On Distance

Distance is a frightful word.

I read this article in The Cut about the loneliness of the long-distance breakup, and this part struck me:

When we were together, I had seen my relationship as existing everywhere: In my apartment, and in his, which I could still see via social media if I dared to look. In the airplanes that took us back and forth across the country, in the phone lines, in my internet connection, in the food we ate together and places we went, in the conversations we shared and people we met, and most of all in the future I'd imagined for us. Maybe my idea of us had grown so expansive, the reality of us couldn't keep up. And when we ended, instead of our breakup eradicating his presence — out of sight, out of mind — for me, it caused him to grow into something more looming and idealized than he had ever been in reality.

​I haven't been in a serious relationship for just over a year now. Ending something that seems so long-term is one of the hardest things you can do (saying that as a mere 20-something, of course). I always knew that my ​​​feelings ​after the breakup ​had to do with ​the ​distance (that ugly word), but I couldn't understand it​ — not really​ — until I read this article.

​If the person in question isn't around, you begin making up stories about them. You start feeling feelings about these made-up stories, and you have to remind yourself that you just don't know — an antidote that's easy to administer, but quite difficult to remember. 

It's because humans think in patterns and stories, though our lives are essentially plot-less. Most of us, myself included, can't come to terms with it. We seek logic constantly. So we make up the stories.

There's a part in On Love where the narrator talks about how the reality of his girlfriend no longer matched his idealized image of her, and so it began to fall apart. People will always think in dualities, but this one can get harder to reconcile over time. It's the reason so many people break up. We no longer match, and we begin refusing to accept the other person for all their flaws that, previously, made us love them in the first place. 

​We build things on imagination instead of reality — our brains secretly enjoy filling in the blanks. It's why we experience such severe, even rage-filled, FOMO based on a few Facebook pictures or a drunkenly-composed tweet. Without those traces, you build stories out of nothing, which sounds incredulous, but it continues to happen.

Try as we might, we can't help ourselves. It's so human, isn't it?

Image source

Time Will Tell

Still on that train of trying to post on here ~once per week. It's such a pet peeve of mine when people start blogs, then leave them for no apparent reason. I thought you wanted to be writers! Content creators! Influential people of your generation! (Ha. I kid. Because I am none of those things, really.) 

I do have something sitting in my drafts right now, but I'm working on how to write that balance between amusing and too-personal. So stay tuned.

In the meantime, here's a song I've been listening to all week. I wish I could go back to my younger self, hold her hand and play this song. Is that a little weird? That's a little weird.

Two Dead Deer

I enjoy writing about death, thinking about death and observing how it affects people. I guess that makes me weird (morbid? #dark?). It's the most natural thing in the world. Yet people still have the worst time coming to terms with it.

I think this is where the terms "naturally" and "easily" diverge. 

In the past week, I've seen two dead deer during my commute to/from work, which may explain my thinking about how things die, and all beauty ends, and oh-my-GOD-I'd-be-terrified-if-I-was-the-reason-for-a-deer's-death mentality.

The first one was a mess. There was a traffic jam on our way home from the train station, rear red lights ablaze. They weren't as red as the animal blood (whooooah, deep) that I saw smeared all over the pavement, dragged a few feet by a sedan. I gasped, my dad shrugged, and we went to go buy almond cookies. 

The second one was this past Monday. Another traffic jam, except it was daytime. I thought the car in question, which had a crater in its metal side, had hit a telephone pole or a tree. No. A buck, which are always so much larger than I imagine, was bent and collapsed in the left lane. No blood this time, but it had a spectacularly broken jaw. All I saw were the antlers. I'm sure I made a blasé comment. 

To avoid being overly-poetic about dead woodland animals, which I can really go on about forever, I'll tell you that my family has been attending a lot of funerals lately. As someone who is so strangely fascinated by death, it must be strange to know that I find funerals a bit nauseating. I don't think I can wrap my head around the idea of "paying respects" to a dead person's family. I always have the impulse to just leave them alone. Why would they want to see half-strangers and too many relatives when they just want to look at the floor?

Last Monday (the last of three), we crowded into a local funeral home for a neighbour.

I read about funerals, the bereaved and cultural funerary practices a lot. Still, there's no way that understand the half-firm handshake grip of a widowed mother. Especially if she's already lost one of two sons. Do they have a term for mothers with dead children? They should.

I grew up in a house where nothing, except high school grades and awful boyfriends, was taken all that seriously. I suspect that, when my parents die, my sisters and I will put in a respectable amount of effort, but we'll remain jovial. That's how they were when their parents did that thing that parents do. I don't think they'd want us to collapse into ourselves.

We had a family friend succumb to (read: die of) cancer recently. I spent a lot of time talking with my mother about it, especially about the children she left. My mom did something resembling a shrug: "All Mommies die."

I don't think I reacted in a bad way. It was something that only your mother could say, really. I probably just agreed with her, especially since her own mother died three years ago.

So when she dies, as all parents do, I know she's left me with the most important thing - the unwavering ability to move on.

Image Source: Flickr

On Quitting Facebook

This doesn't have much to do with anything at all, but I like this movie a lot so I guess it sort of works?

I like the Internet. I like the Internet a lot.

I grew up in AOL chatrooms and a succession of message boards. I'm an early adopter of many social networks (except Ello, heh). I have an opinion (quietly) on nearly every social network and it's one of the few things I feel I'm intelligent about. Most of what I know about anything, I learned on a screen.

I thought about this as I clicked the Deactivate button on Facebook last Friday. Where would I get my news? My friends' witty quips? The platform to share photos, interesting links and, albeit sometimes-selfishly, good stories?

The rest of the Internet - that's where.

Deactivating Facebook shouldn't be a big deal but, to my scorn, it is. I feel like connection is all my generation is about, but it was starting to feel so false and forced that, many evenings, I found myself cursing at Facebook instead of smiling.

It also feels wrong to place blame on a singular (though mammoth) social network. Others have left for their own reasons, but I'm deactivating because of my own personal frustration. I just figured I should write about it.

Facebook was starting to feel like an obligation and, as I hope you know, anything that starts to feel like a heavy obligation probably isn't worth it (friendships, relationships, fad diets). That said, I lacked the willpower to remove myself without something so "dramatic" as deactivation. 

And it was something I realized, painfully, after I literally shouted "fuck you" to my phone screen after looking at someone's profile. I'm sure we've all done the same thing, once or a hundred times.

For years now, I've been absorbing information and other peoples' lives instead of solely focusing and doing my own thing. Facebook wasn't taking all of my brain power (please don't think so little of me?) but it demanded a certain level of social engagement and interest that I just didn't have any more.

I think many people use social media, consciously or subconsciously, for gratification. We like checking our Twitter and Instagram feeds for notifications - a like here, a comment there - because it feels good. I'll admit that for those reasons, and because I generally like the communities better, I've kept Twitter and Instagram.

On another level, I want to challenge myself as a writer and content creator. I like writing on this blog and I like tweeting and I like taking photos. By removing myself from Facebook, which is really just a reaction-based network, I can challenge myself to be a bit more true to me and what my "personal brand" is.

God. I sound like I work in advertising more and more each day.

The Workout Routine

I had a brief dalliance with fitness this summer.

As with many people, I’m still trying to find a routine that works for me. About a month ago, I started a new job that took up most of my time, meaning that I lost an hour or so in the evenings. I also had a pretty terrible cough around then, so it discouraged me from doing anything physical without wanting to line my esophagus in something soothing. Like an anesthetic.

I hate dropping off on any sort of progress. Unfortunately, this is a bit of a habit for me. My parents call me a Jack of All Trades, meaning that if you can think of some hobby, I’ve probably tried it. Or am itching to, at least.

So when May happened, and I returned home from Kingston with both a minor beer gut and a perpetually foul mood, I decided to do something about it. Having avoided the gym through my five years at Queen’s, and after observing how lifting could alter others’  physiques, I thought I’d give it a shot, especially now that I was home twiddling my thumbs from the hours of 5 pm to midnight.

This was when I’d do some standard weight and strength training, often to an episode of Friday Night Lights (Coach’s inspirational yelling and the Explosions In The Sky-inspired soundtrack are, unsurprisingly, pretty motivational). It was a good time. I started to develop the beginning of abs and I could see my butt becoming a bit perkier. That was nice.

But, as with most things, I became bored. It was prime summertime at this point. All along the road by my house, I could see runners with their dogs or their iPods, pounding away at pavement. Some of them were so fast.

I decided that running was something I could do – throwing on a sports bra, shorts and running shoes is simple enough. I didn’t really like running through the park with my fellow suburbanites and judge-y teenagers, so I took to the Humber Trail.

I really did love it. It was a decently-challenging running trail, with hills and mixed terrain (hate concrete, love dirt paths) and the occasional deer spotting. It was also nice to see other runners and cyclists in the evenings who, like me, had probably just returned from their evening commute. 

I’ve grown up near that place for most of my life, but this was the first summer that I really got to know it - fireflies, red wing blackbirds and all. I have running and my semi-regular trail walks to thank for that.

Life has a tendency to get busy though, which leaves you pretty unmotivated to exert energy on anything other than work or your social life. I want to prioritize fitness again. I’ve been getting out to hike, but it’s not giving me the same returns as running or strength training.

Last night, with my pyjamas (sweatpants and a ratty tank) on about to get into bed, I did 30 or so crunches and an embarrassingly small number of push ups. It’s small, but it’s a start. I’m feeling a tiny bit better already.

(The above video, “The Runners”, is by two filmmakers who asked London runners intimate questions during their regular route. It’s a pleasant watch.)

Long Walks, Long Thoughts

The main event.

This past weekend was spent among two best pals, some pizza, Gilmore Girls and a lengthy fall hike that saw us stumbling on rocks and me hacking my lungs away on said rocks.

It was great.

The weekend had a shaky start, with a long traffic clog outside of Belleville on the way to Kingston, but, with the help of FM radio, Alison and I persevered. We made it to the bar by midnight.

It was a bit rainy all weekend, so I was worried that we wouldn't get to go to Rock Dunder. It's a hiking trail about 45 minutes outside of Kingston, and the highest point between Ottawa and the Limestone City. The hike was moderate to difficult, depending on your level of fitness. 

AllTrails told us it would take nearly three hours, but we made it in less than two. That's what you get in a group of three where two are regular runners/yoga addicts, and the other tries fitness like it's an edgy outfit she's unsure about. (Guess which one I am?!)

I'm glad we went out, though. Despite the forecast calling for rain, it never did. We saw a few other people (seniors, too!) on the trail, but no one super intrusive on our time together. Crowded, noisy trails are a pet peeve of mine.

The lookout point, as you can see above, was spectacular. I love the act of working towards something that's physically tangible, like a viewpoint or a fitness goal, instead of something like a career goal or a GPA. It reminds you that you exist in a physical world, I think. Or it just reminds you to take care of your body as well as your mind.

The trail runs along the water for a bit. This was one of the views.

I spent a lot of undergrad burying my nose in newsprint and reddit, so I didn't really get to explore nature (one of life's constants) until now. It's something that my friends have even commented on ("I've never heard you talk about the outdoors before!"). I regret missing out, since Kingston has some of the best "outdoorsy" places around. But now it's a way of filling the void.

Speaking of filling the void, here's something I wrote for The Globe and Mail about dealing with life post-graduation. I'm pretty happy with it, but more so surprised that an editor accepted my pitch that was borne out of half-asleep conversations with good friends.

Ideas

Photo from journaling-junkie

I’ve been on both sides of this coin now (the journalism/PR coin, that is)*. This article demonstrates the way both sides depend on each other in a weird way. Symbiosis (read: the remora and the shark) was never supposed to be a pretty package.

This should be required reading for everyone in school for PR (because of distributing press releases) and journalism (because of time management issues and fun pitch ideas). Fun pitch ideas are something I've always valued, first as a reader and then later as a writer.

When I used to pitch weird and cool ideas as a job, I loved putting myself into first-person experiences like this. That was how I hung out in a funeral home, went ice sailing and learned how to work with aerial silk. 

I'm back on the journaling train, writing in my notebook each night about my day. It was a habit that started when I was around 5 years old and, with some lapses, I now have a personal record that stretches over the past 17 years. CRAZY. (Also, as it turns out, 15-year-old Emo Janina just turns into early-20s Overly-Emotional-But-Moreso-Neurotic Janina. Hrm.)

I try to integrate some level of personal social experimentation in my life, if anything, just to keep things interesting. A while ago, I tried to keep all internet links to myself (no sharing!) and, before that, I was on Tinder to see if it actually works (it does, to an extent)(and not always as a hook-up app).

Point is, keep things interesting. That's something I miss about journalism - it's so easy to inject yourself into experiences you're writing about, or use work as an avenue to try new things. That's not to say it's impossible for me to do that now. It's just that it's cool to do it on the clock.

*I’ve effectively cast it all off with a new job in advertising. Who knows where the world will take you, amirite?

Boyhood

​Boyhood got its wide release the other day and, with that, I received quite a few messages from friends saying how incredible it was (with stellar ratings to back it up). There are far more intelligent things about the movie written on the internet, but I like writing about things I like, so here we are.

I saw Boyhood about a month ago with a male friend. I thought that the viewpoint would be more specific to those of us that grew up boys (the movie title seems to say this) but, after reading that director Richard Linklater originally wanted to call it 12 Years, I realize it's less about a boy growing up and more about how any of us did. 

We remember the mundane, and that's where his filmmaker eye focuses. It's a far less ostentatious, easier-to-swallow Tree of Life. We're not thinking about sunlight filtering through trees while running down a picturesque tree-lined street. We remember the dead bird we found in our backyard one summer, because didn't we all find and poke a dead bird once? And that's why, when described to friends, the movie's premise sounds so dull. But that's growing up - characters, story, but no plot. ("Plots are artificial," Linklater says.)

The other evening, I got into a pretty nasty fight with my little sister, one of my best friends and my mirror in most things. She's moving away soon, a feat that's remarkably parallel to Mason's in Boyhood, and I'll miss her very much. Not too long before that fight, though, we were on another one of our hurtling conversations - moving between side-splitting memories of our shared upbringing and discussions about where we saw our future selves. The other night, we watched a deer in the woods, stumbled upon during a run, and talked about what our hypothetical weddings would be like. Because, all social constructs aside, that's what you do in unfettered conversations with your sister.

And that's what you remember when you look back (the deer, the stupid fights, that time you drew eyes on her chin for a laugh). After the movie, I thought about how if I were to narrate my whole life to someone thus far, it would only span about two and a half hours. The length of Boyhood.

The #Outdoors

Gould Lake

It's not too often that I get outside. I'm a suburban girl at heart (one who sometimes touts herself as a city girl, ha) whose view of the Great Outdoors is the conservation area across the street, when I'm not commuting to the city for work. It's something, but I could definitely use getting out more.

Growing up, my family made a point of going outdoors on occasion. Starting in my mid-teens, we made annual camping trips (which I've since stopped going to) and, when I was 9, went on a landmark cottage week in Blind River where I learned to catch frogs and fish fish. It was great.

This resembles a photo from my early-2000s MySpace page.

Two weeks ago, a friend invited me up to Kingston for a canoe trip. Besides the weekend being a refreshing break from Toronto, it was a great way to reconnect with some forest, do some birdwatching (one of those hobbies, y'know) and lie around eating blueberries while complaining about overzealous boaters. 

Getting outside gets you healthy. Millennials, which The Atlantic can't seem to stop writing about, then face a tough divide - do we escape the suburbs to live in the cities, where work is, or remain in close proximity to our parents' backyards and conservation areas, all for a bit of the outdoors? The grey concrete and muted colours of the city always feel suffocating after my morning walk by the woods (yes, actual woods), if you ask me.

So, though it appears that there's nothing terribly wrong with heading outside, why are so many people disinclined to do it?

Trying to chill beer in the lake. It didn't really work.

There are a few reasons (laziness, "too much" busy work, etc.) but accessibility is one of the biggest ones. I'm incredibly lucky that my parents could afford to get us three kids away. Camping equipment (along with fees, gas, food and other supplies) can be costly. 

For a lot of families, heading to a local park is the only option. And, even then, seeing a few trees thisclose to a parking lot can hardly compare to hearing a loon call for the first time.

That's why there are many great programs that help bring inner city youth (who often don't have a way otherwise) to the outdoors. It helps with education, beyond a multitude of other things. And it's something that some of us never realize we're lucky to have.

Okay. I'll end this here before it sounds like a love note to living in the suburbs (for now), not that it isn't already.

Two W's

I need to talk about this on the internet somewhere, so here it is. My first freelance gig, technically - an interview with my very Italian neighbour about his very Italian winemaking pursuits. 

It made me (re-)realize how much I've been slacking with writing. I used to do it everyday. While I take time to read everyday (still a worthwhile pursuit for a baby writer), writing is something that demands practice. 

In the spirit of inspiring others who may be out of touch with their neurotic, emotionally-sensitive self who compulsively writes everything down, here are some links that get my mind going: George Orwell's Politics and the English Language, Joan Didion's On Keeping a Notebook and Chuck Palahniuk's writing advice.

Now go ahead and write something down.

Rough Guides

Afghanistan

I used to dislike traveling – the long car rides, the staring into oblivion until you got to your destination, the endless parade of familial arguments while you figure out where to eat dinner…

I’m being dramatic, I know.

I’m a bit older since the days of family vacations gone claustrophobic. They're visiting Washington, DC right now, and I’ll be damned if I’m not envious that I have to stay home to care for the kittens. 

I’m using that time wisely though – now I’m the one frantically searching for flight prices to Reykjavik, emailing hostels near Cape Breton, figuring out how to rent a car in a foreign country – the list goes on.

It seems I’ve been bitten by a severe case of wanderlust, which isn’t the strangest thing for the typical North American 20-something. We’ll see how much I’ll have to penny pinch for that lusted-after vacation next spring.

In the meantime, click through the photo above for a slideshow from Rough Guides, a travel writing and reference website that’s only recently on my radar (why’d it take so long?!).

The photos go through the least visited countries in the world which, given a few years, I’ll start seeing as a challenge I can pursue. Hey, translating wanderlust to legitimate travel takes time.

Also relevant: the Atlantic released an article yesterday about the rise of "dark tourism" - when war zones become travel destinations.

Your Personality is Shareable, Part One

These are black-footed kittens from the Philadelphia Zoo. I swear this is relevant.

Sharing is easy.

It’s so so so easy, in fact, that in order to annoy my Twitter followers, Facebook friends and whoever else deals in the dark arts of the internet, all I have to do is make one click.

In marketing, too, it’s important to make sure that your audience has to do as little as possible to distribute the intended message. That’s why Facebook has a “share” button. It’s why articles come with pre-written tweets.

And, because of this, it’s easier than ever to display your “personality” by sharing what you’ve read online.* Posting an article from the Upshot shows that, not only are you well-informed and interested in intellectual topics, you’re into media that’s only a teensy bit off the beaten track.

Congratulations, almost anyone ever. Your personality is now a listicle of news articles and contrived thinkpieces.

So, in an effort to only be a tiny bit different from my fellow Baby Yuppies, I tried to stop sharing articles for a week. I made a rule to include email sharing, since it's just a less public way of accomplishing what's described above.

I lasted(ish) two days.

MONDAY

• Read an article in The Guardian about hipsters, via the Quartz daily brief (here's where you should sign up). 
• I wasn’t even halfway through the story when I thought of two people I could send it to. Can’t recall one out of two of the people interviewed.
• There are almost no proven cures for a hangover, except one: a fried breakfast.** 
• I thought about sending this to a few people, including a friend I offered to bring greasy breakfast to on Sunday because of an intense hangover. I realized, one-third into the article, that I was bored of the subject matter. Ditched it.
• Eventually failed to stick to my rule when I sent photos from a Huffington Post article to a friend. 
• These are black-footed kittens (see above). I couldn’t not share.
• I discussed that vagina sculpture with three different people. 
• I figure this counts.

TUESDAY

• Emailed the New York Times profile of Sia (it had to do with Rihanna’s “Diamonds”, one of the greatest pop songs to come out in years) to a friend I hadn’t seen for a while. 
• I also did this before I remembered my rule, but it still counts.
• Did it again! I asked a new friend for their email so I could send them a Buzzfeed long form piece about Kanye and self-love as a political act (actually a really interesting article!). 
• I feel like this speaks less to my powers of self-control, or lack thereof, and more to how Kanye is the most shareable topic this decade. Next to Beyoncé and whatever comes out of Ann Coulter's mouth next.

And that was the end of that failed experiment. I think I’m going to try this again soon, since I failed to record how many articles I did read without sharing. I’m guessing that what you see here is only a quarter of what I read in a typical day.

Try it, though. Removing the idea of “shareability” from my mind helped me look at stories only for what they were, and not for who in my group of friends would appreciate this or that fun thing.

We’re always itching for a way to identify with another person (read: the reason for Buzzfeed’s behemoth success), so what happens when you remove that?

Reading and learning. Just for yourself.

- drops mic -

I also realize that, in writing this blog post, I've done everything I criticized earlier. Oops.

*A friend once told me that he shares articles he doesn’t even read. He’ll get the headline, the first two paragraphs (maybe) and post it online so that he looks smart. I laughed, because this behavior is horribly horribly common.

**I can't find this article anymore. I don't think I dreamed it.

Heartbeat

After downloading iTube and spending more time than usual reading about women and rap ("Dear Men, Please Stop Explaining Rap Music to Women" and the ever-brilliant "Sheezus Talks" ), I’m in that great place where my foot is now in my mouth re: Childish Gambino. As in, sorry I wasn't paying attention earlier.

This sounds like EDM (Endlessly Deceptive Monotony) at first, but it’s not. Seems to match my mood as of late. 

I've also added an Instagram widget to the right, in case I wasn't recording enough of my life on the internet.

The Philippines: Living with the Dead

Photo by Jeffrey Lau / The Toronto Star

I keep a growing list in my phone (and in my notebook) where I put everything memorable. It wasn't always so organized, though.

It's certainly an improvement - I used to just write things in the margins of whatever book I was reading, or I would maintain a current of post-it notes wandering in and out of my life for weeks at a time. This was inspired by a book I read when I was younger, where the protagonist's mother, a novelist, would hide notes throughout the house and use them as inspiration for her books whenever one happened to find her. 

I was browsing through my own collection today and read, "Filipino family, living in grave for shelter".

This is a misnomer. You can't live in a grave but, as evidence by the photo above, you can build your life around them. It's an interesting phenomenon in my home country, and has been written about in several places around the internet.

All of these articles discuss Manila. It's the capital, and it's the most densely-populated. (To wit, dense was not a word I understood properly until I observed it all for myself. Picture Hwy. 401, the busiest highway in Canada, quintupled. Then add a cacophony of noise and the lightning quick, though terrifying, reflexes of your father, a former cab driver.)

While we did travel to more remote places in the Philippines, we spent most of our time in San Pablo City, a metropolis a few hours outside of the capital. 

One morning, we set off to visit my Lola's (Tagalog for "grandmother") grave. The place was beautiful, with lush spanning green lawns and a smattering of headstones and mausoleums. There were palm trees, and a lot of interesting sculpture and details on the graves. I wish I took pictures. (Out of respect, though, I didn't.)

I was struck by a mausoleum a hundred meters or so away from my Lola's. Within the barred, glass-less windows of the memorial (presumably installed to ward off grave robbers), there was an entire family. They had hung clothes to dry and were sitting on plastic lawn chairs, simply hanging out around the stones that concealed their dead relatives.

It's a similar image to the photo above. It was a memory that was quickly replaced by something else not too long after - I only thought of it after passing a crowded* cemetery on my way to work the other day. 

It also brought itself to mind after reading this quote the other day:

“We think we no longer love our dead, but that is because we do not remember them: suddenly we catch sight of an old glove and burst into tears.”

- Marcel Proust, letter written to his wife in 1913

Grief comes in waves (think about going through a break-up and finding something small that sends you into a half-hour long rampage of Facebook creeping). I just wonder how you can weather that when you, quite literally, don't have anywhere else to go.

*I love the double entendre with "crowded" here. I should clarify - crowded with the dead, not the living.

Field Trip 2014: A Tribe Called Red

I'll be meandering through random bits of Field Trip 2014 in the next few days (or weeks...). This was my most memorable moment - my "apple" of the weekend, as my friend would call it.

It's really hard to find things on your own. I was reading an article the other day that said we're just repeating everything we see on Twitter. It's not easy to be original anymore, is what I'm saying. We're all derivatives of derivatives.

This is why keeping a sense of curiosity, which often leads to new discoveries, is so important. 

And that's why dancing and swaying with the crowd at A Tribe Called Red felt really fucking good. 

Some friends of mine knew of the band, and thought their genre ("Powwow-step") sounded intriguing - so we stayed put. They'd recently played a free show at our school which, I'm sorry to say, I didn't go to but should have.

Admittedly, I almost missed it. They were the last act in a long lineup (which included Kevin Drew, Shad, Austra and a bunch of other Canadian indies). I was about to leave to watch Interpol, something I thought would be good to add to my musical education.

But once the first ATCR song started, we kept watching. This slowly crept to our group of four standing up, and then weaving our way into the crowd where we danced just behind a bunch of bros who brought something resembling Gandalf's wizard staff with them. If you were at Field Trip this weekend, I'm sure you saw them.

My friend Brenna put it best in her tweet.

I don't expose myself to Aboriginal issues all that willingly. I don't have an excuse for it. My time at the Journal allowed me to follow certain aspects of it. And I still find this a bit odd to say, but my experience at this show got me, if anything, a bit more interested in the story of a people so consistently ignored.

Plus, the video montages and hoop dancing were spectacular. It was a welcome relief after a day of five-ish-piece bands with semi-emotional lyrics and guitar strumming. There's only so much Canadian indie folk rock you can take.

I'm still trying to learn new things. I'll have to do some digging around and see what literature I can find on the issues ATCR tackles.

Projects

It's been a year or so since I gave this blog its whole minimal aesthetic (ahem, the same one you see on like 15 other blogs per day). I think I'm ready for something new.

And just in time! I found this neat step-by-step process on creating vector illustrations, care of Creative Blog. I love vector illustrations. They're so abstract, and I find that the form gives you a lot of freedom, but imposes enough restrictions that it truly exercises your creativity as an individual and not just as an artist. It's a lot like my other favourite artistic medium, photography (which I'll be sure to do more of this summer. Like every summer).

I've been working on Photoshop since I was 14, InDesign since I was 19, but I've yet to master Illustrator. It looks like I have my next creative pursuit (outside of the ever-present writing, of course). Now it's just on to learning how to code the header, maybe switching this whole operation over to Wordpress, and who knows where we'll go from there?

This weekend promises to be fun. I'll be going to Field Trip, my first large-scale music festival and my first time seeing BSS. I'll likely be a physical and emotional wreck as of Monday morning.

We're not allowed to bring DSLRs into the venue, but with the potential of disposable cameras (hip) and the ever-advancing quality of the iPhone, I'm sure I'll have plenty to share post-weekend.

Before you go, though, he's an acoustic version of a song I refused to listen to for, oh I don't know, nearly two years? 

Have a great weekend.

New Things

I’m learning to try new things, all the time if I can.

University is over, which is a weird thing if you allow yourself a moment to think about it. Five years pass, and you’re an entirely different person. How can that be? How did half of a decade pass so quickly? I imagine this is how parents must feel.

I had a bit of a quarter-life crisis before leaving school. I worried if I would ever find a community like this again, especially one that could afford me such opportunities as joining random clubs or finding interesting groups of new people. I became anxious that I had spent too much time on certain pursuits, excluding myself from others. (Who knows? I could have made a good member of student government. Har har.)

In the last few months of school, I made sure to try new things. I tried to return to my theatre roots, and (so so nervously) performed at a poetry slam (run by Queen’s Poetry Slam; see video above). I read a LOT more. I decided that I would make the switch to lactose-free milk.

Now that I’m in a nine-to-five job, it’s becoming more important for me to keep this part of me intact. I don’t know what it’s called just yet, but I’m pretty sure it’s important. Which is why I’m drafting this post on the GO station platform. Which is why I still browse discount flight websites, and pick up a new hobby every once in a while. Which is why I don’t think I’ll ever stop reading, or writing, for that matter. 

Perhaps, throughout it all, I’ll be too tired. But the alternative seems pretty tiring to me too.

Restless

I had one of those nights where I went to bed at 4:30 am and, upon seeing the clock strike 5:45, decided to just fuck it and forgo sleeping. I haven't been able to fall asleep before 4 am since January or so - call it a function of working a crazy job, but also being too focused on too many things at once to have a settled mind.

It turns out that the sun was supposed to rise at 6:10 am, so off I went to the lake to settle my thoughts before heading for a solitary Sunday breakfast and antique market browse. Always a good way to end the weekend.

A vintage map I bought my parents. They've been on the hunt for one for a while now.

Summer Soon

This reminds me of two things - that wide expanse of countryside that's a two minute drive from my house, and the fact that I unrelentingly loved Ra Ra Riot ("indie", etc.) at the same time that I came to Queen's.

This video, though a few years old, is something I revisit sometimes when I need to be reminded of the latter. And, now that I'm reaching the final stages of life at school, it's nice to go back to the beginning. Somehow. Even if it's a little #hipster.

**I also just realized that I titled this blog post "Summer Soon", and the previous one "Soon". Maybe this will let you know where my mind is at right now.

Soon

In less than six weeks, I'll be joining the legion of the recently-graduated - the soon-to-be disillusioned, we-used-be-so-young-and-so-fun people that are straddling the line between responsibility and, I don't know, naive hope in the future?

I bet there are a million thinkpieces on this type of stuff. I'm trying to avoid reading them. Between seeing friends, spending time drinking tea in strange coffee shops and re-igniting a sentimental side of myself not seen since the age of 15, I couldn't much care about the qualms of what it's like to move on to the next stage of my life.

Instead, I spend nights reading books and watching movies and pretending I don't have to pack my life up into my parents' basement in the next few weeks.

I was having a conversation with a friend the other night, and this phrase came out: "You either become boring or you die. Hopefully the latter comes before the former." (I'm actually not sure what was said exactly. I'll have to refer to it when I get home.)

I think the fear, in general (IN GENERAL!), is that we're all so scared to be boring. University, in a way, reassures us that we have purpose. We have that end goal. We're not boring!

Just over a year ago, I wrote a post about how terrified I was to start the next year of my life. Now, on the other side, I don't think there was very much to be scared of at all. I learned a lot, and grew a lot, but now I think I'm finally ready to go.

It's strange to finally feel like you've done something. But that's assuming that accomplishment is the only way to demarcate personal success.

First Kisses: An Internet Thing

FIRST KISS from Tatia Pilieva on Vimeo.

Thank goodness for the Internet. Otherwise, this video wouldn't be out there - and, as some of you might know, this has been making the rounds online all evening.

I'd argue that a good kiss is so much more powerful than a good fuck, or whatever you want to call it. There's much less skin, much less awkward and a lot more of that sweetness that can make your mind zone out and your body "blush all over" (as I saw someone aptly describe on Twitter today).

My first kiss was in a crowded movie theatre. His nose got in the way and I didn't know how to tilt my head properly. Hopefully I've improved since then.

My best kiss was after we hadn't seen each other in a very long time. I've had happy kisses, in the same vein, since then. My most recent one was sweet - also unexpected and in public. My worst one involved too much teeth and tongue. My saddest one was on my parents' driveway, not too long ago actually. (Look at me; I could go on forever about kissing!)

Now that the year is winding down, and I'm that much closer to ~*~funemployment~*~, I'll be using this space a lot more. Hard to believe I've been blogging (half-assedly, I'll admit) for nearly three years now. 

What started out as a space for me to practice quasi-anonymous Internet rambling has turned into ... the exact same thing, albeit a bit more annoying, more or less.

EDIT: Turns out it's actually a fashion ad, which we may have all noticed were we paying closer attention to the credits. Still, the sentiment is there. If you're looking for alternatives, though, VICE did a neat thing where they pulled strangers off the street and got them to kiss. Sort of produces the same effect. Sort of.

MORE EDITS: I wish I had written something about brands leveraging emotion to sell something. See: Westjet and P&G, though more subtle, use similar methods of associating their product with feel-good feelings.