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.

Worth Keeping

   There's only one resolution ever worth keeping, New Year's or otherwise.  It's the resolution to be authentic to yourself.  Temet nosce, in the non-traditional Latin of The Matrix.  "Know thyself".

    Get to know who you really are.  Decide who you want to be and go be it.  Embrace the persons, places, and things that will lead you there; and rid yourself of the persons, places, and things that no longer serve you.  A simple formula, even if only the tinest minority of the population actually goes through with it. 

   Every year that passes by represents, in the personal history of somebody somewhere, a time for taking out the trash and cleaning house.  The places and things are easy enough, but when it comes to the persons, this is where most of these individuals in transition get hung up on the whole process.  After all, nobody sets out to be an asshole, even when the people in question are really holding you back, intentionally or not. 

  This is where the inauthenticity kicks in.  You get used to appeasing those who would put up a fight when you take risks, people who quietly judge and dismiss you, who are only tied to you through some shared history and with whom you create nothing new or valuable.  Maybe you're conflict averse, afraid to get into a dust-up with those closest to you, for fear of losing them, even though you're legitimately pissed with decisions they've made. Because certain individuals haven't acted in a way that demonstrates friendship and loyalty to you. Maybe you've just made appeasement a habit.

  In any relationship, even those with places and things, there's a point where you just get sick of self-censorship for the sake of being sociable and appearing upbeat, a good employee or happy-go-lucky buddy, where you're tired of playing Chamberlain to the unintentional aggressors around you in the false hope of a just peace. When you're just going to do what you want.  Fuck the world. 

  Yes, in case you haven't already figured it out, I'm starting the last day of 2010 in something of a foul mood.  But as always, this is mostly just me taking out the trash in the best way I know how: the written word.  And I may as well vent it out before I party down tonight.

   One of my mentors once pointed out the importance of noticing the symbolism of your outer life.  Handing in the Form N9 the other day to my landlord, I took a moment to appreciate the number of my apartment building on my street: 360.  A full turnaround, where you end by returning to the beginning.  I prefer to think of life's cycles as an upward spiral: you eventually come back to where you started, but at least one level higher up in three dimensional space.  Life cycles involve continuous growth, though at each stage of that cycle, you shed the dead cells and let them fall away. 

    Michael pointed out to me the other day that in at least several entries now, I've said some variation of the phrase "I could give a damn what people think".  Of course, that sends the exact opposite message, especially when you repeat it across several entries.  And the truth is, up until this point, for much of 2010, I have given my power away to others.  I have cared what other people think of me, too much so.  Of everything I've learned about myself in 2010, I believe this is the quintessential root cause of my own self-created obstacles.  I'm grateful to Michael for pointing this out, obviously.

  But you know, of the plethora of concepts I've been meditating on over this holiday break, it's that true family, blood relations or not, will give their input and advice, warn you about potential injury, and otherwise be completely free to disagree with you while not sacrificing your relationships in the process.

  They'll see you experience major traumas like betrayal and shock and not lose respect for you if your reaction to all of it doesn't meet their expectation of what's "appropriate". They'll come around and support decisions that you've made even if they advised against them during your deliberations.  They'll walk their talk about loyalty and friendship and rectitude and not equivocate to suit their thinly concealed personal agendas.  They'll have your back, even if they don't understand you.  And they'll push you to better yourself, in a way that demonstrates high compassion.

  But if you don't test your relationships when you have to, when the occasion calls for you to be authentic to yourself even when it's inconvenient, awkward, or downright offensive to your greater family, you're betraying yourself.  And that's the highest and most damaging betrayal that exists. 

 That betrayal then affects everything you do, from the career paths you take to the friendships you keep to the romantic relationships you find yourself in.  Then you get stuck in vicious cycles of your own creation that hold you back, making the same mistakes and repeating the same patterns over and over again, until years pass by and your hair goes gray and you wonder why, for all of your smarts and ambition, you were never able to figure it out. You become, as the movie line goes, "an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone." 

  In 2011, resolve to be loyal to yourself.  To get into a dust-up when a dust-up is called for, if it means that you express yourself authentically.  To give yourself permission to be intense or angry or sad or afraid if that's how you feel at the moment. To stop apologizing in advance to those who care about you for actions and decisions you know are right for you.  To surround yourself with persons, places, and things that are aligned with your own vibrations and allow, with gratitude, everything that isn't going your way to bow out of your experience and fall away naturally.

  In 2011, resolve to put into action all of the things you've thought about doing for so long, to break out of the patterns that society expects of your and actually build an infrastructure for the ambitions everyone else says are impossible.  To give legs to your fondest dreams, that you may end next year in a place far beyond the mundane expectations of what we think life actually is.

  In 2011, resolve to be authentic, inside and out.  It's the only resolution worth keeping, and probably the hardest to keep.

  Personally, I resolve to begin fulfilling these resolutions one day early.

  And how about that?.....I feel better already.

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.

Confidence without Douchebaggery

  The following is a recounting of something Jody witnessed, and may not have happened exactly as depicted, though that's totally okay, because this version's been sexified by Jody's awesome imagination.

 The Phidelts had Wing Night this past Sunday in Westdale.

 After gorging on the delightful parts of some hapless, mass-produced chickens, me and the younger guys chill for about ten minutes before they head off to another pub. 

   During that time, two lovely young ladies emerge from the restaurant, walk past the bunch of us, and get into a car to light a cigarette.  Long story short, one of our entourage - driven by courage, apathy, and a deeper fortitude located somewhere in his pants - walks over to the driver's side.  I have no idea what he says - I'd later find out he opened with "I'd like to see some ID" - but the girls seem to enjoy it and the rest of us are quite entertained.

  "I love the way he sauntered over there," I say aloud.  "It's such a balls-out approach."

  At that point, a brother - who I shall deem "The Moustache" until he gives me formal permission to reprint his name publicly - responds with a cool point. 

"The trick is not giving a shit if people think you're a douchebag". 

  Think about it.  How many "nice guys" worry about looking like anything but "nice guys" when it comes to impressing the ladies?  That's why nice guys fail so frequently and so hard when they try to be less "nice" at bars and at parties: they're aware that they're putting on an act.  They're too afraid of saying something wrong that will make them look like complete assholes to the women.  Their fears become their focus, and thus become their experience.  There's nothing as confidence sapping, as emasculating, as the feeling that you have to choose between being a dick and being the Pillsbury doughboy to succeed at dating, and life.

  The trick is to lose yourself in the part.  And also to eliminate the word "douchebag" from your self description.  All you're doing is just walking your confidence. 

  Much like Jack the Clawless Tabby did in 2006.

  Call it a biological Napoleon complex all you want, this cat is one mean pussy.  Never once did it occur to him that the bear cub could easily take him out with the slightest of swipes, or that he was about five times smaller. The cat had his turf to protect. 

   Jack the Clawless Tabby never dwelled on his shortcomings: instead, he pushed his natural strengths to the max and harnessed them behind a single goal: telling a wandering bear to get the fuck off his property.

 Issues of confidence are rampant in my daily existence, mostly in the assertion department. Assertiveness remains a challenge for me, especially in the presence of stronger, go-getter personalities who are way more cock and balls than I'll ever be.  They give me little room to maneuver: if you push, I'll either dig in my heels or I'll just walk away, start some lone wolf time. 

  Or, if you're really being direct, I'll push back a little more out of proportion to what's called for, but that's a last resort.  I don't much care for pissing matches with people, but if you're on my territory - my home, my office, my arena - I will do what's necessary to protect my sovereignty.

 And yet, in situations where I'm not forced to beat my chest, I'm damned good at the confidence game.  I've landed a couple of jobs where I only barely met the requirements, based mostly on the interview.  Aaron pointed this out a couple of times when I've had moments of doubt: he's one person who sees that strength, and he's one of the most confident guys I've ever met. 

  We have an archetype in Western culture of the disgruntled office clerk.  That person who occupies a lower station in a greater organization who is so much more capable than what he's getting, if only he had the guts to just speak up for himself.  Frequently, the place where he paralyzes himself is one concept, this all-too-familiar fear:

"I don't want to be an asshole."

  Nor is it just guys.  Alice remarked to me today, in a somewhat related discussion, her own qualms with self-assertion.  After showing her the story on Jack the Orange Tabby, she said this:

   I'm always afraid that I'll look like a bitch if I assert myself like that.

    Back to the Moustache for a moment.

    "You know," I say to him, back at the parking lot of the restaurant after Wing Night, "I've always struggled with issues of authenticity, especially when it comes to meeting girls, but you know..."

     I steal another look over at Mr. Ballsy, chatting up the two girls.

    "It's nothing new.  I've summoned that kind of confidence at job interviews, why not here?"

    The Moustache agrees.  "Real douchebags don't care what people think.  That confidence is attractive and they know it.  You can be a good confident person without being a dick."

    Plus, as much as pretty girls can't initially tell the difference between an asshole and a confident good guy at a bar, I'm willing to bet they enjoy the process of sorting them out.

    Simple concept, right?  And yet, so many people fret over it.

   Losing yourself in the role doesn't mean putting on a show.  It's the acquisition and continued accumulation of a genuine feeling, and then just running with it.  It's like summoning a comic book superpower and then swaggering around. 

  Easiest way to summon this power?  Do what Ben Affleck's character talks about in Boiler Room - which Michael is watching over at his place as I type this:

"Act as if". 

   Assume you're a superstar, then lose yourself in the part.  I do this a lot lately as part of my visualization for acting.  Since I started, not gonna lie, my swagger's gotten more attention from all the right places (and a few of the wrong ones).

   As that superstar, walk up to someone today and strike up a conversation like it was nothing.  Unless the other person has some malfunction in that moment, I promise it'll go smoothly.

  If anything, that other person should feel anxious talking to you.  Be polite, kind, say whatever comes to mind, thank them, shake their hands if the chat was meaningful, then make your way out. 

   As you leave, notice that feeling - high, energized, certain - and carry it with you as long as it lasts. 

  And remember it the next time you see that cute girl you've been dying to talk to.

  To the naturally confident, extroverted A-types, this seems so basic, but to guys like me, it's always a new revelation, like a monolith from 2001.  Some people need to have this literally beaten into our skulls with a proto-human femur bone to make sure we never forget.

  And yes, lately I've been following my own advice and doing this with women.  More on that in a later entry.  Back to the novel, in the meantime.

The Luckiest Sumbitch You Know

I've determined that the people in my life who count the most flat out don't take me seriously.

How you present yourself to prospective and current employers, government officials, the people serving your food, baristas, tax collectors: these all matter.  But in the company of friends and close family, you should, in theory, be able to relax and not give a shit. 

This is where I get into trouble.

When I turned 24 years old and started really looking at "growing up" and what it meant, I started reading a lot of self-help and spiritual books.  One of them was Wayne Dyer's Real Magic, and in it, he said something that still amazes me:

"Be a student. Stay open and willing to learn from everyone and anyone. Being a student means you have room for new input. When you are green you grow, when you are ripe you rot. By staying green you will avoid the curse of being an expert. When you know in your heart that every single person you encounter in your lifetime has something to teach you, you are able to utilize their offerings in a profound way."

I had also read, around the same time, several other books that talked about deliberate innocence, about beings who have the wisdom of centuries and lifetimes, but who look at the world with the same wonder as an infant. 

From the time I was five, I'd been accustomed to being the smartest kid in the classroom.  Much of that, upon reflection, was delusion, implanted into me by TV and a very enthusiastic Mom. I learned quickly that people tend not to like the Hermione Grangers and Martin Princes of the schoolyard, but I stuck with it, likely costing me friendships and meaningful connections throughout most of my life.  Even my big ex, during our best times together, would grow weary of my superiority complex from time to time and call me on it.

So, I made the choice: if I had to lead, I would be a servant-leader, a general who would fight in the trenches with his men.  If I had to teach, I had to be just as willing to learn from my students as they were to learn from me.  And if I had to work in a group, embrace modesty in all I did. After all, someone else could be right.  And above all else, return to innocence, and start seeing the wonderful things around me right now. Stop and enjoy the sunset, even if it's between the 9th and 10th holes on the second twilight course at Chedoke (which did happen in 2005).

The result among my social group is that I am perceived as a grown-up kid, and not in a good way.

Innocence has a bad rap.  Our popular society equates it with "ignorance", with the inability to function in day-to-day life, with artsy-fartsy New Age flakes who are so about "positive thinking" that someone could set their hair on fire and they would suppress the urge to scream for the sake of maintaining their karma. 

An innocent, goes the view, is someone who is utterly unprepared to deal with "real life", the victim of swindlers and unscrupulous landlords, the prey of greasy used car salesmen and telemarketers.  Hell, I've even had one instance where a buddy of mine said to me, in a condescending way, "Now, Jody, don't forget to look both ways before crossing the street.".  Like, what the frak, man?.....

(Actually, it was 2:00am and I was pretty hammered by that point.  He probably saved my life). 

Just because I'm not an alpha who gets into scraps and throws shit when he's pissed; because I didn't become a suit or a uniform; because I wasn't captain of the football team; because I don't like telling people what they can and can't do; because I marvel at music, at sunsets, at cute animals, at the amazing moments that most people ignore and express it....does not give you licence to take me less seriously.

That's too bad, because the innocent retains some major qualities that most supposedly "functional" and "realistic" people don't have: trust in life and people, optimism, hope, faith.  And to be deliberately innocent, as I do, unites functionality with an inner awareness that leaves me largely free of the cynicism and jadedness that's infected so many people at the core.

Life's supposed to be fun!  All of it!   That's not to say people who are cynical don't have fun, but many of them find ways to complain even in the midst of times when they should be pretty god-damned happy.  Frequently, they like being right, pride themselves on being the smartest kid in the classroom, have their entire identities wrapped up in their brains. Well....shit! Life must really suck when you're smart, huh?

Lay bare the reality behind people's stated beliefs about life, and you'll find a lot of panhandlers sitting atop unopened treasure chests.  Renters complaining about leaky pipes when they don't have to shovel snow or fix anything themselves. Homeowners bitching about mortgages when they've got attics (I'm sorry, attics are pretty awesome!).  Quarter-lifers living with Mom and Dad claiming brokeness when they've got thousands socked away in the bank from not having to pay rent and hydro.  Couples complaining about their partners' late nights out when, no matter what time they come home, they are coming home to crawl into bed with them and hold them tight. You get the idea.

Thing is, you guys would do well to just not take things so seriously ALL the time.  Frankly, I'm probably the luckiest sumbitch you know, not because of what I have or what I've done, but because despite a tumultous year - maybe because of it - I'm now capable of looking at the world like I am five years old again, while still being able to hold a job, feed and clothe myself, and, yes, cross the street without being run over by a U-Haul truck.  Don't mistake my innocence for ignorance.

Will I have shitty spells?  Sure.  But fundamentally, life is good if you want it to be.  As K'Naan says, "Nothing is perfect man, that's just the way the world is.  All I know is, I'm enjoying today."