I haven’t been funny in days.
I’m moody and full of vitamin-Cunt tonight.
I couldn’t figure it out.
What’s eating me? Why am I spiralling into a darker and darker place? Why do I hate the idea of attending any of the 3 parties to which I was invited tonight? Why does the idea of just being civil to others fill me with a questionable revulsion I can’t fathom?
Why? Why? Why? Continue reading
Category Archives: Autobiographical
A Moment of Clarity, A Project to Start
I’m at the tail-end of a ceremonial shot of Jack Daniels. I’m celebrating.
This past week, I’ve figured out a structure for my book, and the start of the order of content and how to make it marketably different from most of the non-fiction offerings out there.
I want my book to be profoundly literate. I want it to be the best thing I ever write. It has to reflect all I’ve accomplished so far, and all I’ll accomplish in the next two years, as I finish this life-change dream I cooked up in the fall of 2007.
Whoa! Holditaminutethere! What book?
Right. When I decided I wanted to change my life, I also promised myself that, if I got even halfway where I dreamed of getting, I’d write a book about my journey. Continue reading
Why I Love My ADHD
I’m going to be writing more about ADHD over the next while. I started last week with this posting here.
Seems to me too many people are all shame-filled about their ADHD. What the fuck is that about?
Here, take your stereotypes and shove it. Know what my ADHD doesn’t make me do? It doesn’t make me run around like I’ve had 42 coffees and have been mainlining coke and adrenaline, all right? It doesn’t mean I freak out on people. It doesn’t mean I can’t have a conversation with you. It doesn’t mean I can’t get to appointments punctually. It doesn’t mean I can’t be an awesome employee.
What it DOES mean is, I have organizational challenges that negatively impact my life and leave me predisposed to feeling overwhelmed and constantly daunted by the life in front of me. But that’s biochemical. Continue reading
My Memories of Christmas
I’m enjoying the feeling of Christmas more than I have since I was a kid. I’ve gained a lot of distance between the loss of my mom and how much I tied her to the season. I still do, but in a different way.
Now I find myself reflecting on holidays over the years, and thought you might enjoy hearing some of the tales. In no particular order…
Continue reading
And Then There Were Crabs
I’m not exactly Little Miss Adventure, but if I was to tell you the tale of my life you’d probably mistake me for exactly that – a year in the Yukon, thrown from a horse, a near-fatal scooter (motorbike) accident, camping all my formative years, been to Alaska and Mexico and back again…
…Truth be told, though, I’m a bit of a pussy when it comes to facing Mother Nature at her finest. Spiders? Horrifying. Giant moths? Send me scurrying into a corner, ducking under covers. Creepy-crawlies give ME the creepy-crawlies, thanks very much.
Every now and then, however, I manage to trick myself into feeling like the calm, cool, collected adult I should rightly be now that I’m on the verge of turning 34. I’d better be growing up.
Then stories like this come along. So, without much more ado… a tale of a Steff gone camping.
We pitched our tent bright and early. Our neighbours must’ve made the same ferry as we did, for the British couple showed up mere minutes after we begin staking our site.
We both got our sites rigged and then cracked into our local Limey’s collection of beer while playing Frisbee to pass some time. Finally the pub called Gayboy (@mr_tits_pervert on Twitter) and I away, and we set on our local adventures – pub grub, beer, shopping for campfire foodies, and then back to the site we went.
Finding our pitch and the next door one both deserted, we decided to have a game of cards, drink a beer, and plan our attack. On three sides of us were the island’s shores. One side a beach, one a lagoon, and one a harbour/marina. We decided to head to the nearby beach by way of the lagoon. Being Slow-Drinker Girl, I wisely brought my yet-unfinished beer with, and we set upon our latest adventure.
We traipsed down the hill and came out alongside the lagoon. It looked pretty dry and had the unmistakable West Coast generations of broken clam and oyster shells peppering the landscape along with the dark coastal rocks. We shrugged and made our way onto the lagoon. The footing was a bit spongey but it was otherwise indicating a crossing seemed pretty reliable.
We took off along the western side of the lagoon, keeping alongside a little stream we planned to cross midway, thanks to dottings of rocks and boulders across its path.
Suddenly, a shriek.
“Jesus CHRIST!” shouted GayBoy. “Look at the fucking crabs!”
Suddenly I noticed the ground seemed to move in bits. Some very well-disguised crabs were creeping sideways across the shell-covered landscape. They were all around one to two inches in width, but the more I scoured the ground for them, the more I began to notice them. The landscape wasn’t just dotted with clam shells, but the muddy surface of the lagoon was similarly dotted with crabholes. Every couple inches was another hole between ½ inch wide all the way up to two inches wide. The holes were fine until a crab would poke its head out and observe us.
Unlike GayBoy, I wasn’t that freaked out. Concerned, yes, avoiding them, yes, but terrified? Not just yet.
“Okay, this is really creeping me out,” GayBoy muttered. Clearly the dope we’d smoked earlier was toying with his perceptions and making things a little more intense than they maybe needed to be.
We decided to cross the stream right there, and I led the way, clumsily hopping across rocks and landing with a splash of beer spilling out my bottle on the other side. I took a couple steps and found myself beginning to sink some four or so inches down into grubby mud. And with every sink, more crabholes were vacated, the stupid critters heading AT us instead of AWAY from us.
“Oh, JESUS,” exclaimed GayBoy.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here!” I reacted. Then I began to mock GayBoy, muttering with sing-song disdain under my breath. “ ‘Let’s cross the lagoon. It’s a nice beach on the other side.’ ”
“All right, FINE! What way do you want to go?” he bitterly retorted.
“Let’s go to the east side… it looks drier.”
So, naturally, we crossed back. I surveyed the lay of the lagoon and the spot that looked the driest was the direction in which we decided to head.
Big fuckin’ mistake. A few steps later, we’re sinking six inches down. “Fuckfuckfuckfuck!” I started gasping.
“Fuck this! Let’s head back to the path!” shouted GayBoy.
That’s when my shoe came off. I yelped and gasped, beginning to hyperventilate. Crabs were everywhere now. It seemed like they’d all heard there was a new show in town and clamoured for front-row tickets. Not only was I staring down in fear, teetering on one sunken foot as my mud-stuck shoe was hidden from view, but I was becoming increasingly aware that the scattered crabs were now out in force, all hovering around us.
Suddenly I flashed back to my old film job, remembering painful scenes of captioning poor fuckers dying in quicksand. I had clips of nature shows, crabs picking bones clean on shorelines. Then I had a vision of a blog headline, “Something Tragic Afoot: Crabs Dine A La Steff in Lagoon – memorial Tuesday at Twin Pines.”
GayBoy clasped onto me and refocused me. “Steady! Steady. Here’s your shoe.”
I got the shoe back on, and then, clenching my toes to hold the shoe on slipper-style (the heel was pushed down under my foot, it’s all we could manage), I had to use all my strength to hike my feet back out of the now-eight inches of sludge. Every footstep was an epic effort.
Then, the worst that could happen – one shoe came off… and then the other as I stumbled forward onto my bare-sock foot.
I began hyperventilating like a prison bitch trapped in a shower, but GayBoy acted quickly and got me both shoes, while barely keeping it together himself.
With another 20 feet to go, we continued trying to get to the dry path one step at a time. Fortunately neither of us became crabs’ lunches, and we finally made it to the shore.
And me, true Canadian girl I am, succeeded in failing to spill ALL the beer. Thank god for Alexander Keith, patron saint to Canadians lost in crab-infested lagoons, it would seem.
We spent the night exploring debauchery with our new best friends from England, laughing about all our misadventures as we brazenly worked towards the next morning’s hangovers.
Camping, anyone?
Below’s the estimated route of our path:
And here, most importantly, is the beer I managed to keep alive all through the turmoil! Truly a Canadian girl with her Canadian beer! And yes I write notes on my hands and arms, hence the weird blue bit on the left there…
In Praise of Pink Slips
What a difference a day makes. 24 hours ago, I was sitting there sullenly at my desk, kind of loathing my existence. Today, I’ve got a paid day off, and tomorrow I return to the only job I’ve ever known that made me feel like I was part of a family.
It has been 12-13 years since I had a job with an asshole employer. This was the first time since that I’d had an employer that I felt was, well, unfair. I’m not going into specifics. It is what it is, and I have too developed a readership to go slagging anyone.
But let’s face it, not everyone knows how to manage. There are people who have such great personalities that they get overlooked for how they sometimes treat others, and they can be hell to work for.
I’m a big believer in learning from life as it happens. You can just dismiss things and say “shit happens,” or you can ask “why does shit happen?” Everything I ever needed to know I learned from Philosophy 101. Why?
For me it makes life so much better when I assign value to all the things that go down in my life. For every failure, I try to learn something. And whether I want to accept it or not, I was fired. I failed in some capacity, and while I consider myself fortunate to have been uninvited from that particular party, there’s a part of me that knows what rejection feels like again.
Do you ever sit back in your comfy arm chair, watching some talk show, on which is some woman telling of all the abuse she endured through her many years of marriage, and sit there, thinking, “Jesus, honey! Why didn’t you leave?! At what point do you finally clue the fuck in and say, ‘Gee, I think this might be a bad situation?’ Fuck!”
Yet how many of us work every day in jobs we hate? Jobs where you know it’s just a paycheque, baby? How many of us tolerate rude, belligerent employers who don’t know how to sit the fuck down and trust us to do the jobs we’re supposed to be hired to do? It’s psychological abuse, really, when you work in a situation like that. But because they sign our paycheques and keep the roofs above our heads, we somehow feel like they’ve got permission to treat us like they do.
And I don’t give a fuck what kind of job it is, what kind of pressure it is, it’s not too goddamned much to ask that employees everywhere get treated in a reasonably professional manner. I’m not so sure that’s how I was treated of late. Two people there were good, though. Pity about the unbalance.
So, uninvited from the party, I have to tell you that today’s the first time since about… February of this year that I’ve woken up without this palpable fear of whether all the bills are going to be paid and whether I’m gonna have my integrity intact at the end of the day. In the spring I was just financially insecure. Of late, I was underpaid and treated somewhat questionably. Different scenarios, but similar results.
I feel like a fucking mammoth weight has come off my shoulders, is what I’m trying to say. And I’m also trying to suggest that, if you’re one of those people working a job you hate, you really need to start asking yourself if the cost benefit ratio of going through THAT every single day is worth it. I mean, shit. I feel like I’ve just broken the water’s surface and am finally breathing again. I had no idea those many months were taking the toll they’ve now so obviously been taking.
I always said I was lucky to never have really had to work in a bad situation. Now I have. I’m one of those freaks that likes having difficult experiences because then I always grow. It’s my choice to gain from the situation, ain’t it? So I’m having a good day. Friday’s coming and so’s that 33rd birthday. Older? Wiser? Fucking right I am.
I wouldn’t have had the guts to quit without another job to go to. Getting fired was the only way that situation was gonna get resolved, unless one of the headhunter positions worked out. So my perfect record gets smeared. Whatever. I’m glad I’m moving on to potentially better times.
It’s one of those times where you, the reader, gets to sit back and ponder your own life’s satisfaction. Is it really going the way you want? Is it worth it to keep compromising? Think about it. Then remember one of my favourite sayings: Life’s too fucking short.
Hallelujah. I got fired. Uninvited. Ha. And look, it’s sunny out. Go fuckin’ figger.
Good news! I got fired!
Heh. Yep, you read right. I’m happy I just got fired.
I hated the job, or more accurately, one of the bosses. Worse yet: It sucked the will to write right out of me.
Putting words on a screen’s pretty fucking easy most days and I can do it in my sleep, but the GOOD writing, well, that comes from places that machines can’t mine. When the mix is off, it’s really, really difficult to get things gelling again. And, honestly, something about that job just killed my creativity.
And, being such an affable and good chick as I am, the folks I worked the last six years for are taking me back without even thinking twice. Not permanently, but “for a while” at the very least, and “for a while” is what I need.
And the moral of this story, boys and girls, is that when adversity happens, don’t think about the fucking adversity. Think about overcoming it. Within 10 minutes I went from losing a job to getting another one, in essence, and that comes from acting, not fretting.
I’m a happy camper. I lost a job I hated. I’m going back to one that had me, for some weird reason, writing better than I’ve ever written before. Methinks I’ve come out ahead.
But the good news for you is, soon I’ll be back to writing well. Don’t think I don’t know this blog’s been off-kilter for some time. I know it all too well. I already have a couple fun things planned for postings.
I’d kill to hear “Ding, dong, the witch is dead” right now, ‘cos it sums up how I’m feeling pretty nicely.
So, Here We Are Again
The whole 9/11 thing is feeling weird. Reminds me of when five years had passed since my mother’s death. Has it really been so long? Boy, was that all it was? Five years?
Grief gets weird when you live with it for a long time and then — poof — it just vanishes, like. Guilt can come on, then. “I should be more depressed. Shouldn’t I?”
I’m watching some of the retrospective stuff. I think it’s important to remember it all, but I just don’t want to face any marathons. I forget sometimes, though, how fucked up it must have been to live in NY in those early days.
I’ve been thinking about that day. The weather today was very similar to the weather then — clear, sunny, warm, with just a hint of fall on the light wind. I remember the silence that morning. I never found out until I got to work — I never saw the news or anything that morning. I was enjoying coffee, sitting barefoot in my deck captain’s chairs, curling my toes around the metal railing.
I remember walking into the office, my closed captioning office, and the radio was turned on for the first time (and last time) ever. All the employees had no headphones on and were numbly editing files that probably needed no more editing. I knew something huge had happened.
“What?” I asked.
“Someone’s flown planes into the two World Trade Centre towers. Thousands of people are dead. They think it was terrorists. And someone hit the Pentagon, too.”
And like that I knew life on the continent had changed. No longer were we untouchable. Quite the opposite.
I didn’t think I could lose any more innocence after that day, but I was evidently wrong. I grow more jaded and disenfranchised with every passing year.
For a time, 9/11 made us all better people. We found the commonality. We had community. We had a cause. And something happened. A chasm. Conflict. Chaos.
Strange how quick that tide turned. Sad, too. Sigh.
Where are the manners?
Every now and then an email comes in that’s the exact right email for what’s going on in my life. That happened Friday. I’d had an incident earlier in the day that had me seething with rage, and his email hit right home. So, first, the email, then I’ll tell you what happened, and then you’ll get my two cents. Sounds like a plan, no?
I was wondering if there was a certain age where teenagers or adults realise that manners are important and can learn to appreciate them? Because I’ve been trying my whole life (I’m still a teenager, but still) to be a gentleman (opening doors for others, asking if the elderly need help, speaking politely, etc.) and to be helpful as much as possible, but it seems that it is not appreciated at all. So far throughout a few years of high school, I’ve tried to help others boost their marks with assistance on their homework, but they can’t seem to understand that others have morals and won’t cheat for them. (again, turning into a rant i suppose..)
I guess I’m really just sending this email to ask another’s opinion about manners and whether or not it is truly appreciated in today’s society. I’ve asked a few teenage girl friends and they say that it is good to have manners and it’s something important they look for, yet I see them going out with lowlife guys who are despicable and need to learn manners. Is this just a teenage thing to do that you overcome later on and realise it’s importance and learn to be grateful for it? Or is it completely dependant on the people’s standards they’ve set.
Now, what happened to me the other day was when I was riding over to my brother’s place. He and I live in absolute opposite ends of the city — he in the most northeastern section, I in the most northwestern section. I work smack dab in the middle, downtown, and between there and my brother’s is 30-square blocks of what’s essentially some of the poorest and most underprivileged in Canada. If you know where to avoid, you can go without ever seeing any of these people.
I don’t try to avoid it, I just go through. I always see really tragic things when I do and it keeps me appreciating the little I have. This time, though, I was stopped at a light and this old guy, about 70, was in a wheelchair, completely unable to use his hands, and could only pull himself forward using the toes on his right foot. He was literally moving about 2 feet a minute. Naturally, the light turned red with him in the middle of the street, and I got a solid green light to go. Meanwhile, he’s stopped, looks like he’s about to cry from exhaustion, just can’t go any further, and all these fucking people are walking past, ignoring him.
I was in a RAGE. I pulled my scooter over, got off, cursed, “You people ought to fucking help! Where the hell are manners gone?” Then I leaned over to the man and said, “May I push you across the street, sir?” And he went soft with relief. He just sighed, “Please?”
I had a bit of an argument with a couple punks on the corner after that, who seemed to think I was flaming them, and yeah, you know, I was. Just fucking standing there, doing nothing.
When I got over to my brother’s place, I saw my nephew standing there, and I sat him down. I said, “If you ever see a little old lady or a little old man who can’t get across the street or they’re taking too long, you HELP them. You hear me?”
I made sure he knew the distinction between “stranger danger” and helping a senior citizen who really does need the help. After all, that’s how I was taught.
In MY world, I was raised to help people. I was raised to give a hand and do the right thing. I was taught to say please and thank you, and I was told to hold doors open for others.
And I KNOW life moves fast, and I KNOW people are more rushed than they used to be. You know what? I don’t give a fuck. *I* find the time to still be polite. I find the time to thank people and make pleasant small talk. Why the hell don’t they?
So, kid, I say keep going. The thing about being a polite person and not behaving politely just because you’re not getting it in return is that you start to get bitter about it. It changes you. Cynicism finds you and apathy makes a home in you. Stay true to the person you are. Help others, be polite. You’ll one day be surrounded by a better class of people, by people who appreciate that in who you are. It will be a deciding factor on the kinds of engagements you’re invited to and the kinds of experiences you have. You’re still a kid, you’re in high school, and you’re stuck in a social world you have little say in. In a few years, that all changes.
I know I will not date a man who has no manners. I will watch how he behaves and treats others, and I’ll note whether he expresses gratitude for the little things I say and do for him, and if I don’t like what I see, I will walk.
Life’s too short to be with people who just don’t understand basic human decency. I figure that eliminates about 60% of the world from eligibility for my bed, but whatever. I’m fine with having high standards. Are you?
Lightning Crashes… Or Something
There is a world of difference between saying what needs to be said and saying what you want to say. Words get taken the wrong way and intentions are often lost in the mix.
Hi, I’m Steff. I’m a compulsive foot-in-mouthist, and thinking before speaking is a lifelong fantasy I’ve yet to make true.
And you know what? Honestly, I just hope I keep on failing.
It’s so goddamned much fun when I get to actually say what I think. I do curtail it day to day, but not as much as you might think. I’m not one of these secret-other-self type bloggers who has a total alter ego they only bring out to play on a CPU. I don’t have to hit the bong or scarf a tab or guzzle a 2-4 in order to tap into that inner self. I just have to bite my fucking tongue sometimes so I can yield to convention. But, trust me, most people I know have known me to say incredibly crass things sometimes, and I’ve no qualms about playing a fool.
If there’s anything I miss about my old job, it’s that they’d long ago labelled me as “flippant” and knew me to be an absolute yutz at times, and, in fact, they embraced those moments of utter irrelevance. I miss that, and I miss the fact that I’m not feeling as comfortable being myself as I once was. I chalk it up to the oddities of the recent past: the lack of sex drive, the in-orbit levels of estrogen, the sub-terranean depths of depression, and all that shit. But I feel it coming back to me now. I’m waiting, like a lover in the night, I’m waiting for my own arrival, naked yet comfortable.
And that’s the thing, man. Being yourself. It ain’t just about saying what you’re thinking, it’s about feeling comfortable in your own skin and knowing, without a doubt, that the things you’re doing and thinking are all about who you are. It’s far easier said than done, and far harder to actualize than any of those fucking self-help gurus would have you believe.
Why’s that? Well, ‘cos we live in a shrink-wrapped society that thinks image is everything. Hell, it’s apologies-on-demand in our day and age. (I wrote a little ranty thing about just that on the other bloggie-poo of mine earlier today.)
Y’know, there’s two ways I write best: One, with music driving the cadence of everything I tap out, and two, like I am now, seated in unnatural (to you) silence — my little hearing aids turned off, or not even inserted in my ears. I find that if, one way or the other, I drown out the world, that all that’s left is the rat-tatty-tat of my heart and my fingers on the keyboard. Gone is the judgment, the cynicism, the self-doubt, the angst, the bafflement, the groan’n’drone of the world beyond my far too thin windowpanes. I can give in to autolatry and isolation, and, for once, being myself is just a little easier.
I have the misfortune of working at a company with nice people, but with extreme political aspects to them. And with politics comes correctness, and with correctness comes a realization that I might not ever fit in as I’d like to. But, then, I haven’t been there long, and it took me more than a year to gain the unequivocal fondness of my last employers. (But I was in a bad, bad place when I started that job — borderline alcoholic and drug addict, really.) I suspect I’ll beat the living shit out of that time-lapse this time around, but OHMIGOD does it feel like forever.
And I’ve been thinking about this for a little bit today, how weird it all is when we lose touch with ourselves. It’s like trying to dial up a friend and stoke an old relationship. It ain’t gonna be all love’n’kisses as soon as that cup’o’joe settles on the table between you, you know. Takes a little massagin’ of egos and checking in and tuning up and all, don’t you find? Yet we think that because we’re all of a sudden aware of the distance between who we are and who we’re being that there’s some kinda mental Band-aid we can slap on that gaping psychic wound and suddenly be our uber-ally self all over again. Not gonna fuckin’ happen, sweetcheeks — try though you might.
So, that’s where I am. I know who I am but I know who I’m seeming to be, and who I’m seeming to be’s just gotten her eviction notice and I want her ass on outta here, but I know there’s a holding period before that’s gonna happen. Meanwhile, just call me Marcellus Wallace, ‘cos I’m about due to get medieval on that waste-ass tenant if she ain’ packin’ in a friggin’ hurry, baby.
I’m trying to remember when in the hell it all shifted for me. When was it I lost touch with all the little bitty bits o’ Steff that make me grin when I’m alone? At some point during my recently RIP’d relationship, to be sure, and no, I’m not about to blame the ex for causing me to go AWOL. Sure as shit weren’t his fault, not one iota. He liked the chick I am, not the chick I became, and that’s fact that I don’t doubt. The problem was never him, the problem was that I, like most chicks have a tendency to do, managed to fall into that trap of being what I thought was the right thing to be in a relationship, and somehow, that coupled with the estrogen depression and the prevalence of strife and upheaval in my oh-so-tumultuous little dramatic life somehow sent this kick-ass, fun to be with, always witty, always snappy chick somewhere way the hell out into the stratosphere.
And, dude, it sucked!
There’s nothing (NOTHING!!!) worse than waking up with the side of you that you just don’t like. There’s nothing (NOTHING!!!) cooler than waking up with a grin on your face ‘cos nothing turns you on better than liking who you are at 6:53 am, all right?
And you don’t get to be that person if all you’re ever doing is kow-towing to convention and appeasing all the little perfect (read: no fun, dry, unenviable) people around you. You get to be that person when you say things that catch yourself and others off-guard and you bring a grin to their face. You get to be that person when that gleam in your eye sparkles and you find yourself walking down the street with an unwarranted grin.
Ah, well, I don’t know why I’m writing this, and I don’t give a fuck about it, either. I just felt like it. That’s reason enough, no? I wish like nothing else I had Live’s Lightning Crashes somewhere on this harddrive, but no. I do not. If you read this in the next couple of hours, (say, before 2am PST) perhaps you could email me the song and I can rock-the-fuck-out before work in the morning. Not that I’m condoning piracy. Okay, fuck it. I’m condoning piracy. Sign me up, matey, and watch me rock and roll on the pitch of those waves.