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.

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.

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.

My Nervous Breakdown, Pt 2

(cue pre-intro theme from "Battlestar Galactica")

Previously, on Dispatches from the Alternate Universe:

"I sit up in bed in a state of pure awareness, not completely sure what I am hearing. Then my brain reconciles the sound. Heavy breathing. Two people. My neighbours are having sex at 5:43am on the other side of that wall.....This is the last straw."

"I had asked my boss to leave an hour early on Wednesday. Typical arrangement requires me to make up the time I take. Tuesday, I showed up an hour early...Boss... that this arrangement wasn't what I thought it was, and that I likely came in early for nothing."

"This was a thirtysomething Wednesday, my first, and it was boring and sad. The kind when you only think about lost baseball games and Fs on report cards and missed opportunities....was this all there was?"



"5:54am. They haven't stopped at all. And I'm angry. Determined....I get out of bed and start my day, determined to stop letting life kick my ass. Determined to make a change...."



***

Thursday

Thursday begins well. 

Spurred by the late night sexcapades of my nympho neighbour, I am set to get back in the vibe and be a productive individual. Today is the begininng of a special project that I am not allowed to talk about in detail, save that it's something that my boss has given me ownership of.  I am ready to kick ass.  And asses are kicked today.

I'm also excited for two other reasons. After work, I'm going shopping for clothes for a photo shoot I am doing on Saturday for my upcoming work in advertising and commercials.  I am getting professional head shots done and this could be the start of a whole unexpected chapter in my life. 

I'm also due to meet with my BFF - let's call him Dom to prevent undue and inadvertent libel, though I may have mentioned his real name here somewhere - for coffee afterwards.  He has been travelling through Europe for the past three weeks, and I want to hear about how his trip went.


 
As I do my shopping, I can sense a manic energy running through my system.  This isn't necesssarily a good thing, because I've felt this before, and it usually precedes a huge crash.  No matter, I'm getting new shoes, new pants, a new blazer....all things I've needed to complete my wardrobe.  They won't all get used, I know this, but at least it's done, and I'll be equipped for any type of event. Shopping can be a temporary salve during a state of life crisis. 

I come home, head into my bedroom and drop off the stuff in my closet.

And I hear them again!  It's 6:34pm.  This time, she's really raunchy, and sort of a turn-on.  My female BFF Alice suggests that I ask to join them, but that's not in the cards for me.  I barely have enough courage to talk to a girl one on one for just me: a three-way (and a devil's three-way, at that) is out of the question.

Still, it's like a determination refresher that motivates me to go to the gym and experience the mother of all workouts (which I do).

I return, shower, change, and head out to meet Dom. 

Dom's been there for me pretty much forever, but especially since the drama started with my breakup and divorce from my ex.  As single men, we formed part of an endangered demographic in our circle of married and long-term-partnered friends, and as "nice guys", both of us are accustomed to the pitfalls and vicissitudes of post-school dating while not being a douchebag.




I go to the cafe a little early, and find out that my other friend - again, let's call him Rick for anonymity's sake - is working that night down the street and will come over to meet us when he's done.  He's also recently left a relationship, but was starting something up with a girl at his job that was going somewhere.  Rick, too, has been a loyal ally in this dangerous world of singledom, and though at the time, I simply treat this as a casual coffee with buddies with no overarching symbolism, it occurs to me afterwards that these are my wingmen.

Dom shows up, and it's good to see him again.  His trip to Europe was kick-ass, and he's got an energy about him that's basically vintage Dom, except ramped up 15%. 

And I rapidly find out why.  He's now got a girlfriend that he met on the tour.

My face must have lit up like a Christmas tree! Awesome news!  I mean, Dom's probably the greatest guy ever, and if there's anyone who deserves excellent karma for years of being true to himself, putting in his best all the time with the people around him, and looking for a relationship where he can be authentic in all ways, it's him.  I am very excited for him, and wish him all the best!

Rick shows up, and we talk for a bit . Turns out, he too, is now off the market (well, at the time, sort of) and was deliberating on what to do next.  We shoot the shit for a while and I go home at midnight. 

Though it occurs to me at the meeting, it doesn't really hit me until I go to bed (now wary of ANY sound coming from the other room).

I am probably the only single man in my group of friends.



Still, as I drift off to sleep, I do fall back on my own New Age philosophical leanings.  Things that happen in your life also have symbolic meaning, as well as literal. 

 My apartment, for example, is either clean or cluttered depending purely on my mental state.  I'm quite direct in my symbolism - for others, a clean apartment is a sign they're avoiding dealing with other issues, whereas for me it's a sign that I am bringing my surroundings into alignment with my calm and organized mindset at the time - and so I realize something that, in my lingering mania, gives me hope.

  Sex is happening three feet away from me.  My best friends are now experiencing either the start of new love or are seeing opportunities for love right before them.  The universe is surrounding me with the very experiences I wish to have, have been looking to have again for many long months now.  It's only a matter of time before it's my turn.  Not much longer to wait.



  On that thought, I fall asleep.  And yet, outside, in the dark, my apartment is a complete mess.

  Friday

  If I'd known how the day was going to end, I would have probably slept in a little later.  For the first time in two days, no sex from the other side of the wall.  Good.

  I get to work, and today's the day that I am to finish up my project and get the arrangements made.  Part of this project involves collating a significantly large number of documents that, in turn, require organizing.  I figure I can get all of this done myself, impress my boss, and be a champion.

  I don't count on the involvement of the other middle manager in the office.  Let's call her MM.

   MM is hyper organized.  It's her thing.  And she's a nice lady, personally (aren't all the evil bosses nice people outside of work matters?).  But she is organized to a fault, way past the border of OCD.  And I'm about to feel her wrath.

   Leaving my project for lunch, I return to find that she has taken over my collating piles, reorganized them, and is now telling me what to do down to the last detail.  I can't go to my boss for advice because she isn't back until Monday.  Nor can I protest, partly because it's insubordination and I have two weeks left on my technical probation, and because she is offering me critical help.

    The workforce has this phenomenon that I can't quite name, in which there's no practical reason why you should be unhappy for some policy, someone's help, someone's directives, but where there's something wrong where you can't put your finger on what it is.  And for me, I realize that MM has taken away my bragging rights for getting the project done myself. 

   More than that, I also know that if there are any discrepancies, my boss will blame me for it. 

   Worse yet, MM is altering my original directives given to me by my boss, and I am working on complete faith that this is what my boss really wants. 

    MM issues one last reorganizing directive that, if I am to complete, requires me to stay late to ensure completion of the project, then leaves.  By this point, I am demotivated, stressed, and despairing, because my boss already has me on the hook for schedule issues.



   I am damned if I do, damned if I don't.  If I leave on time, the project will not be finished, and I will hear about it Monday.  If I stay late, I will hear about it on Monday.  I decide to stay late, sending Boss an email explaining the situation. 

   As I finish the set-up though, it dawns on me: nothing I ever do will impress my boss.  Her management style is the old school one in which the only feedback you receive is when you do something wrong.

   I am an intelligent human being doing peon work, and being treated accordingly.  I have no upward momentum, and nowhere else to go.  But I'm forced to stay because I need money.

   In the stressed out, demoralized atmosphere of my mind, the usual levvies that allow me to separate home issues from work start to crack. As I finish up my email and start for home, the leaks get bigger.  More chunks fall out from the levvies and the fluids begin to gush and mix together.

   I am single and divorced and alone and lonely.  Everyone is in a relationship but me.

  I am an intelligent, university-educated Arts major doing work that I am overqualified for and bored by, but that I need in order to pay my bills.

  I am trying to please a boss for whom nothing will be good enough.

  Everyone else is living what I want to have: love, and sex and babies and houses and success.

  And I am 30 years old and one week and nowhere near where I thought I would be in life.

  These elements swirl together, gathering momentum, and create a perfect storm in my mind that only breaks when I get home. 

  The manic energy spikes....then, ultimately....CRASH!

 I get into my apartment and just lose it.  When Jody has a nervous breakdown, it becomes rather epic.  Status updates abound.  Text messages fly.  I call everyone to vent.  I allow myself to cry, a behaviour which I've internalized as not being "manly", which I don't even do on my own half the time, but which is just too much to repress any longer.  I lose my typical cheer and optimism and become all about the cloud, not the lining.

For about two hours on Friday night, I alternate my time between venting out the strain, scaring the shit out of my friends and family who mistake the venting for my imminent demise, and just completely losing my shit.  Like most violent storms, though, it's over with quickly, but while it's falling, it's intense and dramatic and scary.

  But then, it's over.

 The comparison between the end of a nervous breakdown and a storm is apt.  The stillness and sheer awareness is the same, the feeling of energies dissipated, of a mess that's left behind now requiring clean-up.  Silence. 

  I get up from the couch, now in the dark.  I look around.  The place is a mess.  But I feel better, if not a little puffy and stuffed up.  I make a few phone calls, talk to a few people who have seen my updates and are worried about me.  The first glimmerings of gratitude and light appear: I am lucky to have the people that I do, people who care about me.  Who love me, even when I can't understand why they do.

  I sit for a while, idly browsing the web, start to put a few things away here and there, but otherwise, not doing much else.  The storm's passed.



  Flashforward: The Weekend

  I feel relieved to have these feelings out.  The weekend is here.

   Saturday, I pack up half my closet, clean myself up and head to Toronto for pictures.  There, I'll visit an actual celebrity photographer in a real artsy loft, the kind I've only seen on TV.  He is friendly and delightful and makes me feel right at home.  I'll chat with a make-up artist who's worked with the big stars all over the world as he gets me ready for my head shots.  He'll tell me that he's been doing work for over twelve years, and that he has confidence that I will get lots of work.  As I leave, he wishes me well and says, "See you on TV." 



  I drive home through Toronto's busy Distillery and then through the Entertainment District.  I feel the energy of a city I have always loved to visit, and may be seeing more of soon.

  Afterwards,  I'll have a belated birthday party afterwards with some of the people I care about most in the world willing to buy me drinks and laugh with me. 

   Sunday's sunny and warm: perfect hangover weather for walking and doing nothing, enjoying the sun and breeze.  That morning, Rick will have crashed at my place and I'll drive him to work at the bookstore where I've applied for seasonal work.  After browsing some books, I'll decide to take a ballroom dance class starting in January. The school is within walking distance of home, and they say partners are not necessary for the group lessons. 



   I'll spend much of the day giving my brain a rest, nursing a slight hangover, indulging in just sitting under a tree, walking through grass, looking at clouds that remind us of the infinite vastness of sky and the wind-chopped waters of an inland sea that leads to the ocean. 

  I'll meet with my baseball team for our last beer call together.  I don't know it on Friday, but I'll win Rookie of the Year from my coach Julius, another good friend I'm lucky to have.   Tuesday, I start floor hockey again.

  At that same gathering, I'll buy a stag and doe ticket for November, another opportunity to have fun and meet new people, possibly someone who'll be special.  Another whim decision, unexpected, and new, like my decision to work in talent.  A psychic told me this summer that the next special girl I meet would be at an unexpected party in the winter.  Could this be it?  We'll see. I tend not to believe most self-proclaimed psychics, so I'm not going to expect anything.  But I can hope.

  The day will end with this blog entry.  Tomorrow I return to work, and whatever trouble I may find myself getting in, if at all, despite my best efforts.  But I'm not going to spin my wheels anymore for no reward.  I will do what's required, focus with all my best, and then walk at the bell.  Become what we all expect of a typical government worker.

  I'll be living with my 30s for the next ten years, so I'll have to get used to it.  It'll take time, but what else can you do?  30's typically a difficult year for most people in those unexpected ways. This is just my time to deal with it.

   And as my friend Rick has been telling me for a while, I just have to be patient that I'll find someone, and find something to do to enjoy my time in the meantime. If I'm in the flow of experiences I enjoy, I won't need to worry about the interpersonal dynamics of approaching girls or not approaching them: we'll meet each other halfway.  And it won't feel like work.



 Nervous breakdowns happen to everyone, even me. Not often, but this one was a long time coming, and now that it's passed, I still feel that calm that follows.  It won't last, of course - nothing lasts - but at least for now, I can just sleep the sleep of the tired and the lucky.

   It's unrealistic to feel grateful and joyous all the time, but at least I can be conscious of the stormy days, be aware of things as they happen, and try to get through them with a minimum of damage to self, surroundings, and reputation.  The contrast of pleasure and pain makes life.

  This breakdown cleared the air.  Eventually, I'll be grateful for it, but in the meantime, I'm happy with just not being ashamed of it.

   9:40pm as I write this sentence.

  I now go to bed and sleep, turning out the lights on an apartment that's clean once again.

  Let's see what the neighbour chick's got in store tonight.

My Nervous Breakdown, Pt 1

(Preface: this is very closely related to Allie Brosh's the Sneaky Hate Spiral.  Click here to read before continuing if you haven't already.  If not, I bid you continue)

5:43am.

That's what the BlackBerry screen says.  5:43am.  My alarm's not set to go off for another hour or so.  I was dreaming deeply, of markets and sunsets in faraway places. 

So why am I up? 

Then I hear it.  Muffled, intermittent, human.  Heavy, from behind the concrete wall that my bed backs onto. 

I sit up in bed in a state of pure awareness, not completely sure what I am hearing.  Then my brain reconciles the sound.  Heavy breathing.  Two people.

My neighbours are having sex at 5:43am on the other side of that wall. 

Three feet of concrete separates me from their hot and heavy, yet somehow I can hear it. 

This is the last straw.

Flashback to Tuesday

The first work day back from the Thanksgiving weekend began poorly.

The preceding week, I had asked my boss to leave an hour early on Wednesday, before my two day vacation, then Thanksgiving weekend..  Typical arrangement requires me to make up the time I take.  I had offered to make up the time before Wednesday, but my boss advised me that she prefers I "do it afterwards".  I interpreted this to mean that my very next shift I am to show up early.  This has been the process at other workplaces I've been at.  Of course, this thinking made an ass out of you and me (mostly me)....

Tuesday, I showed up an hour early, only to find that my government building was still closed, business hours having not begun.  Fortunately, I found an unlocked door and made my way in.  However, the elevators are also locked until 8:00am, meaning that unless I have a special base pass, I can't actually access my floor.  Again, fortunately, some kind souls working extra - like me! - showed up and took me to a floor three stories above mine. 

That's okay, I thought, I'll just take the stairs down to my floor.  And I made it to the stairwell.  And I descended to my floor.  Only to find that the door to my floor was, in fact, locked.  I tried other doors on other floors, only to discover a rather unfortunate truth: I was stuck in the stairwell. 

I checked the time.  7:36am.  Not bad, boss isn't usually in for a while yet.  I suddenly remembered the phone number for security, called the guard, identified myself, and asked him to come up and unlock the door.  He did so, and I gained access to my office.

Boss was not in, so to give her some proof that I did my best to be in an hour early, I sent her an email (those are time-stamped, right?).  45 minutes made up, will make up the other 15 somehow later.

Boss never came in.  In meetings out of the office all week.  But she was checking her email.  Two hours later, I got a reply.  Essentially said that this arrangement wasn't what I thought it was, and that I likely came in early for nothing.  I sighed heavily, rubbed my eyes, went on with my day, mostly conscious.

Nine hours later, I headed home.  Around the afternoon, I developed a headache.  Intense, like little lightning storms striking my skull.  It developed for no reason whatsoever, as the rest of the day had gone well, but then it was followed by stomach queasiness and a general feeling of "what the fuck" flowing through my veins and nerve endings.

I'd had plans to go play floor hockey that night, but instead I came home and lay down, napped for a good two hours.  Though I would eventually get up and get the wherewithall to go to the gym and do mild cardio, my evening, for all intents and purposes, was shot.  The headache and stomach sick vanished just as quickly as it appeared.  I had no idea why.

Wednesday

Wednesday dawned, and the day was slow, so I blogged. Coming home, I decided to go to the Second Cup and write for a few hours.

Outside, an autumn rain, the equal and opposite of spring rain, fell in torrents, cold and bone chilling and dreary.  It was the dreariness that got to me, the type of weather that not only soaks your clothes but gets into your heart and pools, weighing it down.  My friends a city away from me, most of them, no girlfriend or wife to go home to, I felt sad.  True to my bilingual status, all I could think was "le sigh". 

This was a thirtysomething Wednesday, my first, and it was boring and sad.  The kind when you only think about lost baseball games and Fs on report cards and missed opportunities.  Where you dwell on wrong turns taken in the road that led you here.

Was this all there was?  We go through childhood and school dreaming about what we would be when we grew up, and I was none of the things I had dreamed about.  Not an astronaut, not a fighter pilot, not a police detective, not a cartoonist, nor a professor. An author, sure, but not successful in the financial and commercial sense, not yet.  A career in limbo then, working at a low level minion job where I am viewed as a peon - essential to operations, but not someone to be appreciated or thanked - to pay the bills until that success happens. 

The mood didn't get much better as I talked to Mom on the phone, laying out all the reasons for why my life wasn't going the way I wanted to.  "I like what you wrote in your blog," she said, "but I also know what you say to me when we talk about the same things.  You're trying to convince yourself as much as you are others when you do your motivational entries."

Mom's where I derive much of my crazy, I think, my different way of thinking about things.  And she hit the nail on the head, though I answered that even if I am doing this to convince myself of what I should be thinking, if it helps someone else deal with their shit, it benefits both of us.

But that night, I just felt generally stuck.  Making enough money at my job for food and shelter, but not enough for plane tickets, night school classes, or dance lessons: places and experiences where I could potentially meet Miss Right and thus restore my life to the normal function it had for over a decade.  I am no good single.  No one appreciates me at work, and I have no one at home to give validation that I matter as a human being, that I matter to someone else.

I'm also far more intelligent than the work I do, having passed up management jobs here and there throughout my twenties because, well, I've never seen any industry, any economic activity that I could devote 100% of my passion to.  Nothing about the management lifestyle lights me up except for the cash, which I'd gladly accept if I didn't have any responsibility.  I hadn't, however, factored in the hit that my self esteem would take by doing minion work when I'm way more evolved than most minions. 

And, of course, the 30 thing, which I realized was wishful thinking on my part to regard it as just another day. 

This was the mindset I was in on Wednesday night.  I went to the gym, came back, washed up, and went to bed, alone...again. 

As I tried to sleep through the mania that was keeping me up, I wondered why it was so hard to meet women my age. 

Myth#1 of all frustrated single "nice" guys like me is that there aren't women around.  Not true, I see them everywhere.  The thing is just approaching them.

Do women really like being approached by guys?  I can't get a satisfactory, absolute answer to this question.  I've always thought it was borderline creepy to just walk up to a random girl and say "Hi".  But apparently, that's the way to go.  I meditated on the paradoxes of dating: that girls will claim to want "nice guys" but will be turned on by assholes who will hurt them later; that if you go up to a girl with a plan, she'll deride your "agenda", but if you just flat out tell her you're interested with no games, she'll find you boring.

More excerpts from a book I've quoted here before by Lori Gottlieb called Marry Him in which all the fortysomething singles increasingly pine for the "nice guys" they weren't attracted to in their quarter life years, guys who are now married to the women who were saavy enough to lock them down when the getting was good.  Meditated on where those women were at this moment.

More contemplation: why is it so easy for almost every other guy I know to just approach a girl?  Why is it I can give speeches to crowds of dozens, raise the roof, flirt with cashiers and baristas, make friends with strangers, but I freeze when I see a girl at a bar I'm interested in seeing romantically?  This comes naturally to almost 90% of men out there.  I'm having to learn it from books. 

I contemplate entering the priesthood to simply remove the dating option from Jody's palette of options.  Not Roman Catholic.  Maybe Shaolin. I'll know kung fu.

Oh, and the fact that I've been an Aberdonian version of what Barney Stinson calls "The Sexless Innkeeper" for nearly a year, after having lived a decade of my prime years where access to sex wasn't in question. That was about the last thought I had before finally drifting off.

Around 1:45am or so, I finally fell asleep. 

Thursday

I'd only seen the girl next door once. 

Blonde, twenty five or twenty six, decent shape, somewhat nice, but like all other quarter-lifers, not terribly sociable, no small talk kind of thing.  Small talk and walking up to people to say hi is the domain of the older generation.  We said awkward hellos, took the elevator down to the parking garage, said goodbye, and that's it.  No other communication.

Until I hear her having loud sex on the other side of my bedroom wall with a boyfriend she had acquired.  And that communication is not only one-way, but unintentional.

5:54am.  They haven't stopped at all.  And I'm angry.  Determined. 

This is the closest I have physically been to that kind of energy in a long time.  It seems that the good things in life that I'm looking for are happening all around me, but not to me directly.  The universe is determined to screw with my life with its pernacious sense of humour.

Sexless Inkeeper my ass.

Time to stop feeling pathetic and alone.  Time to man up and head out there, stop being sad,and be awesome instead.  If life isn't going to give me what I want, then it's time to go out and take it!

I get out of bed and start my day, determined to stop letting life kick my ass.  Determined to make a change....

(To Be Continued....)

Virus of the Mind

At what point did we start defining ourselves by what we do and what we've got?

Among the big selling points of membership in my college Fraternity is that the skills you acquire and the network you're able to access will help you obtain the high profile, high income, high prestige career that you're looking for. 

This is true, in many respects, in which case I have to ask myself: just what the hell have I, in the last ten years since joining Phi Delta Theta, done with my life?

Four days into 30 years old, and I can tell you, it feels pretty much the same in my personal experience. 

And yet socially, it feels like I'm the slow kid in the class. 

Suddenly, I'm in a new bracket when I take Internet surveys (30-39 years).  I'm the same age that my parents were when they had two kids, a house, two jobs, and two cars, a comfortable life.

I watch TV and see favourite actors who are my age or younger; see ads for lawyers and doctors who graduated the year after I did; read books and magazines written by people five years younger than me and now enjoying the type of material success I still aspire to.

You get the idea.  Personally, it's no different.  Just another hash mark on the wall.  Socially, the culture expects me to have made more of my life than I have.  The culture would have me feel like the first few lyrics of a Nickelback song ("Feels like the bottom of the ninth and I'm never gonna win/This life hasn't turned out quite the way I want it to be").

But then, I ask myself, would I trade the self-awareness I've gained from having gone through difficult career adventures? Of trying and failing to fit my life into the prescribed mail slots that society and the economy have set up for me?

Would I trade self-knowledge for being a successful corporate executive?  Military officer?  Doctor? Lawyer?  Banker? 

And the answer is.....maybe.

Ignorance is bliss, right?  Haven't we all wondered what it would be like to be that asshole driving the convertible Mercedes down the road with the bleach blonde golddigger riding shotgun?  The one with personalized licence plates that read "$MyRide$" and shiny new rims that get replaced with every quarterly bonus?  Don't we all, on occasion, feel society's subtle criticism eating away at our sense of self-confidence and certainty?  Singer Heather Nova calls it "a virus of the mind".  It's definitely contagious, and resistant to most antibiotics.

It would certainly help me with online dating.  My OkCupid profile, frankly, is not that impressive, unless you're measuring from rock bottom (that is, that I bathe, I'm employed, I don't live in my parents' basement, etc..).  I have a job that's unsexy to the point of causing reproductive organs to actually retract.  I drive a dented Sunfire.  I rent.

Again, you get the picture.  I know my value as a person, but on paper, I'm not terribly marketable to the opposite sex (though admittedly, I'm not looking for the type of girl who likes only cars and money, either).

Would I trade this awareness?  Somedays, I would, if only so that I wouldn't be so aware of the lacklustre results of my life versus the ambitious goals I'd set when I was an undergrad. Surely, the unhappiest neanderthal in Plato's Parable of the Cave was the one who knew the shadows on the wall weren't reality: they were just shadows.  Imagine trying to live with the other chained troglodytes afterwards.  Man, they'd give you shit!

Then again, maybe we just need a more authentic definition of identity.

My dad is a trained mechanic and fitter, and that was his work when I was growing up.  Early memories of him involve not the work he was doing, but coming home with food and toys and movies for us kids to enjoy. That's who he was and is today.  He's a great man. 

And yet, I wonder how many people's impressions of him were based solely on what he did for a living? Would they have thought him a failure at life that he was a mechanic at 30 years old?  If so, they weren't seeing the whole picture.

Outsiders don't see inner qualities. The worst thing we can do is make ourselves the outsiders of our own lives. 

Notice that when you have family or friends that you really care about, boyfriends and girlfriends whom you love dearly, in most cases it stops mattering what they do for a living.  What matters more is who they really are outside of work, and how you feel when you're in their presence.  

Dating-wise, I'd be damned lucky to find an available girl my age or younger who sees who I am, without having to lead off with my lacklustre material achievements.  Friend and family-wise, I'm confident most people see my value outside of what I actually do to make money. 

And who am I, authentically, outside of society's prescribed definitions and expectations? 

I'm Jody Aberdeen.  And I can decide for myself what that means.

And I can also post a picture of Homer Simpson at the end of this entry for no reason whatsoever.  Enjoy!

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."

Randoms - July 21 2010

Class Hatred:  I just finished Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club. Fucking amazing book. Much more to it than just fighting, and you know what, it’s explained why I’ve been feeling the pressure from my hometown lately. I’m feeling a Durden-esque class hatred on right now everywhere I look. And it’s true: to a certain degree, I’ve bought into what society and advertising says I should have, not what I actually want, and that I don't have. No wonder I'm so grouchy lately.

The malfunction many of us working stiffs feel is that simultaneous desire for the high standards of living and life experiences that wealth brings – the exotic vacations, the nice living spaces, the hot cars, the mansions with furniture that’s so fluffy I'm gonna die – and disdain for how much of a self-important dandy you really become when you get caught up in the brand names and the elite memberships and the Michelin stars. It’s the status symbolism of the wealth and not the money itself that becomes more important, and that’s where I’m conflicted, because well, I ain’t no dandy, and I could give a shit about status. 

Recommended troubleshoot: accept that it’s possible to have da moneys and not become a bourgeois clone. Get rich to do what you want, by doing what you want, and though you might live in nicer digs and visit cooler destinations than Cuba or Florida, you’ll still buy your boxer briefs at Zellers and sit in the 100 section at the Jays games like the rest of us.

Quick aside: the imagery of the IKEA catalogue replacing porn as the standard single guy’s bathroom read is also something compelling. We truly are a generation of men raised by women, according to Palahniuk, and we’ve been effeminized to such a degree that we adopt the same nesting instincts as women. And yet, maybe this is only true if you're living with a girl?  Shopping at IKEA used to have much more appeal to me when I was in a relationship than now. As a single dude, I’m finding it's not nearly as appealing as before, and I could give a crap about what kind of TV stand I have, not like before when my ex would lovingly point out the flaws in my colour co-ordination.

However, I do stop in every now and again for the $1 breakfast and lingonberry juice. That shit is scientifically proven to put hair on your ass.  I know, I've run tests.

Reality Check:  Returning to Chuck Palahniuk for a moment, I was surprised to learn that when he pitched Fight Club to W.W. Norton and Company in the 1990s, the major publisher only offered him a $6,000 advance. The offer was what other writers called a "piss off" bid from W.W. Norton, an insult in the modern publishing industry.  By comparison, Stephen King's advance for Carrie was $2,500, but that was back in 1973...I have no idea what the inflation would be, but it might be comparable.  Either way, it made me realize: I've been resting a ton of hope on selling my current MS, even though I may not get much for it at first.  I'll still have to work a job until the royalties kick in, and then only if the book sales exceed a certain amount, typically $100,000.  I may also have to write another one, and that could take another two years, depending on the concept.

What does Palahniuk's example tell me?  Barring a meteoric rise to fame and film adaptation thanks to the brilliant and compelling nature of my writing debut, the future's probably going to look much like my present life. That means I may as well start acting as if I've already made it.  Palahniuk said yes to the initial offer because he saw it as six months' worth of rent right there.  Not gonna lie, six grand would be a life saver at present, and if it leads to the fame and fortune that Palahniuk and King now enjoy, it'll be worth it in the long run.  Until then, I can act as if, and be happy. 

Hmm....what would your day look like if you already had what you think you needed to be happy?

Random Fandom: Katee Sackhoff. 

Oh, Katee Sackhoff, how I miss thee!  BSG didn't end as well as I'd liked, but you were always amazing on it.  I remember many a conversation with my buddies about who we'd want to hook up with on the show. Most of them chose Tricia Helfer' Six, others preferred Grace Park's Boomer.  But I have a thing for beautiful, strong, aggressive women, who aren't built like sticks, who have that hint of artistic crazy and that unpredictable temper, and that was always Starbuck.  Katee turned 30 this past April, and she's incredibly smokin'.  That means there's some hope for me yet, as my 30th is only months away.  Who says you always have to be 21 forever? I caught a few glimpses of her on the series ender of 24, but hopefully we'll see her come back to TV full time soon. 

Unnameable Randoms - July 14 2010

Happy Bastille Day!

Two centuries, three decades, and one year since the birth of the French Republic, and scholars still argue over the merits and detriments of the Revolution itself. 

Regardless of the typically anglophonic stereotypes surrounding the French people, institutions, and culture, we all owe much of Western civilization's heritage to la belle France, so here's a tip of the hat to mes amis francais.

"Vive la France....Vive la Liberté"

What It Takes

What's the timeline for success, anyway?

It took me ten years of hemming and hawing to find myself on my path, and you know, even I wonder if that time was still wasted.  Even still, despite previous entries and, frankly, just flat-out knowing better, I sometimes feel that I'm behind the 8 ball to get this life started.

As I mentioned last time, living in this city is tough sometimes.  Surrounded by all of this success, and I'm still not good enough, for my own standards, that is.  I guess nothing's ever good enough for anyone in our society, and given that Burlington is a city given to symbolic wealth as well as the real deal, I shouldn't be surprised that I'm feeling the pressure. It isn't necessarily a bad thing, getting a kick in the ass on a daily basis to get your life in order, though it stings afterwards and makes sitting down rather uncomfortable.

I'm starting to get what Jack Shephard goes through on LOST.  My actual parents are overwhelming supportive of me, always have been, but imagine having a dad who looks for any excuse to tell you that you don't have what it takes. 

That's basically Burlington, Christian Shepherd in city form.  It's tough on you.  It sacrifices your ability to really develop a relationship with it.  It causes some collateral damage and makes you "walk among them, but not be one of them".  But in the end, it turns you into the hero.  It's an instrument of destiny, this city.  And on a basic level, I love it like a father.  Twisted, I know.

It wasn't like this when I was in Westdale. Hamilton doesn't have daddy issues.  Hamilton's more like a divorced fiftysomething that's seen better days trying to figure itself out, and is just starting to make some brilliant progress.  Until it cleans up some of its own mess and goes through a few more years of therapy, you'll never see Hamilton giving you a lecture on success.  Hamilton is no hypocrite.  Then again, Hamilton won't expect you to do better, either.

Enough with the anthropomorphic city metaphors.  You get the picture. 

I keep adjusting and re-adjusting my constructs to suit my moods and emotions.  Truth is, I've been in a crisis/opportunity mode for a while now, and not just because I got a divorce at 29.  This is my quarter-life opportunity, as yet unresolved, in fact having moved two steps backwards in the past six months because I'm now single on top of everything.  Make no mistake, though: the crisis/opportunity was there before.

I've written about that already a lot, but the new revelation is simple: I have to do better at what I love doing.  That means making it make money.  That means recognizing the one simple truth of my life in 2010:

The only thing that truly matters is the book.  It's the key to everything that I'm missing out on.

Without a completed MS, there's nothing to pitch to an agent.  Without the agent, there's no credible solicitation to a publisher for the rights, and thus no advance. Without the advance, there is no success in my chosen career.  Without this success, I am worthless, just another cog chugging along in the public service machine.  An overly sensitive, original and creative dreamer with nothing of value to give outside of being exceptionally personable, quirky, and sometimes funny, telling new stories, and pushing paper behind a desk. An overeducated peon. 

People skills are good, spiritual values are sound, intellect matters, creativity is God in the pen, but if this city's taught me anything, they're all meaningless if you can't translate that into material success, to demonstrate that you're a man and can be a provider and a king. 

Drew Baylor says it best in Elizabethtown: "Success, not greatness, [is] the only god the entire world worship[s]."  Then again, maybe I'm learning the wrong lesson?

I'm sick of being told by others that I have potential, that I'm going places.  That's something you tell doe-eyed university grads, not 29 year olds starting to show gray in their hair.  I want to start manifesting my potential.  I want to actually go places instead of talking about it all the time.  This is the realization I should have had ten years ago.  I have to recover a decade.

That means getting my shit done.  And I'm doing it.  1,300 words added today to my story. Current word count as of when I started this entry: 109,403.  More to go.  Way way more.

I'm gonna do it my fucking way, without being a banker or an accountant or other suited clone of some evil corporation.  Without becoming one of those snot-nosed WASPish country club members in preppie scarves and polo shirts. 

I'll show you, Burlington. I've got what it takes.

"Girls don't like boys; girls like cars and money."

I dunno, maybe I'm becoming cynical, but this seems to be the rule rather than the exception when it comes to twentysomething Canadian girls.  Then again, once again, maybe it's just where I live. 

I can't completely fault girls who affirm this Good Charlotte lyric.  Who wants to date someone who has no job and no ambition?  No energy?  No creativity?  He'd better have either a great personality or a very big penis, 'cause really, chicky, that's all you're going to get out of that relationship. 

On the other hand, those girls are gonna spend an awful lot of their time alone at night with Haagen Daas containers and Sleepless in Seattle reruns....

There are exceptions, of course, and some are very exceptional exceptions, but it seems that if you don't have the toys, you ain't got shit as far as the vast majority of high value single ladies are concerned.  This is a very old discussion, I know.  It seems guys have been bitching about this one for years, but it's new to me, and I'm running into it more and more each day, mostly regarding online dating.  Putting "Writer/Government" as your job in your profile seems to be as effective a deterrent as saying you're the "D" word (divorced).  And I have both.  I might as well beat myself with an ugly stick and stop bathing.

Then again, am I wrong?  No bullshit here, single ladies: are you for real?  Are you independent or aren't you, because, really, I'm having trouble figuring out just what it is you want out of life?  Because if you want to be treated like a princess, then that's fine: I'll work my way up and spoil you rotten.  But if you want to be independent, then what the hell does it matter to you what I do for a living?  Maybe you haven't quite figured yourselves out yet?

Hmm...re-reading that now, it looks bitter, and I guess there's some venting here (it's my blog and I'll cry if I want to), but this is some serious discussion material.  It's frustrating both on a personal level and one of sheer intellectual curiosity, so I'd really like to know.

Where do we draw the line between realistic expectations and wanting what we want?  Discuss.

***

G-20

(LS: 10-0   Mood: Oddly Detached)

So tempting to just say "gas the shit out of them", isn't it?  Or, if you're charging the ramparts, to cry "police state".  So so tempting to opt for the simple, time-honoured tradition of intellectualized and institutionalized name-calling for the sake of advancing one ideology over another.  Fortunately, I'm not so easily tempted.

The convolution of issues surrounding the G-20 in Toronto - or really, anywhere the leaders of the twenty most prosperous nations on Earth decide to meet - brings out all the emotions, but strangely, very little on the issues.

And those issues - the continued functioning of the global economy, sustaining the environment, distribution of resources to the world's needy, human rights - almost never make the front pages.  Instead, we get the violence.  Indeed, that's all we get.

I'm not sympathetic to violent actions.  The hypocrisy - and comedic irony - of those Starbuck-swilling lefties with their rasta-coloured knitted hats and beat poems donning balaclavas and smashing the windows of the very same Starbucks where they planned their marches is fair game for all to see.  The guerilla tactics of blending into peaceful crowds, rightfully exercising their democratic rights to protest, and then putting on masks and rampaging through the streets before blending back into the crowds, do a great disservice to the causes advocated by the majority of those taking to the streets.

And yet, I'm equally reluctant to lend my support to the elite - the business leaders and political officials who live at the top of the capitalist food chain at altitudes of wealth and prosperity and power that 95% of the world population will never reach, thanks in large part because those already at the top have rigged the system that way - because I will not be a useful idiot. 

Speaking of revolutionaries, that's the term, mistakenly attributed to Vladmir Illyich Lenin, that describes those in the intelligentsia and middle class who speak out against progressive change that would benefit the lower classes, despite themselves being blocked by the very powers they endorse.  It's the Uncle Tom approach to manufacturing the consent of the mainstream population: get a few of "the ordinary Joes" to be your tools, and the rest of the population - seeing someone just like them advocating in support of the bourgeois - will go along with it.

I'm a writer, an artist.  I'm very loathe to align myself with those already in power, for whenever we speak out in support of one side or another, we add our power to whoever is already there.  And those in the upper echelon already have so much... including the ability to take away my freedom, my expression, in the name of "public safety" or whatever self-serving pretext they want to invent.  A quote from V for Vendetta sums it up nicely: "People shouldn't be afraid of their governments.  Governments should be afraid of their people".  If they turn us into a police state, they were always going to turn us into a police state.  At least, if that ever happens, I will be able to say that I didn't contribute my words to helping manufacture my own shackles.

But before you declare that I'm on the side of the window smashers, V was, of course, talking about violent revolution against an actual dictatorship.  Though highly statist and institutionally conservative, Canada has no such regime in place.  For that, we are lucky.

Useful idiots exist for every ideology, and I will not be one of them.  It's just as easy for righties to call the violent protesters "terrorists" and condemn the violence as it is for lefties to assail the suspension of "democracy" in the live zone.  The battle lines are familiar, the banners the same, in this debate as all others that happen daily: the only difference now is that there are actual battles taking place.

  

They need to find another way to discuss these important issues, a method that's far less high profile and likely to attract violence than what we have.  Those who will smash windows have always had that predisposition to do so: the G20 is the best excuse available for them to align themselves with whatever "cause" and throw rocks.  The initial reason to have "summits" was purely for prestige reasons, I think.  It's a world class event, a chance for host nations to pull down their drawers and say "See?  My boner's bigger than 85% of the other countries in the world".  Prestige costs us, though, as evidenced in the destruction and injury happening in the streets of Toronto tonight.  Maybe it's time for a more flaccid approach to ruling the world.  Give them nothing to hit, and they won't show up to throw rocks.

Until then, where do I stand?  After all, we're in extremis to some extent, and in such situations, you're either with or against.  I'm biased, primarily because I know there's at least one police officer friend who's likely fending off bottle-throwing socialist crackheads as I sit in my comfortable apartment an hour away by the lake, but I don't buy that half these guys are serious about their "causes".  The real heroes - the guys and gals who truly love progress - aren't charging the barricades in Toronto tonight, but are actually down on the shores of Louisiana and Alabama;  in sub-Saharan Africa and the Congo; in Haiti and in Chile; in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, becoming the change they want to see in the world.

It's one thing to sit in a posh cafe in the city, sipping lattes and bitching about capitalism and Darfur, quite another to put your money where your mouth is and assuage your "white/straight/male/capitalist/middle class" guilt by going out into the world and making a real difference.  I'm not happy with the rioters, and I hope our police use only the appropriate level of force to ensure they are contained.  Of course, the level of propriety in the police response depends almost entirely on the conduct of the protesters.  After all, it's not like they didn't know what they were going up against beforehand, and the time may come when "gassing the shit out of them" is the best way to keep the peace.  In fact, I believe we've reached that time.

But when this is all done, we need to engage with the existing processes for political and social progress, because the lefties are right on one count: if enough of the middle class populations of the developed world knew the true extent to which corporations and governments have been exploiting them, every nation would have its own version of the destruction of the Bastille. 

We only find out about the whitewashing and denials, the decisions to choose profits over sustainability and safety, the scams designed to exploit the poor to the benefit of those already living in ridiculous wealth, after the fact.  The sub-prime mortgage scandal and the BP oil spill are two examples.  Imagine if we knew, right now, all of the profiteering schemes being cooked up by unelected, unaccountable corporations that control vast swathes of our lives, property, and natural resources.  The Toronto riots would seem trite in comparison to the global revolution that would transpire. 

We can avoid this, and potentially reduce the intensity of protesters at these summits and other gatherings, by doing one thing: listen to the arguments they are presenting.  This is difficult to do without somehow granting legitimacy to the violent tactics now in use, but part of the problem is that people who are ignored all the time will eventually get your attention, and sometimes in a way that you don't like.  As a collective society, we do ourselves a disservice by ignoring the voices on the fringes crying out for an end to poverty, to justice between men and women, for a cleaner world and an economy that doesn't exploit those who work at the bottom of the economic order. Ignore them long enough, eventually, they will make themselves heard. 

We don't have this problem with those behind the barricades with presidents and prime ministers: they already have the power to turn their opinions into policy.  But will we also allow them to manufacture our consent without question?  I'll let you figure that out for yourself.

Until then, let's hope and pray for the safety of our cops, the liberties and safety of those engaged in legitimate protest, the security of our city, the protection of our democratic freedoms as well as our democratic nation, the welfare of the downtrodden around the globe, and - as cheesy as it sounds - a better tomorrow for all six billion human beings and the world on which they live in this, the second decade of the 21st Century.