted to be able to read music and play every song I knew immediately. I’m learning these days that one of the things I need to work on most in pretty much everything is learning to be patient. (But “carpe diem” has such a good ring to it…) But after a week or two of perfecting playing the basic chords in my best carpal tunnel-inducing claw and almost giving up, I figured out the proper way, and managed to bugger my way through a whole song! So here’s my first attempt at playing the ukulele for people. The cat doesn’t count. PLEASE bear in mind that a) I’m a total n00b and have a LOT of work to do, b) I look crap in glasses, c) I’m still terrified of singing in front of people, but d) I really, really want to keep taking these steps – even if they’re scary and even though I’ll probably look back in total mortification – because I love music. I love singing, even if I’m not the greatest singer. And I really, really want to stop being afraid of doing it.
Here goes. (God I wish they’d let you actually choose the thumbnail!)
Just a quick post (since my last was… 3,000+ words… yes yes, I’m working on the art of brevity), since several asked for a tutorial on my attempt at galaxy nails! They’re not perfect, but for a first attempt I don’t think they’re too bad. And they’re so delightfully celestial I love them to bits. 🙂
If you Google “galaxy nails”, you’ll find all sorts of wonderful pictures of nebulae and cosmic dust all over people’s fingertips, and there’s not really a way to go wrong with these. All you need are…
You don’t even need a steady hand! Basically, first you’ll want to paint your black/navy base as you would any normal coat of nail polish. Let it dry, and then take a lighter colour to start splodging the base of your star cluster. I used silver at this point. You can either dab some on a section of your black nail (at any random spot) and dab at it to blend with the makeup sponge, or paint some directly onto the sponge and start dabbing that way. I can never be arsed to wait for polish to dry at the best of times, so I started with the colours right away. A couple of minutes is good enough. Then you start doing the same thing with your other colours – I used a royal blue on some nails, and a pink-purple on others to maximise the nebula effect. Keep sponging away to blend the edges in. You can always add more once it dries if you bugger it up like I did. The good thing about this is that you don’t have to be neat at all. Once you’re happy with your colours, stick some glitter on top and seal it all in with a clear top coat, and voila! The doctor would be proud 🙂
This post is going to be about atheism, but I promise it’s going to be the most uplifting thing I’ve written in a long time. I was doing a couple of shoots this weekend, and was thrilled to be told by each photographer what a great and positive attitude I had – and I realised my blog may have not been projecting that lately. I do always tend to try to be uplifting, even in the face of difficulty and uncertainty – but sometimes there are just Things That Need To Be Talked About, and those things may not always fall into the happiest of categories. I apologise in advance if I offend anybody, as it is not my intention. But I too, am often offended by the ignorance and downright bigotry I see posted in the name of religion all over the place, and I feel I have the right to speak my feelings too, especially when they come from a place of genuinely wanting to rid the world of something so harmful.
and I remember secretly shaving my entire arms with my dad’s razor every d
As of next week, I’ll be flying to Baltimore, MD (home of the grave of a certain Mr. Poe!) for a work trip to attend the 
But over the last year, my beliefs have come to rely more and more on empirical fact than on hope – I realised that one reason a lot of people hold on to religion not because it’s real, but because it gives them hope. A crutch, a lifeboat upon which to sail through stormy seas. But just believing in something because it made life more bearable kind of goes against what I value. I value proof, questioning, searching for evidence, and discovering the truth before simply accepting someone else’s. And the notion of human connection’s immortality beyond death cannot ever be proven. And that makes me incredibly sad. I think logically, I’ve come to accept that in all likelihood, this really is it. But there’s a tiny sliver somewhere in my heart that holds onto the hope that these infinitely unlikely bursts of brilliance will happen all over again. I guess it’s a sliver that not just inhabits my heart: part of my newest tattoo includes the words of Emily Dickinson, who believed that “love is life, and life hath immortality.” More updates on the ink later.
7. Become a more 
23. Have 
But enough of the nervous ramblings. If we’re 
Prose and Constellations 
