There world outside is awash in the first cold, hard rains of the real autumn season here in Vancouver.
Without my glasses on, I still see the heavy torrents splashing down. I’m not particularly keen to shower, then, well, go out into the shower.
There’s a pall that falls over this town come winter. We’re a geographical Jeckyll’n’Hyde.  Partying outdoorsy hipsters in the summer and moody sullen pensive types in the colder seasons. Greetings grow terse and mundane. Vancouver’s Georgia Straight weekly arts paper’s recent “Best in Vancouver” edition asked us all, “Where’s the best place to go in the Vancouver rain?” And the number-one answer? “Home.”
I wish I was self-employed today. I wish I could dally and stretch about. I want to be Pajama Girl: Hero to sloth all around the globe. I can do it! I can slack better than all y’all!
Like the weather, I’m hazy and oppressive today. My thoughts are muddied like the streets, my ideas fast falling and going nowhere fast. It’s the kind of bleak and uncertain day that makes creativity a brilliant endeavour or an unsuccessful but alluring trap.
I wish I could stay home, tapping away at my keys in futility and desperate want. But I can’t. I have a living to go earn, obligations to fulfill, a downtown office awaiting my heavy-hearted entrance.
When the world comes knocking here in Vancouver, come February for the 2010 Winter Olympics, there’s certainly a Vancouver I hope the world doesn’t meet — the one that appears in torrents like these; where everything seems obligatory and the question “Oh, do I have to?” hangs like a cartoon cloud amongst the mist over every Vancouverite’s head. “No, I don’t wanna” is the secret cry you don’t hear.
A far cry from the passionate and outdoorsy non-stop-busy people we are in the sunshiney months.
I find myself taking a breath today, accepting that it’s time to don my moody alter-ego’s costume. It’s time to be pensive, torn writer girl, caught in the downpours and encouraged to cocoon against world.
Except for when the cold, damp reality of commuting to an office job interrupts the heroic antics of Pajama (Writer) Girl, that is.
[insert reluctant-superhero theme here]
Bring on the Goretex, bitches. [snarl]