The Creative Process

This is totally how the creative process works….I have been in these meetings:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/642693

Geez!

Been such a long time since I posted on here!

I have found I don't have as much time for personal writing as I used to.  I suppose I should be happy to have a full schedule, but still!  So busy!

Some life updates:

• Alex and I are going to his friend's cabin for a week next week.  Photos to follow.
• I am tentatively planning all my birthday awesomeness that will be the birthday I was meant to have when I was 30.  THAT'S RIGHT. SCREW YOU, 30.
• Lots of vacation planning this year. 
• My niece is getting christened at Christmas, really excited for that.
• Moving Sept 1.  Need a new place.  Argh.

Alright, time to go….next activity of the day! =D

Happy Canada Day

Had an amazing weekend and the last couple days have been really special.

Played board games with friends….super fun!  Though I lost most of the time, was really great to get together and just relax and be a bit silly with some great people.  (That's Liz and Sarah in the photo.  We were playing Dominion at the time, I think)

I also celebrated 3 months with Alex.  I normally don't make a big deal out of anniversaries and such, but it was really nice…and we got to talk, had some laughs, spent most of the day together, was really nice.  At first I thought I would be exhausted by it, but it turned out to be just right.

OK!  Off to bed!

Happy Canada Day, to all my Canadian friends and family!

Fishy!

I bought a fish!  Alex helped pick him out. =)

We bought him from a store near my workplace.  We decided to name him Chuck.

My new friend chuck now has a new home on my kitchen counter.  I might have him move in the near future, but for now…he takes up kitchen space! =)


I'm so happy…I have been wanting to get a beta fish for a really long time.  Glad I have him now…hoping he stays nice and healthy for the next little while as he adjusts to his new home!

My friend Robert left for Ireland on Thursday

I already miss him terribly, but I am so happy for him on his new adventure, living and working in Dublin, Ireland.

He's going to do so well there, I know it.

Trip to Niagara Falls

Alex and I took a weekend trip to Niagara Falls.  

We went to get close to the Falls on the boat.  The poncho is what Alex called 'Garbage Bag Couture.'

Then later in the day, we went for bike ride upstream to see some really cool stuff.

The next day, we went and did Wizard Golf…it was super shiny with all the black lights!

After that, we bowled!  I did really well…..Alex, not so much.

We played some games at the arcade, and we won 30 tickets…which let us buy….a cow eraser.

Then we had ice cream…mine was green apple.

Alex had bubblegum.

And then after ice cream, we drove back into the city.  =)

I just had a giant June bug land on my neck in the middle of the night

NO NEED FOR SLEEPING.

Busy life!

Whew!  It's been busy lately!

Some things:

• I'm going to Niagara Falls next weekend
• I have been working lots, no surprise
• I am getting all my financials under my belt
• Planning on taking a class, potentially a french class soon

And this big thing, one of my best friends, is leaving to go to Ireland for a year.  I'll do more of a post on that later…I am still thinking about how I feel about that at the moment.  Liz is also in Scotland for two weeks with her family, which seems like a really fun trip, I hope she is having a good time.

TOW: Unexpected Surprises

It's funny how humans plan things.  Woody Allen said, "If you want to make God laugh, tell Him about your plans."

One time, when having a conversation with my friend Brennan and his mother, she mentioned that her second son, Emerson, was a 'surprise.'  I had to think about that for a bit and it made me pause….how can pregnancy be a surprise?  And yet, when you think about it…even when planned, pregnancy is a surprise.  Happy or not-so-expected.  Life is surprising, right from the start.  And when you think about it that way, you'd think more people would be excited by the unexpected.  And yet, we spend most of our lives trying to plan for the unexpected, to be well prepared for things we could never know beforehand, and try and guess what is right and what is wrong.

Why do we make plans?  Why do we care so much about the future?

I think we understand patterns happen in our lives.  We understand that some people are good, some are bad…some situations and events frustrate us, and some make us happy.  We look at new people, at new situations, at new things we have not encountered and think, "Ah, this is just like that one time…"  We can look at life without newness, with an eye that says, "Aha, I understand what is happening here.  I see patterns."  

But then…it's God's laughter.  Because the older and wiser we get, the less likely we're able to deal with unexpected surprises because we think we have seen so much, we think we have seen it all.

And some people stop living, and only accept patterns as what is 'acceptable.'

We don't know it all and we can't predict it all.  And those who wish they could become the most unstable in times of crisis.

I think there are times when we are overwhelmed, when we don't know how to deal with situations that surprise us.  Becoming old is the idea that we want to stop being surprised, we want life to get easier for once, instead of harder.  We want to know that the future is going to be alright.

But we can't know that.  

In the end, we will only be able to reflect on how we reacted to the unexpected, not to what we would have done, had we known.  Because we never will.

The best thing we can do is live for the right reasons, be who we are for the reasons we believe in.  We could become rich and happy, we could become poor and sick.  

But it's probably not what we were expecting, was it?

It's been a long time since I've posted on here!

I've been meaning to post here every weekend for…well…for a really long time!  ^_^

A couple things have gotten in the way of my writing time:

-Moving.  I have only just recently started to get everything under control.  And under control is…probably an overstatement.

-Filing an insurance claim.  I hope I never have to do it again….it's possibly the most annoying thing I've ever done.  I had to double check a bunch of receipts and get new receipts from people who misquoted me, and my old landlord still owes me money.  Lots of fun for everyone.

-Taxes.  Losing your T4 among a mess of papers means stress….along with having to change your address, locate all your old tax paperwork, which is now everywhere because you moved all your possessions into a storage locker for a month and half, and then moved it into a new apartment the same month your taxes were due.

-A funeral service.  We recently buried my grandfather.  It was a very difficult weekend.  There were good highlights, I guess….but burying your family…..it's not enjoyable.

I was supposed to say…I put a rose down for my Auntie Jocelyn, who couldn't be here.  And one for me….and I suppose my older brother and Tammy, who couldn't attend because of a sick baby.

-New job:  It's been a REALLY busy first month for me.  They hired me in an upswing of work, and I have been working against the clock to help everyone finish their projects on time.  The amount of overtime on my schedule has been a little much, but I'll be done it soon.

-A really busy social life:  I have sort of ventured out into the world of dating again.  That….takes up a lot of my time.  ^_^  And my friends have been busy, as well.  

In a lot of ways, life is perfect, even when it's not, at least for right now.  I have a new job that I love, I have good people around me, and a good family. 

Time for bed.

Me and my bed

Reunited after 5 weeks.

Can't wait.

TOW: When It Rains It Pours

Like I said previously, I have been meaning to update my blog, because SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED in the last three weeks.

Unfortunately, it's not the kind of 'so much' that I have had time to reflect about anything.  Most nights I have been having my head hit the pillow completely exhausted, often emotionally exhausted as well as physically exhausted.  I can't believe how well I have handled things given my current state of things.

So, to recap the things I meant to tell y'all.

-I got offered a new job the day I finished a 14 day social media campaign that went extremely well, minus a few glitches.  However, I worked 25 hours in 2 days during the last two days of that contest, and it nearly killed me.  It was so much work, for so little reward.

-I gave my notice 4 days later to my manager.

-The day after I gave my notice (a Thursday), I went to bed and woke up to this:

It was..unpleasant to say the least.  There was water everywhere.   2-4 inches in places.  I waded through the stuff in my bare feet and called my landlord immediately.  He seemed to be taking it seriously and promised he would send the caretaker over as soon as possible.

I walked into work and told my coworkers once I got the ok from my manager to give the news.  My coworkers freaked out a bit.  (I will never forget my co-worker Tricia scream of panic.  'WHHHAAAAAAAT.')  She almost had a meltdown on the spot.  It was nice.  =)


I left work to go have dinner with my friend Liz (knowing that I might have to spend the night at her place depending on the situation.)  My building caretaker called me, and told me not to come back the apartment because a sewage line had burst, and that the apartment was now filled with sewage water. 

Sewage water. And it was a really bad leak, apparently.

I slept on Liz's apartment floor that night, and spent my entire weekend moving my items into bags, cleaning things, and trying to move out my stuff.  My friend Robert offered to let me sleep on his couch (and I am still sleeping on said couch, three weeks later) because my apartment now looks like this:

And then eventually it would look completely bare except for the studs, framing and foundation.  And it smelled (and still smells) like raw sewage, masked slightly with a cleaner.

I told my landlord that I wouldn't be continuing my lease.  I've moved my things into storage, and have met with insurance agents.  I'm still in the middle of my claim.

That and oh yeah, I started a new job on Monday.  While I had a cold and a fever.  (I learned today in HR training they don't like it when you come to work sick at a hospital of any kind.)

It's been a really long, emotional three weeks.  I had a lot of things I wanted to write down, but so many things just got in the way.  I haven't been this busy since I don't know when...and it's really tiring.  The change is exciting, and there's lots to learn in a good way, but honestly, just a job change was enough change for me....now I have all this other stuff I have to deal with. 

And now I need to go to bed.  I need to be at work for 8:30 tomorrow morning.

Remains of the day

So this is what a dead, lonely apartment looks like.

I have been meaning to post about some incredible and some not so incredible things that have been happening. But all of that changed this weekend when my apartment flooded.  Flooded with sewage water.

I am now homeless and living at a friend's place. It will be a month before the work is finished.

Looks like I will be moving.

So I am taking a creative writing class

And it is so draining.

Honestly, it's just really intense to write short exercises amongst other creative people, have to listen to the exercises, and then do the whole process over again for nearly three hours.  Exhausting.

TOW: Living the dream

Yesterday is but today's memory, and tomorrow is today's dream.
-Khalil Gibran 


What does it mean to have a dream?  What if you didn't have any?

I have been lucky enough to accomplish many of my dreams.  I have a career path, and a great job with great coworkers.  I have an enormous amount of education, and I have surrounded myself with good-hearted people.  Pretty lucky, I am!  =)

But luck did get me to where I am today, hard work did.  I worked hard for most things I have in my life, and made good use of opportunities presented to me.  I made my own luck, and circumstances often paid off for me.  I am goal-oriented, and darn it, I accomplish goals on a regular basis!  Go me!

But sometimes you can't help but wonder…what's next?  I'm an adult, I've made my way, now what?  Where's the checklist? *frantic searching*

It was with my grandfather's death that my perspective changed.  I thought of all the things my grandfather accomplished, and while I was sitting near his bedside, I contemplated that most of those things didn't happen while he was 'checking things off a list' or 'being goal-oriented.'  It wasn't his goal to meet Charles Schultz, and have him be a personal friend.  That just sort of 'happened' as he was living the life he wanted live, playing hockey and travelling through the States.  And, universally, most of the things that happen to us in life 'just sort of happen' and we don't plan them.  Scary thought for someone like me, who needed that road-map!

Sometimes we accomplish our dreams, our goals.  That can leave us feeling empty because we don't always have something to replace that dream with.  And what we don't realize is that we're not supposed to get a new goal or a new dream immediately.  We're supposed to live our life.  And the beauty of life is in living our dreams, not accomplishing them.  We should all hope to sustain a feeling of happiness in our day-to-day lives because 'getting somewhere' in life doesn't mean each destination is a rest stop to somewhere else.  It means that we go to a destination to be there. We have dreams so that we can live them, not so we can constantly searching for something else, something so-called better.

So live your dreams.  It's a dream worth having.



 

Time is precious

I have been thinking about a lot of things this week…when i get the chance, I might put them in writing.

I am taking a creative writing class, and I might post some of my pieces here.

On Tuesday, my grandfather died

A lot of my family posted on Facebook about my grandfather, photos, some of his humour and mannerisms, and there was an outpouring of public support from friends and family.  I couldn't really bring myself to read the comments, or even some of the things that my family members posted.  I was upset at the time...and being away from family doesn't make it easier....it makes it harder.  And I can't be there....because the airport in Toronto has shut down because of weather related problems.  I called my dad, my grandmother....they understand...but it doesn't make it easier.  I want so much to be with them, to give my dad a big hug, to sit with my grandmother when she cries, to give her my shoulder if it will help, to smile if it will ease the pain.

I have been very lucky to have grown up with not two, but three amazing parents who love me and want me to grow up to be an upstanding individual.  I have been born into a family of love, a family of people who are not drug addicts, gambling addicts, in jail, or otherwise fallen into the various social pits of society, never to escape.  I come from a family of winners.  I look forward to seeing our families succeed and support each other as we grow up into the future.  

I am now an adult; I am no longer blind to the weights that adults bear during difficult times.  Difficulties faced in happiness, in illness, in misunderstandings...in the passing of missed opportunities, of ones that are missed.  Now is one of those times. I miss my grandfather, because he was family, and I loved him.  I wish I had more words, more words that could be something, something that means something to me.

My dad and my grandmother displayed the kind of strength I hope one day I might have.  The strength to love when love is hard, the strength to persevere, especially when not all is right.  It is easy to be kind when life is easy.  It is not easy to be kind when life is cruel, and circumstances are final.  It is hard to believe in God, to love what is good and right and true when the people you love are constantly in a world where nothing seems good, right or true.  Where every light is but a little dimmer, squandered in the face of consequences of living, and being born to die again.  In those kind of days, happiness and goodness only come up for air to show that they still exist, not that they have come to stay for a season.  They only appear as a contrast to the difficult times ahead.  The difficult times faced by those who choose love.  To love and be loved.  To lose.  But to gain again, as the cycle of life continues.  And happiness can begin again. 


My grandfather and I share a name.  Both a family name and his first name.  I have always felt strongly connected to him as the grandchild to carry on his name, though he was a man of few words.  He and I rarely spoke, though we did spend time together....and if we did speak, unsurprisingly, it was me doing most of the talking. I was grateful....grateful for the time I was able to spend with him as a teenager, as a young adult.  I know that not everyone gets to know their family.  I know that my grandfather and I were very different...but I loved him all the same.  And I know he was surrounded by people who loved him as he passed.  And I am thankful to still have those amazing, caring people in my life.

TOW: Stages

Every life has stages.

When I was younger, I was lucky enough that I got to live the stages of my life the way I wanted.  I had both time and energy to do the things that interested me.  I got to have extracurriculars, I never worried about food, or about not having things kids should have at my stage of life.  In other words, I had everything.

Now, at 30, things are different.  My stages of life don't match other people's.  And none of us really are on the same 'path.'  Sometimes they just intersect.

It was easy in high school....in university.  You found people like you, and even if they weren't the same, they had similar ideals, you could talk about similar things, you could discuss 'ideas.'

As an adult, I am often too busy, and people are too preoccupied to discuss ideals and ideas.  We are swept away in practical concerns, often of the kind to make a better society, in our own little ways.  We are all working the adult work of creating a history in our lives that mean something. 

My life stage doesn't match the one that society puts forward for me.  I don't have a young family, I don't have a house, and I don't have anything to show for a 'legacy' that I am building.  In other words, I seem to either a) be in a special kind of life phase b) be stuck in a life phase that some people transitioned out of in their twenties. 

I know, though, is that there will be new marriages, births, deaths, divorces (unfortunately), and new families, growing out of new situations, new stages of life for new people.  Love and life, life and love.  And then again, these stages. 

I know you can't always get what you want in each stage of your life...but it's good, I think to enjoy what you have while you have it.

I had a great thought today

And found out that I had plagiarized from a play I have never read.

The thought was about moderation, and how I don't love that particular rule because it can lead to some social problems I find common in literature I read, and so I thought, "The reason I don't like the rule of everything in moderation is because even this rule needs to be moderate.  We need the rule of moderation in moderation."

Less than an hour later, I find this in an internet article comment:

"Somewhere in Greek myth or drama, there's a scene between Artemis & Apollo that goes something like this:

Artemis: Brother, you are always going on about "everything in moderation", but very time I turn around, you're chasing a nymph around my forests! What's the deal?

Apollo: Dear sister, there must indeed be everything in moderation… including moderation."

There is a great ancient quote that I can only vaguely remember, and it goes something like:

"If anything great is written, it was first written by me."

Le sigh.

TOW: A Good Neighbour

"And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'"
Matthew 22:38-40
You know, I have had the chance to think about community a lot this week and weekend.  November has been a month for meeting new people, for reconnecting with old friends, and just thinking about the kind of people I want in my life in the future.  Recently, I have had the good fortune to meet a lot of great people in the neighbourhood where I live.  And it brings me back to think about something that has been missing from my life for a while now, and which, I never realized other people my age and older wanted.  Which was a sense of community.

I'm a little tired from the long day...but it was nice to connect with a couple people who lived in my building....and it was good to think of the future...and to think there would be good people in it. 

I have been spending a lot of time looking for volunteer opportunities which match my desires to do good for those around me.  But what I suppose I realized this evening is that there are opportunities to do good everywhere, and that people used to have communities before they had charities.  Charities only exist because communities fail, or don't exist at all.

Our neighbour is not a stranger; our nieghbour is someone who needs us, and needs us intimately.  Life is very hard as it is, and living only in a relation of one-to-one, in a relation of what I want and getting it...that's not a life.

In the coming days, I hope that I can be a good neighbour to those in the sense that I belong, and I make an effort to belong to something and somewhere, while still being myself.