A "Hello, How Are You?" Kind of Day

I feel like the change I’ve sought is finally starting to happen. The gears are shifting, things are falling nicely into place, money is sorting out, my body’s pain is settling down, and I’m even starting to feel like a “local” here.
It’s a big week for me, always is. Mother’s Day. It always approaches with a sense of dread. It’s different this year. I’ve upped and moved to a place I think my mom would’ve loved to live in. We came here on a “girl’s weekend” when I was in fourth grade, so, that’s odd for me in a way this week.
One of the first things I did here as a new resident was wind up having dinner with my two aunts, both visiting suddenly, who raised a glass of wine, toasted my mom, and said “Who would’ve thought we’d all meet here, now?”
That was back in March and I already feel a million miles away from who I was that week.
I’ve tried to keep my bitching to a minimum in all that time, but my body reacted horribly to the stress of moving, the sudden shift to a “walking” lifestyle, and working from home. Oh, and the small matter of riding my bike straight into a roadsign and getting whiplash. That was helpful. Suffice to say, in the coming weeks, there was a lot of pain, and a lot of worry.
But I kept my chin up and now, this week, finally, everything is settling down and I’m not so sore, and I’m more active, and it’s a good, good thing.
I’m glad I had that unexpected adversity, though. I think it needed to get worse before I would really appreciate it getting better.
Sometimes we can be very stupid humans that way. I know I can be a very stupid human. Sometimes, getting beat upside the head with lessons is the way to grow.
Sometimes, we forget how resilient we are. That too is a great thing to be reminded of.
I think all the little griefs and frustrations that sprung up in my first eight weeks here have served to remind me of why I needed this move in the first place.
I’m 10 weeks in, I have no life, I’ve only seen minimal parts of the city because I’ve been limited to days I feel good, and YET I don’t feel homesick for Vancouver.
Despite that, I have a trip home next month. I’m speaking at the 2012 Northern Voice Blogger’s Conference. I’ll be on a panel talking about how to write with authenticity. I’m speaking Saturday if you want to grab a ticket for the day, $40.
I’ll be in town for a few days, crashing at a couple different friends’ places. A foreigner in my hometown. A couchsurfer returns. That’ll be weird. And cool. Mostly weird.

Great blue heron fishing. Shot by me.


And I’ll probably cry on the ferry back to Victoria, and homesickness will likely hit me for the first time then. Because, honestly, Vancouver in the summer? Heaven on earth, man. That’s how ya do it. (But Victoria’s gonna be pretty killer too.)
The impending, inevitable bout of homesickness doesn’t matter in the long run, though, because I know this is the right place for me. It’s that gut-check level of intuition. I can’t explain it in words, how it feels, but I wake up and this place just feels right, for right now. And that’s all I need to know.
Monday, I got up, excited to see a big to-do on the beach road, but that was a bust, so, instead, I took a walk along the beach and spotted a great blue heron fishing. I stood there sinking into shoreline wet sand, snapping photos for an hour. It was fantastic. Then, I came home and worked.
Tuesday, I got up, worked for a couple hours, hopped on my bike for a great eggs Benedict breakfast in town, then cycled around to four different food shops (Chinatown and beyond) for all my favourite cooking stuff, and headed home for more work.
That’s two days in a row with the kind of balance I moved here looking for.
This is the first week where I’ve felt like I’ve had any of that going on. It’s something to aspire for. It’s where I’m headed. If I can have 2-3 workdays a week like that, it’ll be a great lifestyle over here, and I know it.
So, change. It’s like that snowball on the hill. Getting it going is ridiculously frustrating and labourious sometimes, but once you get the foundations, once you start moving it and pushing it, it slowly amasses more, and more, and then it has a momentum of its own. If you’re not from a colder region, here’s a video of making a snowman. All true.
And that’s what I’m imagining for my own change: The Snowball Grows. Now gravity is pitching in and my ball of change has begun to roll with a whole lot less of the grunt-work from yours truly.
It’s an exciting time.
Well, this wasn’t what I’d intended to write about but it’s a great snapshot of my headspace right now, I guess. I’d intended to tell you about my jade plant and how well it’s doing and how much it’s got me being pensive. But that’ll be for another day.
In the meantime, I’m doing well. Living life, working a lot, feeling better, getting my groove on, and thinking I’m getting closer to where I need to be.
That’s your update, kids. And, hey, it’s almost Friday! Happy weekend.

RANT: You're Stupid And We Know It, School Board

A six-year-old has been suspended for singing the words an LMFAO song: “I’m sexy and I know it.”
The school board thinks he should’ve known better.
You know what the six-year-old knows? That these people look like they’re having a LOT of fun when they’re bouncing around singing this song in the video. They’re cool, weird, neat performers with great hair, exciting lives, and they’re singing a super-catchy song that makes the six-year-old come to life when he sings the song too. And they were on top of the world because of it. That is what he knows.
Know what the adults on the schoolboard know? Better. They damned well know better than to suspend a six-year-old for mentioning the words to a ludicrous song by a campy band. And to call it sexual harrassment?
“Zero tolerance” laws are for a moronic people in a moronic world. We’re smarter than that. We know that not everything’s a crime. We know that kids tell lies, adults make mistakes, and shit happens. But we want to seem tough, strong, and like we’re in the moral right, and so we say HEY, ANY CONTRAVENTION OF THIS LAW, AND YOU’RE SCREWED, PAL.
So what happens? A kid gets suspended because he’s singing lyrics to a song he probably doesn’t even understand.
When I was a kid, I was 8 when I found an Elton John record with my brother at a yard sale. On it was “The Bitch is Back.” I didn’t understand the lyrics, but I loved the way it sounded when he sung the words, and I remember dancing around the room singing all summer long.
In grade 7, I loved the song “Relax” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. It would be years before I’d understand it was about premature ejaculation, or even what “premature ejaculation” meant.
We can hear songs as kids and love the way they sound, but not have a clue what the premise is.
Even if the kid had any gleaning of this song’s meaning, to call it sexual harassment when he’s just emulating what’s in pop culture is a ridiculously hypocritical move.
I don’t want to live in a world where there are no shades of grey. We’re boring enough already, people.
Let’s get over ourselves and stop the stupidity. Zero tolerance makes zero sense. Look at cases on their merits, not just under the dimwitted light of asshat politicians who pass laws under the guise of looking tough on crime — because it’s we who pay the price, not actual bad guys.

Our Lives After Their Death

There’s a full moon tomorrow. I’m in a weird headspace.
In social media, I’m seeing snippets here and there from those I’m connected with, remembering the passing of our good friend Derek Miller last year. My thoughts on Derek, as his death took the world by storm by way of an incredible blog post, were posted here.

Someone once graffiti'd a lot of sites in my new neighbourhood, and this one made me think of Derek last week -- a lighthouse, a beacon, at the end of a long path, and at the foot of it, "The things you really want, you can't buy."


Derek’s death became a lot of things for a lot of people, and I’m having trouble even now identifying what it meant to me, but I know his blog post, and his passing, were part of why I spent the next few months realizing how unhappy I was with my life. The thing was, I knew someone like Derek would simply comment, “Well, then change it.” So, I tried to figure out what I needed to change, why I was so deeply unsatisfied with everything.
He may have “just” been a husband, father, and all-around geek, but I got the sense that there was really nothing else Derek wanted from life. He had everything he wanted. He was where he wanted to be. All he wanted was more life, more of the same with the people he had around him.

All The Things I Wasn’t

I found myself thinking a lot about, well, I’m not where I want to be. I don’t have what I want. I don’t have the people in my life I want (ie: love). Let’s not even talk about the bigger picture.
I’d been kind of skating through life and sort of ignoring anything below the surface. I’d stopped being a good writer (in my view) and stopped living the deeper, observant, involved life I’d once had. I’d been depressed before, but this wasn’t depression — this was plain old unhappiness.
Derek’s death somehow was a slap in my face, like a loud shout of Wake up! Get it right! Time’s ticking!
And, it took a while, but I think I’m where I am now because I’d realized through him of just how far afield I was from the things I considered basic requirements in life — time to write, close to the ocean, quiet, and so many other little things that speak to who I grew up being, who I was in my 20s, when I was most “myself.”
I’m new here, in Victoria, so I’m ironically even more “alone” than I had been in Vancouver. I’ve not been looking for a new tribe yet, but I will begin later this month. Because that’s another lesson I’ve learned through him. Some people just make our souls feel better, and we need them in our lives. We are better people when we have better people around us, and there are few we can’t learn something of life from, but others offer a master class in it.

Two Lost Souls Swimming in a Fishbowl

When I sat in that theatre for his remembrance, listening to all those amazing people paying homage to Derek, hearing their stories, I couldn’t stop thinking about the degrees of life. This couple, Derek and Air, they were in the same crowd I’d run with nearly 20 years before. But by inches and degrees, we must have missed each other here, there, and at different times. Somehow, some way, we never connected until the end of Derek’s life.
What if I’d paid more attention? What if I’d slowed down? What if?
I’m not done learning lessons from Derek’s life. Or anyone’s life. I’m just not done learning.
Next week, Mother’s day rolls up again, and the Hallmark Machine is playing that message loud and clear. So, these days, I’m thinking a lot about the people I’ve lost in life, the legacies they’ve left me, and whether I’d feel I’d done enough if I were to leave this realm tomorrow.

Coming Back to Life

Getting here, moving, that was a start toward the life I’d like, and the legacy I seek to leave. But I’ve barely even begun on my way. I was off-track so many years that just getting back on-track is a hell of a journey in itself.
I’d like to think there’s plenty of time for me to get it right, but that’s foolishness. Sooner is better than later.
So, as the full moon messes with my frequencies, and the hazy oppressive clouds dampen the world beyond windows, I’m lost in thought about who I am today versus who I’d like to be, when I really should be writing a project quote and starting my day job’s work.
Sigh. I don’t know how to finish this post. I’ve tried six different endings and I keep deleting them. Maybe there is no ending. Not for me, not for this, not yet. Maybe there is just a beginning.
Well, then. That’s how it is.

STUPID PEOPLE win money for believing NUTELLA IS HEALTHY

Oh, you think that title’s politically incorrect? Well, then, buckle up.
I’m kinda pissed after reading the makers of Nutella, that incredibly addictive chocolate-hazelnut spread that pimps out a crepe like nobody’s business [shudder/twitch], are settling a lawsuit with consumers because people actually BELIEVED the commercials.
Nutella claimed their meal was part of a nutritional breakfast. You know, wink-wink, nudge-nudge, if it’s on whole-grain toast with a banana sliced on top, and a bowl of strawberries on the side, plus a glass of fresh-squeezed OJ and a shot of insulin.
Unfortunately, people didn’t grasp the “PART of a balanced diet” bit. Nor did they read the sugar content or the fact that North America’s lesser-than concoction of Nutella (Europe gets the REAL thing, we slum it) has PALM OIL.
See, I had this “holy SHIT, is THIS STUFF CRACK?” phase of Nutella addiction, and then, one day, I read the packaging. I saw the fat, the sodium, the sugar, the palm oil, and I thought “Whoa.” There was a really tasty Real Canadian Super generic version that had all CANOLA, not PALM, oil, and it was pretty good, so I switched for a month, but then I just realized I was eating too fucking much of it and I dropped it altogether.
Because I READ THE LABEL.
Some of us do that, you know. It happens. It’s RIGHT THERE. You don’t have to walk two blocks, catch a bus, and SOME of us have educated ourselves, or were taught in public schools, as to what the calorie count we’re after, how many grams of fat are bad, and so forth. I mean, I barely stumble through this stuff and YET I have an inkling of the right information, and even I was scared off by reading Nutella’s nutritional low-down. I mean, holy crap! There’s crack in them-thar jars, Batman! ask someone —  you just have to turn the jar over and READ THE LABEL.
But, no. People who don’t read labels, who don’t empower themselves, who are ignorant of any basic logic (sugar + nut butter + chocolate = not awesome for your ass) and believe commercials with violin instrumentals, they’re all being rewarded with $3 million of Nutella’s dough.

OH, THAT LOOKS HEALTHY. HOW COULD IT NOT BE? IT'S SO SMOOTH, SHINY, AND GLOOPY.


You know what? I call bullshit.
 
Fucking learn your stuff. Don’t trust advertisements. Be judicious. Empower yourself. Don’t be a victim.
This rewarding-people-for-not-caring thing, it’s just not cool. Apathy and ignorance are not excuses. They don’t deserve this.
There’s ZERO incentive to being a proactive, informed individual anymore. Society only rewards the opposite.
I’m fed up with it.
Here’s an idea. Let’s stop this “I don’t need to know because I can just sue them later” epidemic of STUPID in North America and totally change the game. If a manufacturer misleads you, and it’s not something like, say, a life-saving drug or something like a car’s safety where your life is literally on the line, you don’t keep the money from the lawsuit.

They’re really angry that chocolate spread is unhealthy? It’s FAT-FILLED NUTS and CHOCOLATE and SUGAR. Yeah, that’s a fucking surprise — unhealthy. Idiots!
No. They’re angry enough to sue? Great! Do so from a Good Samaritan, Kantist “for the greater good” standpoint, and I will applaud you — so long as the money paid by the offending party is distributed among relevant charities. (ie: Food banks.) NO MONEY FOR STUPIDHEADS.
Let’s STOP THE BLEEDING. Let’s not reward apathy. Let’s make ignorance less profitable. Let’s just try to be in it together, so we’re shutting down corporations for irresponsible behaviour, but we’re not being a part of the Cash Cow System that’s so detrimental to our civilization. Let’s start caring again.
You can’t fucking tell me you put a couple tablespoons of that chocolatey-hazelnutty crack-like concoction on bread and think “THIS TASTES SOOOOOOO HEALTHY.”
Jesus. It doesn’t taste like sawdust. Do. The. Math.
Fuck. I’m gonna start taking a parachute EVERYWHERE I GO, because society is going DOWN, man. Score one for the stupids.
No Nutella for ANYONE. EVER. Pass the whiskey.

Finding My Words

I’ve been enjoying the reclusive life and doing a lot of solo exploring in small chunks since I’ve moved. It can’t, and won’t, continue for much longer but it’s been a brilliant choice on my end.
It’s only now, clearly, that my desire to write is returning. I was sure this would happen sooner, and part of the Being Antisocial Plan was so that I’d reconnect with my words. Well, yeah. It’s taken time but it’s happening.

Sunset off Clover Point in Victoria. Par moi.


I’ll embrace antisocial behaviour for a little longer — a week, maybe two — to let my wordy seeds grow. Then, I’d like to start meeting people and think it will be easy to do so. Optimism helps, kids!
If I’m in the right mood, people generally like me. Or, people I like tend to like me. That’s not cockiness or anything, because being liked just isn’t hard — be nice, be interested, be interesting, be kind, be authentic. It’s much easier, of course, when you actually talk to people and make an effort. So, until I do that, I shall remain anonymous and lifeless. Yay?
As we both might know, I’m no dummy. I’m the thinky-thinky type, like all geeky writer girls tend to be, and all my cerebral wheels have spun something fierce in the months leading to this moment.
See, I know what small towns are like, and at 1/9th the size of Vancouver and my living in a very small neighbourhood within that, I know anonymity evaporates in a hurry once you start fitting into the community. And that’s great, it’s nice to feel noticed and like you belong, but once you have THAT, you never have THIS again.
I talk to people, I’m chatty, I smile a lot, and most people enjoy bantering with me, so I expect to start knowing more people than I don’t. One day, I’ll be able to recall this 8- or 10-week period where I saw no one but strangers, did nothing beyond shop browsing, and never got greeted by name.
Kinda awesome. For a while. Life and its contrasts are fantastic. People should enjoy their weird life phases a bit more. The start of a relationship, the awkwardness of being new… Newness is fantastic and fleeting. Everything gets old so quickly.
It’s common that we get so caught up in wanting the future to happen now that we forget we can never come back, we’ll never have THIS moment again. We’re the impatient fast-food, flash-cooking society, and it shows in our lifestyles.
I don’t own a microwave. I am in no hurry, friends. Anymore, anyhow. Namaste.
There’s nothing to regret about holding off on joining the Locals Club. I know I’ll get there, and when I do, I’ll absolutely adore being a part of this community. It’ll be great living in a place where I can walk all the way home after 2 or 3 drinks, where I can casually go meet people at the city’s most popular parks and beaches, since they’re all a short walk away. I’m under no illusions of a) what my life can be like here, and b) what it’ll take for me to connect with others.
But, for now, I’ve more literary aspirations in mind.
For that, it’s nice, this anonymous wanderer schtick of mine. A rewarding way to burn off the rat race hangover I’ve had since I escaped the faster, bustling drone of big city life.
I’m still in the headspace where I feel like I have so much I need to do, and that’s all part of the necessary efforts in transition. It’s catching up on work, finishing projects around my home, and other little things. But now I’ve found time for writing (and even blogging) each day for a week.
The change I’ve sought is officially afoot, it seems. Oh, writing, how I’ve missed wanting to do you.
Longtime readers know I’m a big believer in writing being a muscle. The more one does it, the more one taps into the rhythm and grind of what makes writing great.
But if you’re living a life where nothing inspires you, nothing sets you free, it’s hard to tap into that. In fact, it’s damned near impossible. I should know, because that’s how I was feeling for much of the last two years. Trapped and frustrated.
That’s changing, quickly. I’m becoming fascinated and intrigued often. I’m becoming inspired and recharged from time to time. I need more. More, more, more!
Creativity requires much in life but it mostly requires focus and awareness. Stimulation, too. And we can trick ourselves into thinking the city is what we need for stimulation, but, for some, cities are built for distraction, not stimulation.
I’ve been so distracted so long that this silence and quietude in my new life is overwhelming at times. I’m so undistracted I’m confused.
And that too is part of the life transition. Slowing down. It’s the emotional and mental equivalent to the way solid ground feels after an afternoon of being at sea or a day spent 4x4ing. The sudden stop is jarring to our equilibrium.
Well, I feel the same these days. It’s almost panic-inducing at times, because I’m still waiting for that day when I don’t wake up thinking my vacation’s over and I need to return to the city soon. Because I don’t. I live here now.
That’s something I have to remind myself of, daily. There is no rush, there’s no return, there’s just me, here, now.
So, that’s where I am today. Still anonymous, still wandering, still transitioning… but a writer once again.

RANT: Censorship & The Nonsense of a Non-Seuss World

I’m swearing a lot here on purpose. When I talk about censorship, it makes sense to do so. Avert your sensitive eyes if you’re all bent out of shape by cusswords, and all will be fine. Because that’s all you need to do… not fucking ban it.
We’re regressing as a society, and it scares the shit out of me.
Dr. Seuss is being banned. Why, I can’t fucking fathom it, but it is.

Some bureaucratic asses who are terrified of lawsuits have deemed a story about a turtle as political.
Here’s what the Globe and Mail explains in this article about a BC’s schoolboard’s choice to ban this much-loved children’s classic:

The quote in question – “I know up on top you are seeing great sights, but down here on the bottom, we too should have rights” – comes fromYertle the Turtle, the tale of a turtle who climbs on the backs of other turtles to get a better view.
In the midst of a labour dispute between the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation and the province, the quote was deemed unsuitable.
“I responded that in the context, it was borderline,” Mr. Stigant said. “Contextually, it was political – but it was grey and I would prefer it didn’t appear and I believe she agreed.”
Yertle’s quest for a higher vantage point ends when the turtle at the bottom of the stack – who’s pleaded, “I’ve pain in my back, my shoulders and knees – how long must we stand here, your majesty please” – burps, sending Yertle hurtling to the mud.

Yeah. “Political.” Fuck.
Look, people. Banning political messaging from schools is precisely part of why we’re now living in a society where constructive thought seems elusive at best. We’re in the age of Jersey Shore and Real Housewives, when people become famous for partying and being dysfunctional assholes, and the least we could hope for is a return to critical thinking by the children who are our future.
I mean, DUDE: Teach them well and let them lead the way. So sayeth Whitney.
Instead, political hacks who can’t even be trusted to file expense reports have decided the politics of arguably one of the most intriguing children’s authors is too political to be morally tolerable when teaching kids ‘cos — oh, the unthinkable of unthinkables — it might inspire children to think of classism.
Excuse me while I ram my head into my desk for a minute.
Well, that feels better. Okay. Deep breath.
PEOPLE. We’ve dumbed down EVERYTHING in society.
We print legal warnings that coffee cups contain HOT liquid and therefore are DANGEROUS. We rubberize playgrounds because some kids scraped a fucking knee. We pander to the lowest common denominator in everything we do, and North America is suffering an epidemic of stupid. Are you infected?
Instead of offending ANYONE EVER ANYMORE, we live in a completely vanilla society where the mere suggestion of offense means some public relations department comes running with an ass-kissing statement that does nothing but blow bubbles.
Saying “goddamnit” on television would probably explode transistors coast-to-coast in America, for Christ’s sake.
Children today grow up without any threat of getting hurt. God forbid they go ziplining in a public park, go head-first down death-defying slides, or even get a sunburn. Quick, shield little Jonny before he gets a bruise!
Back when I grew up, we actually got grades on report cards, fell down on concrete, jumped off things without safety nets, learned about racism and political parties in school, and look at me — I’m just as fucked up as the next guy, but I get through my days A-okay without needing meds or therapy. I’m normal, Ma! Fucked up in all the best ways.
Not like today. Kids are growing up without critical thinking, scared of getting hurt on adventures, and obsess over looking good instead of being smart, because that’s the pansy-assed culture we’ve given to them.
Stop it!
Allow kids to fall. Encourage them to fail, so long as they’ve tried. Let them learn conflicting ideas and find their own ways. Make them flex brain muscles.
Let’s pray we haven’t undone everything that’s made our culture so awesome for the last century, and let’s get back to embracing free will, allowing competing ideologies, and enjoying everything else that makes life in a free society so goddamned much FUN to endure.
Bureaucrats are making life boring, and it should be a crime. Lock ’em up! Stop saving us from ourselves.
Wake the fuck up and  say no to censorship, people.
And let’s just stop the rubber playgrounds, please. Buy a motherfucking box of Band-aids and live a little, mm-kay? Like they say, life’s tough. Get a helmet.

Where I Am Now: Pictures

I was lucky to be born and raised in Vancouver, the only member of my massive, massive extended family with that privilege.
The city outgrew me, and trying to decide where I could live that wouldn’t leave me brokenhearted about where I’d left, well, that was a challenge at first, until I realized Victoria could fit my budget and deliver on all the lifestyle promises that Vancouver no longer could.
I live in a little part of Victoria called James Bay. It’s the oldest neighbourhood in Western Canada, and has had the longest serving police detachment. Its character homes date as far back as 1860 and there’s at least one on every street.
It’s a mix of old people hauling oxygen tanks and young folks looking for a lifestyle that offers the adventures of the rugged West Coast and proximity to downtown life.
This is my new home, and I find it to be quickly feeling like “home.”
If I can’t find a better life balance here, then I’m a lost cause. This place makes my soul feel a little lighter, and I can’t wait to see what it looks like through all the different seasons. Summer will blow my mind.
Well. Since I’ve moved, I’ve shot 2,000 photos, and I’ve barely sorted through a couple hundred of them. I’d like to now share with you a few images of the new place I lay my hat. Most of these beach shots are within 3 kilometres (less than 2 miles) from my new home, and there is so very much more coastline to see — even more than in Vancouver.
I am a coastal girl through and through. (Despite wanting to travel to all the world’s great deserts.) You will never, ever find me living inland again. When I lived in the Yukon for a year, seven months into my stay, I visited the Alaskan fjiords and saw Skagway, smelling salt water for the first time in half a year, and had to fight back tears.
My heart is on the shore. Always will be.
So, maybe you can see why wandering has held more allure for me of late than sitting indoors and writing.

Some recent photos:

 

This is where you come when the winds are gusting 95km an hour, like they were on this day -- just shy of true hurricane force. My lens cap blew away about 5 minutes before this shot. This is Holland Point, Victoria.


Ogden Breakwater, seen here, protects Victoria's Inner Harbour from the brutal storms Island Life brings. It's a 1/2-mile walk to the end of the breakwater, and never stops being beautiful.

 

 

Another shot of Victoria's Ogden Point Breakwater, the end, where you can enjoy one of three benches, watch passing ships, and rest for the 1/2-mile walk back.


Victorians do not take their beaches for granted. You won't find any desolate stretches, but with so many great beaches to choose from, you also likely won't find huge crowds.

 

Another shot of that great stormy 95km-winds day. I'll never get tired of those, I suspect.

 

I like how there's so many points overhead to watch people on the beaches below, unlike in Vancouver. It's intriguing from a photog's point of view.


My first day living in Victoria, and I find these steps. Love, love, love these steps. Holland Beach.


I really hope we get some good windy days in the summer months, too, because I love how it looks on a sunny day.

On The Quieting of the Self

I don’t think I’ve blogged regularly in months, but that’s the nature of lifechange for me.
I don’t deal well with change, and it’s possibly why I resist it so hard for so long.
That said, there’s a book on ADHD called The Unquiet Mind, and that phrase aptly describes my mental state of the last several weeks/months.
In asking how I was acclimatizing to my new life/world/routine over here in Victoria, a friend replied to my flustered response with “Change is good, and often overdue.”
I began thinking how overdue my change has been, and it’s too far back to get into, but a couple years anyhow, if not longer. But the delays in undertaking the change resulted in my descending further and further into my funk before I got out. I suppose that makes me more ordinary than I’d like to admit, since most of us don’t adopt change particularly well before it becomes mandatory.

Photo by me. Shot on Victoria's Clover Point.


As the days bleed one into another over here and I slowly become A Local, it occurs to me that just making the choice to move here was only the start of my change, and many of the things I hope to introduce in my life will take a long time to make a reality. It harkens to the cliche “Rome was not built in a day.”
No. I guess it wasn’t. Nor will be my new life.
It’s been seven weeks, and I’m only now reaching the point where my apartment is beginning to feel like a home. Just a week or so ago, I had my first instance of being late for an appointment, missing my bus, and solving it like a local would — via another bus on a nearby route. I felt smart and shiny, like I’d inherited some pretty new Big-Girl Pants.
But, in those seven passing weeks came a lot of problems with my body — one adjustment after another causing upheaval for my fucked-up skeleton, and it’s also only now that these things are settling.
It got scary for a bit as New Badness kept occurring, since my back and body are big reasons I’ve moved to Victoria — where it seemed easier to get around, geared to the walking lifestyle, and more fitness-oriented in a ways I would be able to incorporate into my days. But when you make that move and things go in the opposite direction from what you’d hoped, yeah, it’s a hair-raising segment of change that isn’t what you’re ready to receive.
For weeks, people kept asking if I was “loving” my new life, and I tried to put the Smiley Face on, but the truth was, I was scared, hurting, and hoping I hadn’t made a Big Scary Mistake.
But transition takes time, both mentally and physically. Knowing that, I just kept my head down, kept my goals ahead of me, and tried to keep my head in the game.
That worked, and my transition’s easing into a better normal now, with a mo’ better normal yet to come.
With my home nearing completion, it’s time to turn the transitional focus onto me — my body, my health, my mind — and really reap the rewards of making this big change in my world.
Last fall, when I would imagine life in Victoria, I was off on a number of points, but that includes underestimating the amazing surroundings, the quiet, and the pace of life around me. I know now that it’s a place I belong.
When I imagine my future today, I see myself embracing more walks on the ocean, finding a better sense of balance time-wise, learning to meditate regularly, photographing/writing daily, and falling back in love with reading.
Because, the thing is, this Unquiet Mind conundrum of mine, it’s been the status quo for me since about 2009 or so. Seldom have I found peace or quiet in a way that resonates for me. I think I’ve found it here. I think I’m learning now that, while I was born and raised in Vancouver, and love it on some level that’ll never change, I think I’m not built for life in the big city. I suspect one day this place, too, will outgrow my soul.
It’s funny how much I can surprise myself, how much I still have to learn about who I am and where my place is in the world, but I suppose it’s all part of the EverBecoming of being human. If you stop growing, you may as well push up daisies.
I know that, by delaying the needed change in my life, I fell further into a horrible rut, and undid much good I’d struggled to accomplish in life, but something tells me the grief of my relocation, the bodily aches and pains that came with, and the turmoil I’d felt during it all will result in some amazing days to come.
It’s good to be on the other side. Now, where will I be in a few months? I don’t know, but I think I’m gonna love getting there.

The CBC Bleeds: Life inside the Zeitgeist

As I type this, Canadian’s national broadcaster CBC is bleeding heavily after being gutted by budgeting cuts imposed by a national government that sees no value in Canadians having a free and informed press, and loathes a national culture that often indulges in mockery and satire at our government’s expense.
The CBC will survive today, but at what strength, I don’t know.
Without a real breakdown for me to compare existing jobs versus those that will be cut, and so forth, I’m mostly blowing smoke out of my ass if I speak to numbers or measurable consequence, so I’ll stick to peripherals and ideologies rather than facts. Proof I’m smarter than I look.
This gutting today, the “surgical” cutting of budgets, speaks to Stephen Harper’s government, who’ve shown a disdain for anything based in science, culture, or public interest.
I don’t even want to go there, right now, though.
This moment, here, now, what has me sad is the change to our culture. Whether it’s small theatre or the CBC, Canada has its own bent when it comes to what flies, culturally.
It’s why some American show like Arrested Development might barely get a following in the US but is a runaway hit in Canada — we see things differently from our American friends. We like bleakness. We’re big on books and words, have a great ability to comprehend complicated plots. We’re completely oddball when in comes to humour, proven by ex-pats like SNL’s creator Lorne Michaels, or Jim Carrey, Mike Meyers, and pretty much anyone else who’s made $10 million or more for acting in comedies.
Some question if that weird worldview is borne of our “bi-polar weather” — amazing short summers with endless winters. Maybe it’s the great beer, or the wide open spaces where you get to really be alone with the voices in your head, or the way we’ve always needed community for surviving in the wilds of this Great Northern Land.
There’s something about Canadians that’s just different from Americans, and every effort to encapsulate it falls short.
Nation-wise, we’re often depicted as being the little guy who needs his big strong friend to pick him out of trouble spots.
But like most people with self-esteem issues, the reality is very different from what the perception might be.
We’re not really the ineffective little friend that needs Big Dude’s help.
Instead, we’ve got a crack military force. Our education consistently ranks with considerably higher results than USA’s. We’ve got more natural resources than most countries could ever dream of. We’re the fourth largest oil provider in the world, and one of the best beer providers. We’re funny as fuck and have long been the backbone of the American comedy industry. We once had more writers per capita than anyone in the world, probably still do. We’re polite. We’re a massive country with a little population, and somehow we not only have infrastructure everywhere, but we also have universal healthcare.
Sorry, eh?
Granted, a lot of those places where we rock are places our budgets have been cut, funding slashed, and the glimmers of hope dimmed, but hey. It’s what we are.
So, today, I’m of two minds.
One, I understand why the slashing is happening. I know that, like most public organizations, there are a lot of deadbeat managers and redundant positions, but I also understand that when these cuts happen, it’s not the deadbeat managers who are gutted, and when more and more of the supposedly “redundant” positions are hacked, it starts bleeding into the quality of the overall product.
Take a look at the shitty barely-researched articles offered by so-called “online reporters” for newspapers like The Vancouver Sun these days as an example of what happens when you keep lowering the bar on employees due to this perceived need to have “new news” every moment of the day. I worry that this will be what happens to a once-great CBC. And then Harper will be as happy as a pig in shit.
Two, I know we’re on the cusp of a new time. When printed music first appeared, it changed everything in the world of musicians and concerts. We’re at that point now with digital media. Suddenly, we don’t need newspapers, or record companies, or book publishers. We’re turning into a world much like that of 400 years ago, where artists are back to distributing their own content, and it comes truly down to who’s got the best way with the world instead of who’s standing with the biggest corporation marketing machine behind them.
The CBC, like every other entertainment giant in the world, has got to feel the pinch from the fact that it’s now by ourselves or fancy third-party apps that we aggregate our news, culture, information, and images from a variety of sources. We don’t need reporters or people who were cultivated by a corporation to try and figure out what the hot-new-thing-now is, because we’re better judges than most industry hacks ever could be — we have no advertisers to appease, talking heads to curtail us, or shareholders to satisfy. We just have to find cool shit to watch, read, hear, or circulate, and it doesn’t matter who’s behind it.
How the CBC could escape that changing reality in this modern age, well, that’s entirely beyond my imagination.
It doesn’t mean my heart doesn’t break a little today. It doesn’t mean I wish we could resolve this in a way that doesn’t mean hundreds of jobs vanish, shows go unproduced, and content-creation begins treading even softer so as to avoid becoming a part of the gutting.
The CBC was a huge part of my upbringing back when we got five channels and most of what we watched was on CBC. The CBC was the voice in the night when I moved to the Yukon and had only radio to keep me company before I met any locals. The CBC is, in many ways, synonymous for me in thinking of what “My Canada” means.
So. Yes. We’re at a difficult point, to be sure.
It’s like anything. Some things need to die before others can be born. We’re alive during a drastically changing zeitgeist.
Culturally, the upheaval is incredibly hard to handle.
But, underneath it all, deep down, waiting for its moment, it is truly the time of the Individual. Or: The Viral Age.
It means we’ll have fewer corporations to do us the favour of weeding out the crap. We’ll be subject to more and more mediocrity. But once in a rare while, someone who’s truly unique and has great talent will break free and get noticed in the wide world of the web, and we’ll all share the link.
Or maybe not.
And that’s life in the zeitgeist for you: Everything you love changes; there are no guarantees.
And sometimes it’s really fucking sad to watch that becoming the case.

Morning Movie, Memories, and Mental Detours

Good morning. It’s grey, dreary, quiet. I’m down to the last mug of the French press, contemplating a fleece jacket. I’ve not yet acclimatised to living on the ocean, despite growing up near it.
I’ve lived on the river for the last 12 years, on the Mainland, with the ocean a few kilometres off, but this waterside-life on the southern tip of an island that’s the last stretch of land in the Pacific Ocean before one reaches Hawaii, well… it’s an altogether more chilly beast on an early spring morning. One day, I’ll adjust. Today, there’s fleece… and time to think.

A Cinematic Escape

One of the many neat alleys in Victoria. By moi.


Lazily, I’ve had a “slow” morning. Quiet, breakfast, and coffee, watching David Lean’s A Passage To India. Thinking.
It was my mother’s favourite movie. I think I saw it as a youth, and I remember seeing it on PBS or something 10-12 years ago, shortly after her death, as I was consuming all manner of things loved by her in a deluded attempt to keep her memory alive. Needless to say, the movie didn’t really sink in then, either. I didn’t “get” it.
Now I’m about four years away from the age my mother was when she first saw it. Maybe now I’ll see what she saw.
A lot’s gone down for me in the 10-12 years since I last saw it. I still remember next to nothing of the film, so I’m quite enjoying it from my new eyes of being a woman in her 30s who also had two roads to choose from and picked the more complicated, daunting one after a good long think.
I also get to watch Passage in HD on my big-ass still-new-to-me TV, and the detail is so much more beautiful than I imagine it was back then. David Lean movies are like a master class in photographic composition. The lines, the colours, the light… things I’m really looking at as I fall back in love with photography in my new and highly-photogenic home.

A Riding We Will Go

I smiled and paused the movie to come write for you and I once the protagonist Adela goes cycling into the Indian jungle and finds a lewd temple depicting sexual scenes in stone, a la Kama Sutra, then has aggressive monkeys chasing her away. “What fun,” I thought. “And that’s what’s great about cycling. It’s so easy to just go a little further and investigate.”
Yesterday, I got the good wordword from my chiropractor that it’s okay to bring cycling back into my life, slowly, after a six month break. It’s my favourite way to discover the world around me, and if I’d never had back issues with it, I’d never have stopped riding, so… I can’t tell you how excited I am that a cycling life looms for me.
That’s why, when Adela has her first real “adventure” in India as a result of finally going cycling off the beaten path, it made me smile ear to ear.
There’s much of “real” Victoria I have never seen, and much of it can be cycled in 30-60 minutes, provided I make my life easier by using a bus to get to outlying parts, then cycle back to civilization. I have saddlebags, I can get to some of the neat food purveyors in other seaside areas, cycle home. I can bring cardio back into my life in a beautiful scenic way. I can photograph all the miles and miles and miles of coast and nature around me here.
It’s an incredibly exciting development. But I have to ease into it. And that’s okay too.

Moments of Doubt

Speaking of easing into things, I’m nearly four weeks into the move and, yes, doubts have risen from time to time.

I see I'm not the only one at a loss for where to go next. A perplexed seagull in Victoria's Fisherman's Wharf. By me.


The doubts don’t last long, and I don’t invest much in them because I know they’re just normal-humans-being-scared overthinkings. Did I make the right choice? Will I get a life, get a man, get a move-on? Will I have fun here? Did I unpack too quickly?
It comes, and quickly goes.
All I need to do to get my head back on straight is go for a walk (or: bike!), see some neat new thing that makes me like a certain element of Victoria’s citizenry, stumble on a new view somewhere, or return to Dallas Road’s incredible beaches, and POOF, I think, “Well, it’s a pretty damn good mistake, if I did fuck it up.”
And then I remember that my mother wasn’t the only one in my family who was into adventure. My dad lived in the Yukon for a year at the same age as I went Yukon-ho on my own — 21. My brother did his own kind of adventuring too, from hang-gliding to scuba-diving, and he’d be doing more now with the means for it. I think we’re supposed to be adventurers, us Camerons. I think I got root-bound staying in the same place too long.
When my mother saw A Passage to India, it was near the end of her marriage to my dad. It would be a long strange couple years and, with the hindsight of being a grown-up woman staring at the end of her 30s, I’m now wondering what books and films inspired her to set out on her own. Was this one?
What kind of doubt did she nurse as she considered doing what no other woman in the family had done — leaving her man, while still raising kids? Going back to school in her mid-40s, starting a career, providing for herself? If she did those things without doubts, she must’ve been a super woman, but I have a whole lot of evidence that she was normal, weak, and flawed like the best of us.
I don’t know what her doubts were, and safe to say, I never will.
But, as much as I love my dad, they just weren’t happy together, and the lesson I learned from their divorce was: If you’re not happy, make changes. It hurts, it’s hard, it takes worth, but there’s a lot of life to be left lived and doing it unhappily just isn’t the way to go.
My move here, to Victoria, is part of that life lesson their divorce gave me two-plus decades ago. If you’re unhappy, change it.
Did I make the right choice? I have no crystal ball but I think I did.
I do know staying in Vancouver would’ve been the wrong choice. So, there’s that.
Here’s to adventures, cycling, and seeing new things in a new life.
And here’s to finally feeling like writing more often. Looking forward to this feeling.