A new job! And a new blog post

I think this is the longest break I've had on my blog - the longest since I started in 2007. Wow. I'll have to double check, but I'm pretty sure the most I've skipped was a couple months.
The break happened for a number of reasons, including leading a pretty boring life and not having much to write about as well as feelin' a little discouraged at seeing my view counts in the single digits. But I swore to myself when I started this blog that I would never pay much attention to the view counts. I guess I kinda broke that promise. Oh well. I'm here now!

So I got a job. It's nothing fancy, working in a kitchen... but actually, it is pretty fancy because it's a pretty fancy place with fancy food and fancy people. Well, I don't really fancy all the people all that much actually. The snobbish academic university type, y'know. But I haven't been around for very long and the people I work with are really cool. Real nice, too. When it gets busy, some of the head chefs can get stressed and they become pretty ruthless, but the food they make is so good I wouldn't dream of complaining.

Here's a song that's been stuck in my head ALL day and which is ironically upbeat:

Okay, so I'll probably post more often now that I actually have adventures to write about. My cameraphone is broken though, so not too many pictures for now... :(

Mad Stories

I'm headed to a monthly event in just a few minutes. It's called Mad Stories. It's not very well known so usually only a handful of people show up. I go because I've gotten to know some of the people there and I enjoy both listening and sharing stories related to mad experiences.

What is a mad experience? I think a mad experience is any experience that cannot easily be explained by routine. It is an experience generally out of the ordinary, different from typical modern things like job interviews and picnics in the park. Mind you, mad experiences do occur in both these situations. They can occur anywhere, at any time.

Mad experiences are also sometimes intertwined with psychiatry. There's certainly a lot of madness in this field, with things like electroshock treatment and the (forced) tranquilizing of people with lived mental health experiences commonplace all over North America nowadays.

Mad stories is a place where people come together to talk about experiences that they find odd or particular. It's generally quite lighthearted and laughter abounds. Tea is always provided, so in a way, it's kind of like Alice's mad tea experience in Wonderland.

Cheerio!

The world in the rear-view mirror doesn't matter

Credit to Lights for today's blog title.

I don't even drive, but I thought it was interesting to have a car analogy in the title. Mostly, it's just a lyric that's been playing in my head for the past little while. I guess the idea is to be moving on and focused on what lies ahead instead of what's behind.

The longest day of the summer has already gone by. Now, gradually, the sun will retreat little by little, leaving me feeling as if I have a little less time to do things during the day.

I'm feeling empty-headed. I think I'm going to go for a bike ride to a new library.

7 long years

I've hit the 7 year mark. 7 years exactly since I completed the grandest adventure of my life: Katimavik. I remember it was today because my train was scheduled to leave on the 21st, 4 days after the program officially ended. Those 4 days were filled with mixed emotions: sadness at leaving a previous life and moving onto a new one; freedom of being able to choose what I wanted to do next.

After the initial tearfest at the airport, I hung out with K who also decided to cash in her plane ticket and who was waiting for a friend to arrive in Vancouver with the plan to hitchhike all the way back out east. In a way, it made it easier for me to transition out of the 9 month group living experience because there was still someone around. I lingered in the house for as long as I could, and then went out to Surrey for the last couple days to live with my wonderful billet family, since the lease on the house was over.

There wasn't much to do in a Surrey, so I ended up using what was left on my TransLink pass to head back into Vancouver and get one last look at the sprawling metropolis. I probably spent some time at café Deux Soleils, but as I was keen on wandering, I probably did that more. And then the train was ready, so I left.

I think I'm writing this down to remember. Not that I would ever forget, but it's easy to have all these memories fade to the distant past and lose some of their magic.

I met some alumni of the program last week. That definitely spurred some emotions, especially because two of them had lived in the very same Vancouver house barely a month after I had left. These quasi-strangers worked the same garden, slept in the same rooms, and cooked in the same kitchen as I did for 3 months. That's pretty remarkable, considering I met up with them at a College street café, thousands of kilometres away from Vancouver.

There are some people in the group that I haven't seen since the 17th of June, 2009. That kind of makes me sad. I think one day I'll see them again. I don't know when.

I took this picture on the 21st; I used a dolly cart to ferry my bags around Vancouver

Cold weather and warm spirits

I went to bed pretty late last night - around 12:30 am. I thought I was going to sleep poorly because I had just spent the past couple hours glued to my computer screen playing Civilization V. Oops! But it turns out I slept pretty well, and at 7 am I was wide awake and while not feeling completely refreshed, I definitely felt like I had had a good night's sleep.

So I went to the Y. There was a yoga class at 9 am usually taught by Josh, but today he was sick so a replacement teacher took his place. Getting to the Y was stimulating: the temperature dipped to single digits and it stayed pretty cold for the rest of the day. I was biking, so a good windbreaker kept me warm. Feeling the cold air on my face was kind of nice. Given how hot it's been (relatively speaking), a colder day was a welcome change and something one must get used to if they are to live in Toronto.

I came home and in the afternoon I had the inspiration to make a dairy-free cream of broccoli soup. In my opinion, the recipe didn't call for very many spices so when I was cooking the onions I added some turmeric and curry powder. Not too much, but enough to change the colour and be tasted in the final dish.

I then went to pick up a bike I had gotten fixed at a bike repair shop on Christie, and after biking up the big hill, I had barely enough time to get ready to head downtown for an arts group at Stella's Place.

Stella's Place is cool. Maybe I overuse that word, but it's a really great drop-in centre for youth 16-30 who identify with sensitivities. The interior design is new and fun, and it's got lots of places to lounge around and do things like dance. which is one of the things I did there today. Creative movement was the theme, and it was just such a nice atmosphere that my usual self-consciousness about doing wacky movements in public kind of fell away. And, the folks there are really friendly!

I will no doubt be writing more about my experiences at Stella's.

Today was a fun day.

Dairy and Strokes

I was riding the subway today and I saw an ad above one of the seats. I don't remember the exact details, but I remember it being about strokes and the risk factors that contribute to having one. I recall feeling annoyed at the fact that the ad was also about promoting the use of this app called the "Get Enough" app. From what I gather, you're supposed to install this app on your smartphone to ensure that you consume enough dairy in your diet, because apparently that's going to prevent strokes.

Now, I love cheese just as much as the next guy, but I think it's a little ridiculous to promote an app to help track your consumption of dairy. Sure, it also seems to track other food types and servings, but since the main sponsor is The Dairy Farmers of Canada (in association with the Heart & Stroke Foundation), I think the message they're trying to get through is that you need to drink your milk to be healthy.

Well, I don't buy it. Literally. I can't remember the last time I had milk. And I'm certainly not about to go buy some low-fat milk, as recommended on their website. Full-fat dairy is the way to go: tastier, and full of fat-soluble vitamins.

Pushing dairy - especially from cows stuck in crammed feedlots - on the average population is, in my opinion, a mistake. It reinforces the wrong message that everyone should consume dairy to avoid strokes, and encourages the continued consumption of foods that are often made from sick cows. And I don't think that's cool.

Digimon!

I just stumbled on Digimon on Netflix. I'm super excited! It's like reliving a part of my childhood. I just finished watching the first episode and I found myself smiling and grinning while it played. The nostalgia of watching this after school on YTV is hitting me big time. And it's actually really good!

Being teleported to another dimension and trying to find your way home while being accompanied by these loyal companions... how cool is that? I'm giddy!

But now it is time for bed, so this nerdy excitement will have to continue another time.

Dutiful cleaning of my computer and phone

I'm using my good ol' desktop computer right now. I haven't touched it in months, mostly because I haven't been playing computer games and because it's getting really sluggish. Sluggish yet still going strong. I've had this beast since mid-2009 and aside from the yearly cleaning and some software tinkering, I've never updated any of the components. When I have a bit of extra cash, I might soup it up a little bit, but there are more important priorities in my life right now.

Right now, I'm busy uninstalling a bunch of software (again, mostly games) to try and free up some space and hopefully speed it up a little bit. One thing I'm noticing while I'm doing this is that it feels good to have a program clear up space on a computer. It's almost akin to vacuuming a dusty room and although I'm not going to be able to breathe better, I feel as if I'm liberating some space, somewhere.

I'm also taking this time spent on the computer to clean up my phone's music folder. There's a bunch of music I don't anticipate listening to any time in the near future. Getting rid of some Eminem - that shit's angry. Getting rid of some pop-electro stuff, like Far East Movement. Too much autotune. And I think I'm going to remove some of the heavier metal stuff, too. It's just not light enough for the summer.

I think I'll add some Beatles. There's a lot of joy in their music. Some Sting & The Police, because he does yoga. And let's see what kind of good dance music I can find... well, there's this song from Skins, the British version. It's pretty catchy, and not too well known, so that kind of makes me feel cool. Wait, nevermind, over one million views on one of the videos! I am so off. Regardless, it's kind of dancey.

And now I've extended past the amount of time I wanted to spend on the computer so it's time to sign off.

Wasting time on Netflix?

The ease of opening a new blog post and writing words appeals to me. It's easy to open that new tab and start typing away. It's slightly less easy to go fetch my journal and a pen and then start writing.
I blur the line between what should go in a personal journal and what should go in a personal blog. I blur it, but I don't erase it.

-

Netflix. It's everywhere. And it's dangerous. Well okay, no, not dangerous... More like tempting, charming, captivating, engrossing. You get the picture. It's very tempting to watch multiple episodes of a TV show in a row. Especially when you have to exert a greater effort to STOP watching than to continue, thanks to the 15-second countdown timer that automatically starts the next episode for you.

Case in point: two days ago, I was on season 1 of a British sitcom called The IT Crowd, which is a show that kind of reminds me of The Office minus the mockumentary style and with fewer characters. Today, I'm in the middle of season 4. I'm not setting any records or anything (especially since each season only has six episodes), but it's still a little scary to see how much time I've spent glued to the screen in such short a time-span.

It's entertainment, and it's pretty good. Enough to make me laugh out loud at least once per episode, and that's a good thing. If I'm just laughing on the inside, I'm probably not producing endorphins and I want those. Diverting attention from a somewhat monotonous life is also a goal. So it's not like I'm completely wasting my time.

Other recent TV Netflix binges: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (7/10), Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (5/10), and a documentary called Web Junkie (7.5/10).

If you're interested in how Netflix can be both good and bad for you, this article sums it up pretty well.

That's it for today!

Kaleidoughscope #2

Some free writing on a hot spring day

Hey it's Friday! Hey I'm feeling ambivalent about this long weekend. I have something planned on Monday, and that something is a nature expedition. Into the wild. It's not actually that wild because it's in the middle of the city but my guidebook with a personalized note in it says that it will take me two hours and fifty minutes to complete the circuit. I'm going with a friend and I wanna invite this third person but I've never hung out with her aside from her official duties and it's a little scary to send an invitation to someone because they might say no and then you feel rejected.

Scary scary things. I'm not scared, I felt like this on my way home. I'm not scared, I felt like this on my way home. Inspired by music and music is playing while I write on my blog which I used to do all the time, like that one time I was listening to Guns n' Roses and I ended up quoting some lyrics at the end of my post in 2008.

I went back to try and find that post that mentions GnR but I can't seem to remember what song or what post I was talking about and it's too bad because I read online recently that it's a good thing to link back to previous posts on your blog when you mention them. It allows for better continuity or something like that.

I love November Rain. I was singing along to it while I was cooking breakfast for my sister and I this morning and at first I thought I was singing well but then my throat started to hurt the tiniest bit and I thought "if my throat hurts then I'm not using my diaphragm which means I'm not singing well".

I ran into Kate on St. Clair today. Well, not literally because she was sitting eating dinner on a patio and I was just slowly walking by on my way home after badminton and she was in a conversation with some older folk and I wasn't sure if I should interrupt or not. So I said "Hey" and she coolly said "hey", but not cool as in distant, more cool as in that cool way of being nonchalant. And she asked if I was still at UofT and I hesitated because I don't really know.

Whoa! It's pretty cool that when I started writing I was feeling kind of sad and lonely like that kind of loneliness you feel when you've missed your shot at going on a road trip with your best friends and now I don't feel nearly as bad because I've written a kaleidoughscope of writings. That's what a KoW is. A kaleidoughscope of writings, or little fragments here and there of what's going on in my head.

I'm feeling more unsure about how the kaleidoughscope fits since I don't eat dough at all anymore. Not even cookie dough ice cream. Because that stuff is not good for my brain. Like, did you know that for gluten sensitive people like me, gluten stops blood flow to the brain, specifically the prefrontal cortex? You can scroll to just below the picture with the frowning toast for that citation if you'd like.

It's getting late and I am tired. I'm listening to Lights again, but mostly her earlier songs because I find they're more positive and less sexual than the later stuff. Okay, maybe her later stuff isn't sexual at all and I'm just imagining things and yet... the cover art on Siberia has a bit more cleavage than I'd like but who am I to judge. Regardless, I'm listening to this one song called Face Up and it's the last song I'll listen to tonight. It starts 46 seconds or so if you want to skip her intro but she talks about her cat a bit before and I like cats so I start it at the beginning.

Goodnight.

Extra-special

Pen on paper; inverted

A list of things I've witnessed recently

I don't write enough lists. They make a lot of things simpler - things like recipes, invoices, and yes, even blog posts. Too many of them is probably not that great a thing though. Can you imagine your life being filled with a series of checklists? A list of checklists, turning into a list of lists of checklists ad nauseam. It's actually pretty scary to think about, because if you fill out the lists you eventually turn into a robot. But there's something to be said about having just the right amount of lists in your life, so here's one I want to share.

A list of things I've seen in the past couple weeks or so:

• A car followed by a small truck zooming past me on the segregated streetcar-only tracks on St. Clair. The truck driver quickly realized his mistake and practically jumped off the tracks back onto the road. The car just kept going, at least till the next intersection
• 2 dead rats in the backyard. Suspected killer: Winnie the fat orange cat
• White petals blowing off from the cherry tree and coating the ground
• A badminton birdie twisting on the top of a net and barely making it over to the other side of the court
• Hundreds of little purple flowers dispersed on a hill in High Park
• Two wood ducks, one male and one female, surrounded by four male mallard ducks who were quacking at the lone female in Grenadier Pond
• The Weeknd catch fire on Youtube
• A sketch painting in the subway of a middle-aged Asian woman looking at her phone with headphones on
• A woman in her late twenties nonchalantly twirling her black hair while speaking about her sister-in-law to a male friend on the bus
• A plastic box containing a couple dozen homemade ginger snap cookies
• A full moon partially obscured by clouds in the late night sky

Paraphase over

I think my Paramore phase is finally over. Actually, it's probably been over for a while now, as I haven't been listening to them much. Not at all during the winter (or not much other music for that matter).

The official realization came today while cooking myself breakfast. I had decided to plop in their self-titled CD in the music player and I found myself skipping to the next track halfway through a song. And during some favourites like "Ain't it Fun" and "Part 2" - songs that I was sure I would love forever -, I realized that although the guitar riffs and drum solos were pretty great, the lyrics were making me feel isolated, sad, and even angry at times.

I don't like feeling depressed. Nor do I like feeling angry. And I've written enough about loneliness to know that anything that contributes to that loneliness is not something that I want in my life. So it's time to move on to music that makes me feel happy, and there's plenty of that out there.

-

Oh, looks like I'll be going to a Blink-182 concert this summer! Maybe not the happiest music in the world, but I'll be going with good people so that's pretty great.

Kaleidoughscope #1

Bluegreen

I've started to journal again. I find it quite therapeutic. The physical feedback of the pen scratching the paper and the semi-permanent ink on the page is nice. I can't go back and erase complete sentences like I do so often here. I mean, I could, but then I'd start feeling like I'm wasting ink. And I don't like wasting.

I tend to journal in french. I find it difficult to type in french, but writing with a pen on paper is different. I know exactly where to put the accents, and I don't have to fiddle around with keyboard settings to find them.

-

The mac I'm using is making weird sounds. It's because it's importing a CD - a drumming CD. At first, it sounded like a bulldozer trying to climb over a giant ant hill; now, it's a more regular sort of scanning sound. Regular and persistent. More like a colony of ants exploring the surface of a bulldozer.

-

I had an idea for my blog yesterday.

So I've stuck with this whole kaleidoughscope theme for years now, and up until yesterday I had never really tried to draw one. But then I found my old set of colour pencils from art class and decided to fill in a circle with different colours. And I thought "okay, great, I can finish this kaleidoughscope and then scan it and upload it to my blog".

But then I got fed up that I was drawing my kaleidoughscope in my writing journal and stopped.

-

I've been pretty good about treating this nature deficit disorder for the past few days. Stopping and noticing greenery in the city whenever possible. Spending time in the sun, or doing breathwork after the rain, when negative ions are aplenty.

Natural deficit

Nature Deficit Disorder. Now that's a label I can get behind. I'm inspired by it. It's a label unlike any other that does not seek to put a fault on the human being or one's brain chemistry.

It's been a rough few months. I think I underestimated the winter season. I was looking forward to snow and the calmness that it usually brings and instead got swept up by fire and chaos.

I hope to revisit this theme of lack of nature or, more positively, the efforts that I make to include more nature in my life.

Snippets of semi-controlled energy

Stream of consciousness writing is really cool. Or free writing; it's a similar thing I guess. I do want to edit what I write so it's not too difficult to read. But not having to worry about a particular writing style is calming.

Calmness. Serenity. Peacefulness. They're nice words. They're nice because they represent nice things. Actually, I prefer the first two over the last. I think the first two are just nicer looking words, and "peacefulness" just lacks the right letters.

Why am I writing again? Because I wanted to share how I'm feeling. And I also wanted to calm myself down a bit. I'm not overly excited or anything... no, I just feel anxious. And although I don't often turn to my blog as a therapy tool, there's no reason why I shouldn't.

I feel like I should turn to it more often. Part of it is a sort of obligation to be genuine. See, I've sometimes told people that I have a blog, and that I use it as a way for me to cope with my spiritual emergencies. But to be honest, I haven't used it all that much. It's not like I ever really had a daily ritual of writing something down here. On the other hand, I don't need to look up my old posts to know that I've often written about my feelings and thoughts on things, and it would be difficult for me to say that this blog has not helped me at all. So if I never used it, then yeah, I couldn't really tell people that I'm a blogger. But I do, so I guess I am genuine after all and I shouldn't worry about that.

Wow, tonight it seems like I have more to share. Maybe one of my theories is true. What is my theory? Well, I think that anxiety can also be thought of as uncontrolled creative energy that does not have an outlet. Without an outlet, creative energy has nowhere to go so it sort of stays bundled up in the body and it just makes you feel like crap. But if you could direct that energy outside, out of your system, then maybe the anxiety symptoms would lessen. Well, I still feel anxious up till now. Doesn't mean my hypothesis is invalid, though.

What sorts of thoughts do I have while I'm feeling this anxiety? (I wanted to say "Why am I anxious?", but the answer to that, according to what I just explained, would have been "because my uncontrolled creative energy isn't flowing").

It's a combination of a lot of little things and some big things. Like for example, I've had my phone for a while, but the screen is cracked and chipping away in some places, and every time I look at it I remember that I caused this damage to it, and repairing is not an option. More importantly, the camera is kinda broken and although I can still take pictures, they almost always come out really blurry. I think the internal focus sensor is broken. And I'm not going to repair that either. It really sucks because my phone is more appropriately called a "camera phone", since the camera normally shoots in really high resolution and it has all these settings to shoot with that make it similar to a DSLR camera or something of the sort. And now I can't use it to take pictures. So I have this pretty expensive phone that is now mostly used as a mobile browser, for calling, and for texting. I guess the anxiety stems from knowing that hundreds of dollars (and some slave labour) went into the phone and now it's sort of sitting there, not able to perform.

Okay, enough about the phone. I also feel anxious because I realize that a lot of my days are spent sitting in front of the computer, surfing the internet, reading comments on Reddit, watching streamers play Hearthstone on Twitch and sometimes also playing some games here and there. It's sort of depressing. But I just don't know what else to do. My djembe drum is sitting beside a brown bookcase, staring at me, silently asking me why I haven't struck it in months.

Come to think of it, I actually feel like playing it for the first time in a long time. That's really weird, and I should look at it as a positive thing. Unfortunately, I can't play it because it's late and it would wake up not only my housemates, but probably also the 100 year-old lady next door who suffers from migraines. And I'm not an inconsiderate bastard.

If there was a drum circle, right now, in the ravine or something, I would be there. How cool would that be? Disregarding the fact that it's below freezing outside, going to a drum circle right now (with maybe a bonfire and some dancers) would be absolutely amazing.

That makes me think of my friend K. She's in Australia right now, but she's the kinda person who goes to these kinds of things all the time. ALL the time. She does something called buugeng, which from what I gather is sort of like fire spanning. And she's been to Burning Man. So -that- kind of cool person (sorry to put you in a box!).

I have an extended network of friends, I realize. I rarely see any of them them nowadays. Some, like K, are in far away lands. Others are busy working. I just... feel sad that I don't spend time with these people. I want to spend time with them, it's just I don't know what to do with them anymore. That felt weird to type... What I mean is, I don't seem to know what sorts of activities we could do. That's just an excuse, I admit. But I sometimes think in my head that I'm not really capable of fulfilling that "friend" role anymore, so I just don't bother trying.

I get anxious about the fact that I have no clear direction in life, career wise. Even job wise. Like, is the point of living to make money to afford being able to live somewhere and being able to buy food to live? I guess it sort of is in a capitalistic society. And now I think of my friend S, who, last I heard, is working on a paper about how capitalism is stripping away things that make us human. Okay, that's probably not right at all, but I know his paper is critical of capitalism.

AHHH. Thinking about S, it freaks me out that there are people that I could potentially hang out with, but I don't take the steps to do so. What is wrong with me?! I feel like something is wrong with me because I think that I can't handle conversation well anymore. It's so much easier to write this stuff than to talk about it with someone face to face.

I'm going to go make myself a tisane now. To soothe (another nice word) my all-over-the-place mind. And maybe I'll log on to Skype for the first time in months and maybe I can at least have an online conversation with someone. Some of my Skype contacts are actually acquaintances I've only met online. And with my creative energy somehow channeling through me at the moment, maybe I'll be able to spur conversation my way. For some reason, it's something I crave at the moment.

My last anxiety to share is that I feel like I haven't completed some of my thoughts in what I've just written. Oh well. There's always another blank blog box to write in if I want to.

-Gabriel

Two months far gone

Hey. I don't really know who I'm writing to. I guess I have to say I'm writing to myself in a public way, on this blog. This blog which has been in my life for many, many years now.

I usually try and write at least one thing a month, so that on the sidebar of my blog it at least looks like every month is filled in. Not so for the past two months, but I guess for February 2016 there will be a post.

I guess I'll write down how I feel just now. I mean, I do that a lot on here and a lot of the time I write that I feel alone. Well, today is no exception. I feel alone. I want to be social. I want to be happy! I want to be social because I think it means I will be happier? I think it's probably true. But isn't happiness something that can be kind of addictive? I mean, being happy sure feels good! So why don't I make more efforts to be social? Is it because it doesn't actually make me happy? I really hope not! I recall reading that having a good network of friends is a good teller of many important things, like psychological health and happiness. So in the darker part of my brain I think "Oh, what's the point of being around people, I don't really have much to offer to them anyway". I don't like thinking that.

A lot of the time I will think "Okay, I will text so and so. Maybe we can do something". I never do. Or at least, I haven't in a long while. It's kind of scary to think about, so I ignore this behaviour. I talk about these things with a therapist sometimes. And I get good feedback.

Channeling some Lyra again would be great. I kinda am, again. I want to rely on this mystical conception of an angel that is there only to help me. Because otherwise the darkness is overwhelming and impossible to handle.

The darkness includes such ideas as:

• I'm going to be alone forever
• I'm never going to be able to build a life for myself
• I'm losing all my friends
• I am not a functional member of society

On the positive side of things, I know I made a new friend in the last year. Sadly, she moved back to England. But it was actually cool discovering that new friendships can happen.

I'm not sure when the next update will be. But my blog is not dead! So that's another positive.

-Gabriel