ps

what I forgot to mention in the last post is:

I'm sorry.

you know who you are and why. 

Intention and why none of this matters

I hate Intention. Seriosuly. It's that niggling little word that means poeple can be pissed off even if you didn't mean it to happen.

let's face it folks, I'm a fairly shallow pool. what I say is basically the sarcastic what you get. don't try to read deeper meaning into it cause there isn't.

what baffles me and what is striking me this week in particular, is the obsession with minute. whether it;s three sentences or one minute of tape or one day or one hour or one look or one tone, it's all meaningless- sure life may be in the details but the details aren't life.

I dunno. I've had a week. after spending an entire day yesterday hearing the life stories of people who experienced somethign horrific at the Indian Residential school here, it's hard to take any of this seriously. who gives a damn if someone is a little miffed at me? who cares if I have 6 bucks left in my bank account? what does it matter if my feet hurt, or I'm sleepy, or the girl downstairs is blaring her music? what right do I have to not talk to my family, pout, whine, or complain? I was never taken away from my parents and culture, beaten and abused, raped and struck and dehumanized and then released back into the limbo between the white world and the native world and told to survive in some fashion when no one believed or accepted me. after that, all of this, even this blog, seems self indulgent, petty, and utterly ridiculous and shamefull.

I'm taking to my bed. I'll re-emerge when I can muster up some generation Y self-absorbed angst. 

I'm getting an inkling about why I'm in the handbasket and where we're going....

SO I have an announcement:

I am officially directionless.

oh yes. I know. let's take a moment and watch every fiber of my father's being twitch as one of his offspring (albeit the disapointing one ;)) declares that no, she refuses to plan ahead. she reneigs on her long standing 10 year plan, and resists the urge to create elaborate outlines of where adn how and why she'll be at any point in the future. I embrace apathy, take a big bite out of misdirection, and most importantly take a big jump into the present, leaving the realm of hurry-hurry future behind.

why?

because trying to live up to that constant plan making is making me CRAZY. I've been doing it since I was 12. Seriously. I was the only kid I knew who was looking at univerisites the summer before grade 10. I vividly remember googling univerisities, comparing programs, and sending away for information packet after orientation booklet from my father's office where I was ansering phones. I remember feeling this pressure to figure it out, figure it out now, for the love of god figure it out at all costs and sort it all neatly into a pile so you can categorically make a logical, vulcan like decision before your 15th birthday! 

I do believe this whole process not only involved star trek references but spreadsheets.

As god as my witness, I will never spread sheet again!

Ironically this whole backpeddle on my whole life sequence happened right when suddenly, it looked like I had a clear, easy plan to follow, for the first time in a year.  See, I tried to murder th gerbil and step off the treadmill last August when I fled the west. but rreally, that didn't last.

I think it took me 6 weeks before I was back to journalism, actively looking for work. It only took my dad 3 weeks of me home before he was setting up interviews through friends for me, offerign to pay for teachers college, and urgin gme to get out there and get a life as soon as possible- provided of course it was within half an hour of home and they'd have keys to my apartment, which they would decorate, in a job that would pay me a wage he approved of, and would allow me to come home every other weekend.

but I digress. fastforward almost one year- I've tried very hard to be planless, and have failed miserably. I have festered with angst over where my jobs going, and what's going to happen if and when M and I part ways and I'm roommate less. I've fretted over what to do and where to go next, and simmered with jealousy over the advancements of people I graduated with. I've even burbled with rage when J tells me off hand that if I should move to the T-dot, what makes me think I can get a job, when stars from our year are unemployed. (yeah that one hurt- as clearly in the eyes of J, I'm horrible at this...thanks. awesome. particularly coming from someone who's a)never really read or seen much of my work in the last year or so and b)isn't evne in this industry and finally c) (since i'm pissing people off in this rant) just had a little pat-on-the-back fest with V about how the two of them are rocking their newfound, none journalism careers.)

again I digress.

So finally, my life starts to sort out. I start kicking the metaphorical shit out of my current job. Rocking it, as such. andthere are plans for the future from the higher ups for that paper and they seem to includ eme. I'm writing appointments in my book for months in the future and planning things like back-to-school features for September and Halloween ideaas for October and only-jew-in-rural-ns spots for December. 

and it's throughally freaking me out. 

because here's the thing: I like my job. don't get me wrong. some days I even LOVE my job. but I can see this being a life. I can see myself here, building, advancing, transforming myself and the paper and making it something new. I can see myself moving out there, settling down, and waking up one day 45 and with a life that in no way resembles the life I invisioned for myself since I was 9 year old. 

part of this was spurred on by an interview with three retiring teachers, who were talking about travelling and pursuing interests and hobbies they haven't had tiem for in the last 30-plus years. 

I do not want to be in my 50's and looking back wishing or wondering! I want my life back! I need my life back! and my life requires freefalling!

that's right, I said it. in order to live my life, at 23, I need to take a breath, jump off the cliff,a nd not give a damn about how I land or if I will be mangled and torn or caught by a friendly bush.

so here's the new non-plan: I'm going to rock this job until my lease is up. then I don't know. I'll find it when I'm there. Maybe I'll travel. Maybe I'll move. Maybe I'll stay. who knows? M's going to take off, and the door is going to open. my safety net, of friends and roommate, will be whiped out from under me as people move on. And I'll need to shake off the paralisis, and take that leap again, no matter how it scares me. terrifies me in fact. I can't keep stressing aobut what will happen because I can't change it anyway, and all that does is terrify me. I need to embrace the fear (yeah that's a bit cliche) for once, again. I need to not care what happens. and go and enjoy. I've had my safe little cocoon break,a nd I needed that, and I'm giving myself 6 more months.

but here me now, oh ye gods of the internet: Janurary 1, 2009, I have no idea what I'm doing and THAT'S OK!!

Captain Intern Away!

So this post id dedicated to a facebook stalker.

we've got this intern at the office, right. CAPTAIN INTERN for all future purposes. It's a little weird- a year ago, I was the intern, scurrying around, unsure about what to do and when to do it and makign obscene suckign noises as I tried to get the very best references I possibly could.

all of this was pretty much moot of course as I ended up in newsrooms where things were thrown, they jacked me up on caffeine till I couldn't really function being a super-hyped electric bunny, or a purple bobble head pen would alternatively rejoice or condemn me, depending on if I bit my nails and called Sarah Jessica Parker a pony, or not.

but I did learn to be a journalist...I guess. what did I pick up from all those times I spend as unpaid slave labour in the media grist mill? well, a lot of fun first. and a good hard kick to my preconcived notions of journalistic pride. walking into tnewsrooms is more a jimmy olsen experience than a Lois Lane one- thye're universally messy, with furniture cobbled together from several different decades, and all seem to have the same era of mac lurking in corners (the same mac would one day start sparking and try to set me on fire at my first real job). There's lot of paper, lots of people, adn random bits of swag from incredibly random sources (I used to have a mouspad with cows on it from agriculture alberta). That was probably hnumber one- the other day V and M came with me on a roadtrip to no where and we sopped by my office, an dthey were appalled. yes, I work in a basement. yes, I'm three feet from A, my coworker, and maybe 4 feet and a wall from BIT. yes, it's all a little dingy and whatnot BUT IT'S SO MUCH BETTE RPOST FLOOD I SWEAR!

part two of the great learning extravagenza was the people. ok sure, sometiems they are intrepid journalists of the woodword and bernstien ouvre, plowing for the truth at all costs. but a lot of the time thye're just people, hanging out, feeding that goat and having a laugh. Maybe it's because up until my fourth year of university my internships had been at rural papers and tv stations where a lot of the time, yeah, you were covering old people. and puppies. and children. and longing for that day when an old lady would get into a horrific fight with a puppy protecting a child and there would be lots of blood (but no fatalities) as that would make an awesome picture (we're also horrible people in newsrooms. seriously. we are on the expresslane to hell and passing others as we speed). And when I was in fourth year I ended up in a cube decorated with twinkle lights refered to as the Playpen.

but that's a good thing! Seriously. and I hope Captain Intern is paying attention here because listen up : newsrooms are not what you think. they're not professional, for the most part. we are professionals, but our workplace is not. it's liek a home. a messy, disorgaized, stressful home. and like a home, you need to get over thinking you're going to have the bestest house on the block right out of the gate. you're not. you may not be in roach filled apartments with a scenic view of a crack den, but you're not going to be in a mansion right away, if those even exist (and I have my doubts). what I'm saying here is I used to beat my head against the wall of I-want-more all the time; I thought the status of working for the news section, for example, of my foruth year internship paper was the be all and end all. I actually cried, a lot, when I found out I'd be put on Entertainment. but that day I walked in and joined the playpen and Violet first turned her bobbly purple head my way, it didn't matter. I got better clips than my compatriot on the newsdesk, I had more fun, and I'm hopign I have better references (hint hint coworkers who read this hehe). Same goes for my current paper- was my old one in Alberta more prestigious? probably. it was the only game in town with a wider readership. but ahve I learned more writign about puppies and kittens and old ladies here? maybe. 

cause that's really what this whole internship thing is about- tring to cram as much real world knoweldege into your head as possible, in about 6 weeks, give or take. and trying to do it without taking in all the bitterness and rage that will inevitably leak out of the reporters around you, while still taking in a little bit of that cynysism, wrapping it around you like a woobie, and usign it so when you end up as the reporter, your tender soul and ideals aren't crushed too brutally. 

oh that and intense coffee intake and general slavery. it's a wheel baby- I was everyone's bitch last year, now you're mine.

you can never escape Captain Intern! 

mmm this is some good crow

So I've got something official to say :

BIT, I'm sorry.

I've clearly misjudged you, underestimated you, and for that, I'm sorry. 

Why this sudden turnabout and metaphorical dining on ugly birds you ask? WELL...friday was quite the day. quite quite quite the day. 32 cents in my bank acount kind of day. gas light goes on in my car when I'm half an hour fromhome kind of day. miss an assignment cause I'm doing ad copy find out my mileage cheque won't be in till Tuesday fight with my boss about edits kind of day.

so it's all fairly gruesome but the important parts are this: I'm incredibly grumpy, incredibly stressed, and just want to curl up in a ball and cry. I cried in my car on the trip between Fall River and my missed assignment and work. I haven't done that in months. So I'm right up to the hilt when BIT hands me back a story that I'd work hard on, slashed to bits. Mainly, a well crafted and woven in paragraph where I integreted a discussion of ethenol as it relates to the current world food crisis. SO we fight a bit about that where I say you know what? I'm just too tired and don't care enough anymore to fight you on this. enjoy your fluff (yeah I get way snippy when i'M not happy), and he says 'I'm sorryw e can't do this sort of thing, if that's what you want to do maybe this is the wrong place for you, but you have to decide that'. and I leave his office going 'woah was that the hint I'm gonna get canned?' followed closely by bad day rebellious feelings of perhaps-i-SHOULD-just-march-in-there-and-quit. I've done that before but only for crap retail jobs.

Anyway, bad day parade continues when he pops his head around his door to inform me that a)mileage cheques, for which I've been waiting, begging, pleading, praying, won't be here till Tuesday. At the earliest. and oh btw, even though it's my weekend off, if I want some ownership of the monthly I've recently started doing tons of work for, there are some weekend events int hat coverage area I shoudl go to. 

So I snap. and say 'dude (yes I called my boss dude), I have 32 cents in my bank account and 20 bucks in my wallet. I can either get gas or eat and even then I'm probably not going to be able to afford to drive in on Monday.'

and he nods, and goes back into his office. then I hear him go 'after your 2 o clock appointmnet, you can go home. that's not a good thing. we'll talk about it monday.' and I go 'ok' and start packing up, then he goes 'actually, we''ll talk about it now' and kicks A and Captain Intern (high schools tudent we've had around latly) out of his office and calls me in.

I enter in that weird agressive/aprehenision pattern you get, where you think you're going to get fired adn you're mentally preparing to quit instead to save your pride. I'm standing too because I know it makes him uncomfortable when I'm taller than mhim (ok it makes me feel better more like). and then he starts in about how he knows the situation is bad but the others out there don't need to hear about it blah blah and I do something I NEVER DO.

ever.

I cry. in front of my boss. I have one of those face scrunching moments of comoplete overwhelm-ness, frustration bubbling up in highly unattractive and unprofessional snuffling complete with snot. I am not a pretty cryer. 

and BIT tells me it's Ok,a nd I go its not because I never do this, professionalism and blah blah then he's telling me to sit down and how he understands, he was exactlyw here I was for three years, and he's pushing to get us a cost of living increase, and would $ help? and I'm thinking 'wait what?' then he's saying, no no I'll lend you that money, to get you through the weekend.

and I'm thinking dear god I misjudged this man. that's seriously above and beyond. I should know- I've had older, more experienced, hypothetically wiser and better bosses who, when I was in WORSE situations couldn't be bothered. but this? this is big. this is entering territory of great-boss here. 

so I swallowed my pride- I'm too poor for pride anyway-and took the money. I'll pay him back on Tuesady when I get the mileage cheque. for now I've got food and gas and can...breathe a bit. 

meanwhile. I have to totally revaluate my perception of BIT. yes, he can be a bit of an asshat occasionally- but can't we all? I'm sure we've all been posterior chapeauxs at one point or another. but...he's got the potetnial to be a great boss. he's got that thing that when he's older, when he's doen this more, when he's a bit more experienced adn maybe when he's not swamped dealing with ads everyday will make him one of those kick ass editors, at that small paper so many amazing journalists travel through. that person who in 20 years will ahve a string of award winning journalists saying 'I learned it from him'. 

or you know, just that he made sure I didn't starve. 

List of random

So I'm gonna start this one with a giant GULP.

I applied for the Zambia internship. and I got an interview. 

so why am I sitting on my bed at 11:20 on a tuesday having a panci attack about this????

this is somethign I wanted! I applied for it! i've always wanted to travel! so what is wrong with me??

I think it's a combo of this is happenign really fast. M jsut got home today, I stood waiting in the airport for  half an hour, watchign through the glass as people came slowly down the escalator...shoes...pants...hants...not M not M not M..then I walked aroudn the corner and realzied he'd walked right past me wearing an ugly ball cap. ANyway, he's back, and it's just a little strange. Meanwhile, I got the email about the interview the day after I applied- wow. If I get and accept this gig, I'd have to be in Toronto beginning of July, and in Africa on July 15. That's two months away!

maybe that's my problem. I was just getting settled here. if this job was for September? I'd ahve time maybe....but right now? I want M to get into school I want to get a job in the city so I cna stop this commute adn I want to stay and live with him and hang out with V and do the Africa thing...later. 

wow. I said it. and that makes me awful and pathetic I'm sure.

cause what happens if he doesnt' want to live with me? if he doesnt' get into school and takes off? what if I don't get a job in the city? what if J and V both move away? then I'm here, living alone, on my own. and kicking myself for not doing Zambia. but what if I go to Zambia? what afterwards?. I'd be even more directionless cause I wouldn't have somewhere else to come back to. M woul dhave moved in with his friends, I'd have no job...geez..........seven months is a long time. 

but...I'd have done Africa. taken a step towards being a foreign correspondant. done somethign awesome and cool and when I got back, maybe be able to settle, a bit......feel content iwth my job because I've done it, Iv'e gone abroad, I've lived.

but right now all I see is being alone.

where in the world is ME?

I wonder if I'm hanging out with Carmen Sandiego?

see recently I've realized...somewhere in the last 3 years, I've lost myself. How'd I come to this conculcion? well.....my contract is up at the end of next month with my current job. and. 

I don't know what's next.

Now, based on previous entries, the solution should appear fairly clear- quit-tastic fun time, non? but...on refelction, I wonder. Am I just ditching cause I'm twitchy? or is there some other reason? because when I think about it, why would I go? money? well that'd be nice. but I can survive on what I get now. actually getting apid for all the hours I work? please. not in this business! plus I think I can probably negotiate some time off this summer in a block that'll actually make up for all the stolen unpaid hours and whatnot. asshat BIT? well the thing is....I tried I little experiment today: I was nice to him. I took him as a funny little monkey in his cage of an office, and didn't take anythign he said personally or seriously and talked back and suddenly...he's just...a person. a little annoying sure, but for the most part not the worst boss a girl could have. don't want my car? well that's legit but if I can work out a cost of living increase to go along with rising gas prices and get my insurance down really low? well...

and the question then arises: where would I go and would it be any better? AC had it today- why do I think this place is bad? It's not. am I too good for it? am I scared I'm not good enough?

that may be it and it may also be what's contributing ot my current angst. I foudn a job. In Africa. before? I would have been off the wall, drop eveyrhting desparate to go. now I'm torn about even applying. is now the time? these jobs come p all the time, only qualifier is you can't ahve done any paid international work previously (meaning a work abroad in the UK with M is out before this). Am I good enough for it? Will I get something out of it? or will I spend the whole 7 months longing for home, lonely and missing M and V and A and all those people back here like the last time I took off all on my own. 

and I'm wondering when this happene.d when I got so lost and undirected. Me? I used to KNOWW. I used to kick some serious career booty, assured I was amazing an dheading to the top. now I watch classmates surpass me and feel jealous but not know how to fix it or if I can. 

and I don't knwo why I'm not happy considering I have a steady job, an apartment, friends, all that good stuff. Feels like every 6 month I get twitchy and move on.

I feel like I can't be happy any where, doing anything for long. I'm always missing something, feeling liek I'm doing the wrong thing, wasting my life. If I stay at my current job I'm not connected to the city. if I jump off the treadmill and just...wait table sor something, I'm missing journalism and that career, and btw I run the big risk of realizing that the reasoN i'm so angst-ridden and 16-year-old lady is because I HAVE slowed down enough, at last, to realzie that maybe this is not th eplace for me, I wasn't meant to be in this industry, admit it pack it up and pack it in and go figure somethign else out. If I go abroad, I'm missing the chance to live with M and hang out and work here. if I stay in this country I'm missing the chance to be exciting and young and daring and push for that career I've always thought I wanted right now. 

maybe carmen sandiego knows what to do, cause god knows I don't!