You can finally read my article in THIS magazine!
Referenced on the cover as "Dirty water in the North" - Oh, it's dirty.
THIS mag vailable in Ottawa at...
Mags Plus — Rideau
St.Britain's — Glebe and Westboro locations
Byward Market News
Carleton University Bookstore
Collected Works
Glebe Smoke Shop
Globe Mags and Cigars (William St. in the market)
Support freelancers! Pick up THIS!
Friday, November 26, 2010
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
oh hey thurr!
It's been a while since I've posted.... over a year, actually.
My bad guys.
BUT! Exciting things have taken place in the meantime!
1. The article I was chronicling is finally in print - check sa in This Magazine, voted Magazine of the Year by Canadian Society of Magazine Editors! Nov/Dec issue, available at Chapters and great independent magazine shops.
2. You can listen to the melodious timbre of my voice LIVE, Fridays at noon! If you're Ottawa-based tune your dial to 89.1fm, or internationals/non-ottawans can listen live on chuo.fm. Past shows aren't archived yet but we're working on it.
3. I have gained, and lost, a cat.
Louie, please don't poop on your new owner's bed.
Thanks for keeping the faith!
My bad guys.
BUT! Exciting things have taken place in the meantime!
1. The article I was chronicling is finally in print - check sa in This Magazine, voted Magazine of the Year by Canadian Society of Magazine Editors! Nov/Dec issue, available at Chapters and great independent magazine shops.
2. You can listen to the melodious timbre of my voice LIVE, Fridays at noon! If you're Ottawa-based tune your dial to 89.1fm, or internationals/non-ottawans can listen live on chuo.fm. Past shows aren't archived yet but we're working on it.
3. I have gained, and lost, a cat.
Louie, please don't poop on your new owner's bed.
Thanks for keeping the faith!
Thursday, August 27, 2009
... it sure shines bright to me...
Great improvements today - progress on the article differs daily like the peaks and valleys of the Dawson Range.
Yesterday was a series of valleys punctuated by too few highs. Today, however... today was a veritable Everest.
Chief paid a visit to my cabin at 10am this morning (the same one who couldn't made our meeting yesterday), and stayed to talk for over two hours. This got the day off to an exciting start as our conversation grew more and more comfortable and I began to understand the plight and the values of this place. The environment came up about as frequently as the lack of financial resources available to protect both it and the community residents living in and with it. "Money will come and go," he says, "but the environment will always be there, no matter what condition you leave it in." And though the 'leave something for the next generation' mentality seems cliche now, it is only because it's been espoused without act or intent to act by so many so often. In this community, however, you can really see how they try to care for it. Bringing their own plates and utensils to community dinners so paper and plastic won't have to be used, and hard-lined environmental standpoints being taken in mining negotiations are only a few of the ways this community prioritizes its surroundings. Hunting and fishing are mainstays here where industry and other city characteristics are in constant flux with the boom and bust that city dwellers hardly notice.
Also, more of the little money this community has is being put towards cultural development and activities like dances and dinners, to "put people more at ease," the Chief explains. And, judging by how wound-up and hopeless I felt yesterday, a dance and a dinner really does seem to do the trick.
The interview was great; I just listened and learned so much. I wish I'd remembered to take his picture.
Then I was taken to the Band Office where I was flooded with the resources unavailable on the internet, reports and emails and press releases, vital to the completion of an impactful article.
I've got a lot to read before I leave, and that departure date could be moving forward as well, with a tentative meeting scheduled in Whitehorse with the community's main consultant. And now that the option to leave early is there, I really am reluctant to take it, preferring to stay in my little cottage, brushing my teeth out of a cup and taking reflective walks on the Yukon River between mountains of reading. I find out tomorrow if I'll be leaving that same day, and I've got to get packed and ready to go, rearrange the room for a leisurely stay rather than a desk in the middle of the room covered in papers and a television in the corner on the floor. I was asked today how it worked and realized I hadn't even turned the damn thing on. The wireless internet is great though! Some rustic cabin, equipped with wireless (and thank god too).
Took a break from writing, looked up at the stars and realized there were some. Ho! As my eyes adjusted to the dark they became more numerous and bright, and I gained an appreciation for the darkness as a foundation and origin for the light.
I realized today that there is hope in this small community, and that they're fighting to keep every scrap of it. I only hope I can do them justice and that my article will help rather than harm their chances of getting funding.
Yesterday was a series of valleys punctuated by too few highs. Today, however... today was a veritable Everest.
Chief paid a visit to my cabin at 10am this morning (the same one who couldn't made our meeting yesterday), and stayed to talk for over two hours. This got the day off to an exciting start as our conversation grew more and more comfortable and I began to understand the plight and the values of this place. The environment came up about as frequently as the lack of financial resources available to protect both it and the community residents living in and with it. "Money will come and go," he says, "but the environment will always be there, no matter what condition you leave it in." And though the 'leave something for the next generation' mentality seems cliche now, it is only because it's been espoused without act or intent to act by so many so often. In this community, however, you can really see how they try to care for it. Bringing their own plates and utensils to community dinners so paper and plastic won't have to be used, and hard-lined environmental standpoints being taken in mining negotiations are only a few of the ways this community prioritizes its surroundings. Hunting and fishing are mainstays here where industry and other city characteristics are in constant flux with the boom and bust that city dwellers hardly notice.
Also, more of the little money this community has is being put towards cultural development and activities like dances and dinners, to "put people more at ease," the Chief explains. And, judging by how wound-up and hopeless I felt yesterday, a dance and a dinner really does seem to do the trick.
The interview was great; I just listened and learned so much. I wish I'd remembered to take his picture.
Then I was taken to the Band Office where I was flooded with the resources unavailable on the internet, reports and emails and press releases, vital to the completion of an impactful article.
I've got a lot to read before I leave, and that departure date could be moving forward as well, with a tentative meeting scheduled in Whitehorse with the community's main consultant. And now that the option to leave early is there, I really am reluctant to take it, preferring to stay in my little cottage, brushing my teeth out of a cup and taking reflective walks on the Yukon River between mountains of reading. I find out tomorrow if I'll be leaving that same day, and I've got to get packed and ready to go, rearrange the room for a leisurely stay rather than a desk in the middle of the room covered in papers and a television in the corner on the floor. I was asked today how it worked and realized I hadn't even turned the damn thing on. The wireless internet is great though! Some rustic cabin, equipped with wireless (and thank god too).
Took a break from writing, looked up at the stars and realized there were some. Ho! As my eyes adjusted to the dark they became more numerous and bright, and I gained an appreciation for the darkness as a foundation and origin for the light.
I realized today that there is hope in this small community, and that they're fighting to keep every scrap of it. I only hope I can do them justice and that my article will help rather than harm their chances of getting funding.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Yukon her before she kons you.
Oh, I've been 'konned, alright. I've been up in the Yukon since Saturday and she's got under my skin, and not in the "it stays with you; people come for a summer and stay for twenty three years" kind of way (which, by the way, was the story of the couple who owned the B&B I stayed at last night).
No, in the unsettling kind of way. The kind of way where only a three-in-a-row-hit-machine of Journey, Brian Adams and "Hungry Eyes" can fix (and it did - thanks KISS fm Spokane).
I'm writing a story about the water quality in Yukon First Nations with a focus on the town of Little Salmon Carmacks, where over half their wells were repaired by the Canadian Auto Workers of all people.
A great story and a cause I'm extremely excited about. Seems as I'm the only one though, and understandable so, I guess. When you've had e.coli lurking around you your whole life you try to forget about it, and when you're made used to living off handouts you don't really overflow with gratitude at each stranger that shows up to help "fix" your town. I get it. But when you show up, invited, just to tell these people's story you'd expect at least for people not to look at you like they think you just stole something from them. I think I'd shit my pants if I got invited to dinner (maybe THAT's why I haven't been.....)
I think because I'm white and polite and I ask alot of questions most people believe I'm from the government. This is why I think they've been keeping their distance, but I'm hoping they'll realize I just want to understand and to give that understanding to other people and then maybe, maaaaybe by the time I leave I'll have a couple nice stories and a few people I can call friends. Til that happens though, it's hard. Even the weather's been cold and the temptation to stay in bed or to go out in search of something familiar (read: white) has been growing stronger by the day.
I got stood up by the CHIEF today. The fucking Chief. Ambassador of the community, head of the band, their elected representative and the man who suggested I come visit (probably not thinking I'd show). We were supposed to have had a meeting today at one pm and where is he? In another community. He double booked. I was so excited and nervous to meet him and I had a little present and everything. I almost cried when I showed up at the office and his secretary told me he wasn't there.
The day did get better tho - a couple younger guys that work for the bands on the wells took some time out of their work days to show me around town (THEY showed up to our meeting). We visited some of the community wells and then walked around the interpretive centre. One was friendlier than the other, but all in all it was good fun - we joked around and I felt like I didn't have to watch my words for once this trip. Our visit was far too short, and I didn't want to leave these friendly faces when they dropped me off at my cabin.
What no one realizes is that the people who espouse that "the Yukon stays with you" shit all have one thing in common - they. be. white. as. shit.
Or, you know, as something actually white.
Don't get me wrong, the expats up here are really friendly and great to talk to. They'd share a liver with you if it was possible, and I wouldn't have made it this far without them giving me rides, shelter or food.
But they aren't really "Yukoners." Real Yukoners probably wouldn't call themselves that in the first place; they'd call themselves Northern Tuchone, Tlingit, or one of the many other First Nations who've called the place home for so long they still remember how to snare a mammoth like a rabbit.
But those people don't talk much. And this freaks the shit out of me; it makes me turn quiet and, in turn, probably makes me seem freaky, sneaky and unapproachable - a vicious, vicious circle that corrodes reporting when you only have four days to do it. And I'm tryyying to get out of this funk, I really am, but it's really hard when your welcome wagon is missing a wheel and was left at the highway for you to ride your own damn self in on.
The real Yukon is hard. It is a hard-knock fucking life and I have it lucky - if you're brown or you have a first name for a last name or you were born anywhere North of 60 except Whitehorse then you've got plenty of reasons to gripe.
The summer's not bad, the First Nation Council will take care of people and provide jobs where it can, but when winter comes and funding's being given out in 1989 dollars not even the Band's magic can get you paid. If you don't have a full-time job, usually for the Band Council or the government (INAC, AFN, Yukon Council of First Nations or Yukon Territory Government), then you're going on E.I.. The reason I say Whitehorse isn't that bad is that, being the capital, it houses most of the government jobs. Of the nearly 19,000 people making up the 'experienced labour force' in the Yukon over 2,000 work in the government, says the 2006 census, making it the fifth largest employer in YT after sales and service, mining and administration. And how many First Nations do you think are getting those jobs? From what I've seen and heard walking around the capital, not enough to shake a stick at.
Of the few lifetime Yukoners that I did have a conversation with lasting five minutes or more, two women sitting at a picnic table in Whitehorse were saying they were going to be heading to Alberta soon, and one of them jokingly asked if I'd take her back to Ontario with me. "It's hard here," she explained. "Too hard." Her cousin had died just the day before in a car accident, and her brother had died the week before for a reason she didn't get into. She teared up when I told her I was heading further north to Carmacks, and she warned me about the construction and the gravel roads up that way that caused her cousin's accident.
Coming up here as a Euro-Canadian you get a distant, hesitant feeling from natives who seem to fear you'll follow the trend and set up camp here, hang around the cities with the other ex-pats and take up the jobs the natives can't get.
Residential schools have left a painful legacy here, and even though the last ones were shut down thirty years ago or more the effects of the abuse suffered there has trickled down the generations making drop-out rates high and graduation rates low.
Among the miriad of photos of elders and past Chiefs that decorate the halls of the Band Office conference room are two group shots in front of a wooden structure like a large log-cabin. The Council Clerk explains to me that these were taken of residential school students in her parents' time, and that her mother thankfully escaped being sent because of a bad leg that wouldn't heal - who'd have thought one would ever see that as a blessing? "Most people don't like talking about it," she explains, "and whenever they do they cry." Students suffered mental/emotional, physical and sexual abuse from school instructors and supposed caretakers, and the Council Clerk feels that the vulnerability of her mother's broken leg would have made her an especially large target for sexual abuse. "I don't like these photos hanging here," she says. "We should forget every memory of those schools."
Some students were in attendence for their whole adolescences, emerging without life- or parenting-skills. You can see now how this would take more than just a government and church "I'm sorry" to heal the wounds caused by the system.
The community of Carmacks has between 400-500 residents and nearly 90 individual wells and one community well providing water to the well-less. These wells are maintained, cleaned, treated, and the community well water trucked over the whole community by one man who must also find funding and solutions to provide the community with a safer water source. Why doesn't anybody help him, you may ask? Because no one can get certified. Why's that? Because no one can pass the math portion of the certification tests.
It gets to you up here. It really fucking gets to you. The hopelessness, the dependence, and the temptation to sweep in with a solution. Trying to understand the situation I feel as though each time someone tries to stand they get pushed back down by something different, and it's hard to get your energy when you're living off the scraps of what you once had. Sure First Nations can hunt and fish whenever they want, but with commercial fishing boats catching the big fish and throwing them away if they aren't the specific kind they were out for you don't catch much.
But every community is different and for every ten seemingly hopeless people there's one or two with a plan and a passion for their community, and these people will see us through. Though they might not be officially certified they're doing what they can unofficially, helping out part-time in the summer and gaining experience to pass on until someday somebody will be able to get their certification and a steady paycheque. You'll find these people hanging around the band office or the elders, keeping up the old ways that the schools tried to take from them or their parents, going to their fishing camps or trap lines and taking the younger generations. If you come at the right time of year they might even lend you their extra tent and show you how it's done.
So there is hope, but you have to look for it. And it's not in a government office unless it's a cheque without strings or a promise that can't be taken back. It's not in the Whitehorse Walmart or the coffee house staffed by white people. These places are safe because hope is hard and they have it easy. Hope is found where there seems to be none. It's in water regulations that don't see race; it's in the people who fight against the odds to graduate from highschool, and who show their children the love they might not have had. It's in those who put in 10 - 12 hour days to help their neighbors and to train and talk to and listen to the younger generations.
No, in the unsettling kind of way. The kind of way where only a three-in-a-row-hit-machine of Journey, Brian Adams and "Hungry Eyes" can fix (and it did - thanks KISS fm Spokane).
I'm writing a story about the water quality in Yukon First Nations with a focus on the town of Little Salmon Carmacks, where over half their wells were repaired by the Canadian Auto Workers of all people.
A great story and a cause I'm extremely excited about. Seems as I'm the only one though, and understandable so, I guess. When you've had e.coli lurking around you your whole life you try to forget about it, and when you're made used to living off handouts you don't really overflow with gratitude at each stranger that shows up to help "fix" your town. I get it. But when you show up, invited, just to tell these people's story you'd expect at least for people not to look at you like they think you just stole something from them. I think I'd shit my pants if I got invited to dinner (maybe THAT's why I haven't been.....)
I think because I'm white and polite and I ask alot of questions most people believe I'm from the government. This is why I think they've been keeping their distance, but I'm hoping they'll realize I just want to understand and to give that understanding to other people and then maybe, maaaaybe by the time I leave I'll have a couple nice stories and a few people I can call friends. Til that happens though, it's hard. Even the weather's been cold and the temptation to stay in bed or to go out in search of something familiar (read: white) has been growing stronger by the day.
I got stood up by the CHIEF today. The fucking Chief. Ambassador of the community, head of the band, their elected representative and the man who suggested I come visit (probably not thinking I'd show). We were supposed to have had a meeting today at one pm and where is he? In another community. He double booked. I was so excited and nervous to meet him and I had a little present and everything. I almost cried when I showed up at the office and his secretary told me he wasn't there.
The day did get better tho - a couple younger guys that work for the bands on the wells took some time out of their work days to show me around town (THEY showed up to our meeting). We visited some of the community wells and then walked around the interpretive centre. One was friendlier than the other, but all in all it was good fun - we joked around and I felt like I didn't have to watch my words for once this trip. Our visit was far too short, and I didn't want to leave these friendly faces when they dropped me off at my cabin.
What no one realizes is that the people who espouse that "the Yukon stays with you" shit all have one thing in common - they. be. white. as. shit.
Or, you know, as something actually white.
Don't get me wrong, the expats up here are really friendly and great to talk to. They'd share a liver with you if it was possible, and I wouldn't have made it this far without them giving me rides, shelter or food.
But they aren't really "Yukoners." Real Yukoners probably wouldn't call themselves that in the first place; they'd call themselves Northern Tuchone, Tlingit, or one of the many other First Nations who've called the place home for so long they still remember how to snare a mammoth like a rabbit.
But those people don't talk much. And this freaks the shit out of me; it makes me turn quiet and, in turn, probably makes me seem freaky, sneaky and unapproachable - a vicious, vicious circle that corrodes reporting when you only have four days to do it. And I'm tryyying to get out of this funk, I really am, but it's really hard when your welcome wagon is missing a wheel and was left at the highway for you to ride your own damn self in on.
The real Yukon is hard. It is a hard-knock fucking life and I have it lucky - if you're brown or you have a first name for a last name or you were born anywhere North of 60 except Whitehorse then you've got plenty of reasons to gripe.
The summer's not bad, the First Nation Council will take care of people and provide jobs where it can, but when winter comes and funding's being given out in 1989 dollars not even the Band's magic can get you paid. If you don't have a full-time job, usually for the Band Council or the government (INAC, AFN, Yukon Council of First Nations or Yukon Territory Government), then you're going on E.I.. The reason I say Whitehorse isn't that bad is that, being the capital, it houses most of the government jobs. Of the nearly 19,000 people making up the 'experienced labour force' in the Yukon over 2,000 work in the government, says the 2006 census, making it the fifth largest employer in YT after sales and service, mining and administration. And how many First Nations do you think are getting those jobs? From what I've seen and heard walking around the capital, not enough to shake a stick at.
Of the few lifetime Yukoners that I did have a conversation with lasting five minutes or more, two women sitting at a picnic table in Whitehorse were saying they were going to be heading to Alberta soon, and one of them jokingly asked if I'd take her back to Ontario with me. "It's hard here," she explained. "Too hard." Her cousin had died just the day before in a car accident, and her brother had died the week before for a reason she didn't get into. She teared up when I told her I was heading further north to Carmacks, and she warned me about the construction and the gravel roads up that way that caused her cousin's accident.
Coming up here as a Euro-Canadian you get a distant, hesitant feeling from natives who seem to fear you'll follow the trend and set up camp here, hang around the cities with the other ex-pats and take up the jobs the natives can't get.
Residential schools have left a painful legacy here, and even though the last ones were shut down thirty years ago or more the effects of the abuse suffered there has trickled down the generations making drop-out rates high and graduation rates low.
Among the miriad of photos of elders and past Chiefs that decorate the halls of the Band Office conference room are two group shots in front of a wooden structure like a large log-cabin. The Council Clerk explains to me that these were taken of residential school students in her parents' time, and that her mother thankfully escaped being sent because of a bad leg that wouldn't heal - who'd have thought one would ever see that as a blessing? "Most people don't like talking about it," she explains, "and whenever they do they cry." Students suffered mental/emotional, physical and sexual abuse from school instructors and supposed caretakers, and the Council Clerk feels that the vulnerability of her mother's broken leg would have made her an especially large target for sexual abuse. "I don't like these photos hanging here," she says. "We should forget every memory of those schools."
Some students were in attendence for their whole adolescences, emerging without life- or parenting-skills. You can see now how this would take more than just a government and church "I'm sorry" to heal the wounds caused by the system.
The community of Carmacks has between 400-500 residents and nearly 90 individual wells and one community well providing water to the well-less. These wells are maintained, cleaned, treated, and the community well water trucked over the whole community by one man who must also find funding and solutions to provide the community with a safer water source. Why doesn't anybody help him, you may ask? Because no one can get certified. Why's that? Because no one can pass the math portion of the certification tests.
It gets to you up here. It really fucking gets to you. The hopelessness, the dependence, and the temptation to sweep in with a solution. Trying to understand the situation I feel as though each time someone tries to stand they get pushed back down by something different, and it's hard to get your energy when you're living off the scraps of what you once had. Sure First Nations can hunt and fish whenever they want, but with commercial fishing boats catching the big fish and throwing them away if they aren't the specific kind they were out for you don't catch much.
But every community is different and for every ten seemingly hopeless people there's one or two with a plan and a passion for their community, and these people will see us through. Though they might not be officially certified they're doing what they can unofficially, helping out part-time in the summer and gaining experience to pass on until someday somebody will be able to get their certification and a steady paycheque. You'll find these people hanging around the band office or the elders, keeping up the old ways that the schools tried to take from them or their parents, going to their fishing camps or trap lines and taking the younger generations. If you come at the right time of year they might even lend you their extra tent and show you how it's done.
So there is hope, but you have to look for it. And it's not in a government office unless it's a cheque without strings or a promise that can't be taken back. It's not in the Whitehorse Walmart or the coffee house staffed by white people. These places are safe because hope is hard and they have it easy. Hope is found where there seems to be none. It's in water regulations that don't see race; it's in the people who fight against the odds to graduate from highschool, and who show their children the love they might not have had. It's in those who put in 10 - 12 hour days to help their neighbors and to train and talk to and listen to the younger generations.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
up his creek without your paddle, NOT dirty
I did it; I snagged me a man.
And now I'm wondering if I'm ready to have snagged one. Having finally recovered from the last "relationship" I was in (which wasn't so much a relationship as me letting him plan out the rest of my life for me, a method that doesn't exactly jive if you have, oh, I dunno, goals and dreams?) and struggling to find a balance between asserting my own voice in day-to-day activities and using it to illogically overwhelm others (read: sticking my nose where it doesn't belong and making outrageous suggestions), I find this balance equally precarious in my relationship with this one person.
Should I not cut out a path for myself upon which I can firmly stand and evaluate life's zigs and zags, or do I throw in my lot with another and make it up as a go along? The latter can be dangerous, as it becomes easy to just coast along until you find yourself in his canoe minus your personal paddle. I don't want to be back in that place again. Good thing about this guy is I don't think he'd let me.
But will I let me?
What is cause to be mad over something? If you let a little thing go will it turn into a big thing? To what extent does being understanding allow yourself to get walked all over, and how firm is just firm enough to drive someone away?
How much do I let go?
They say you have to pick your battles, and excellent phrase indeed. But upon what criteria? I think one must account, to a certain extent, for life's uncontrollable poppings-up, and for the fact that some people anticipate these (and to the negative can end up obsessing over them), whereas others do not, or do so to a far lesser extent. Does this make them inconsiderate, or just not big planners?
I think the key comes back down to figuring out what I want, to plotting out my independence and sticking to it. So I like sticking to a schedule, that doesn't mean he has to; it does, however, mean that he has to remember when we make plans (which he does). And I also have to stop freaking out about every mistake becoming a precident: if it happens on a recurring basis and hurts your feelings then bring it up, but everyone makes mistakes. Furthermore, if he apologizes for those mistakes then believe him, drop it, and let it go, give him a chance. If he keeps doing it, then you put your foot down, but impatience is not a way to ward off getting hurt. In fact, it invites pain.
However, to what extent am I able to mellow out in anticipating future cock-ups from him in particular without it effecting my ability to anticipate and plan for the future in general, period?
Basically I'm nervous that if I mellow out again I won't be able to stop it, like last time, and I'll suddenly stop planning my day around my goals but around his whims, trusting him to say no and not me, and that I'll let every little slip pass by until I'm incapable of stating my own feelings. If I go too far to the other side I'm afraid I'll become like a prison warden, selfishly defending myself to the point of not letting anyone in.
Where do I draw the line? How do I forgive him, mean it, and keep my own voice... like he can?
And now I'm wondering if I'm ready to have snagged one. Having finally recovered from the last "relationship" I was in (which wasn't so much a relationship as me letting him plan out the rest of my life for me, a method that doesn't exactly jive if you have, oh, I dunno, goals and dreams?) and struggling to find a balance between asserting my own voice in day-to-day activities and using it to illogically overwhelm others (read: sticking my nose where it doesn't belong and making outrageous suggestions), I find this balance equally precarious in my relationship with this one person.
Should I not cut out a path for myself upon which I can firmly stand and evaluate life's zigs and zags, or do I throw in my lot with another and make it up as a go along? The latter can be dangerous, as it becomes easy to just coast along until you find yourself in his canoe minus your personal paddle. I don't want to be back in that place again. Good thing about this guy is I don't think he'd let me.
But will I let me?
What is cause to be mad over something? If you let a little thing go will it turn into a big thing? To what extent does being understanding allow yourself to get walked all over, and how firm is just firm enough to drive someone away?
How much do I let go?
They say you have to pick your battles, and excellent phrase indeed. But upon what criteria? I think one must account, to a certain extent, for life's uncontrollable poppings-up, and for the fact that some people anticipate these (and to the negative can end up obsessing over them), whereas others do not, or do so to a far lesser extent. Does this make them inconsiderate, or just not big planners?
I think the key comes back down to figuring out what I want, to plotting out my independence and sticking to it. So I like sticking to a schedule, that doesn't mean he has to; it does, however, mean that he has to remember when we make plans (which he does). And I also have to stop freaking out about every mistake becoming a precident: if it happens on a recurring basis and hurts your feelings then bring it up, but everyone makes mistakes. Furthermore, if he apologizes for those mistakes then believe him, drop it, and let it go, give him a chance. If he keeps doing it, then you put your foot down, but impatience is not a way to ward off getting hurt. In fact, it invites pain.
However, to what extent am I able to mellow out in anticipating future cock-ups from him in particular without it effecting my ability to anticipate and plan for the future in general, period?
Basically I'm nervous that if I mellow out again I won't be able to stop it, like last time, and I'll suddenly stop planning my day around my goals but around his whims, trusting him to say no and not me, and that I'll let every little slip pass by until I'm incapable of stating my own feelings. If I go too far to the other side I'm afraid I'll become like a prison warden, selfishly defending myself to the point of not letting anyone in.
Where do I draw the line? How do I forgive him, mean it, and keep my own voice... like he can?
Friday, July 24, 2009
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Wisdom
I'd like to bury something precious at every place that I've been happy, so that when I'm old and ugly and miserable, I'll come back and dig it up, and remember.
- Sebastian, Brideshead Revisited (cred: inthenextapartment.blogspot.com)
Thinking about the times I've been truly happy I've come to this perpetual turn around: how do I know I was truly happy? Did I just believe I was happy because I believed that that was what happiness was, because I'd been told to?
I generally have a fairly good bullshit radar, but it falls short when turned inwards. The above neurotic rant is a perfect example of what turns me around and stops me from completing something risky and from actually persuing something meaningful, frightened both of not knowing what it'll mean, and of failing at it.
A wise woman wrote recently of turning off the static in one's head. I am unable to do this, despite fairly perpetual introspection, and it urks me. She also spoke of the difference between doing what one likes and what one is good at.
This got me thinking: what do I like?
I like being good at things.
As shallow and pathetic as that sounds, I've always turned to the things I'm good at and concentrated my efforts at becoming the best at them. This gives me unspeakable satisfaction, and also great cause for self-loathing. Result: static.
Lately, however, I've been searching to find things that I enjoy regardless of my level of success while doing them, and to persue them regardless of the fear of failure. The last bit is the hardest. Especially when you would like to make a career out of this thing you may discover that you like: if you end up doing poorly at it and making a bad impression with someone influential then *poof!* opportunity gone.
Or is it?
I must scrounge up the courage to find out.
I mean, really: my dream is not to succeed in Wall Street finance, which means I'll probably get more than one shot at it.
Let's face it, as an editor who has to look at shitty article after shitty article, it really wouldn't bother you too much to read one more. Plus, what would be more impressive? Receiving an incredible article off the bat (quite impressive), OR, receiving several crap articles from the same person that begin suddenly not reading like crap anymore (more impressive because situated among low standards).
As Lloyd Dobler says, "If you start out depressed, everything else is just a pleasant surprise."
So there we have it: grab some cohones, send out some shitty pieces, and perhaps the drastic improvements that come with practice will stun someone into publishing my articles!
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