Turn It Off

I don't have the energy to overanalyze another Paramore song, but I still want to share my thoughts and feelings as they unfurl whilst I listen to Turn It Off, from Brand New Eyes.

I feel like searching for my soul; my true self, and to "turn off" all the chatter that prevents me from me being genuine.

See, Hayley aka lead singer of Paramore, has been a sort of lifeline/inspiration to me for a few years now. And she gets it. She gets what it means to be genuine. Beyond the media veil, beyond the commercialization, her voice carries a strength that I admire.

Oh, woes. I'm finding it so hard -not- to get into the overanalysis again. It's just... as I listen to the music, I feel like explaining my reality. These Paramore songs capture my fleeting thoughts and make them beautiful, somehow.

The only lyric I'll leave in the post here today is:

I wanna know what it'd be like

To find perfection in my pride

To see nothing in the light

But turn it off in all my spite, in all my spite

TURN IT OFF. Well, not the song.

Signed,

Kaleidoughscope

Sensical theatrical

Jumping on opportunities is what I'm doing these days.
A couple blog posts ago, I narrated how I became involved with a student group at UofT called Design in Design. It has been a positive experience so far.

But the only reason I became a part of the group is because I seized the opportunity when it presented itself. I could have chosen to go home that one Friday evening instead of sticking around in room 204; but my decision to stay and see why all these strangers were congregating led me to discover a world I had never thought of being a part of before.

Now, I'm on the team that manages the Facebook page for the group. Granted, I haven't done anything yet because I'm not experienced enough in graphic design matters, but it's good to feel part of a team.

Pine needles in Cedarvale

Design in Design is but one example of the opportunities that present themselves every day to me.

I'm joining another group, totally unrelated to this graphic design thing, tomorrow. I don't want to say too much about it since I'm not sure what to expect, but it has to do with gender, sexuality, and identity: all interesting topics in and of themselves, but together, a whole greater than the parts.

I am that whole. And the hole that has been gnawing at me from the inside is finally retreating.

Signed,
Kaleidoughscope

Grab a brush and...

Top of the mornin' to ye. (Apparently, people in Ireland don't actually say this and it's a Hollywood fabrication.)

I can usually tell that I'm going to have a good day when I wake up and I have a song playing in my head. And I don't mean a song being -stuck- in my head, that's not as positive as just having a pleasant song sort of flowing in and out of your ears. It's hard to explain, but maybe you get the point.

Damn, I lost the song now. I was so eager to actually play the song through my speakers that I went ahead and played the song I thought it was, and it turns out I was wrong. I know it was (unsurprisingly) a Paramore song, and I'm pretty confident it was on the Riot! album, but now I've got That's What You Get playing and it wasn't the song.

Oh well.

I'm feeling pretty sore all over this morning, especially my right wrist. Oh, but it's not what you think! See, I had a pretty solid 2 hours+ of badminton yesterday night at a community centre downtown. The competition wasn't great, but I did have a chance to play a number of games and to get my ass moving. I'm thinking of playing at least twice a week until I can find more places to play.

I used to play at the YMCAs, but since I'm no longer part of the family plan my parents pay for, it's not really cost effective.

Well, I have some work to get done before reading week is over, and some procrastination to do before I even get to it, so...

Toodles.

Signed,
Kaleidoughscope

The cold transit

I had a pretty good day today.

First order of business was showing up to a small room named "Lockwood Lab". In the basement of the ever-confusing Sidney Smith building on the west side of campus, I had been summoned for a psychology study relating to "attachment and dating partner preference".

Because the study is still ongoing, I can't really go into details, but it was an interesting first foray into the world of social psychology testing. I sat in front of a computer for a solid half-hour, answering questions like: "What do you look for in a potential romantic partner?" and "On a scale of 1-5, how important is trustworthiness in a potential romantic partner?".

I didn't feel like I wasted my time and didn't feel too much like a lab rat, so that's pretty good. However, I feel like what the study is truly intending to show (which I can't tell you) is an oversimplification of individual personalities. Maybe I'll talk about this more when the study is released sometime this summer.

-

Second order of business was going to the Innis Library and using a computer to do some research on Auckland, New Zealand. I have a small paper to write that deals with globalization, colonization, and multiculturalism (among other things) and I have to use one particular city for my report. I had originally picked Alexandria, Egypt, but I found it too difficult to find information on the aforementioned topics so I switched my search to a city within a country I love and yet know little about: New Zealand.

-

Final order of business, and indeed the trickiest part of my day, was a self-directed yoga session at the field house in the Athletic Centre. Given that this is reading week, I was expecting a lot of people to be there and I was not proven wrong. Not only were there undergrad students galore, but there were also a surprising amount of people clearly not there to exercise; parents, guardians, whatever, were scattered around the track and made it difficult for me to find a spot to lay down.
I eventually found a neat little spot shaped like an open trapezoid. I had to move a large gymnasts' mat closer to the nearby stationary bikes to make room for my Manduka^©. This allowed me to make my own little protective rectangle of calm that is to be found on the mat.

It was difficult to have a calm and relaxing yoga practice, however, due to the sheer amount of energy being expended all around me. On the left, people pedaling incessantly; in front of me, hordes of joggers and sprinters zooming by. On the right, a sturdy wall with a bulletin board.

Well, thank god for that wall. Always dependable and non-chaotic.

It was a little funny, actually. About 10 minutes into my sun salutations, I hear the booming voice of someone speaking into a wireless microphone. Turns out there's a group yoga class happening directly across from me, over the track, and slightly hidden from my point of view due to giant curtains.

The teacher seemed interesting. She offered "bronze, silver, or gold" versions of poses and although I did my best to follow my own practice, sometimes her instructions would sync up with what I was doing, such that she would tell her class to breathe, and I would breathe as well. Or I would be in downward dog when the class was in downward dog, and I would hold the pose for a little bit longer because of her.

-

Riding on the subway (and bus) home, I found it hard to not feel watched; judged; dismissed. The endless faces of commuters, many of them on their phones, but many also seemingly awake and peering out at the people all around them. I had to close my eyes to feel like myself and not feel like I was a reflection of the others.

Signed,
Kaleidoughscope

Design in Design

Let me recount to you a story of how I randomly found myself being part of a student club at UofT called "Design in Design".

Fridays are generally my favourite day to be on campus. I have my Women & Gender Studies tutorial in the morning, my peer mentorship drop-in in the early afternoon, and last semester, I played badminton for the rest of the afternoon.

I didn't sign up for the badminton club this semester because I felt I had gained a little too much weight over the holidays to really be competitive. This, of course, is merely an excuse (because I would lose weight by being in the club) but well, it's too late now. I can always drop-in, but that costs a little more than if I pre-register.

Anyway.

So here I am in room 220, just hanging out by myself after all the peer mentorship people have gone, and since I don't have badminton to go to, I figure I'm going to camp out here and throw stuff in the air and catch it, all acrobat-style. And once I get bored with that, I'll practice my reading voice by reading passages from The Magicians.

So it's around 4:00 and an apparently middle-eastern guy around my age with an ill beard walks in. I foolishly blurt out "You can come in", as if I own the place, and he merely nods at me. He then walks over to a desk, pulls out a laptop, and plugs in.

I go back to my pseudo-juggling. As I catch one more piece of clothing that I've been throwing in the air, I realize that laptop-guy is here to stay. I figure I might as well go see why he's here; maybe something is going on and I have to clear out soon.

G: "Hey. So, what are you here for?"
M: "Our club is meeting here in 15 minutes. It's called "Design in Design", and we meet with clients to design logos and brand images."
G: "Sounds neat!"

I happened to have my sketchbook with me, and "Maruf" (laptop-guy) seems to be okay with me hanging out as people trickle in, so I sit down at a desk and start to doodle. My beautiful red pen with blue ink runs out on me, so I'm forced to use those standard bic pens to draw.

The "CEO" of this club then walks in; a younger-looking guy whom I find out later is 22. Maruf introduces me to him, and I find out that the head honcho is named "Joe".

J: "So what do you want to be here?"
G: "Uh... well... trainee I guess."
J: "Alright so you're going to be Creative Director and I'm placing you in that group over there."

Joe points to a small group of about half-a-dozen people sitting together, discussing and laughing as if they are old friends. I join myself to them and awkwardly try to join in on the conversation. It doesn't work out too well, but they all seem very friendly so it's not that bad of a situation.

Finally, the action starts. A client comes to our table and describes a logo he wants turned into a banner. As a creative director, I'm supposed to lead the vision of how we want to produce this logo, apparently. So I scribble in my sketchbook, pretending to know what the hell I'm doing when I really have no idea what I'm doing in this room.

An hour passes, and it's time to go. Joe tells me to add him on Facebook and mentions that they would love to see me again next week.

So I came back the next week, and I'm still confused as hell, but apparently work is getting done because we have new logos to design.

And then today, the third week that I've been going to these meetings, I realize I can switch my title to "Quality Assurance Manager", so I get moved to the marketing team and I spend the hour looking over e-mails and double-checking an event promotion page.

Weird. Cool.

Signed,
Kaleidoughscope

Writing from the heart

Writing from the heart, rather than from the brain, is difficult.
Too often I have found myself blogging solely to see words pop up on the screen, my motivation being that of feeling like I have accomplished something. This feeling is one that I can partially characterize as a heart-skip that I get when I hit "Publish".
In my experience, this heart-skip is much more pronounced when I've just written a post from the heart. If I've written a post mostly from the brain, I don't feel as much satisfaction.

So what's the difference between writing from the heart and writing from the brain?
Well, when you write from the heart, you get emotionally invested in what you're writing. The words can sometimes flow through you onto the page like an endless stream of liquid creativity. Other times, a single word can suffice to express everything.

Writing from the brain isn't all that bad. For a lot of courses in my undergrad that have essay components, I am intellectually (rather than emotionally) invested in what I am writing. Ideally, I'd be equally invested in both, but that would require a course with a special blend of liberty, creativity, and intellectual rigor that is difficult to find in early-year undergrad courses.

The challenge with writing from the heart is to not revert to writing from the brain when your emotions get locked up or blocked. The easy way out is to write fancy words and hope for the best; but are you really being truthful to yourself and your muse if you do this all the time?

Signed,
Kaleidoughscope

And the cradle will rock

Signed,
Kaleidoughscope

Try #2 at Robarts

Different floors in Robarts have different sound levels. So here I am, stuck trying to write stuff one finger at a time at 1/00000000000000000 x the speed of light. It's a pain.

This is a really weird day.

Signed,
Kaleidoughscope