All The Places and People We Call "Home"

  (At the apartment)

  I've got just about three weeks left in my apartment.

  I knew that moving home with my family for a short while would be a challenging transition, but reading the roap map ahead and actually walking the territory are two different things.  With only fourteen or so days left, there's not much ground to cover now. 

  It's such a contradiction half the time, nothing that's really new that I haven't talked about somewhat in the past little while.  You wake up, or you come home, and you think "I'm home!  This is my place!"  It's close to your friends, in a neighbourhood that resonates with your spirit.  A place where you can, if you feel like it, parade around in a bath towel (or less), leave as messy or as clean as you want, where you make your own rules.  A place where you can be free.  And you're filled with some bittersweetness that you're leaving this place soon. 

   You walk in and you've come home, but you won't be there for long. The situation demands that you savour all the moments, live in the now. You take special notice of the little details: the way the baseboards don't quite align in symmetry with the tile, which was new when you got it; the sound of the elevator rumbling through the wall of your bedroom. Someone upstairs dropping something on the ground and the sound of a car outside on the one road that leads inward. The way the trees and the houses across the street look from your picture window. The luxury of being able to take long showers because the water's included in the rent. That's usually the first hour.

From when I was moving in a year ago.

  But then, two hours later - hell, sometimes a few minutes later - you find yourself on the phone calling or texting people because you kinda miss people.  More than kinda.  You really feel like hanging out with someone, or even just knowing you've got someone in the other room that you could talk to if you so wanted.  In the second or third hour of being by oneself, you then think...."Meh." And you remember the reason why you're leaving: because a nice apartment completely on your own with no one to talk to, or even just to know is in the other room, is one of the loneliest experiences you can have.

   One of the great things about having a Fraternity house, we advise our undergrad brothers, is that there's always something happening in the common room: a PS3 competition, a movie, some discussion about some topic or other.  Something.  Come and go as you please, stay and talk as long as you want.  The common room is always there, and there's always something happening that gives you an opportunity to connect with people with whom you share kinship and shared interests.  Within two hours of coming back here, I miss that kind of experience, even though I myself never really had it anywhere else except with my family.

 This wasn't always the case: for the first six months after I moved here, I was pretty good on my own, enjoying the solitary time and the freedom of movement.  My own place.  Hell, my own blog entries back this up.  I can't pinpoint the exact moment that everything changed, but these last few weeks have felt like waking up from a dream....

 (At the house)

  I had started writing that earlier paragraph nearly four days ago now.  Since that time, I found new employment in Mississauga, not far from where I am in Brampton.  I made sure to learn from my previous experiences and feel out a place that looked like a fit, followed my gut instinct, and been smart about recognizing opportunity when it presents itself.  The speed at which everything seems to have led me to here has been incredible and almost a little scary.  I'm due to start Wednesday, so like it or not, I'll be spending more time in Brampton than Burlington for what little time remains in that apartment, which is, at this point, simply a storage depot for all my things.  There is no Internet.  There is no TV.  I had both disconnected a month early to save on money.  As such, when I'm there, there's very little to do.

   Staying there now is just downright depressing, but I have to stick around this weekend for two reasons: to pack up and throw out what remains to be packed up or thrown out; and because I have limited time there, and I want to savour the time.  Mind you, I knew that I'd probably get this way going into the experience.  Giving up the apartment was a sacrifice that my intended changes demanded. 

  I always get a little misty about leaving a place (well, except the last move, but that was only because bad stuff happened there), but this one's quite different. This was the first place I'd lived completely on my own as a grown-up.  In a way, it completes a cycle.  I started life away from home on my own, and I'm ending it that way.

  My first time moving out was to Bates Residence at McMaster for my second year of study in 2000-2001.  I hadn't gotten along with my roommates too well - three Engineers and one Humanities student do not a stable mixture make - and for much of the winter, I spent a lot of time avoiding the place whenever possible. It was a shitty second term, and after having failed a course in the first semester, I had to overload to make up the credits.  Plus, I was a Phikeia (a pledge) for Phi Delta Theta, a notorious contributor for the Silhouette, working at the distribution centre on weekends, and in a relationship with a girl who was still commuting in from Brampton each and every day. So I spent a lot of time away.

  Then, during exam time, and with less than a week to go, I came back to my room one day.  It was April, and we were experiencing warm weather for the first time in ages, so I had my window open.  The door opened, and I could smell that fresh, earthy smell of rain and grass and mud coming in through the window.  The kind that just wakes you up after five months of frozen earth and snow.  And I looked around my tiny little bedroom, and realized I was really leaving this place.  For good.  And I ended up spending most of the remaining six days in that little room, just noticing the things about it.

  A favourite memory was Friday morning.  My roommates and I were down the hall from the elevator, but it was one of the older OTIS models, and the noise the thing made as it came up to the fifth floor sounded like a construction drill when you had one side of your head still pressed against the pillow of your tiny single bed.  The rest of the week, that elevator was a pain in the ass, waking me up at ungodly hours when all I wanted to do was sleep until the last fifteen minutes before class. 

   On Friday mornings, though, it was sweet. The sound would wake me up, maybe around 7:45am or so, and I'd scootch over towards the back of the wall and stay in that delirious in-between stage between waking and sleep.  The light from the window for much of that year would be a pale grey-blue that spilled over everything - from my Gladiator poster on the wall that I bought at the last IMAGINUS sale to my desk and the Pentium desktop computer that now seems like Stone Age technology. 

   I'd hear that elevator - whirrr-r-r-r-r-rr-r-r-r-r-rr-r-r..br-o-o-o-mmmmmmmm! - come to a stop on our floor, and the doors open, and that's how I knew that I was only thirty seconds away from my ex coming through the door of the apartment-style dorm, then opening the door to my place.  She'd have been up since like five o'clock, and would have driven in from Brampton, parked her car in Zone Six, and taken the shuttle here.  She'd be tired, and she'd be ice cold, as girls tend to be in winter (and most seasons, I find). So she'd take off her coat and shoes and just hop into the space in the bed I just made for her, and I'd reflexively grab the comforter and envelope her in it and warm her up.  Then we'd lay there for at least a good half-hour before our morning seminars, and all was right with the world.  We were both 20 years old. 

Main hallway...hell, I should be a rental agent!

   I should probably clarify at this juncture, people might read that and think that I'm pining for her - especially with Singles Awareness Day around the corner - but this is not the case.  A couple of people I've met in the past month alone seem to think that when a relationship ends, you have to press "delete" on all those moments if you're to "move on".  As I've written about time and time again on this blog, that does a disservice to the time you spent, and I have "moved on", while retaining what was good about the experience.  And Friday mornings on the fifth floor of Bates Residence were almost all good. I'm looking forward to more such moments with the next girl who becomes special to me.  Never mourn because it ended; smile because it happened.

  In any case, that was a memorable time that, really, was truly mine, because that was my first home away from home.  Every place since was shared with with my ex, except for the apartment I'm leaving now.

  I don't regret the decision....well, not completely.  The only hangups I have right now involve the loss of "independence" and my own issue with the idea that living with your parents at 30 years old may not make you the most attractive person to the kind of women I'm interested in dating.  Mostly that last one (I have a car and will have a ton of gas money to go where I please over the next year, so I'm still "free"). 

   Still, I'm not at home due to lack of ambition - hell, I only returned home to live once in the past ten years, and that was the summer of 2001 right after Bates - but out of sheer deliberation and choice to be closer to my family and clear up some debt.  As I've written, most single women in my age group won't recognize these qualities until their late thirties or early forties.  In quarter-life, too many of them want a guy who can give them money and toys, all flash and no substance, guys who satisfy those primal urges that women feel to want to feel protected and provided for.  The elusive "spark".  And because they tend to be just a bunch of grown-up boys at this point in life, these twentysomething guys burn them, so much so that some of these ladies create distant early warning systems to flag "issues" and "baggage" in potential mates, using any little violation - he has too many female friends, he lives at home, he watches South Park - to justify not pursuing someone who would otherwise be great for them. 

   Before I get too carried away, it'll take a while for me to get used to the idea that, for the right girl for me, it won't matter that I live at home at all, nor will any of my other perceived "weaknesses" that I think I have.  It'll work when it's supposed to.  We'll leave it at that.

A spring view from my balcony.

   "Home" really is something that we make up.  Anthropologists and psychologists may say it's a primal instinct to be connected to a place, but tell that to a nomadic people, who never stay in the same place for too long.  Tell that to a world traveler, backpacking for years around the globe, staying in hostels, hotels, campgrounds, even the street for little periods here and there before moving on.  Some say it's people, but tell that to drifters and hitchers, to those on spiritual pilgrimages, all on their own and who may meet people on the road, experience whatever they have with them, then let them fall behind them on the road as they press on.  In that way, I suppose one apartment that helped me rebuild and re-create myself in a very transformational year matters as much as my childhood home to which I'm now returning, and any other place I'll call "home" in the foreseeable future. 

   I'm due to return "home" today to continue the packing up of things, and to bring back a number of items before I start work tomorrow.  I'll probably limit the time I spend there, if only to make myself more motivated to be efficient at packing and what-not, but this is definitely one of those times when I'll look back and wonder at how critical this decision was to the other things I was to accomplish in life. 

  Just have to wait and see what happens, as I've been doing.

Two Tribes

    The OLN show Departures is one of my favourites. 

http://www.departuresentertainment.com/about.html

Two ordinary twenty-and-thirtysomething guys from Ontario, Justin and Scott, along with their videographer buddy Andre, set out to travel the world for a year, to finally do what so many people say they want to do, but never do.  The first season was supposed to have been the only one, I think, but the show was such a success, the network picked it up, and now the trio makes a living from wandering the Earth.

    A recent episode featured a stop in Ethiopia, where their local guide took them to a part of the country, in the south, that remained largely untouched by development.  There, a traditional tribe was having a bull-jumping ceremony, as part of a celebration of an arranged marriage for one of the tribesmen.  It's not glamourous - the ritual involves flagellation and some animal sacrifice - but what always gets me about rituals like this is how insular and together everyone is.  The tribe moves as one, even though they all scatter separately in the day to day living.  The sheer harmony of the scene even brings Scott to tears at one point, and this is a guy who's charted more of the world and its plethora of experiences than most of us will ever see in a single lifetime. 

   A recollection from a broadcast of The Moth that I heard two years ago comes to mind.  The American storyteller recounted his work in Rwanda, and how he had a time when he was simply not feeling well. When one of the locals found out, he gathered the entire village together for a ceremony.  The storyteller, in mock humourous fashion, tells the tale of the ceremony.  Highlights: a goat was sacrificed, and he was made to strip naked and have the blood smeared on him. He was brought out into the sun at noon where everyone in the village engaged in a dance ritual that made him feel delerious and disoriented, and by the end of it, he felt elated and much better than how he was. 

   Later on, in another part of Africa, he recounted the experience to another tribesman, who said that his had something very similar to what he had experienced.  He told the American that it was far better than having the Western psychiatrists there.  When asked why, the tribesman responded that the ceremony had several holistic elements that would heal most disease: going out in the sun for the light and heat; moving around rhythmically to get exercise; but most importantly, getting the whole village out to show that whatever you were going through, you were not alone.

  By contrast, said the tribesman, Western psychiatrists brought people into a closed dark room indoors, sat them down at a cold table alone, and made remember all bad things that had happened to them.  "That's when we knew we had to get these people out of the country as soon as possible," said the tribesman.

  That day-to-day living here in the West lacks this harmony is old news, but the trend is changing. Aside from the Boomerang Generation of kids who move back in with their parents in their late twenties and thirties, friends cluster together in the same neighbourhoods, if not the same houses.  Blended families are practically the norm in most urban and suburban centres.  City planners now design neighbourhoods that facilitate closer social interactions, and hotspots like the Second Cup where I'm writing this in downtown Burlington are becoming more commonplace in new suburban housing developments: locales where you can gather and connect with human beings.

   People you meet and connect with eventually become part of your social networks, but really, what I feel we want is not a network, but a tribe.  That's what I want, anyway.  And it's what I have.

   I have two tribes: my family and my friends. Unfortunately, as I make the move home for a few months, I will lose proximity to one tribe in favour of the other.  I need them both, much more than I really appreciated until recent days.  Obviously, thanks to the advent of the internal combustion engine, the phone, and the Internet, we're always connected.  An hour's drive away, an instant by phone or email or Facebook. 

   And yet, that doesn't satisfy completely.  Having my two tribes separated by distance sucks, and neither of them will likely relocate anytime soon to one location or the other. 

  I have a dream archetype that I wrote about a year ago, in which everyone I know and love in the world lives in houses on the same street in the same city.  In that dream, there's nowhere I can walk- the market, the mall, the park, the cafe - where I don't run into someone I know or am related to.  I'd love to have that in real life.

Grandpa and me at  Mom's old house in Trinidad,
 Guessing something like 1982.

   Maybe this is genetic. Mom and Dad's families both lived within the same square kilometre in Trinidad, at a place called the Junction just outside of Princes Town.  Everyone knew everyone else around there, cradle to grave.  Unless soemone there was actually crazy or violent or deliberately anti-social, no one ever experienced the isolation I've felt in recent months.  I'd love to have that kind of community coupled with the diversity of life in Canada and the prosperity of the city in which I'm still residing for the next month.

   The common occupancy of the same shared physical space matters: for the time that we're together in the same place, that's home.  Here the West, we're so used to treating "home" as just the place where your stuff is, but I feel at home at Michael's house, at this 2Cup, at my soon-to-be-former apartment, at Mom and Dad's, out with my friends. Even that transitory space between each person when we're all walking to the bar or a movie or some other gathering place together is, for that time, our space, and feels like home while we're in it.

    Because as much as I may require an intervention for my Facebook habit, for all of my own lone wolf time, I never want to lose the daily real world contact with my tribe.  Never again.  I think next time, I'd much rather share a place with my own bedroom and a common area than an entire place to myself.  Some people are built like that or they're just plain used to it.  After a year of this, such a solitary lifestyle is no longer what I want or need.

 When I move back out, it'll either be with a bunch of buddies sharing a house or something, or my own place that I'll share with my next girlfriend in a city near enough to everyone I care about.  I needed this year to centre myself after my ex and I split, and it's done that, but everyone in transition reaches a point where you no longer want or need to be alone in order to discover yourself.

   Surround yourself with the people you love. Home is wherever you can all be together, the same shared space, even if the space itself changes. And when you're feeling dis-ease, your tribe will bring you out into the sun, they will lift you up, and they will restore your well-being, just by being there for you.

 Only there'll be no need for goat sacrifices. We'll just get pizza.  Pizza's good.

Splashdown

  Everyone belongs to a statistical club.

  Of course, the statistic is never the full measure of a person - I still consider most math and numbers part of the Axis of Evil - but if I were a statistician, I'd almost like to think a person's numbers is like a membership in one exclusive club or another.  Sorta like the Yacht Club. Or the Stonecutters.

  For instance, I'm part of the "Young Author" club, very exclusive, as only one in ten people will ever write a book in their lives, let alone two.  I'm part of the "Divorced by 30" club, a little more populous, as four in ten first marriages will end in divorce in Canada.  You can also throw me in for the Canadians of Trinidadian and Tobagonian ancestry, 50,000 people and counting, representing 0.15 of the Canadian population.  Of that, I'm one of only two authors in this group - Neil Bissoondath being the other - and may in fact be the next Ian Hanomansing if my acting and TV work progresses well. 

  And, within a few months, I'll be joining another growing club, one which includes 41% of the population aged 18 to 36 in its membership: the Boomerang Club. 

   Friends, Romans, Countrymen...I am moving home.

   (And yes, I'm aware I didn't provide accurate citation format for those numbers.  Citations are for Democrats.)
  
   This is a tough decision, but it's a necessary next step to accomplish some of my bigger life goals. 

   Normally, this is the point that I spend a ton of time and wordspace justifying my decision.  Strangely, I could give a crap what people think about this today.  My one year lease is up at the end of February, and while I could leave it alone and go "month to month" on my apartment, there is a window of opportunity to walk away.  And walking away is what I'm going to do.

   I've been living away from home for a decade now.  I moved out to live on residence in 2000, moving back home for the summer of 2001 only to head back out to my apartment with my ex for our third year at McMaster.  I've been away from home ever since. And, of course, for the past year, I've been living completely on my own. 

   It was all time well spent, and with a few tiny exceptions, I have no regrets about my independent living.  At this point in my personal development, it's hard to go back and say it was for nothing.  It all served a purpose, and just like other parts of life that have fulfilled what they were meant to fulfill, it's time to let it go....

  Okay, I can see this won't get much further than flowery New Age affirmations without some more concrete explanations.  And there are two: I need more spending cash now on things other than renting a place where I spend most of my time sleeping; and freeing up my apartment enables me to not feel like I'm held hostage by my current day job.  Now to explain the explanations.

   The advantages are clear: more money means debts paid, savings boosted, vacations - the type of travel I spent all my twenties fantasizing about but never actually got to do - and more of the material "stuff" that I've gone too long without. 

   Moving home with the 'rents and my sisters isn't a permanent thing. Frankly, our egos are all too big and our lifestyles too different for that to be sustainable for too long. It will also involve some commuting to work for a while. The disadvantages are clear. But whether I go home for four months and return to a cheaper rent, or whether I stay there a year, I'm still going to have to take this first step regardless. This simply happens to be the time that the opportunity has presented itself.

   Then there's the matter of my work anxiety.

 I suppose this is mostly my fault.  After all, I've been trying to find my niche in the economy for the past five years, ever since I got my first full time job.  Each time, I found something to complain about, and in two such cases, it was enough for me to leave the position altogether.  However, just as the Boy Who Cried Wolf learned to his regret, I'm now being serious when I tell you that this position is starting to undermine my self-confidence.  I simply am not a "fit" where I am, and everyone senses it. It really is only a matter of time before my bosses turn their full attention to replacing me.  The wolf is gonna get me sooner or later. Serious this time.

  Moving home provides immunity against my fear of losing everything in the event that they go for the "sooner" option. It gives me flexibility and a sense of freedom that I'm not risking everything by speaking up and speaking out. It will remove the feeling that I must stay put in a job, give me the feeling of freedom to pursue other opportunities.  There's nothing worse than feeling trapped.

   Moving home also lets me interact with more people in my day-to-day who aren't work colleagues.  Much of the time, the only people I interact with are the ones who are busting my butt.  I get chewed up, spat out, and made to feel like an idiot all day, and then I go home to an empty apartment, stressed out with no one to talk to.  Hanging out with friends helps, but it's not enough.

   My family, for our differences, is my tribe, my community.  I can at least go home and interact with a group of people who I know love me unconditionally, who believe in me, who appreciate my abilities, and who have much the same living conditions I do: very clean, no big parties, no drugs or alcohol floating around, no debauchery.  Some guys can feel at home in a party house: I'm not one of them. 

   And yes, moving home gives me the freedom to quit, if it comes to it, and still have a place to sleep. Some of my former in-laws and friends somehow managed to take the two instances in my otherwise uninterrupted 14 year work history where I quit jobs that were making me unhappy and declared me "unable to hold a job".  As such, I've had an axe to grind in putting up with the crap in my current workplace.  But it's making me miserable and the concerns of former in-laws and former friends are pretty low down on my priority list.  Moving home opens up the possibility of a rest period while I pursue other opportunities.

  Of course, my apartment is lovely.  It's in a great neighbourhood that I love, with good, friendly neighbours, and I do love where I currently live.  Most importantly, it is mine.  But I get the sense that this place has served its purpose in the greater scheme of my own life.

   Had I decided to move home a year ago, when my marriage ended, I would have felt all the more the failure.  I had another axe to grind: I had to show to myself that I could survive completely on my own.  Now that axe is pretty sharp, and I don't need to worry about proving my ability to live independently to others, or myself.  I can go home knowing that I'm able to come back out here again when I choose to.

  Had I not moved here, I doubt my book would have been finished, or turned out the way that it did. Burlington is a nexus of prosperity and a high quality of living, and the downtown around Brant and Lakeshore provided me with prime inspiration for my protagonist's own life, even if it's not by name.  An artist needs a vibe of prosperity, and that's what I got while I was here.

 Had I not moved here, I never would have taken that walk through the vendors at Ribfest and gotten involved with Film/Comm Talent, starting this new journey.  Had I not moved here, I never would have dated that girl who lived around the corner, and had that kiss that really renewed my own feeling of worth as a good partner. 

  Make no mistake.  This place helped manifest the best case scenario in a transformative year.

  But now, I am here, and the things I want to accomplish require me to say goodbye to Burlington, with thanks.  This will be the first time I'm leaving a place that I'm still in love with, heart and soul.  As I said, one of the toughest decisions I've made in recent years, and those years have had their moments, that's for sure.

  Too often, we hold onto things that served us in the past when they're well beyond their expiration date.  That doesn't invalidate their previous benefits: just means you need to get a new carton of milk is all.  

  Ironically, by choosing to pack it in for a while and go home, I feel even more empowered than I thought I would be, because it's a clear choice that I am making for myself.  In so doing, I avoid joining other statistical clubs: the Society of Working Poor; the I've Never Seen Europe Support Group; not to mention the Ancient Mystic Society of Unhappy Office Workers. 

  This isn't a failure to launch.  This is a deliberate de-orbit, a time to come back to earth for a while for a refit, so that I can land among the stars the next time I head up there.  And reach them I will.

  Splashdown's in two months.  Time to get ready.

Soul Mates, Stunt Doubles, and Other Realities....

  Watched Will Smith's Hancock the other day for the first time.  I enjoyed it. Grittier than I expected, and Jason Bateman's performance inspired me to push Michael to become a PR guy: I think he'd be spectacular at it, personally.  Michael and Bateman's character Ray share that quality: they can persuade you to do good, functional things simply by talking to you, not by raising their voices or pushing you around, just talking.  Theirs is a subtle power, one that's far more effective on me than "C'mon! Go do it!  Do eeet!".  But that's neither here nor there.

  What most caught my attention was Charlize Theron, and who could blame me? Oh, Charlize....

I thought her role in this movie was especially poignant.  The only other "superhero" in the world, Hancock's wife for over three thousand years.  Built, like he was, to have her superpowers diminish and immortality fade when she chose a mate, so that they could live and die together, as normal people, if they so chose.  The only way they can be "superheroes" is to be apart. 

  What powers do we lose when we're in love? 

  It's coming up on a year that I've been single.  I've had the privilege of meeting so many others, some in my boat, others paddling alongside me in their own, who were in wonderful relationships, and are now out of them, floating along this unexpected river. 

  Some I've only known as single men and women, others I met when they were just out of a relationship and in the "crazy" stage.  A few are still "recovering", years later, from what happened to them. A few of them went the other way and are now in relationships whereas before they were single.

  For some, life lessons need to be taken internally.  No matter how much people will give you advice on relationships, early on and well after you've fallen out of love and gone back on your own, you have to learn numerous things completely through your own experience.  The old "I'll believe it when I see it" adage applies to some people more than others.

  From a year's worth of owning the whole bed to myself, I can say two things for sure: I know who I am, and I know who I'm waiting for.

  But first, one random point:

Stunt Doubles

 Lining up for Harry Potter  a few weeks ago with Michael and Aaron, we were talking about the new "See Friendship" function on Facebook.  I off-handedly remarked that Alice had said that our "friendship" was so epic that you'd swear we were dating.  "Aren't you?" teased Michael.  "Yeah, she's like a part-time girlfriend for you," said Aaron.  "You need to consider getting an actual girlfriend and not just a female friend."

  Checking this with Alice through our preferred medium of BlackBerry Messenger afterwards, she concurred:

"Yeah,you should get a full-time girlfriend soon. As much as I enjoy our friendship, it'll be a lot more fun for you ;)"

 The next day, I met Pam for coffee at the Indigo bookstore in Stoney Creek.  When we were walking to our cars afterwards, I mentioned the conversation of the previous night.

   "Oh, you mean stunt doubles," she said.

   "What?"

   "Well, it's like an opposite-sexed substitute for either an existing partner or none at all.  You know how sometimes if a boyfriend wants to go somewhere that his actual girlfriend doesn't like, he'll sometimes get a female friend to go with him?"

    "Yeah?"  Pam nodded.

    "Yep. Stunt double.  A fill in for an actual partner."

    Not a new concept for me, for sure. One of my favourite movies, Elizabethtown, featured the idea prominently.  As Kirsten Dunst's character Claire says of her friendship with Orlando Bloom's Drew Baylor:

"We're the substitute people."

 

   Being a stunt double or sub for an actual partner's supposed to be something of an insult, but that usually presumes that one of the people involved wants to be more than that.  This is what my ex's current boyfriend used to be: in the end, he got his wish, rightly or wrongly. 

   But for myself, the (re)discovery of the concept made me realize something new: most of the female friends I'm closest to serve as substitute people for my ex.  They're part-time girlfriends, totally platonic, but serving the same functions. And we're all cool with this arrangement.

    Pam and Alice are the two primary stunt doubles I have, I think. Even my ex herself at times...well, the new version of her, anyway.  Each serves different purposes.  Pam's like a big sister who thinks much the same way I do and who really *gets* it; Alice shares many of the same interests and quirks that I do and has a knack for kicking my ass in a good way without meaning to, very effectively; and whenever I need historical perspective, I go to my ex, because after all we've shared, she remains the one human being outside my family who knows me best and longest - fourteen years now and counting.  And, of course, my guy friends provide buddy time and act as a rational, more social contrast for me to measure up my crazy introverted ideas. 

   Again, it is what it is, but I find it remarkable that I had to find at least six substitute people to provide the emotional satisfaction I used to get from just one. 

   It goes to show that none of us are truly functioning under our own power.  We all need those social connections, and those emotional ones in particular, wherever we can get them.  And though we'll occasionally burn our friends out with our whining, complaining, and venting, they'll be back for more, because that's what good friends do. 

   There's more I want to say on the subject of stunt doubles, but I want to touch on something else first, so we'll return to this later.

  Who I'm Looking For....

   Personal value and self worth are often the first casualties of a breakup or divorce, provided you didn't lose them already in the time leading up to the split. Thus, you might feel inclined, as I did for about seven months, to look for a new relationship way before you've managed to put yourself back together again.

  They'll tell you "you're not ready to date", and sheer ego will keep you from listening.  But you aren't, you really aren't, until you know you can be on your own.  It's old news, it's what everyone tells everyone else who is suddenly single.  And yet, as I said earlier, you've got to learn this from your own experience to really believe it.  As Ke$ha says, love is indeed a drug, and when you're jonesing for a hit after you're stash has run out, you'll say anything to get it.  That's what desperation does. 

  Hell, they may even have to tie you to a tree.

   So then, how do you know you're ready?  Same way you've got to prove to the bank that you don't need the loan in order to get it.  Same way that you need work experience before you can get that first job.

   You're ready for a relationship when you can feel the same love for yourself as you would if you had a partner to love you. 

   I thought I was ready in April.  Then again in June.  And in August, I was actually dating a girl for a bit, and I though I feel this is when I became emotionally ready, I had a ton of career-related challenges - namely French classes and studies that I needed for a job-saving bilingual test - that would have interfered with any new relationship for at least a month and a half.  

   Those may have indeed been self-deceptions, false Buddhas on the road to Enlightenment, but if you'd asked me then if I was ready to fall in love again, I would have said yes.  Not that it would have been a giant lie, but I wasn't as ready as I am now. 

   Because now, when I think of meeting someone, I'm willing to wait for the right person.  I have a surprisingly clear and ever-evolving idea of who she is, and anyone less than that would always be second rate.  That wasn't the case before, when I was willing to date every kind of girl just for the validation. 

   Love costs you your superhero powers, if not applied correctly.  That subplot in Hancock is a great metaphor for what it does to some people, and what it would do to me if I fell in love with anyone less than the right girl. 

   That's who I'm looking for.  Her and only her. 

   Most women out there don't interest me.  My buddies tell me I have to approach them, say hello, and I'm really good at doing this now, but I choose not to most of the time because there's only one kind of experience I'm looking for, and it's not a casual lay.  Most women don't interest me because I'm not interested in most women. Just one.

   Right now, I'm functioning at an overall peak performance in many aspects of life.  I've improved so much and I'm working on elevating the other parts, career in particular.  I'm as sure of myself as a self-reflective ENFP lone wolf author can be.  My ideal mate is someone who would not cause me to revert back to who I was before, and thus undo this evolution in progress.

   I'm uniquely positioned among other men in my social circle to be able to declare this.  For starters, my sex drive is not nearly as elevated as most guys, meaning I'm not going to go skirt-chasing at bars because I can wait for someone special to share that experience with.  I love myself more now than I ever have, not conceit, but a healthy love of self.  I'm more willing to define social boundaries and not give up my time, attention, or beliefs just to get people to like me.  Most of all, I'm living for things that are bigger than me, primarily art and storytelling in the form of writing, and acting when that gets off the ground. 

   As such, the only dance partner I'm willing to take for a spin will be the so-called "One".  Soul mate. Twin flame.  Whatever you want to call her, she's the only one I'm willing to go and get.  I'll know her when I see her.  And since I'm waiting for only one particular girl to show up, I don't need to waste my time chasing other ones around the ballroom.

   That way, when I do fall in love, I won't be giving up any of my power. The love-drug makes you do so many stupid things. Given the right circumstances, you can fall in love with just about anyone: it's how you explain the "why is he with that bitch?" or "why is she with that asshole?" scenario. When you're with the wrong person, you can damage yourself for life, lose your abilities, sometimes forever. Love isn't enough.

   In a relationship with my soul partner, however, we can only add our powers together, because she's the optimal match for me. She doesn't have to be a complete copy of me - she'll have her differences, obviously - but we need to be in the same wavelength in life, giving off the same type of vibration, for this to work right.  Call me picky if you wish, but why the hell would I settle for anything less than the best for me?

   There's a girl out there right now who's everything I'm looking for, and for whom I'm everything she wants to have.  In a way, we're already together, we just haven't caught up to the reality.  And if we're already destined to meet, then in the meantime, I'm going to enjoy today as much as I can, do my utmost to maintain positive energy as work does its thing and the holiday stresses mount and the cold closes in. 

   Who is this girl, though? My equal and complementary spirit? What does she look like?  What is her story?  Does she enjoy Babylon 5 reruns as much as I do? (Scratch that question: of course she does!). 

   I have no answers to the detail questions yet, but however, wherever, and whenever we meet, I'll owe Serendipity a drink at the bar for all of her hard work. 

  Can't buy it now though: Serendipity's busy working as I write this, and there's no drinking on the job.

  Until then, read this.  I thought it was rather sweet.  A page from Serendipity's portfolio right there.

Stepping Stones

  This week should see my first calls from the agency for acting auditions.

   It seems like I've been waiting on this forever, ever since Labour Day when I happened to chance upon the two recruiters in Burlington.  Sometimes I get a small worry that I've oversold this to people.  I mean, I had one person in the last week ask me "besides acting, what do you do?" and yet I haven't even been to an audition yet!  Still, if ever there was an application of the "act as if" principle, it's this.  I'm going to take this one heads on and see where it leads.   I'm excited!

   Creative people are difficult to place in a capitalist economy.  It's probably why so many artists grativate towards socialism or communism: if the basic necessities of life were taken care of by the community, then it would free up artists to explore their craft without fear of homelessness or starvation, whatever it might be.  I can definitely see that appeal.  Sadly, while that could be the way things go in the future, at the present, creative men and women are still having to wait tables, serve coffee, lug boxes, or push paper in offices to support the basics of life to follow their dreams. 

   When they do succeed, though, they succeed big.  It's the difference between Harrison Ford the Carpenter - the job he held to pay the bills; he'd met George Lucas when the director hired him to fix his cabinets - and Harrison Ford the A-List Film Star.  If you look at the percentages of artists living almost obscene affluence thanks to their craft and those struggling for rent and food....well, I'd rather not.  As one of Ford's more famous characters, Han Solo, once remarked:

"Never tell me the odds."

    Off the top of my head, I've held something like nine jobs in my fourteen year work history.  Two were logistics clerk positions; one was a warehouse co-ordinator for a marketing company; one was as an office customer service rep; two were pure administrative clerical gigs; two were as a warehouse material handler; one was as a virtual concierge (in an office, but not doing administration); and one was in sales. 

   Out of the nine, I was happiest in the concierge and the sales gigs.  I only left the concierge for the better shift and pay of government work, and - I'll admit - the presence of a union to keep the man at bay (my new thoughts on unions are a whole other entry altogether).  I only stopped working the sales job because the company itself was shady and disintegrated, resulting in a layoff (I enjoyed the work, though).

   I liked them because they appealed to my creativity, because they challenged me to think outside the box, to use my unique talents.  It's a satisfaction I can't get in government.  Here, there is nothing outside the box.  The box is everything.

    There's a lingering convention in the way Western culture - and the American workforce paradigm in particular - views careers, and that's the idea that you're supposed to find one career for life.  It's that 1950s ideal of the man who works for a loyal company, for fair compensation, who gets rewarded for his efforts if he shows effort.  He sticks with the company for 40 years, then retires with a good pension. 

   Flashforward to the Great Recession...hell, even before.  The 1950s vision is only a memory, and a laughable one at that.  Not only has the economy grown more unstable, but several new work paradigms have emerged.  One of them suits the artist very well: the job as a growth experience, as a stepping stone. 

   You start a job with a great level of excitement, stay as long as the gumption stays with you.  Enjoy your time.  When the gumption runs out, and the job feels like an existential drag, or when you no longer see any chances to move up, start finding something else.  Send out the resumes, do the interviews, and when you get an offer for a new place, tender your resignation at the old, and start again.

   In a way, it's more natural than sticking with the same job for decades.  In nature, there are many species of fauna that will habitate one place for a while, and then migrate to greener pastures when the habitat no longer supports them.  Western culture, for all its greatness which I do admire and defend, seems wont to impose artificial expectations on work, as it does other aspects of life.  Why should anyone stick with something long after it's outlived its usefulness?  When it not only stops providing satisfaction and a feeling of purpose and belonging, but actually starts working against your happiness? 

  The reflex of the traditionalists, of course, is to slap back with the other extreme: you don't want a string of fifteen jobs on a resume.  You don't want to show you're non-committal.  To them, I say this: employers are non-committal.  Way more than their workers.  They won't hesitate to let you go if it serves their interests.  You shouldn't hesitate to drop them in favour of something new if they no longer serve your interests, as long as you do so in a professional manner that prevents too much damage on either side of the arrangement.

   When we say we're in a new economic reality, we need to appreciate that this reality now changes on a daily basis, not a generational one.  Most of the gray hairs for whom I work and who still cling to the old 1950s vision of career will never accept that, nor will their younger disciples for whom life has indeed been a straight and narrow path of relative ease.  Adaptability and knowing when to leap are two qualities I'd advise any young person entering the workforce to develop, no matter what they studied in school, at no matter what level. 

   Above all, I say to these kids: don't look for your career to define you as it has previous generations.  Instead, try to resist the tendency to label yourself and others you'll meet by what they do, and focus instead on the experience of life as a whole, in which "career" is only one thread in the tapestry.

   Your career, like your relationships, like your health, like other parts of your life, should all have one thing in common: they should be accurate reflections of the strongest version of Who You Are. Present tense. That is, they put you in the zone and give you a zest for life, make you excited to wake up in the morning to face the new day.   Doesn't matter what the job is, whether it's in your trained field or not, as long as it contributes to your overall joy.  When it stops doing so, look for something else that's more in line with Who You Are, however you define it, wherever you find it.

   I'm mindful that I'm now as excited about acting as I was about starting my current job, as I had been about the virtual concierge, about many of the jobs that ended up burning me out over the years. I haven't left my day job, and don't plan on it, for all of the shortcomings it has of low creative satisfaction and the social isolation. But I'm no lifer: my boss knows that, and if this new adventure turns out to be lucrative and personally fulfilling enough, I'd be silly to stick with a sure thing that fails to satisfy on both counts.

   How this turns out remains to be seen. That's why it's called "risk". Stay tuned.

***UPDATE: For those of you who have expressed concern, even criticism, that I shouldn't write this for fear that current and future employers may Google me, read this.  Frankly, any employer who would seek that much control over my thoughts and feelings does not deserve my services.

Shadowy Seasonal Spin Cycles

Underlying the commercial side of Halloween is its origin. Samhain is the reason for this particular season, and I won't re-explain the significance of this (neo)pagan observance here. Its origins, however, remind us of the cycle of life and death. The harvest is as much a symbol for death as it is a literal reaping of the crops, where we reflect on what we've done and what's happened. 

Halloween was low key for me this year, with one party and a Sunday spent at home on a ghost walk through the beautiful Church St. Cemetery in Brampton with Mom and Dad.  During that visit, my mother and I watched a DVD from motivational speaker Debbie Ford called The Shadow Effect. Shadow work is a conscious acknowledgement and introspective study of all the qualities of your being that you hide from others. The parts of yourself that you're ashamed of - your fears, your past transgressions against others, your guilt, your regrets, etc..

According to Ford and other experts, whenever you react unusually strongly to a slight provocation; whenever you indulge in something that you rail against publicly (see NY Gov. Spitzer, or Rush Limbaugh, or the Catholic Church), or sabotage yourself, that's your Shadow getting tired of being suppressed and ignored.  Those are dramatic examples.  The rest of the time, the Shadow acts in millions of small ways that compromise you, leading to boredom, routine, the inability to escape from vicious cycles of behaviour, finances, health. 

That which we bury in the earth will grow back. Always. Don't believe me? Watch Dawn of the Dead.

I'm familiar with shadow work. Much of my twenties has been about looking at myself critically and as objectively as possible. This work is never done. It's not intended to "cure" all your ills or eliminate the darkness: those who war against their own darkness really war against themselves, and will never feel whole. Rather, it's to embrace the totality of your being, light and dark. It means understanding that for you to live in a nice house, every now and then you've got to take out the trash and sweep the floor. It's the way of things.

Monday being the start of a new month, I figured that some shadow work on myself was a great way to mark a new beginning. Everyone could use some honest-to-Zeus introspection.

Among the other creatures hiding in the dark, I discovered Stuckness. I was stuck. Existentially bored. And the goal wasn't to slay Stuckness, for he's a part of me, but to cure him.

Arriving at the Goodlife Fitness after work that Monday, I sauntered into the mall, up the stairs past the usual regulars, and into the locker room. I changed in the same spot near the same locker, and headed out to the floor to do the same cardio-resistance routine I've been doing for months.  All I could see was drab routine: my work, my exercise, my weekly calendar.  Blah, blah.....blah.  Was this really life? 

Then I saw that the spin class was starting in ten minutes.

I see it every time that I'm in there - seemingly crazy people, dripping with sweat, killing themselves on the bikes to pretty catchy techno music and rock and roll - and I'd always promised I'd try it once.  Still, the tricky part about a routine is that you're at once sick of the normal, and very comfortable with it.  I'd fought the impulse to go for weeks, despite having reached plateaued in my weight loss around 215 pounds. 

But Monday night, the thought of another boring 45 minute elliptical session kicked me in the ass, and I took the leap.  I walked in, met the instructor, set myself up, and joined in.

As I said on Facebook, Megadeth would be happy to know that I've found a 100th way to die....

And yet, it was worth it, not so much for the exercise - which was amazing, and which wore me out enough that I went to bed at 9:30pm - but for the sake of the New.  Suddenly, even though I'd changed absolutely nothing else in my routine, my life felt more interesting, and that's what ultimately counts: how you feel about your life.

I've talked about the Power of Now, but sometimes the solution to existential angst is simply to try something new, even if it's something small.  Spin classes, of course, are somewhat dramatic if you're not into exercise that much, but I realized that I am thoroughly missing new stimuli.  Time to embrace the Power of New.

A slide from the creepy DHARMA Initiative brainwashing film from LOST quotes the Buddha:

"Plant a good seed and you will joyfully gather fruit". 

As Samhain ends, according to the Pagan calendar, those in the Northern Hemisphere lie directly opposite of Ostara, the spring holiday when we plant next year's harvest, when we sow new seeds, and start the cycle over again.

Naturally, we don't have to wait to re-create ourselves. Everyone has a stuckness monster living in their shadow.

And for people like me who, more than most, have to do regular inner work to prevent the monster from manifesting in yet another life crisis, sometimes all it takes is to do one new thing - plant one good seed no matter how small - to cure the hapless creature, shine a light for him to see, and set him free.

Freedom in the Falling Leaves

    This summer has taught me momentary living.

    What does it mean, anyway, that standard New Agey cliche: "live in the moment"?  Depends on who's doing the living.
 
     My hunch to take a break for the past month was a good one, because writing about these things as they were happening would have deprived me of proper marination time. 

     August transformed me in ways I could never have expected in my wildest daydreams of quantum leaps.  I feel liberated, energized, and renewed.  What makes this time different from all of those temporary moments of good vibrations that come and go with the day is that something is solid here, something permanent.  I've passed a point of no return, as if a wall magically appeared behind me to keep me from falling back into some fundamental old patterns of behaviour and thought.

     Before this month, I did a lot of talking about momentary living, and not enough living momentarily.  My whole life, I've planned.  I've calculated.  I've weighed costs and benefits.  Most of all, I've hesitated to choose.  August taught me decisiveness.

    What were these events?  At least one of them isn't something I'm comfortable blogging about in public due to employment issues: I'm almost certainly aware my boss is aware of this blog, and though I doubt she reads it much, I am very much interested in staying employed until writing can sustain me.  It's self-censorship, to be sure, but at this point, financial survival is paramount.

   Nor can I just open up a new anonymous blog for my writing, for two very big reasons.

    First, I was shortlisted for this year's Arts Hamilton 2010 Creative Keyboards Short Story Contest.  As such, I am starting to gain some publicity, and need this to remain public and in my name as a homepage. 

    Next, I am nearing completion on my novel, which I've tentatively titled Convergence. Again, this will require open and public awareness that Jody Aberdeen has a web presence. 

    I will say this much: I have had 31 days of high highs, one very low low, and ever since, a synthesis, a reconciliation that I feel has been penultimate.  There is no going back now to what and who I was before.
 
   So what is momentary living?  It's the simple division of your overall plan into smaller segments.  Each day has 1,440 minutes of 60 seconds each.  Too often, we get stressed out by the overall plan when it's measured in bigger chunks: weeks, months, years, decades.  We think that we have "wasted years", we should have been "further along" than we are now; we procrastinate on larger goals with long-count timelines because we think "lots of time between now and then" and thus create our self-fulfilling prophecies of doom.  By getting addicted to a long-count plan, we often compromise ourselves and doom ourselves to failure, because everyone knows that the big plans almost never turn out the way you thought. 

   But 1,440 minutes, of which you spend an average of 420 asleep, that's more manageable, because they are easy to fill, far easier than a decade.  Unlike those longer term goals, you don't have to wait with the moments to feel how you want to feel: you can feel it now, within 60 seconds of your decision to feel it. 

   How did I come to this conclusion?  A simple, beautiful experience, one that I have no qualms talking about.

    I met someone online, nearly a month ago.  We chatted online, dated for a time, and on the third date, headed out to the Burlington Beach on the last night of the month.  At sunset, wading in the warm clear water under a cloudless blue sky, she and I kissed.  That was a beautiful moment for me, one that seemed to last far longer than the sixty or so seconds of the actual duration of the embrace. Whitley Strieber summed it up best: "all kisses are forever".

    Two days later, we stopped seeing each other, and though I was initially sad, I felt, and still feel, energized and electrified from that kiss, which was a moment truly lived. I am ready for more.

    And many of those I spoke to initially viewed the experience as one part of a larger "failure", despite their best efforts to hide it with placations.  After all, the lovely young lady in question and I are no longer dating; it didn't work out in the long run, which is the stated goal of all romantic dating.

    None of that matters, because I was able to create a moment, and that moment lasts forever.  Living the moment means not living for specific results: it means experiencing what is at the time it's happening. And though it didn't work out, the experience gifted me with something else:  I now truly *get*, from experience, that old Eastern adage that every piece of the puzzle that doesn't fit only leads you closer to the piece that does.  I am grateful for what I've learned, and will put it to practice with the next romantic experience I have. 

    August was full of such experiential moments, not just romantic, and really, all of life is like that, if you choose to see it that way.  The choice is essential.  This doesn't negate the need to have a goal: as I said, you're just using a smaller measure of time.  And I have a goal and a plan, a new one that's really helped to move me forward, like a fresh breeze pushing canvas sails.  I'll talk about that later.

    I won't comment on September as a whole, not until it's passed.  I'll say this much: I look forward to enjoying this new sense of freedom in the falling leaves and chilly breezes and the earlier sunsets.  Fall has always been special for those types of moments for me anyway.  Lonely or satisfied, joyful or anxious, I look forward to them all.

   This is the start of something new.  I can't want to see where it leads.