Another entry without pictures.

In the past few weeks, I feel like I've been thrust into an entirely different world, where violent rapids of ideas are shooting past in every direction, leaving me more or less raped of coherence and expected to deal with the erratic mess of thoughts that flop feebly around my ankles. And for weeks I've been asking myself, "How am I supposed to rope all of these in?"

Well, maybe, as Claudia H. Johnson suggests, "it's about connection".

I used Johnson's textbook, "Crafting Short Screenplays that Connect", for a creative writing course I took last semester. While it provided a wealth of interesting and occasionally useful insights in regards to writing a script, the main argument she presents - that connection is more important than conflict - is of little help to an inexperienced writer, and I found it difficult to take this "touchy-feely" approach seriously. However, when I went back to school this term and entered into an entirely new field of study which somehow encompassed everything that I'd ever done before, I started to get all "touchy-feely" myself.

Life, life as I know it, is connection. It's connection to ourselves, to our environments, and to other people. It's a series of shared experiences and a journey towards that inextinguishable high that some people get from God, others from love, and others still from crack, or what have you. I've been constantly re-evaluating my life for some time now and a lot of the reason for that is because I do feel disconnected. I recently made a personal commitment to buckle down and finish my degree before taking any more time off, meaning full-time school, year-round. But only a few short months into that commitment, and I'm already wondering how I'll manage to preserve my sanity. I know how lucky and privileged I am to have access to all of the social and economic resources that I do. But everyone has their own struggles, and I'm just communicating mine. And mine, is largely a concern of time.

With the addition of an extra course to my regular load of 3 (I know, I'm such a princess), I've already noticed a rapid decline in the amount of "free" time that I have, particularly with 3 of those being heavy in readings, and me being a slow reader. All of a sudden, every activity is taking longer, and the space it occupies is time that I would otherwise use to sleep (as in now). Campus is farther (more time), I no longer have a car (more time), I have two jobs (more time), and amidst all that, I still have a crowd of friends and family going through hard times that I'd really like to be there for.

I like school. That, in and of itself, is like an extremely condensed vessel of experiences, and if my years were unlimited, I would take it one course at a time, forever. Or maybe two, just to be sure I took it a little seriously. Sadly, time touches me in this sense as well, as in the sense that all upstanding members of society need to earn their living, and that takes time, and increasingly more time, as population goes up and cost of living goes up and retirement goes down and takes the job market with it. It is perhaps because of this market that university expectations are so high (in some ways), and yet it is to their own detriment that students may acquire an incredible breadth of knowledge but fail to specialize in any functional way due to the sheer amount of information that's now available to them. It's the blessing and curse of the "information age", and it's probably the reason why a BA is hardly a step above yesterday's GED.

Speaking of the information age, technology also has an ever-increasing role in time, and functions in an odd way with connection. In terms of time, we need only look at the amount of TV the average household watches, or how often they surf the web. Or forget the web, just Facebook or Twitter. Or forget the household, and make it just me. In any case, it's a lot, and in most cases it's a lot more than we think. Constant "connectivity" is actually a disconnection, if not from people, then from anything that might otherwise hold your attention. Smartphones, regular cell phones, tablet and laptop computers... More people than ever before are in possession of at least one of these. And just because you can be connected, a small part of your brain will wonder if you will be. Nick Carr discusses distraction and a lot of other interesting aspects of modern technology in this lecture, the most interesting parts of which begin around 30 minutes in. He discusses at length the difficulty that humans have developed with deep focus as a result of these innovations. The loss of memory is particularly haunting, and frighteningly true. Just a few hours ago, I received a text message, a late response to a text "conversation" my friend and I had been having earlier. Because I had to empty my inbox to make more space sometime in between the initial conversation and the postponed remark (my phone is of the archaic "flip" variety, and caps text messages at about 100), I could not (and did not) remember what we were talking about.

Of course there are benefits to network communications. With unlimited texts, I can send messages to friends across the country free of extra cost at any time. With Skype, family members may be able to reconnect over insurmountable distances. And with Web 2.0, regular shmucks like me can share trivial perspectives and snapshots of our daily realities with anyone who cares to peruse them. I read an article that called the events in Tunisia the result of the first "Twitter revolution". Needless to say, my interest was piqued, and I decided to join Twitter some days later. Today, having witnessed the global spread of re-tweets from Egypt, I imagine this is a valid argument. This blog entry probably won't "go viral", but it's still a kind of catharsis for me, and who knows, I have 4 followers - I might connect with one of them.

But whether or not I do, this kind of connection is certainly not a replacement for the more tactile, personal connection that people get from being in the physical presence of one another. My most fulfilling relationships remain those that have been nurtured - literally - hand in hand. When I've had the worst day in the world, I'll go out for tea with a good friend, and nothing about that day changes, but I go home feeling better.

According to Edward Hall, my discomfort and feeling of disassociation may be related to his hypothesis of Monochronic and Polychronic time. M-time and P-time, as he calls them, may as well stand for masculine and plural. Monochronic time is what he describes as linear, task-oriented time, and he associates it with men because of the convention of the "working man", who was created by the mechanical clock. Polychronic time is more "people-centered" and flexible in nature, putting the immediate welfare of one's personal relations above any other task at hand. However, this idea of monochronic time is the dominant perception of time in North American culture, and Hall suggests that it is because of this that women (naturally housewives, therefore polychronic beings and walking hazards of emotion) are statistically more depressed in our society.

Hall's argument is often sexist and sometimes racist, but it's an interesting way to consider time, and even certain cultures. As Hall states, the two "types" of time may be used in conjunction by a society in specific aspects of life, but they do not mix. One of the examples given was to imagine a polychronic person making a dentist appointment. At the last moment, an out of town friend arrives and announces they want to meet for lunch. The polychronic person naturally skips their appointment, and has to wait something like 3 weeks before they can get another one. In North American society, this tends to be frowned upon, particularly by the white majority towards immigrant groups who employ this practice. Perhaps, in some ways, rightly so, because it's true that the system is ineffective if not engaged by all. But it's worth noting that neither is necessarily better or worse, only different.

But it's differences like these, differences which completely alter our paradigm, that make it so difficult to change the world. Social and technological sustainability, and for that matter, environmental, economic and political sustainability are such grandiose notions, on which so many people have so much to say, that's it's simply impossible to obtain a globally unified perspective (or at least a majority) on any one issue because there's simply too much to focus on. The world is like an orphanage on fire and how can you say which child to save first? The best we can do (perhaps) is to choose our battles and stick to our guns. I don't know how effective is it to have 10% of the world as model citizens for reducing the carbon footprint while the rest of the population uses even more energy and makes more garbage than ever. But the remaining 90% may be worried about disaster relief or disaster preparation or famine or the local economy or the welfare of gorillas or whatever else. And they're all good causes, and no one's efforts will likely hurt the overall state of affairs, it just seems that any one thing could only be implemented fully and completely with global participation.

For the most part, we can settle with a job half done. After all, if we didn't have some people drowned or buried or burnt or starved or just plain handed their ticket to the Darwin Awards, then we'd be worse off still. We egotistical beings don't like to think of ourselves as numbers, and I, as much as anyone, would prefer not to be crushed to death by the roof of my own home in the event of an earthquake, however, there are already too many people in the world. The economy is suffering, and if or when disaster strikes in our all-powerful 'developed' nations, then we not only have to recover billions of dollars in damaged infrastructure, but we also have to commit to the welfare of the thousands who survived because of that exorbitant infrastructure.

This may seem somewhat lacking in compassion and admittedly steers away from the topic of connection, but I think it's true. I'm certainly not suggesting that people stop helping the earthquake victims in Haiti, nor that we revisit anything like the Holocaust. And I understand that population control hasn't generally been very effective. I, personally, will not have children, but that's an easy call for me to make, because I don't want children anyways. I understand that not everyone will be able to make that choice, for reasons that may have nothing to do with preference.

But that could open up a whole 'nother can of worms.

The point is, if there's one thing that we need to get across to each person on the planet, it is that each of us has a social responsibility. Communications theorist and possible lunatic Marshall McLuhan expresses it succinctly (in the 60's): "In our own time most of us have grown so accustomed to the life of each for himself that is is difficult for us to understand that for the greater part of man's history every man of necessity lived a life of involvement in the welfare of his fellows" (War and Peace in the Global Village). Like it or not, we're all stuck here together, and each of us are in some way responsible for one another. The information age has given us a lot more to know about, but I don't know if we're actually doing anything about it.

And this is what worries me about school. I've quit one of my jobs, interestingly, the more solitary one, at the risk of incurring student loans in future semesters, in order to fully immerse myself in my studies. And I do this, at times. But as school itself becomes less of a social institution, and breaks are spent texting rather than chatting with your neighbour (which is now weird and potentially threatening, as I have learned), then I worry that I will become a sort of disconnected drone, who may write many passionate blog entries on a variety of global plights, but then fall victim to the unconscious mindset of many: There's so many people in the world... someone else will do it.

Not true.

But who even has time to think about all this?

I admit to having no solution for the problems at hand. Like most other people, I'm more worried about the things that immediately affect me. But maybe I can start there. As a baby step, I will do what I can to make sure that my close relationships remain in the forefront of my priorities, and that university remains a social experience. In this way, maybe not only I, but others, will maintain that critical connection and thereby acquire a natural sense of social responsibility. If we want to be a little more polychronic, there's only a rush as we see fit; the important thing is the goal, and that it gets done. Some of our actions may transcend our own lives and we may not live to see our ambitions realized. You might see that as blind faith, a relay that may never end, but unless we're doing something totally unvalidated ("Turning the mattress on the 43rd minute of the 19th hour each day will prevent the volcano from erupting!") then I doubt our descendants will hate us for it. They might even applaud our spunk.

That is, if they still applaud anything then. If they still even speak to each other. Sigh.

Anyways, thanks for listening. I'd love to hear your comments.

Screams in the valley

Why can't I just sit still?

This semester has possibly been the longest, hardest, most emotional and frustrating few months of my life. The whole year hasn't been for me, and it's been downright awful for a lot of my close friends as well. I can't help but get this feeling of impending doom.

I know negativity isn't the answer, in fact, it's probably a large part of the problem and something that I have personally drenched people in on many occasions. But I like to think that there's a lot of compassion in people, and how can you stay positive when day in and out, you watch misery after misery befall the ones you love? It's difficult, is all. It's easier not to care, but then where do you find yourself? Who are we but the imprint that we leave on others? There's so many people, so many problems, and we're lazy. I need to practice positivity. I need to get myself out of this funk, I need to get my generation out of this funk. I need to blow more bubbles, dance more, sing more, offer the cover of my umbrella to more people standing in the rain. Random acts of kindness change the world.

I often find myself trapped in a vicious battle between self-loathing and narcissism, particularly when it comes to stuff like "good deeds". When I feel I've done something particularly "good", I get an enormous amount of self-satisfaction and then feel extraordinarily guilty for my undoubtedly selfish reasons for performing said deed. Similarly, I think we all encounter situations in which we believe ourselves to be the moral/emotional/mental/physical superior of others. And even when something rolls along and reminds me how small and insignificant I am, I sometimes feel simultaneously shattered and yet smug that I should be so insightful as to come to this realization. Sometimes I look in the mirror and I see myself as if I'm not myself, and I just think, "What an ugly girl". On some nights, I cry myself to sleep like an infant for reasons I can't articulate, and tell myself that no one understands. But people do understand. I talk to them about it and it sounds petty and childish. Many things, when I finally get the nerve to talk about them, are petty and childish. The words begin to lose shape and integrity as they fall out of my mouth and 9 times out of 10 the statement has turned into a shared joke before I've reached the end of it. I think it's about perspective.

But falling into that pattern of self love/hate nevertheless puts an itch in my heart that only the strong winds of change can scratch. For as long as I can remember, I've acted out against depression. Many of these actions have been hair-related. I've chopped off all my hair several times and dyed it almost every colour of the rainbow to fight constancy. I've quit school to work. I've quit work to travel Europe and live in Germany. While in Germany, I chopped off my hair myself, for the first time. I also took several impractical, impromptu trips to Sweden, in pursuit of adventure and a doomed romance. After that, I bungee-jumped 180 meters off of a parasail. You get the picture.

Now that I've upped the ante, a haircut alone just doesn't do it anymore. But I'm at that place, the eye of the storm, the calm that follows the chaos and inevitably precedes more chaos, and I can't stand it. I want adventure, intrigue. I think we'd all be better people if we had a little more of it. But it just gets harder and harder to get that satisfaction. I don't have money. I don't have a lot of time. I need people, and a storyline, and a reason to keep turning the pages. I want to be excited about life again! My friend and I spoke a few days ago about how we used to have sleepovers. We would stay up all night talking about our lives, loves, beliefs (in elementary fashion) and whatever else the time called for. Now, if we stay anywhere together, we just sleep. For so long, there were things that could only be said in the darkness and quiet safety of night. What can we say now? What else can we discover? What else should we discover?

I think if we were all truly honest and frank with one another, then we could learn a lot more about people in general, but it's hard to be that honest. Especially if you don't know what you're being honest about. If you stuck any two people in a room for 3 days, what would they find out about each other? Would anything besides small talk even come up? I guess it depends on the people, but I've always been curious as to how I would react in that situation. I'd almost like to try it. I'm completely useless at articulating myself on the fly, and I'm a terrible conversationalist in any and all regards, but I would want so badly to take advantage of the opportunity that I wonder if I could overcome it. Sometimes I just think it would be amazing to have that chance to talk, really talk, with someone that you never would have been able to/thought to otherwise.

Realistically, I have a feeling that if I were in that situation, we might get as far as names of immediate family members by day 3. I can be cripplingly shy. Everything I've written here, just now... I wouldn't say it aloud to most people. I couldn't even read it off the page. I'm trying to be honest right now, and it's really difficult for me to put that much of myself out there. I'm always kind of worried about weirding people out.

Sigh. It's late, and I'm not even sure what I'm talking about anymore. I guess what I'm saying is, I want to cut my hair, take another road trip to the island and end up stuck somewhere with a friend/stranger for several days with no outside contact. That's totally normal, right?

Don't be alarmed. Goodnight.

BBQs and Party Dresses

So things already seem to be taking a turn for the boring here. I've been unusually occupied the past week or so, between pet/house sitting and actually getting work and having a social life every now and then (thanks to incessant whining to my friends and boyfriend... not that I promote that). Amidst all that, I've still been doing a fair amount of sewing, and baking, and even some cooking, but it's too late to photojournalize the cooking and baking adventures and I fear the sewing may get redundant. So, I'll just try and give the lowdown on a couple different things to keep it fresh.

1) BBQing

Yes, I am that girl. The portrait of a female stereotype, incompetent down to what is arguably the least manly of the manly tasks (only because it's food prep related). Ever since I was a child, it's always been my dear father firing up the grill, delivering us those most glorious of meats and proving his ultimate leadership in the familial hierarchy. For that alone I would have remained ever submissive, but alas, my independence has been granted, and learning to navigate this bull of a contraption takes me one step closer to validating my own authority over the ones that I love and care about. Also, I was house-sitting and really wanted a barbecued hot dog, so it had to be done.

There's not too much knowledge or technique I can impart for a hot dog. Lighting up the BBQ was simple enough, much like lighting a gas stove, only you have to remember to turn the gas on, and more importantly, off, when you're finished. I waited for it to heat up a bit, plopped some dogs down and played the waiting game. I generally enjoy my hot dogs blackened so there was really no way I could go wrong. I checked them every few minutes and flipped them around to get all the sides, and once I deemed them dark enough, they were as tasty as animal entrails in intestinal casing ever were. I like the classic mustard and relish on my dog, but on occasion, some fried onions or sauerkraut or cheese and bacon or chili and mozza will do nicely. Just for an extra dose of healthy.

Next stage: Kebabs.

2) Dressmaking

This wasn't really my idea. I got it from this person who probably got it from someone else. But she clearly knows what she's doing, and has a lot of great pictures to go along with it as well. So take a gander at her website. Things basically went according to plan. Get a fabric that has at least one way stretch, if not both, and is the same front and back, because a lot of twisting is involved in the final product. Cut your lines in the fabric as even and snag-free as possible, because they won't be getting hemmed.

One part that I remember reading and yet don't seem to see on the Rostitchery page is how to calculate your measurements. So, what you do is: Take the measurement for your natural waistline (the place where your waist is smallest), and divide that by approximately 3.14. That's the diameter of the circle that you're going to cut out for your waist line on the skirt. The size can be approximate but try to make it an even circle. I made a paper template to start, pinned it to the fabric and cut around that. Be fairly precise with the waistband as well, you can put an elastic band in there later if your measurements were off. I did that, and it seemed to turn out just fine!

Waist circle... pin fabric around the edges of the circle.

I would only recommend machine-washing this one if you put it in a laundry bag. Otherwise, the straps may get wound up and tear (far more likely if you're an amateur seamstress like myself), but it should be okay in a dryer. As usual, wash and dry your fabric before sewing to see what happens to it.

It's not actually uneven, i just threw it on the floor with little care of appearance.

3) Improvise cooking

I was told the other day that there's actually a Youtube channel dedicated to this same subject: the task of making dinner when you're low on groceries. I can't remember what the channel is called, but hearing about it reminded me very much of an experience I had earlier this week.

I had worked a 12 hour day in sweltering heat and came home ready to prowl the cupboards like some kind of ravenous beast, ingesting anything readily edible. But lo and behold, I opened the cupboards and there was barely anything there that could be willingly consumed without some kind of basic preparation. Largely because I wanted meat. And there was no way I was dragging myself out to the grocery store.

So, after some scrounging around in the freezer, I discovered a half-used package of ground pork and thought, "What can I do with this?" I had used the first part to make gyoza, but I was fresh out of dumpling wrappers, green onions, cabbage, and most everything else that would have allowed me to recreate that delectable dish. So then I thought tacos, but I didn't have taco shells. I DID, however, have a couple tortillas, so I decided to pursue something along those lines.

To be honest, I've never really made tacos that weren't founded by an Old El Paso Taco Kit. So I didn't really know what I was doing. But I knew that I had to use up the green pepper in the fridge, and I love onions, and pork and lime is a winning combination, and thus the basic formula was born. I cut up the green peppers and onions while letting the frying pan heat up with a bit of oil, then plopped the pork in and let it brown before draining some of the excess fat with a spoon. Then I chucked in the green peppers and onions and figured it could probably use some spice. So I hit up the fridge and cabinet. Lime juice? Defs. Garlic? For sure. Slightly aged tempura sauce? Why not? Add a pinch of salt, a blast of oregano, some chili powder, celery seed, cumin, and whatever else smells good and you will have yourself a delicious, meaty concoction.

After everything in the pan was done doing whatever it did, I still wasn't really sure how to go about consuming it. It seemed like there should be lettuce in the tortilla, but there was none of that around. Instead, I found some acceptable looking salsa and smeared that down the center, and it might have been perfect, had cheese been present. Alas, I was also sans fromage but still desperately required that cheddary zip to complete the mock-taco (maco?) combo.

Fortunately, for SOME REASON there was a large container of that disturbing cheese-flavoured powder hiding behind the milk. It is essentially like pouring the contents of the white package in Kraft Dinner directly onto your food. Only saltier. Ordinarily, I shudder at the thought, but at that moment, it was just what I needed. So I applied it (sparingly) over the salsa, hid it underneath a layer of meat, onions and peppers and dug in.

And you know what?

I'd say the green peppers actually brought it down. Yes, it was the one moderately healthy part of the meal, but (potentially for that reason) the flavours just didn't work together. Everything else tasted surprisingly fantastic (though real cheese would still have improved the situation). Since I had to use up the green peppers anyways, they were okay, but if I tried this again, I would just avoid falsely convincing myself of anything healthy about this dish in the first place.

You can tell I'm all about eating healthy.

Regardless, I still feel that I've learned something here. And I hope you have too. Even if that lesson is simply not to buy cheese-flavoured powder.

Happy Birthday! (whenever you have one)

Today is the day.

Greetings, internet! I come to you on this not-so-fine summer day to begin writing what will be a blog about my attempts to get by in the world without skills, or a particular knack for anything useful. Essentially, I am attempting to find and share the things that those of us without talent may nevertheless enjoy, and perhaps use them to decieve our friends and foes into thinking that we may actually be resourceful, functioning members of society after all. And perhaps, after enough practice, we may even fool ourselves.

So, a quick bio. Somehow, in the 13 years of elementary and high school education I recieved, I managed to slip out of the entire field of courses involving practical application. In the first year of high school, a course appropriately called "Life Skills" was offered and actually mandatory for all students, unless the student in question was taking band class, which I, of course, was. Not really an adequate tradeoff. While the other kids were learning to cook and sew and work with tools and computers, I was fumbling around on my bass guitar. Say what you will, I do believe in the greatness of the world's truly talented bassists, but it doesn't take much to be able to pluck your way through high school band. I will say this much for myself: I am not tone-deaf, and I have a decent sense of rhythm. But it stops there. And for what I was given in natural ability, I was disproportionately deprived of in social ability. I plan to address this as well. But moving along, band basically annihilated any opportunity I had to learn something useful because all of the useful courses were, naturally, electives (ZING, school board!), and band ate up 2 of 3 slots, the other occupied by French, which was an elective that was mandatory to take. For reals, that's what they told us. I probably would have taken it anyways, because I've always felt bad that French is an official language of my country and I can barely understand a lick of it, but I suddenly realized on a later trip to France that all 7 years of French class gave me in the BC school system was the ability to order pizza and go to the mall. TANGENT

Anyways, soon enough, high school was over and after another lazy, unskilled summer, I found myself in college, partaking in a smattering of humanities courses that didn't feel very far above the high school level but suddenly cost a lot more. It was about then that I realized that I should probably have some sort of a goal in mind. And it was just shortly after that that I realized achieving said goal would probably involve some measure of success in a given category, which was vastly foreign territory in the landscape of my life. I almost got culture-shock just thinking about it. Even so, I worked my way through two misguided semesters before finally giving up and going the way of the immigrant, finding a full-time job in unskilled-and-not-even-requiring-muscle-mass labour: Housecleaning.

A brief sidenote: The comment about going the way of the immigrant was not meant to be derogatory to immigrants, but rather a bop on the government's head for failing to have in place appropriate transfer certification for skilled workers from other countries. I live in British Columbia, Canada, and while I was cleaning, I worked with, among others, a medically trained woman from ALBERTA who couldn't get certified to work in her field in BC, as well as a man from Thailand who had degrees coming out his ears and years of experience as a general contracter and massage therapist! Weird combo, I know, but the guy did nothing but study on his free time for AGES, and then he came here and had to start from the bottom all over again. It's just sad.

Back on track. I did the cleaning thing for a year before I decided I needed a change of scenery and sailed (in a plane) off to Europe for around 16 months to backpack, live, nanny and totally fail at learning foreign languages. I spent most of my time in Germany so I could probably be quite proficient in German by now if I were not myself, but fortunately the constant repetition has at least drilled a little bit of it into my mind. Even so, my time there was the real, conscious start of my skill-seeking adventures. Goal number one upon arrival to Europe: Learn how to dress. I didn't realize how awful I was until I landed and realized almost immdiately that those European fashionista stereotypes are entirely valid. But I think I may count this now as my first acquired skill. I never quite got the hang of it while I was there, but after I returned to Canada and had a bit of money to invest in some key items, I like to think I'm fairly fashion friendly. Also, I got a full length mirror. I cannot stress how necessary that was. Formerly, it had only been upon the embarrassing revelation of photos that I realized what I looked like. Now I can see before I even leave the house!

With this newfound sense of fashion came a desire to be seen! Since my social circle was still lacking, I decided to go back to school, with a new set of goal ideas in mind. That was last fall, and the past two semesters have definitely been slightly more successful, and I feel like I'm getting closer to knowing what that goal is. But I need to make money to continue to go to school to get there, and THAT so-called-brief bio brings us here. No, I am not HERE to make money. I am 3 months and about 200 applications into the job search with no results, and no life. But I am tired of feeling like a torn and melted cheese string so I've decided that it's time to put down the potato chips and ice cream and spend my abundance of free time trying to be good at things. Low budget things. So as I go about these things, I will try to share and photo-journalize so that any positive experiences I have may be repeated, and any negative ones avoided. I'll work on any skills I can when the opportunity arises: social, practical, technical, financial... and I welcome suggestions of things to try, though at this point, I'm sure that seems pretty vague. Once we get rolling, I'm sure we can reel that in a bit.

With that however, I welcome you to the recorded beginning of my quest for talent and personal betterment! Thanks for putting up with the wall of text and I hope that my next entry is significantly more useful.

Cheers!