Espresso Powered

Hey kids!

The good news is that contrary to what the lack of postings might suggest, I am NOT DEAD! (WOO!) The bad news is that I have been working a LOT (6 days this week!) and have not had the time or the energy to post anything. So, I decided to write a blog on my laptop while on my 30 minute lunch break at work. This breakneck speed is unforgiving so please let any typos, grammar, flying monkeys or espresso stains slide by unnoticed.

Everything in life has been going swimmingly since I lost my mind on that fine Sunday and ended up with my therapist. She made me realize that I need to make some big changes in my life. I've looked at everything from looking for internships at magazines to volunteering overseas to studying abroad somewhere cool, but I haven't quite decided which I want more. Any and all of these choices would obviously have a huge impact on my life, and I have dreams and hopes that are attached to all of them.

Thursday I'll be popping into my school to get some career counselling and hopefully find one answer or another to my dilemma. Also, meeting with my friend Justin for lunch, who invited me to the poetry slam a week? Two weeks ago?

Either way...poetry slam was CRAZY AWESOME, you have no idea. (Unless you've been to a slam before. Oh. My. Lawd.) It opened up my mind to how words could be used as weapons, as fists, as affection and hate and social expression. Don't ask me WHY I didn't think of poetry that way before, I just...never had experienced it that way. Bek and I got lost on the way there as her blackberry (which had the map and directions on it) died and so we ended up on another crazy adventure that ended in something totally new and beautiful and exciting. It was honestly one of the best nights in recent memory and I can't wait to go to another one! Which I most definitely will.

In other news, I am 90% sure that I am going to be FREDDIE MERCURY for Halloween this year. (As a follow up to my last minute decision to go as David Bowie last year.) The complete obsession with Freddie, and Queen and the general amazingness of them together continues on. I saw Lion King in 3D and while I don't give a damn about 3D, I have to confirm, yes, Lion King is STILL as good as you thought it was when you were younger. Actually, maybe even better. That's rare, isn't it?

Growth

My Sunday meltdown resulted in a trip to my psychologist on Tuesday afternoon. I'm not ashamed to say I've seen a counselor professionally. While I know therapy isn't for everyone, I've found it always helps me. I starting going when I first had panic attacks in my teens, and any time I'm out of sorts, I end up back on that same couch, pouring my hear out.

Naturally, it was one of the first things I concluded I needed, when I forgot my black shoes for work on Monday morning and collapsed again into crying with frustration while driving home to get them. (More than hormones. More than work stress....Seriously. The second you find yourself crying over sneakers is when you admit you're going CRAYCRAY and book an appointment ASAP.)
My psych is a lovely woman understands and sympathizes me in a way no one else could. She is not just there to pay attention to me because I'm another cheque. (Well TECHNICALLY she is... but...The look on her face an in her eyes whenever I'm spilling my guts out to her is always sympathy.) I've told her things I don't think I could bring myself to admit to my closest friends.

The point of this all is that I'm feeling sorted out. I'm not RESOLVED, but I understand more. I understand why I had the first real panic attack I've had in years. The weird feelings I've been having. The depth of the break up I went through. (Read: It was more than just... petty. Which made me feel less stupid for being sad about it.)

ANYWAY, the point is, there is going to be some change in my life, and soon, I hope. Or soonish. What it might be, I don't know. All I know is that feeling understood is amazing. Feeling not CRAZY...is also amazing. I feel more level.

I'm going to try and get out a regular post but I've been busy with work/going insane/and back again. I worked a 13 hour day on Monday between my two jobs. UGH.

Gloomy Sunday

EDIT: I was in a psychotically dark place this morning when I wrote this. The past couple of days have been eventful to say the least. I'll explain more later, but I have to go sleep now. I work 13 hours tomorrow, and I'm not looking forward to it one tiny bit. I've been having problems with my mentality-- lately when I've been agitated or upset it's like a whole different personality comes through. When that happens, writing it out happens to calm me down in a big way. I'm not deleting this post because it's slice of life, but I am trying to explain where I was coming from when it came into life.

Dear Self,

Today you're choosing responsibility to a job you have you to admit you are starting to hate, over something your heart wants, but also needs. You're choosing practical and logical over emotional. Who the fuck are you?

You'll get over it. You'll get over him. You'll quit eventually, but not tonight. And years from now you won't remember tonight, the tonight where you DIDN'T quit your job, put on that grey uniform and those pants you hate. But you might have remembered the tonight you went to the cold room filled with warm people to listen to music that would have been good for every bit of your soul. That might have put you back on solid ground, soothed that panicked attack of hysterics you went into this morning.

The one where you almost cried until you puked.
The one where you couldn't breath for a full minute and while you were suffocating, you knew it WASN'T about a band, it wasn't even about the boy and how he hurt you, you knew it was about more. Self, today you are the logical voice of reason, saying that money is more important. More important than freedom and love and art and spontaneity. That air conditioning is better than the cool breeze. That digital is better than film, Facebook is better than real human contact and dubstep is better than Bob Dylan.

That room where you would have sat with your best friend and the boy who saved your sanity a few nights ago and listened to real life art, and poetry, en Francais? It's going to be waiting for you. And your empty seat will be there and your empty hands will fill with useless items at work and you'll have the same question twenty times. A hundred times. Other people will ask you if they know you from somewhere and you realize that it's been happening more and more lately. It's not YOU they know, it's the fear and the ocean behind your eyes. They've all been there. Everyone goes there, and everyone comes back... but not tonight. Tonight you're going deeper down the rabbit hole.

Two weeks from now when you decide you've had it, you're going to wish you quit that goddamn job tonight, since you're quitting anyway, eventually. You even have another job don't care about to cover your ass. The rent you don't pay and the words you don't say are on the opposite ends of the spectrum. You have it dollar easy and yet you feel that life is taxing, hard.

Tonight is going to turn into tomorrow, then the next day, then the next. By then you'll be so far gone you might not know who you are anymore. You might not be your job, but your job is putting up a fight to keep you from being anyone else.
I'm saying it again, who the fuck are you?

Sincerely,

Me

Psycho Boy Jack

In my dreams last night, I graphically cut left hand off, from just above the wrist. I remember sawing bone and sinew and how much it hurt. I woke up wild and scared and as it turns out, unmaimed. While I really have to blame Aron Ralston's book for some of this, I always look up my more vivid dreams, out of curiosity. I know that dream interpretation is kind of like horoscopes. You project your own reality and meanings onto them, but I still find them interesting.

AMPUTATION:
To dream that your limbs are amputated signifies abandoned talents and serious, permanent losses. It indicates your feelings of frustration, powerlessness and helplessness. Sometimes amputation may also represent a situation that you have been ignoring and has finally reached a crisis point. In particular, to dream that your arms are amputated suggests that you lack motivation.

WRIST:
To see an injured or bandaged wrist in your dream indicates a loss in productivity. You are in an imbalanced or one-sided relationship. In particular, if your wrists that are injured, then it implies that you are not reaching out to others enough. -- Dreammoods.com

These seem to relate to my general feelings of quarter-life crisis-ism. Laura and I have had small conversations about how no one is defined merely by what they do as a profession. Lately all I can think about as I'm topping mochas with whipped cream, or ringing in someone's toilet paper, cough drops and condoms is about how many thousands of dollars I paid to have a diploma I'm not using. How I am capable of more than what I'm committing myself to. How I'm too young to have hit such a disenchanted wall with reality. (After my psychotic dream episode, I laid in bed and thought..."Moving back into your hometown after college is probably why people start doing stupid things like recreational drugs.") So maybe my brain knows a thing or two that I don't and it's trying to jumpstart me into realizing and acting on what I already know in the back of my mind.

Hopefully I'll have some good news to report sooner or later in this respect, and less crazy self-surgical dreams.

In other news, hopefully I'll have some not vague lame rambly posts about my confusion with life at this point coming up very soon. Saturday, I may be going to my first ever poetry open mic/slam with my friend Justin, and on Monday Jill is coming home from working in another city for five weeks. We're starting a two week 'clean eating' challenge to help us refocus our goals and eat better just in time for the 10K . Did I mention I'm all signed up for that officially now? (Holy shit.) It's like being strapped into a roller coaster. I KNOW I can do it, but I need to know if I can do it well. ALSO, the issue of Travis that I wrote my 10K article in will be published soon. Did I forget to mention I had to go to a real photoshoot for it? I think I did forget to mention that. Oh well. EXCITING TIMES!

It'll be good blog fodder, that's fo' shizzle.

And now for your viewing pleasure, a video I took of Costello's cat shenanigans over the summer.

Good vs. Bad

THE BAD STUFF

I got up at 4:15AM to go to work at 5AM this morning.
I was supposed to be up at 4:15 this morning to get my ass into work for 5AM, but instead I ended up learning a couple of things about life. I don't REMEMBER getting up walking to my desk and turning off my alarm clock. I do remember Telly nuzzling my face, checking my cellphone which magically was under my pillow and gasping in horror at the time. (Sitcom situation impending!)

• 5:30AM (the ACTUAL time I woke up) still looks like the MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT.
• Cats make good alarm clocks.
• If people don't USUALLY compliment you on your work glasses but they're noticing them today, you put them on in the dark and wore your hipster goggles to work by accident. Also, you're still half asleep.

Usually when I have anxious freak outs it's because I make some sort of mistake, so today had me on the brink. When I apologized sincerely (it was a Mona Lisa of an apology, trust me) to my manager she honestly seemed to care less about my accidental tardiness than I did. Still, it bothered me for the rest of my shift. I was in a bad way, and it was adding on to some of the feelings that have been following me around. Egging the Bear on, so to speak.

Despite my own promises to live with joie de vivre and making up a new motto to go with it, I have to confess kids, I've been feeling in a rut lately. A rut that is threatening to turn into a trench. Unless I do something about it... I have a plan and a possible opportunity but I don't want to write about it until it's a little more certain. (Ooh. Mysterious.)

THE GOOD STUFF
After work, I got home, chilled out for a little bit and then popped out to do some errands.
I went to the library and saw a dream car in the parking lot: a red Mercedes 560SL. I love the boxy look of old Mercedes and gawked at it like a construction workers eye up ladies in films from the 80s. (Yeah, I rhymed, what?) It's a serious head turner.

In terms of books I picked up On the Road by Jack Kerouac (for hipster cred), a book about writing/planning novels to try and sort out some ideas for this year's NaNoWriMo, and Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston, the book/man upon which the movie 127 Hours is based.

Then I went to the grocery store and bought smiley fries (Hellyeah,my one weakness) and strawberry soy milk. Which I then had for lunch, because I am not a BORN health nut. When I finally arrived home from having a huge sneeze attack, I also discovered my new Aldo boots had arrived!

The goods today outweigh the bads, something I'm grateful for in a day that got off to a less than settled start, and I'm proud of myself for keeping it together and moving on over dwelling on it like I usually do.

Run With a View

...I'll have been running for a solid fourty minutes or so, dodging slower pedestrians, watching cars whoosh by, inhaling the exhaust and feeling every footfall come back at me from the hard pavement. City running. There are lots of small test-your-willpower hills in my running route too, so I'm soaked, nearing mental and physical exhaustion and hoping for a miracle. It's usually about 5K into the run when I get to my favourite view.

Suddenly, suburbia falls away and leaves me with sun soaked fields that rise and fall like the tide of the earth. Open roads and often, the breeze visits the salty sweat on my forehead, giving me a cool down. All my muscles and limbs seem to take in the air and relax and my pace slows, but my head turns on to take it all in as I muster the power to go on. It's awesome and the photos don't do it justice.

I biked out there today to snap a few pictures anyway, because I wanted to attempt to share it with y'all.

The Silver Screen

I just learned they are making a romantic comedy about the invention of the vibrator. Starring Hugh Dancy (one of my FAVOURITE actors, he's an amazing andalsogoodlooking) and Maggie Gyllenhaal... I love her (Dark Knight and Stranger Then Fiction!) and people tell me that I look like her on an almost monthly basis. SO EXCITED though I KNOW it won't be out for quite some time... Oh well. I guess I'll have to watch something else while I wait. Which reminds me... There are a lot of movies I'm looking forward to in the next little while... LIST TIME.

MOVIES I WOULD LIKE TO SEE IN THE FINAL MONTHS OF 2011
One Day
I just want to see it, and Jill wants to see it, giving me an excuse to go to drama/romance movies I don't normally get the opportunity to watch.

Like Crazy
I saw the trailer for this while going to see My Idiot Brother on Labour Day Monday with Bek. The trailer itself was pretty powerful and it had my attention in a way most romances DO NOT. I typically roll my eyes at stuff like this but....I fell in love with Anton Yelchin's face during the Star Trek reboot and now...I just need to see this movie.

50/50
When I was explaining the plot and concept of this film to Jill as we wandered around the mall today, she hit the nail on the head with my feelings about it.
Jill: "It's about time. I just feel like the whole...heart wrenching....cancer movie thing...."
Me: "Has been done to death?"
Jill: "Uh...yeah...It's just good to have something light hearted about it. People need that for cancer."

Moneyball
It looks like MORE than just a sports movie. A combination between real life, drama, comedy and Jonah Hill. Seriously, from Super Bad to Get Him To the Greek, Jonah Hill has always made me smile. I'm really interested to see him stretch his acting skills.

Machine Gun Preacher
Badass title. Based on a true story. Interesting buzz.

The Three Musketeers (kind of.)
I fear that this movie could be AWFUL but it has Christoph Waltz in it, Orlando Bloom rocks a pouf and an earring, and OH YES. It's the THREE MUSKETEERS, which is awesome. You know how awesome it is? The only other movie I've seen with them as characters was the Man In the Iron Mask, which came out when I was EIGHT and has a 6/10 rating on IMDB AND I STILL LOVE IT. I can even forgive that all the characters are from France and Jeremy Irons is still British, Leo DiCaprio for all his acting skillz is still American and Gerard Depardieu is actual French.

My Week With Marilyn
"Colin Clark, an employee of Sir Laurence Olivier's, documents the tense interaction between Olivier and Marilyn Monroe during production of The Prince and the Showgirl."--IMDB. Did I MENTION that Clark is played by Eddie Redmayne, who captured my heart in the Pillars of the Earth saga? My old hollywood fix meets my ginger fix AND back again.

Immortals
Director Tarsem Singh BLEW MY BRAINS OUT with his debut movie The Fall. It was not like any movie I had seen before and the SECOND I knew he was directing something new, the movie was on the must see list. The fact that it's a violent mythological journey like 300 but without all the meme potential (so far) just makes me want it more. MOAR I SAY.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
I know very little about this film, I have to admit. I know it's a thriller. I know it has an awesome name. I know Colin Firth, Gary Oldman and Benedict Cumberbatch (I have a crush on his face, name AND talent) are in it. Honestly, that's all I need.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
My love of ALL OF THE AMAZING Downey Jr./Law bromance in the first film ALONE would have me running to see the sequel. BUT it's another Guy Ritchie flick, I hear it might be better than the first AND if the score is half as good as it was in the other film, my heart might explode from happy. Also. Robert Downey Jr...IN DRAG.

War Horse
No lies: Benedict Cumberbatch is in this too and that's my main motive for seeing it. I'm a terrible film person.

Also, I kind of wanna see Tin Tin but I don't know anyone else who will ALSO want to see it so I'm going to have to wait until it comes out on DVD and THEN check it out...
What flicks are y'all looking forward to?

Motto

Today started out really tough. I'm getting sick and I had to get up early to go to work at the drug store. I knew I was in a certain monthly trouble when I woke up with a small pimple on my upper lip. Then on the way to work I almost started crying just listening to Somebody to Love. I had been up for less than an hour and I was already on a rollercoaster. At work I was sniffling and dripping and my eyes were watering and my sinuses were aching. I wanted to spend all my money on cough and cold medicine, then build a mattress out of packages of maxi pads and diapers to sleep on in one of the aisles. I first-world suffered through the whole day and then after work, went to pick up my mama.

We had made plans to go to the gym, and on the way we got into an argument. The Bear was being pretty loud today, grumbling and despairing about each and every little thing; it had me snarling on the defense immediately. So when I finally got to the gym I was almost in sick, hormonal, frustrated tears. As I laced up in the change room I couldn't calm myself down. I talked myself out of the 10K. Into the 10K. Giving up my goals of fitness. Giving up everything. Starving myself. Stuffing myself until I self destructed. It was crazy and manic and I knew I had to run if my emotions were ever going to find balance. It was dragging myself to the run today that I came up with a new motto.

"Someday I will be nothing, so right now I must be everything."
-Me
You heard it here first.

Sometimes, I find honest, weird solace in the fact that life is going to end. Those demotivational posters that say: "When work gets overwhelming, just remember you're going to die someday"? They put things in perfect perspective for me and I think about how inconsequential some things are in the big scheme of life... and death. It's not that I'm sprinting towards the finish line of existence or anything, but nothing soothes my anxiety like realizing that some day, these monumental things and feelings and trials that are freaking me out will all be nothing.

Start living. Write more love poems. Wear what you want. Give your all daily. Other cheesy vague generic and not inspiring statements. POW POW POW.

Don't Stop Me Now

Yesterday was Freddie Mercury's 65th birthday. (Did you see Google's tribute to him?) I fucking love Freddie. I love him. He's one of my heroes, because he was an artist, a dynamo, a showman, and he was bisexual on top of all of it. He shocked the world by announcing he had AIDS and died just over 24 hours later at the age of 45, breaking hearts everywhere. He changed the way people looked at others suffering from AIDS and also homosexuals in general, another political topic near and dear to my heart.
You know how people play the game: if you can meet someone who's already dead, who would it be? Freddie Mercury. I would have loved to see Queen live in concert while he was still alive, so much it hurts me to think about. Unfortunately it's a dream I'll never get to experience until time travel is invented or until they perfect cloning via DNA or maybe never. Happy (belated) birthday Freddie.

I cannot WAIT for the biopic about him starring Sacha Baron Cohen to exist. I know it's only rumored right now but if it ever happens, it will MAKE MY LIFE.

Queen has been a huge influence on my taste in music and me as a person. When I was young, I remember my godfather blasting it as we went cruising in his car. Somebody To Love was and still is the song I listen to when I'm aching and pondering the future man I think I've yet to meet. Don't Stop Me Now is one of my go-to karaoke songs. Fat Bottomed Girls and I Want To Break Free at times feel like personalized anthems. I have not-in-the-near-future plans to get a Queen based tattoo.

This outfit has a little drama with the sequins, a little class with the black, a little badass with the vest, and some antique charm with the bowler. I felt preeettty cool wearing it, pretty unstoppable. Also, yes I am becoming more and more of a dirty hipster by the day. It was 'styled' as they say by Bek, who has a fashion blog which she SHOULD POST IN MORE. She took a look at the stuff I had and like magic, pulled this together like it wasn't no big thang. She's a savvy lady, especially when it comes to fashion.

On the weekend, my-now-ex roommate Allie came down for a visit. Rebekah and I did our best to make her short visit entertaining. We did yoga, read tarot cards, lots of shopping, had awesome dinner with my fam and went out for dessert and coffee at Symposium a very fancy/casual place to go. This is my coffee/dessert outfit. WHEE!

Bowler: H&M (You can buy them RIGHT NOW.)
Vest: Danier Leather/thrifted
Sequined top: Thrifted
Dress-as-skirt: Forever 21
Bag: Matt & Nat

WTF NO

I'm feeling a bit odd. I'm writing this before bed. I'll get up tomorrow and go to work, and while I'm at work, Kacy, my little sister will be heading off to college. COLLEGE, PEOPLE. I still remember her curled up in a blankie on our couch watching Thumbelina on VHS over and over and over again, driving me crazy. Making up big dance numbers to Disney music to show to my parents. Sneaking into my bed on Christmas eve so we could talk about how excited we were about Santa. And now... she's off to college. And I'm working two different jobs...not going to school for the first time in YEARS.

This is scary.

I'll post more later! Happy September y'all!

Cliff Diving

A journalist I follow on Twitter recently posted about needing either an intern or a clone to keep up with all the work he was being offered. I'm a fan of his work so I jokingly (kind of?) encouraged him to go the route of taking on an intern. To my shock, he replied back, asking if I had any experience in photography.

[Insert unnecessary heart explosion of excitement here.]

After freaking out (mildly) and deliberating with my mama for about five minutes, I told him that I HAD studied some photography in college, but I was not Andy Warhol. It's true-- in first year Media Arts, we had to learn photography, everything from f-stops, ISO and white balance to frame composition. Even though I have yet to hear back from this guy, and maybe I never will, this put my place on the board in heightened perspective.

As I pondered becoming the shy, awkward but resilient intern, my mind ran wild. What if he said no? What if he said yes? It was a cliff, and I was looking straight down at a big, ominous body of turbulent water.

I realized that, given the chance, I would jump. I would quit both my jobs, pack my life up and sleep on my friends' couch to intern in Toronto. My mind romanticized the crap out of it, all the while saying that, YES it would be hard but it could be worth it. After all, in all the stories about people who make something of themselves, it always starts with one stupid move. One jump into the cold water waiting below.

I know now that I'm ready to make a leap, even if that particular opportunity never becomes something, I'm ready to jump for something else. Fall for someone else. Do anything to chase a dream. This is coming from a girl who has quit two jobs and survived plenty of sobbing panic attacks due to work related anxiety. I would like to take a moment and relish this absolute moment of pure insanity brought about by the need to do something I love with my life. The moment in which I realize I would do something ridiculous in spite of, or maybe even because of mental afflictions. Hell. Yes.