Yet another new, free local "magazine" arrived on my doorstep this week. There are a million of these publications, all of them excellent. Sorry. I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. Let's be honest: NOT ONE of these ubiquitous publications is excellent. Each is only a slight variation of the next, filled with trite, badly-written advertorial copy written by 19 year old "journalists" and small local business owners playing at journalism in order to promote their personal ventures. Most of the time, I put every one of these rags right into the trash, but when a new one arrives, I can't help but flip through it (once, with hope in my naive little heart), looking for something ... better.Today was just such a day. On my doorstep was the newly minted Village Living magazine, Issue 1, Volume 1. As always, as I've said, I had hope. I had the tiniest glimmer of hope, which was, predictably, dashed on page 5, where, below the masthead, appears the following disclaimer: "Village Living accepts no liability of any kind, written or implied, regarding the contents of the magazine and expressly disclaims any warranty regarding the accuracy or reliability of information contained herein."Soooo... Sigh.
I started blogging back in 2005. In my mind, this means I'm a relatively new blogger (because I knew people who were blogging back in the 1990s, before the word "blog" even existed). But in the real world, I'm actually an old-time blogger, one of the early adopters. And in the grand scheme of things, this means that there are still a lot of people out there who don't understand what I do or why I do it. For a lot of people, "blog" still translates into a strange conflation of negatives like scary/weird/tacky/stupid.
Call it "essay" writing and a completely different image comes to mind. Samuel Johnson by Joshua Reynolds I don't see the difference, personally. Personal blog posts are essays and essays are personal blog posts. The only difference, at least in my mind, is the delivery medium. The internet didn't exist thirty years ago, let alone three hundred years ago. If it had, I imagine people like Samuel Johnson would have been bloggers. And they probably would have felt great about it, the internet allowing them to disseminate their thoughts more efficiently. And people would have eaten it up. (Of course, if women were the ones producing personal essays in this imagined age of the internet, people would be screaming "shut up shut up shut up!", but that's the case with women's writing even today, so let's not go into that.) My point is that personal essays and personal blog posts are really the same thing. Anyone who says they aren't probably has an agenda that's beside the point.
But regardless of medium, regardless of intent, regardless of what we call it, one of the main problems with writing is that we can't control the reader's experience. We can't control meaning. This sounds simple and obvious, but in practice, it's hard to get your head around.
When you write something, you feel (quite rightly, in many respects) that you OWN it. That it's yours and yours alone. No matter how you share or disseminate your work (via newspaper, book, blog or otherwise) I think this feeling of ownership is universal. It's not practical, but I don't know any writer who claims not to feel it.
But you can't control meaning. You can't control the reader's experience. You can't control interpretation. For such an old medium, writing is surprisingly alive in this sense. It lives and changes and grows as it's read and shared.
This is something that's both compelling and hard to accept.
I've been thinking about it a lot for obvious (or perhaps not-so-obvious) reasons. If you read the blog regularly and saw that post I did about my grandmother and the chain of comments that followed, you probably understand. If not, I'll explain by saying this: I wrote something that made a few people angry.
Usually, when this happens, the angry people are relatively random strangers. Cranks. In this instance, the angry parties were member of my family. Not close members, but members nonetheless. In retrospect, I should have expected their reactions. Or at least anticipated, in some vague sense, that they would be angry. But in retrospect, we all should have done and thought a lot of things that we didn't do or think, so I'm trying not to be too hard on myself.
But of course, I'm still thinking about it. To save face, I could pretend that I stopped thinking about it the moment after it happened, that the harsh and shockingly off-topic personal critique just rolled off my back. But I don't really care about saving face. If someone sets out to hurt you, and you consequently feel hurt, there's nothing embarrassing about admitting that, is there?
So I admit, I've been thinking about it for the last few weeks, rolling over and over it in my mind, trying to decide what I should have done differently, if anything at all. Image by Gaetan Lee. From wikicommons.
I once had a friend named Andy who tried to explain it to me in more scientific terms, quoting brain and psychiatric studies and the like (which I didn't understand). We all think, he said, trying to put it into terms that I would comprehend, that we understand what other people are thinking. We are all, he said, confident in our assumptions when it comes to determining motive and intent in the brains of other people. We all think we're GREAT at this -- understanding others. But in reality, we're crap at it. We don't have a clue what other people are thinking or feeling or wanting. We only know what we might think or feel or want, imagining ourselves in a similar situation, which is something we can't really imagine correctly.
And most of the time, this doesn't matter.
We understand enough to get along. We're able to get by. Our myriad misunderstandings rarely make a significant difference in the world.
Until, of course, they do.
I've thought about this idea often over the past several years and it's come to resonate with me more and more. Certainly, I have fallen victim to the trap of thinking I understand another person. This happens, I think, most often in romantic relationships. Imagine you approach your first husband (just for example) ten years after the fact, and you say, "Hey, remember when that thing happened? I thought you did/said that thing because you were thinking this/that. Was I right?" And your first husband will most likely say, "No, not at all. I did/said that thing because of THIS OTHER THING THAT NEVER EVEN OCCURRED TO YOU." Whatever he says, it will surprise you. But so what? You've been divorced for ten years. It won't matter anymore. And unfortunately, you likely won't have the presence of mind to talk in this way when it does matter. In the moment, so many other things take over. We assume we are understanding each other when we're not, and we think we're right when we're not. And the stakes are high and the moment is hot and no one wants to back down. It's only later that we can talk about these things clearly. I think this is just how we are -- how we ALL are. Like it or not.
So like I said ... it doesn't really matter. Except when it does. And for me, writing is one of the times when it does.
Public domain image. Photographer: William B. Folsom. From wikicommons.
I HATE the way my writing can sometimes be misinterpreted, twisted to fit a particular agenda, or simply misread and unfairly evaluated. I HATE that. But I can't control it. The only way to stop it would be to quit writing entirely. And that's not going to happen. You can't stop doing something that saves your life. Not if you want to keep being alive.
Writing a blog is complicated because despite the prevalence of the technology and the people who use it, the world is largely a tradition-driven sort of place. Anyone who bothers to blog appreciates the advantages it's brought. We understand that blogging has enabled the democratization of the artistic process and a whole host of other things as well. We understand that a blog isn't "just a stupid blog" -- a phrase used to damage credibility and cast shame. We understand that what we're doing is no more and no less than essay writing, but we don't need to call it that. There's nothing shameful about "blogging." We don't have to hide from it because we get it. But at present, there are still many more people who don't get it. And who don't like it. That's changing, but we're still in the teething and motor-skills stage of this whole thing. It's early days yet. It's going to take a bit more time.
Anyway. I write this because I've been thinking about it a lot. And because people have been asking me what I'm going to DO. What are you going to DO? they say, meaning, what am I going to do about the strange and hateful comments occasionally left by occasional readers.
And the answer is this: I'm not going to do anything. I cycled through that stage of trying to understand and assign motivation, and then I moved into thinking about how we can't really understand such things (see above). And then I stopped. So now there's nothing to do except to go on, doing what I do, writing what I write, blogging what I blog, and trying my best to say the things that feel important to say.
Periodically, I'm going to try to remind myself that I can't control meaning, but that doesn't mean that I shouldn't write and it doesn't mean that I shouldn't say what I feel like saying, exactly when I feel like saying it. There's nothing embarrassing about that, no matter what anyone would have you believe.
I'm not going to forget about it. Not exactly. I'm going to put the experience into the vault of things I draw on when trying to get my brain around the seemingly crazy things that other people do and say. And despite that bit of experience, more often than not, when trying to interpret someone else, I'm going to be wrong. But so what? Most of the time, I won't think about it at all. I'll go on, thinking I'm in the right and so will the people who disagree. Because that is what we do. That is what we all do.
The year is ending. It's been a good one, I think.
 My friend Nick's first child was born eight months ago.
Eight months ago, and I only managed to meet her last week.
I've had a gift for her sitting on my desk for ages - a small, blue elephant, purchased during the Christmas rush. Plush, of course. Friendly-looking. Adorned with a jaunty red bow about the neck (a sweet addition, if I do say so myself).
I was looking forward to handing it over. I was sure the baby would like it.
But nonetheless, as I drove across the city to Nick's house (way up in North York's east end, where he and his wife decided to settle in order to get something of a decent size that was at least semi-affordable), I thought to myself, 'this is what our friendship - no wait, our lives - have come to.'
Eight months to plan a simple visit.
And then I realized I'd forgotten the elephant at home.
Which, just, you know... figures.
Nick is what I'd call a good friend. A close friend. I love him, even though I only manage to see him only a few times a year (at best). But this is what most of my close friendships are like nowadays. Almost everyone I love best is at a distance, in a different city, or working a different schedule. We're all kept apart by the demands of young families, new partners, and business trips. We exchange sporadic emails that are lovely to read, but hellish to get around to writing, and catch sight of each other at weddings and christenings and that sort of thing, when we generally find about five minutes to talk before our relatives sweep us away. I receive (and send) the occasional nostalgic text, but we never talk on the phone. (Who has the time?) And that's just the way it is. That's being grown up and living far away and being busy with work and grocery shopping and exercise and family obligations and all of the general hoo-ha that goes along with being a (reluctantly) upwardly mobile thirty-something living in a major city. It's related (somewhat) to the money issue I wrote about a few weeks ago. Mo' money, mo' problems, remember? We're too busy, mostly because we think we need more money. I think that's what it comes down to.Like I said, that's just the way it is, but at times, it's hard to reconcile with what I remember. When I was a kid, I would take four to six paperbacks out of the school library on Friday afternoon, just to ensure I'd have enough to occupy me over the weekend. I'd lie on my living room floor, paperbacks in a pile, bowl of snacks beside me, just killing time, for hours. I was often bored. I was never busy.
Were someone to call, I'd be ready, at the drop of a hat, to do whatever was suggested. I was always free.
And my fluid, free-time filled lifestyle continued all the way through university. Once, when we were both still students at Queen's, Nick called me up in the wee hours of the morning and said, "I'm going to Toronto. Want to come?" And 30 minutes later we were on the road. Three hours later we were in the city. And by nightfall we were back in Kingston. I didn't even have to think about it. He called and we went. That was the extent of our planning.
Now it takes me eight months to sort out a simple lunch.
And I'm not even popular! That's the real shocker. I'm well-liked (I think), but no social butterfly. And compared to most people I know, I'm positively lousy with time. I work part time. I play sports for fun. We have no children and Nate is an academic, which means he's often at home. My life is shockingly easy, and still, I find myself saying no to half the things I'm invited to, and constantly apologizing for being absent. And at the very same time, I feel like I'm failing at being busy enough. It's mental. Mental, I tell you.
I'm not sure what my point is. I guess this is just something to work on. For the time being, I've visited with Nick and I've met the baby (adorable, chubby, sweet). But the elephant is still sitting here, on my desk, staring at me.
Judging me. I can tell.
Image 1: Jellycat Junglie Blue Elephant; Image 2: Organic Beginnings Baby Sprouts Blue Elephant; Image 3: Bimbo Plush Elephant; Image 4: Judgy Elephant; * available at various retailers online
 I don't usually push my professional stuff on the blah-og. No reason, really. It's just that the blah-of is so decidedly unprofessional. Never the twain shall meet. You know how it is. But today, I decided to do a little plug. The company I work for -- Nyman Ink -- has entered this "Small Bussiness, Big Impact" contest thingy. I wrote the entry, the script, and did the voiceover for our entry video. And, I dunno... I just REALLY WANT TO WIN. So, would you all be dears and vote? I'd really appreciate it. Just visit the contest site, watch our one-minute video, and cast your vote (by decipherig the captcha and clicking the vote button on the right side of the page).
Thanks, dudes.
I don't make a lot of money. In fact, I make very little.
ON PURPOSE.
This makes my parents crazy.
They bring it up every time I see them. Every time! Sometimes, people don't believe me when I say this. They think I'm exaggerating. Especially because my parents are generally careful to bring up my finances only when we're alone. Talking about money in front of guests wouldn't be polite. And as you'll see from what I am about to tell you, if my parents care about one thing, it's being polite.
Anyway. Anticipating charges of exaggeration, more than a year ago, I started keeping a running tally of each time the finance issue came up. And the tally shows that my folks have mentioned my income (usually in a disparaging way) every single time I've seen them in the past 16 months. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
Sometimes the comments are veiled. "Are you working this week?" my mother will ask. As if I might suddenly NOT be working. As if I regulary take off weeks at a time to indulge in sloth and gluttony. At other times, she takes a more straightforward approach. "Young people need to work! How do you live!? You should get a job at the government." These sorts of assertions are the most fun, for obvious reasons.
I do, in fact, have a job, so explaining that I need to work seems rather pointless. As for living... well, I am clearly alive. Sooooo... check. AND the extra 30 lbs I have hanging around my middle would seem to indicate that I'm living quite well at the moment, actually. So.
That said, I have to give her the third point. The government job thing is entirely my own fault. I don't know what's wrong with me. The Canadian government keeps banging down my door with offers of mind-numbingly-dull positions complete with bankers hours and excessive sick days. They're giving those jobs away like candy (sort of like they did for racialized women like my mother in the 1970s), but I'm an asshole, so I keep sending them away. I'm refusing to thrive, goddamnit. It's ALL MY FAULT.
My pop's comments are generally more direct. And while more pointed, they are less obviously critical to the casual observer. He favours a "just in case you're an idiot" approach to my general education, which he still feels responsible for. "Do you realize you spend more than XX% of your gross income on rent?" he asked recently. Or "You know… when you freelance, you still have to make Canada Pension Plan payments. Did you know that?" The good part is that I've learned that I can answer without even listening to his questions. Because the answer is always "yes."
Yes. YES. Yes, I realize these things, I am aware of these things, I know these things. Yes. Indeed. Yes. But thank you for mentioning it. Again. I know you only have my best interests at heart. I also know that even though I've been living on my own since 1998, I probably missed a lot of basics along the way. I am, after all, an idiot.
So... yes.
Sigh.
I don't initiate these conversations, I swear.
Here's the thing: in 2008, when the sub-prime mortgage crisis hit and the recession got going, a lot of people had to downsize. But not me. I downsized my life by choice. When I lived in Vancouver, that is to say, in my previous life, I made quite a bit of money. I had a whack of savings tucked away for my half of a downpayment on a house my then-partner (a total douche) and I eventually planned to purchase.
We slept in separate bedrooms but were still planning to buy a house together. Does that sound smart to you?
Nonetheless, my life looked good from the outside. My parents liked to brag about my job, which they were able to understand. ("Journalist" is so much clearer to them than "writer/editor" for some reason.) I had a huge apartment, complete with two living rooms, two bathrooms and a dining room that we never used. In other words, I had a huge amount of useless space that I filled with equally useful (but often beautiful) furniture.
My life was like a handbag. Does that make sense? Bear with me for a moment while I explain. My life was like a handbag that I had to fill up. Because why carry a handbag if you have nothing to fill it with? And if you're a woman of a certain age in North America, you can't go around with no handbag! What would people think?! So I got my handbag and I filled it up. And once it was full, I began to imagine that I needed the things inside it. I began to imagine that all those things were necessary to my life. The only solution seemed to be to get a bigger bag. Which I did. And I filled that bag too. And it started to get really effing heavy.
Up up up. More more more. That was the only way to go. Spend more. Get more. Buy more. Get married! Buy a house! Get all that documentation in order to PROVE that I'm a valuable person.
What a load.
In part, the drive to acquire was what kept me in a terrible relationship for more than five years. I was afraid of having less. And more importantly, I was afriad of what having less would look like to other people. The idea of downsizing was terrifying.
Not anymore.
For the first time in my life, I have a job I like. It doesn't pay much, but it pays enough. And it leaves me lots of time for other things, like blogging and crafting and going to baseball games and playing volleyball and reading novels, which is all, as it turns out, pretty darn great. Doing things BESIDES working is pretty darn great. Who knew?
And I know what some of you are thinking. That this is just laziness. But it's not. When I work, I work hard, but I don't work all the time. And I refuse to leave a job I like just because it doesn't pay as much as other jobs out there. Finally, I can feel good about the work I'm doing. I used to get home at night and feel ashamed. Ashamed to be part of the consumerist machine. Ashamed of the bullshit I was selling with my writing. And now, I don't. I feel proud of the work I do, and proud of the small contributions I make. And that good feeling is worth more to me than a few extra dollars an hour. It's worth more than several extra dollars an hour. Mor that that, even.
I used to work all the time. ALL THE TIME. And I felt like shit... all the time. Now I work some of the time, and I play a lot of the time, and I feel good most of the time. It's not rocket science.
Oh, and I don't make a lot of money. It's not embarrassing. Why should it be? Rethinking the notions of ambition and success has been nothing but awesomesauce. You should try it. Seriously.
Nate and I live in a smallish apartment, which we rent. And every time my landlord shovels our walk, or fixes a faucet, or mows the lawn, I feel glad to be a renter. And when I hear my friends talking about their mortgage payments and their dry wall problems and their furnace issues and their weeping tile and their vapour barriers and their flooded basements and their condo fees... I feel AWESOME. I mean, no major disrespect to home owners, but sometimes... your problems are boring. And they sound endlessly frustrating and expensive. I don't envy you. Would it be nice to own a house? Sure. Maybe. But it might not be "worth it" to me. And to understand that, you might have to think about worth in a new way. In March, I noticed a lot of hoopla online about ar recent study conducted by UNH psychology professor Edward Lemay and some of his colleagues at Yale University. The study showed that people who feel loved and accepted by others place lower monetary values on material possessions than those who feel insecure and/or unloved. It makes sense, but it's not exactly common sense. According to the study's press release, researchers measured how much people valued a specific item, such as a blanket or a pen. In some instances, people who didn't feel secure placed a monetary value on said item that was five times greater than the value placed on the same item by a more secure person. “People value possessions, in part, because they afford a sense of protection, insurance, and comfort,” said Lemay in his press release. “But what we found was that if people already have a feeling of being loved and accepted by others, which also can provide a sense of protection, insurance, and comfort, those possessions decrease in value.” I now own almost nothing that I couldn't live without. While I love my home and my many (many) things, the thought of getting rid of them isn't daunting in the way it used to be. I'm not saying 'all you need is love' or anything stupid like that, but still. Halloween 2008. Nate is an investment banker/panhandler. I am a Newsie. We are poor, but happy.
Now, it's only fair to explain that Nate and are in a relatively unique position. Eventually, we expect to have to move to accommodate Nate's job, but we don't know where. We might have to go across the country, or down to the States, or somewhere else entirely. And it seems pointless to aquire too much in the meantime. But interestingly, I've also found that our meagre income actually helps facilitate our ethical aspirations. Having less, strangely, allows us to do more. Why buy something manufactured in a sweat shop when you can get something unique or vintage? Why pay someone else to do or make something that I can easily do or make myself? Making stuff, it turns out, is fun! More fun than buying stuff. As long as you have the time, of course. And I do. All these things are connected.
Since we're not caught up in the craziness of acquiring, we been able to realize that we don't need more. And subsequently, we feel able to give more -- by making donations and that sort of thing. Because we already don't have much, so what's a little less? I give more to charity now than I ever did when I had money. It's so strange.
Nate and I sleep in a double bed. I know so many people who cringe at the thought. It seems nobody wants to go smaller than queen-size these days.
I used to feel that way too.
I worried that I wouldn't be able to sleep. I worried about my personal space. I worried about being too hot or too cold or too crowded. And in the early days, I admit, the transition chafed a bit. It took us a little while to settle into a good sleeping pattern. BUT... we got used to it. We evolved. And now I love our double bed. It doesn't matter that our arms touch, or that I sometimes wake up breathing his breath, or that I occassionally kick him with my spazzy jimmy-leg. I like that closeness. He likes it too. We don't want a bigger bed. We don't need a bigger bed. This is something we've talked about
Anyway. This is a very long post and I don't really know what I'm getting at. I started out wanting to call out my annoying parents for being so ceaselessly, relentlessly critical, but the piece has morphed into something else.
I'll try to bottom line it for you, by way of an ending:
For me, having less has driven home a truth about the world that so many people fail to notice: it's no big deal. It's not a hardship. Having less has made my life infinitely better. Having less has amounted to having more. So there. All images licensed under creative commons, from Flickr. 1) Follow your dreams Banksy image by Chris Devers.2) Graffiti house by Miss Muffin. 3) Withou money photo by Toban Black
Mondays are so often depressing. I start to feel them coming around noon on Sunday. If I'm not careful, I can find myself dreading Monday as early as Saturday night. And it's weird because I actually like my job. Beginning a new work week isn't so dreadful. I think my Monday dread is a combination of something inherited and something from a long time ago. I've had a lot of truly horrific jobs, you see. And once upon a time, I dreaded Mondays like an agoraphobic dreads a trip to the mall. And for good reason. But those reasons expired a long time ago. Yet still... I dread. To some extent, I think Monday dread accounts for a lot of the moodiness of this blog, which I tend to produce on Sundays. The other blogs (the chic blog and the reviews blog) have a distinctly lighter tone. But those I tend to produce near week's end, when the looming weekend fills me (and most people, it seems) with a sense of relief. Anyway. Nathan and I actually had a lovely weekend. We didn't do anything particularly special, but somehow, the weekend turned into a wonderful, relaxing thing and I forgot to dread Monday. On Friday night, we headed out to a wine and cheese party hosted by my friend Emily, which was nice because Emily has a million friends and a vast network of changing acquaintances, very few of whom I know and fewer still who know each other, so her get-togethers force me to exercise a social muscle that might otherwise atrophy. And that's a good thing. (I'm a natural hermit, you see.) I'm always nervous about parties before they happen, but then I go and end up feeling sort of self-congratulatory and pleased with myself about the whole thing. Like I do when I take my vitamins or go to the gym. Another hermit: Jeff Bridges in The Door in the Floor.
With the rain pouring down and social butterflying out of the way, neither Nate nor I felt a need to leave the house on Saturday and we spent a glorious day watching movies in our pyjamas and eating antipasto with our hands. We saw The Door in the Floor and To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday, both of which I'd seen before, but Nate hadn't. They're beachy and grey and depressing, but very good in their own ways. Both based on literature. The Door in the Floor is an excerpt from the John Irving novel A Widow for One Year, while To Gillian is a David E. Kelly adaptation of a play of the same name by Michael Brady. In the interim between the films, Nate watched a basketball game and I reread about half of Michael Chabon's book Wonder Boys, which is also a movie, by the way, and I'm now hankering to see it again, too.
It was a very literary weekend, all things considered. I guess life gets that way when you're surrounded by writers. Nate's mom recently finished the manuscript of her latest book, and I read that last weekend. It left me crying for a good half-an-hour, so I'd say it's pretty good. And Nate, after a couple of years of uncertainty, the loss of one publisher and the finding of a new one, is now closing in on the publication of his own first book, so we spent a little time this weekend trying to get a half-way decent author photo for the back cover.
Here's one of the outtakes from our back steps:
Nate has a tendency to tense up at the sight of a camera. As a result, he's often captured with the frozen smile and dead eyes of a serial killer. (You should see his passport. Scary!) So we had to take several shots, but I think we got at least one that works.
Anyway. Like I said, it was a damn fine weekend. On Sunday, we had a volleyball game, a big birthday dinner for a friend, and some ridiculous five-pin bowling. And somehow, everything came together and obscured my usual dread, and Monday arrived, sunny and fine and full of possibility.
Did you have a nice weekend?
 Fact: I have never been good with criticism.
It doesn't matter if the criticism is deserved, fair, constructive or otherwise. Historically, I've found that criticism reveals my tendency to hide in the ladies room, or to get my back up like a cornered badger.
(Badgers can be dangerous when cornered. I know this from first hand, slightly inebriated experience.)
ANYWAY.
I've always been a juvenile about wanting everyone to like me, and being yelled at activates my fight or flight response. My body fills with adrenaline and I struggle to suppress the urge to vomit. And in trying to hold back tears (because public crying would make the situation SO MUCH WORSE) my nostrils flare wildly, giving me the appearance of an insane monkey (or badger)... or something. It's not pretty.
My emotional development stalled at 14. I don't know why.
Only, it seem the tide may finally be turning. Yesterday, I arrived at work to find a note from my boss that went something like this:
"Jen, this needs a complete rewrite! Not your best work by far! I really don't like it."
Now, considering the sort of editorial direction I've received in the past, this is really tame. Nonetheless, in the past, it's the sort of thing I would have been quite upset about. Why? Because I'm a baby.
People yell a lot at newspapers. Editors scream and pound their desks. They throw your writing back in your face. At my first newsroom job, a sputtering Brit in suspenders screamed at me so loudly, flecks of spit flew from his mouth. My mistake was small and fairly unimportant, but I guess he was having a bad day. I was hysterical in the ladies room for a good 30 minutes. That was 10 years ago.
About five years ago, I worked at a commuter daily that required me to produce approximately five pieces every day. I lived in a constant state of panic. I barely slept. And I had to deal with an overweight, unwashed copy editor who liked to point out what he called my "obscenely egregious" errors, and send my pieces back to me for correction. Correction of typos. A "they" when I should have written "the" -- that sort of thing. I was writing five stories a day, people. Mr. Unwashed apparently didn't understand his job description. It was unreasonable, but still, it upset me.
The worst was my last job, at a very downmarket "magazine." My boss liked to write things on my copy like "bleeech!!!!" and "ick!!" in nearly illegible scrawl. Of course, he was widely known to be a psychopath. He favoured headlines with exclamation points (seriously), and liked to say thing like, "Are you tired today? Is that why you're so incompetent?" He also couldn't spell, knew nothing about journalism, and dressed like Ellen Degeneres, so whatever.
Still, it upset me. The unfairness of it all upset me.
These days, I work at a place I like. it's not a newspaper or a magazine, but I'm still writing. Occasionally, things get tense, but I find while I still want to please, I'm not as sensitive as I used to be. I churn out so much material in a day. It can't all be good. And sometimes, you've just gotta get something out. Anything. You can't wait for inspiration. In those cases, you leave it awhile and then you rewrite. That's just the way it is.
Yesterday, I found that for the first time in my writing career, when faced with criticism, I wasn't upset. Maybe it's because the note was understated. Maybe it's because my boss is a nice person (if occasionally blunt). Maybe it's because the piece in question WAS terrible, rushed, and needed a rewrite. I don't know.
I like to think I'm growing up. Mind you, if I was indeed growing up, I wouldn't be writing about this, would I? I wouldn't need to crow about it.
Oh well.
I never thought I'd end up on television. At least, not in a "regularly scheduled programming" sort of way. Once in awhile I envisioned myself making a daring rescue (and the accompanying news clips that would follow), but I never thought I'd appear on TV for no particular reason. Regularly. Practically every week, in fact. For a good two years.
And then, thanks to the MTV After Show, I did.  Outside the MTV building (the Masonic Temple), Toronto I first discovered the After Show by accident. It was... rough around the edges. Amusing, sure, but I wasn't a regular viewer and I didn't think about it often. And then one evening, fueled by too many glasses of wine and copious amounts of reality television, and egged on by my then-friends (fans of the show The Hills) I send the wee show an email.
That was the beginning.
Many, many months later, following a move to Toronto and various life changes that made me forget the email I sent in the first place, I got a call about an audition. I went. And suddenly, it seemed, I was sitting in a studio at MTV, right next to Jessi Cruickshank and Dan Levy, with shaking legs and two very attractive underarm stains (not to mention a decidedly sweaty belly) which -- thank goodness -- didn't show up on camera. (Yes, I said sweaty belly. I was nervous, okay?) I have little memory of my first show, but I guess I did okay because they next thing I knew, I was being asked back, and then back again, week after week after week.
I loved it.
Being on the After Show was NOT a job. At best, it was a hobby. It was a fun, unusual, odd, surreal and very lucky hobby. In my years on the show, it went from being on once a week to being on every day. We moved from a small studio to a large one and audience sizes ballooned from an average of about 10 people to groups of 100 or more (depending on the occasion). It was all very heady. I was never recognized on the street or anything. (Others were.) And it certainly didn't make me rich (despite what the high-schoolers think), but I loved it. In addition to appearing on the show, I wrote a few blog posts, and was blogged about. (One reporter even called me "amazing" - thankyouverymuch.) It was all very exciting. And a nice change from being called a sell-out and a Carrie-Bradshaw-Wannabe which is what I often got as a junior level journalist in the newspaper industry. (Thanks to my age and long hair, I suppose... Yuck, right?) Being on live TV, in any capacity, can teach you things about yourself that are worth learning. I learned that I make comic, over-the-top faces. A lot. I do it unconsciously. (Which is worth keeping in mind, because lord knows, I've probably been pissing off strangers on the subway with my appraising scowls.) I also learned that I have a seemingly-affected way of smiling and laughing that can look fake, even when it's not. Finally, I think learned to give myself a break about my weight and my skin and my appearance in general, because in the After Show environment, how you looked mattered, but in my role, what I had to say mattered more. As an After Show "Friend" (as opposed to a CTV Globe Media employee) I was allowed to say nearly anything I wanted (within reason) and that was a great thing. I was often the antagonist, bringing up things like feminism, equality, race relations and gay rights (in other word, things that aren't a part of the usual MTV lexicon) and I like to think that, thanks to popular culture and reality television, between jokes about Heidi Montago, Brent Bolthouse and boob-jobs, I got a few 14 year old girls to think about things they might never have considered otherwise... but that's self-congratulatory (and probably unlikely). Mostly, I just had fun. As I sat in the studio for the last time on Tuesday night, I thought to myself, "you should remember this." I tried to take a mental snapshot of the scene. After all, the whole thing happened so unexpectedly. My minor fifteen minutes, spread out over two years, are already a blur. But I know the show was something I was lucky to have. And I'm grateful. Remind me of that the next time I complain about anything. I'm a bit sad it's over, actually. Thanks MTV. Thanks universe. Just... thanks.
 I keep trying to give blood and the folks at Canadian Blood Services keep sending me away.
Not for any particularly upsetting reason (a few months ago, it was a slightly low iron level and this weekend, it was a recent booster shot) but nonetheless, it's a little frustrating. I am trying to give, people. TO GIVE.
Apparently, a life of charity is not so simple.
It's a busy time of year, what with all the religious hoopla and a whole rash of birthdays, all at once. It means an abundance of "family time" which, as you can imagine, is oh-so-relaxing.
My parents (bless their evil hearts) are on a campaign designed to worry me into leaving my job.
They regularly try to convince me that I make no money and will soon be landing in a cardboard box . I think the long-term goal of the campaign (which, to be fair, is well-designed and insidious, founded on the principle of the sneak-attack) is to get me to return to the golden handcuffs. You know, a fat pay cheque, a good title, a career they can brag about.
In my more charitable moments, I try to remind myself that they do this because they mean well. They're worried and in transferring that worry to me they are only trying to help.
But like I said, that's in my charitable moments. In my regular moments, I think they're being asshats for no reason, as is the Selk family way.
What's the right thing to do? To strive to give, if you can. No matter how many times we are beaten back, they key is to keep going back, sleeves rolled up, heart filled with naivete.
*Image by MPMthe1from Stock Xchng.
 Things fall apart. They fall apart so hard.
And then, new things happen. Green things grow in the blackened earth. We've talked about this before.
Well.
I'm back. I guess. Sort of. It's hard to know where to start.
It's funny, it's it? I kept threatening to stop blogging, and not following though. Which is sort of what I'm like in general, so really, it shouldn't surprise. Then, all of a sudden, without meaning to, I did. Follow through, I mean. I didn't intend to stop posting. It just happened. The way things do.
In March of 2009, I was dissatisfied with my job. Desperate in fact. Desperate to get out of it and out of my life. I know because exit desperation is something I'm familiar with. When you're trapped in a loveless marriage of sorts with someone who's impotent, addicted to internet gaming, pornography and various forms of assholeyness (which is a word I made up because there aren't any better ones) and you hate your job, and you own expensive things, and want people to like you, and you're getting fat, and you don't trust your friends, and addiction seems like a good solution, desperation becomes part of your everyday.
This is a lament of the upper middle classes, I know. Pathetic, really. Not at all like having real problems.
Nonetheless, you feel desperate on a regular basis. And in that way, it's no so bad, really. You get through. You accept. You learn things about patience. And it's not a feeling you forget. In a way, desperate times teach you to watch out for them. Forever after, you recognize their faces. You learn to slam the door quick, without hesitating.
So. In March, I hated my job. I'd hated it for awhile. And, remembering past mistakes, I jumped ship quick. Before it wore me down. Unfortunately I merely managed one of those frying pan/fire maneuvers. Figures. (But more on that another time.) Regardless, here we are in 2010, and dare I say things are working out?
Gainful employment that stimulates, uses expensive education, and doesn't make one want to gouge out eyes with spoon? Check.
Home that is homey, unique and envy-worthy? (We all have our vices.) Check.
Love from partner who boasts respectable, impressive world view, devotion to ethical lifestyle and infinite capacity to empathize? Check.
Yeah, I'd say things are working out. Which, when you consider the patent unfairness of the universe, is a pretty nice thing.
I'm glad it's 2010. At last. I like the roundness of it. The blank slate-y-ness. (Yeah. And I'm paid to be an editor.) I like that it means five years since 2005, when the cracks started widening into craters and 10 years since 2000, when I felt so very wise. I even like that it's been 15 years since 1995, heartbreaking though that sometimes is. I'm just glad. And lucky. Incredibly fucking lucky. And between being glad and lucky, when I'm smart, I'm also grateful. And that's something.
*Photo by Marek Wojtal from Stock Xchng.
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