Monthly Archives: May 2011

Catching You Up with Me

Looking for work sucks. I’m glad that part of my life is officially over.
I’m returning to my old job. I’ve worked there off and on since 2000. No, I don’t see myself there for the rest of my life. I don’t see myself at *any* job for the rest of my life.
But I sure see myself enjoying my coworkers, having a job that fits into my life, and having the freedom to write and live as I like for now.
Oh, I won’t be raking in the cash, I’ll be living a reasonably budgeted life, but I’m excited.
The last time I “returned” to this job, I promised myself I would change my life in every area but work. And I DID. I beat the depression that had been plaguing me, lost 50 pounds, and generally improved my life in a lot of ways. Then I blew my back out.
Now, I’m recovering from a REPEAT of that back injury and I’ll be getting the gift of medical coverage. Yay!
I’ve been very quiet about that recent back injury, but now I can share, because I’m no longer looking for work. The injury was a lot worse than I was letting on. Like, Steff-in-tears-on-hardwood-floor-for-hours kinda bad. I had a lot of really scary nights involving a lot of tears and fear for my future.
April was among the darkest months I’ve ever had in my life. I don’t even want to write about some of what I’d been through that month.
One week, though, was EASILY in the Top 3 darkest, saddest, tear-stained weeks of my life, when I re-injured my back the second time in five weeks.
And if you’ve never HAD a serious back injury, YOU DON’T GET IT. It cripples your entire life. Every move you make, task you do, rest you have — it’s ALL affected with a serious back injury. If you know someone with a back injury, please ask if you can get them some groceries, help tidy — anything. You have no idea. It’s a scary place to be. Without a job or medical, it’s terrifying.
Between working anything I could get, rehabbing, looking for work, trying to catch up domestically with all the things I was physically unable to do, I was facing 60+ hour weeks for the last six weeks — and, injured, that’s just no good way to live.
But, all you can do is tough it out, and I did. Now, no more toughing-out. I have the promise of work, the means to care for myself, and a lot less weight on my shoulders.
That time’s over now. My back’s come a long way. Ain’t FIXED, but at least I can work. My social life will return one day but I really don’t give a shit about seeing people, as hard as I’ve been working, and as stretched as my time has been. But that’ll change. Soon, too, I hope.
And now, with a guaranteed job and medical, and a social safety net back under my feet, I know I’ll get to where I need to be.
I’m really trying to hold onto that experience though — the black-as-hell, darkest-before-dawn, all-hope-is-gone fear — because it teaches us what’s important in life, and where our focus needs to be.
Today, I make the same pledge to myself as I did in September 2007: A year from now, I promise myself, I will be stunned when I look back at how I look today. I will be strong. I will be fit in a way that works for me and my life.
Starting today, my health is my first priority. Work, writing, and creativity are my second priority. Then, it’s the rest of life.
Wisely, I’ve set myself up with 30 hours a week. I can always work more, but right now that’s what I need.
In the last year, I’ve learned:

  • I don’t like “self-employment” of the meet-and-greet give-a-business-card variety. I’m not that girl.
  • I do indeed like doing some freelance, but I’m not really structured to be a natural at the business side of that. Maybe one day. Not today, not exclusively.
  • Contract jobs that only offer 15 or 20 hours a week with an unfocused objective and a “but you’ll figure it out” because it’s a “new” position can screw yourself over while giving someone else your value.
  • I need a routine in order to have success measured equally in my life.

I wouldn’t want to do the last year over again, but I’m sure happy I’ve learned this much about what I need for happiness, and what I want in my life. I think I’m on the road to making that all happen.
So, here, today, my New Year of Me begins.
I rocked it in 2007-2008, and I’ll do it again. This time, I’m still down 60 of the 70 pounds I eventually lost. This time, I’ve already got the injury and I’m working to strengthen myself — not just a desperate pushing-300-pounds fat girl like I was in 2007, trying to lose weight without the know-how or help, and damaging myself in the process. This time, I’m finishing the job I started, but properly.
I’m excited. I’m mostly tired after what’s been a really long hard time of life, but… I’m excited.
Some people can be unemployed and it’s like a vacation. I didn’t get that experience. I don’t want it now, either. Employed, this is good.
Have a great week, minions.

My Recent Decor Blogging: Links

As you may already know, I’ve had a little blogging stint over at BuildDirect.com.
Here are the blog posts I’ve done in the last few weeks:

Rethinking Storage: A Personal Story

A material age presents a lot of space-making challenges. Where do we put all that stuff when urban dwellings are shrinking?
Just last week, a New York writer’s 90-square-foot apartment went viral. Opting to live in the perfect location just two blocks from Central Park and Lincoln Center, Felice Cohen compromised space to live in a convenient neighborhood, and learned to use use every square-inch of her postage-stamp-sized pad.
After watching that video, my 660-square-foot 1952 apartment sounds positively palatial, but living in it, this “palace” feels full. READ MORE HERE.

Urban Gardening for Beginners:

Growing & Using Herbs

A nice patio container garden can really take the cold edge off living in an often-impersonal concrete jungle.
While convenient, urban living is getting more expensive, and, as food prices around the world escalate, it’s easy to cut back on groceries to keep a budget reined in, but there’s a tasty compromise a lot of city-dwellers don’t consider: an urban garden, or kitchen garden. READ MORE HERE.

De-cluttering: Understanding Clutter,

And Why It Needs to Go

Clutter, like most things in life, sneaks up on you. A couple busy months peppered with a few dozens “I’ll get to that later,” and suddenly everything from your fridge to your filing is making you nuts.
Clearly people relate to this struggle, since Rob Jones’ piece on de-cluttering is one of our most popular posts, and for good reason! Getting over clutter will change your life. READ MORE HERE.

Urban Gardening for Beginners:

14 Herbs to Grow Yourself

Last week, I wrote about how to consider your small space for a kitchen garden. Today, I’d like to tell you about all the herbs I think are great for cooking with, so you can start planning how to proceed.
Professional chefs love fresh herbs for a reason: They’re awesome!
I’m no professional, but I can’t get enough of fresh herbs. At $2.50 a pack in my area, a packet of herbs is a luxury item in winter. There’s a recession, you know. READ MORE HERE.

Interior Design Vignettes, Pt I:

Small Spaces Within Large Rooms

Rooms are big! Decorating is a challenge when you’re thinking “big picture” from the start.
Have you ever thought smaller, via creating “vignettes?”
In writing and art, “vignettes” are smaller scenes meant to have more impact. In decorating, it’s an area that’s a self-contained setting within a larger space. A little reading alcove, eating nook, or the stuff you surround your hallway table with — these are all examples of vignettes. READ MORE HERE.

De-Cluttering: Where to Start, And How

Last time, I wrote about the emotional struggle one goes through with clutter, and why de-cluttering is such a triumph when you get it done.
I’m not an organizational expert, but I’ve made it happen anyway and so can you. These techniques worked for me, and continue to work. Here’s how to start. READ MORE HERE.

Interior Design Vignettes, Pt II:

Home Decor Themes

When we were talking about creating vignettes for larger rooms, “themes” came up.
“Theme,” used in art, writing, and other areas, is generally defined as a “unifying subject or idea.”
“Theme rooms” get a bad rap because too many people abuse them.
You know how the standard “seaside theme” looks, right? Walking in, it’s like being slapped upside the head. Oh, look… How nautical: Rope ceiling trim, a porthole, and lots of blue and white. It’s like being visually assaulted by the Love Boat’s set decorator.
That’s not a “theme,” that’s a cry for help. READ MORE HERE.

The Week That Was: A Round-Up

What a week. I’m just finishing up some coffee, then I’m dragging my tired ass into work.

My seat in the arena might've been the nosebleeds, but it was fun to be above everything. Loved it. Great view.

A lot of changes coming for me. I’ll share one day. Not today. But life is settling down. It feels like the end of a long road. Not quite there yet, but getting there.
I got to see the Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals in hockey. The Canucks smoked the San Jose Sharks. It was one of the most enthralling sports experiences I’ve ever been present for.
17 years to the day that Greg Adams scored a double-overtime sudden-death game-winning goal, sending Vancouver’s Canucks to the Stanley Cup finals against the New York Rangers, our Kevin Bieksa scored his double-overtime sudden-death game-winning goal. Now Vancouver’s waiting on word of our next meal, in the Stanley Cup Finals: Boston or Tampa.
17 years. Wow.
I just made a mental list of the world of experiences I’ve gone through in those years. It’s an interesting week to take stock of where I am and where I’ve been. Where I’d like to go.
It’s an exciting time, both for me and for my city.

The Queen Is Retired, Long Live the Queen

And Oprah’s over. A lifetime of learning from her show — mock me if you will. I think there’s a few Oprahs, given the variety of topics she’s handled over the years, but I think Oprah’s social efforts make her one of the greatest people of modern times.
Whether it’s the thousands of scholarships she’s given out, the work she’s done to protect kids from sexual abuse, her advancement of gay rights, celebration of the arts, her involvement with education on all levels… well, there’s not many people in this world who’ve truly put their money where their mouth is, but Oprah has.
Oprah has meant a lot to me over the years. There have been times when I’ve been home in the afternoon, lost or sad or pensive, and just happened to turn on Oprah and there she was, talking about something that I could use to have more insight into my own predicaments.
So many times have I watched her show and had something to write about, whether it was Oprah-centric or some six-degrees topic that’s inspired by some aspect of a conversation she’s had.
I’ll miss her wealth of fodder for writing. I really will.
And I will miss the constant of that show being in my life.
Judge me if you like, but I’m an Oprah fan and I don’t apologize for it. This week, I’m sad to see her leave.

Rant-Be-Gone: Social Media

I wrote a rant about Twitter last week, under the guise of it being social media tips. I stand by a lot of it, but some was over-the-top. I’ve taken it down. I’ll rework it sometime.
I’m getting a little burned out on social media. I began what I do so I could have a voice. I like the portal. There gets to be a time when one feels like others think they’re entitled to a piece of you. Replying feels like work. Engaging feels like just another strain on a day.
It reflects the extent to which I feel like life demands my attention right now. It’s been a long and tiresome road, not just for myself but for others this year. Social media’s sort of that outlet place where we get to “say” things… but the larger our audience, the more inclination there is for us to be held to task by someone who perceives X situation in Y light.
The balance gets difficult. Maybe I don’t want that debate with you. Maybe I get to choose what absorbs my time. People forget there’s two sides to social media. What we say, and what we don’t.
Unfortunately, you’re mostly judged via what you said in the last 5 minutes.
Man, there are days when giving everything up to take that remote home on the coast, that I’d love to live in within five years, seems like it can’t come soon enough.
There are days when having an outlet doesn’t seem to be enough of a reward to deal with what that social media produces in response.
Fortunately, there are better days, too, when it all makes sense.
Right now, I’m not getting a lot out of being on social media. Instead, I feel like a rat on the wheel of life. It’s work, working out, hockey, work, working out, hockey. Even social media feels like work.
These days, saying less online means having fewer replies, which means it’s less work, which means I’ll recharge sooner.
This is how the thinking goes.

When Being A Couch Potato is an Improvement

I’ve sat on my sofa two days in a row. Last Monday was the first time I’d sat on my sofa in two months, thanks to that horrible back injury I had back in March.
This means things are improving.
It’ll be a while yet before I get the pacing of life under control, but I think I’m on the verge of having a less scattered lifescape before me. May has been far better than April. April was better than March. I believe June will be far better than May.
When it comes to writing, et al, I have things to say, but I don’t have the time, or energy, for saying them.
I may be tired, bone-tired, but I like life’s trajectory. Working hard is better when it’s getting you somewhere.

___________________________

And that, friends, is the week that was.
Have a fantastic weekend.

End-of-Coffee Ponderings

The sun is shining. It’s disconcerting. A tease. More rain lands on Sunday, if not before.
Vancouver’s in the throes of one of its wettest, coldest, greyest springs in recent history. I’ve not worn shorts once this year. I haven’t even entertained the thought of planting basil yet.
Today, most of the tech community will convene at Northern Voice 2011, at UBC, and I’m now realising how disappointed I am to not be going, given the recent turn of events and the loss of Derek K. Miller. Perspective took a turn of late.
I’ve always caught on in the end, but I’m often a late addition to reason.
Then, eventually, whomp, it hits me: The lesson.
Even if I had tickets, my financial situation would require that I work through the conference. That’s the way the dollar-cookie crumbles. It’s “meant to be” and in a way is providing mental spark-power on ideas I’m churning through.

It’s the end of the world as we know it & I feel “meh”

It feels as though life as a whole has been a struggle his year. Maybe the Doomsdayists and their “May 21,2011” end-of-times prognostications have a little oomph behind them. All the “end-of-times” prep I’m doing is holding off on my Costco visit until May 22. Why die with full cupboards?
For now, a man is mowing the lawn, sunlight is streaming in, and distant tires patter up busy roadways.
That’s the world. Beyond that, something else awaits. That’s for me, a train, and a bike to discover.
I have a pretty short list of what I want in life right now. One is to have the joy of regular paycheque-after-paycheque comfort, and to feel good in body and mind whilst pursuing steady, fulfilling work. The other is, a little sunshine. Everything else in life, that’s bonus.
In a way, my friend’s death has been giving me clarity about what’s important. I knew, once.

Keep it simple, stupid

There’s nothing like somersaulting off a scooter at 45 km/hr or so, landing on your head, and surviving with only silly things like a head injury for waking you up to what’s important in life.
So, for a while there, I had it figured out.
Live for today. Enjoy the moment. Celebrate friends. Be a part of it. Whatever “it” is to you, be a part of it. Celebrate what you have, try to get more, but don’t pin your happiness on that which isn’t in your hands, because then you’ll never have happiness. See how that works?
I had it figured out.
But life is like a vacuum.
Far enough away, you’re fine, unaffected. Get too close, unsettled, you may get sucked up into that vacuum. Caught inside too long, you can suffocate.
I’ve never been good at vacuum-proximity. My life balance, well, it’s like a bad day on a boat sometimes.

Cause/Effect: The Long Game?

Today, I’d like to do Northern Voice. If I did, it’d hurt my bank account, stress me out on the time-management-money-making fronts, and would probably be hard on my back. I’d overdo things, wouldn’t prioritize myself, and the fallout would probably continue for another couple weeks.
Not doing Northern Voice, I earn money, get exercise I need daily, can do all the right things for my back, will get the sunshine my soul desperately requires, will be freed up for my friend’s memorial Sunday, get to earn me a soul-day Monday, and will have balance I need throughout my week so I can spend important time with my family next weekend, before my dad and stepmom do a gruelling six-week cross-country roadtrip — the last of which didn’t end particularly well when my father wound up in critical care 2,000 kilometres from home.
It reminds me of a favourite flick about writing, The Wonder Boys, based on Michael Chabon’s novel. It’s not a perfect movie but it’s far better than the box-office, and title, suggests. In it, Michael Douglas plays a writing/English professor, and he teaches that “writers make choices.”
Choices, they’re harder than we think. It means acknowledging we can’t have it both ways. The heart wants what it wants and sometimes it wants both.
Years ago, I stopped writing fiction for my inability to create tenable conflict that had a beginning/middle/end. A friend surmised I’d had enough conflict in my life, that generating more in my recreational time was probably not what my soul had in mind.

Do whatcha gotta so you can do whatcha wanna

Days like these, where I’m torn between what my heart wants (to spend time with awesome people talking about fascinating things) and what my soul needs (head down, steady progress in work and rehab, daily balance so I can have the summer I want), I try hard to make the right choice.
Then I remember that my friend was diagnosed with terminal colorectal cancer at the exact age I am now, and would be dead before his 42nd birthday, and I get confused: What’s the right choice again?
Fortunately, my body seems to think it knows, so I can ignore my brain and heart, and listen to my bones, which seem to long for a seaside bike ride and a quiet day of not carrying a backpack and bustling from uncomfortable seat to uncomfortable seat, followed by ungainly bus rides.
And that’s all we can do. Guess. Listen to something, anything, and interpret. Among Derek’s last words were a cautioning that we can make plans but they often will never come to pass, and all we can do is be in the moment.
I thought I’d be at Northern Voice this year. Instead, I have the gift of getting well enough that I can return to something I love, sunny day cycling.
That’s a moment I can be in, that I must be in, because it’s the only moment I have available to me, the best this day has to offer.
Sounds like the right choice after all.

Legacies: When All That's Done is Said

Wow, so this posting got long. It should probably be separated. I just don’t have the emotional-editorial prowess for that, so I’ll leave it all jumbled together. I’m sure as the days and weeks move on, I’ll become more cemented in what I believe about Derek’s legacy in the blogging world, but, for now, I’m less academic and more the fumbling friend amazed at the outpouring of interest in a loved, lost voice on the local scene, to say the least.

__________________

As of yesterday, our Vancouver friend, the Penmachine, Derek K. Miller’s infamous The Last Post had gone viral both on the web and in the world’s news media. On Monday, the Canadian Press newswire went live with a story on Derek, it was picked up by American Press’s wire, and suddenly it went from 23 notable world press stories on Sunday to more than 220 press organisations (at this time) carrying this story on Derek’s passing worldwide.
I wrote last week that, in blogging, Derek would “…have told his story. A ripple in the pond. That’s all most writers really want to make — a ripple in the pond.”
Some kinda ripple, Derek. Well done, friend.

Words, words, words

I think, in the scheme of Derek’s life work, in all he tried to share with others, that the legacy being created through this worldwide exposure to what blogging can DO for a man, his life, his legacy, and the memory others get to have of him, that Derek’s changing the world’s perception of blogging.
Maybe I’m too close to it.
Maybe I know the man, his work, and maybe I want this to be bigger than it is, but as someone who’s watched the press all her life and knows what the public thinks and feels, this is a rare, rare moment when a really honest, simple, powerful statement is getting heard by the whole world.
And it’s not a world leader. It’s not some political activist dying for a cause. It’s not a celebrity known the world over.
It’s just a statement from a good Canadian man. A father of two, a guy who married his soul mate and died still madly in love with her. It’s the guy we all knew we could call with a technical problem that needed urgent solving, or who we KNEW had just happened to take a secret perfectly-timed picture of us at that event where he just had a camera. He was that guy.
And somehow, who he was, who he loved, and the life he led, that was all captured in a mere 1,500 words. His perfect 1,500 words.
Then the world read it and, in 1,500 words, realised what was truly important in life, what can all disappear in a moment.
Like Derek wrote, “As soon as my body stopped functioning, and the neurons in my brain ceased firing, I made a remarkable transformation: from a living organism to a corpse, like a flower or a mouse that didn’t make it through a particularly frosty night. The evidence is clear that once I died, it was over.”
In a moment, we’re all gone forever. Then what?

Legacy-Making

So what’s his legacy, then? Super-nice local legend loved by those who were at the cusp of all the tech/web/music developments for 20+ years? Great writer? Spokesman for cancer, early testing, and living out loud?
Sure.
But I think Derek’s legacy is bigger, with more global implications.
Derek Miller took time in his dying days to write a post that, if we’re lucky, changes the way we’ve been thinking about language, communication, social media, writing, and connection.
For Derek, blogging (and podcasting) was truth, education, community, sharing, connecting, activism, camaraderie, and putting his stamp on the world. He did it all. He stamped good.
There are a lot of really shitty blogs out there. Content farms, traffic-whores. A lot of bad blogs.
Derek was never guilty of bad blogging.
He wasn’t a “writing filler” kinda guy. He didn’t have some self-imposed turnstile of copy-quota where he “had” to blog every day. He was a writer who was compelled to share a statement, a truth, or anything, but he certainly didn’t blog so we the audience had something to read, or the PR companies with schwag gifts had reason to mailing-list him.
Derek K. Miller always blogged because he had something to say. Something smart, well-said, perfectly edited, often insightful, and never sensationalised.
Somewhere along the road in the last five years, blogging became about expected numbers, certain amounts one had to get done on a weekly basis. Some “experts” claim 3-6 posts is the “perfect” amount. They’ll tell you a “good word count,” and that Derek K. Miller’s The Last Post was 900 words too long. They’ll show you how to juice it up with “search-engine optimising,” and sex it up with a graphic or two — oh, and break it up with headings, gotta do that too.
But they don’t tell you how to have heart in your writing.
They don’t tell you that your readers deserve significant content. They don’t tell you that creativity, quality, honesty, and originality count.
Somewhere, somehow, blogging and social media became about having a social resumé, hawking your wares, getting connected, getting laid, everything someone like Derek K. Miller never bothered manipulating it for.
I’m a writin’ romantic — a passionate idealist about language, writing, and communication.
I believe that blogging is the BEST thing to ever happen to writing.
And I think blogging is the WORST thing to ever happen to writing.
But, for every site concerned primarily with driving traffic, and not worried about enriching your life, there’s a blog quietly churning out good content week-in, week-out, just like The Penmachine did.
I believe a quality blog only needs one posting a week.
If it’s great, then one will do. If it sucks, then none will do.
I believe the sparse, simple, shocking truth behind Derek Miller’s brilliant The Last Post serves as a reminder of what economy of language, a simple desire to state the facts, and opening yourself up to the world can provoke in all manner of people.
We all want to be remembered. We want a legacy.

Blogging: Whoop! There it is

Not stupid blogging. Not bad blogging. Not blogging where you’re talking about ordering a muffin.
Blog about what that muffin means to you — what do you remember when you’re eating it, what was the most emotional muffin you ever ate and why, what happened right before that muffin was served, how did it smell, how did it taste, and does the emotional overload that triggered that muffin return to you now and then when you’re enjoying one, and if so, what’s that like?
A muffin, does it matter to the world at large? No, but your experiences that determine how you feel about a particular muffin, those experiences might.
And that’s a sort of ridiculous-but-clear example of blogging is — a chance for every person to have a real, true, digital record of their understated lives. Their commentary, opinions, injustices, whatever. It’s a record.
We’ve lived in a world where publishing, media, communication have almost always been in the hands of those with money and power.
For the first time ever, we can control our words.
We can make sure others can read them, even strangers in far away lands.
AdAge magazine called Derek Miller’s The Last Post an example of the “democratization of publishing.” Yeah, okay. Sure: Cheap-n-easy self-publishing.
Personal blogging is powerful, not only for you but for the people who get to read it… and maybe even those you leave behind.
We’re told not to “tell” too much. Yeah, all this not-sharing stuff seems to be doing a LOT of good for society.
Oh, no one will ever understand what you’re enduring. No one will get that.
Derek Miller blogged about wearing diapers, yet millions are hanging off his extensive cancer-living archives this week.
You know who doesn’t know what people want to read? THEM. The “experts.”
You know what I want to read?
I want to read people who write about things that leave them feeling uneasy when they hit publish — or proud, or desperate to see what the comments are because that post mighta been pushing it or so angry while writing that clicking “publish” felt like they’d just flushed the toilet on all the shit that had ’em feeling that way.
I want to read about people experiencing life — in all its varieties.
If you CARE what I think, I probably don’t want to read you. If you think, while writing, “how should I say this to best elicit a reaction?” then I likely don’t want to read you.
If you write because you need to write, because you feel like you have something on your chest and you’re hoping writing will help sort it out, or because you just can’t NOT share THAT observation you had earlier today?
Then you’re the kind of blogger I wish everyone was.

Empowered by Blogging

Blogging is a tool we have for breaking down barriers.
We can connect, teach each other, expose injustices, examine life, do whatever the hell we want.
No longer are we under the thumb of industry when it comes to distributing our creations.
As artists, writers, musicians — if an audience is all we require, then we have the whole world before us. We have 100% artistic control. We have instantaneous access to publication and audiences. We are not at the mercy of industry. Industry is at the mercy of us, and the tide is turning.
Back in 1990 was a movie I always thought was ahead of its time on some of the issues (though dated now), Pump Up the Volume, about Christian Slater as a pirate radio DJ named Happy Harry Hard-on, aka Chuck U. Farley. The premise of all his angsty railing against society was pretty simple come movie’s end: You have a voice. Use it.
In the end, if Derek Miller’s legacy is that people realise they can use the voice they have, I can’t think of a better one. Nothing broke my heart more than to know Derek had lost his speaking voice for much of his remaining weeks in life, and to think his “eternal” voice is heard around the world now… well, it blows me away.
You have a voice. Use it. Leave a legacy of your own choosing.
And, more importantly, consider today what you’d write in your obituary for tomorrow, and take stock now of what you need to change to have that obituary reflect a life you wish you’d have been living — and an emptier bucket list.
Blogging: It’s good mental lifting. Writin’ does a soul good. Check it out, kids.
(Photos: Derek K. Miller — from Facebook profile shots he’s used.)

The Emotional-Enema, Too-Cheap-for-Therapy Post

Days, weeks like this, it’s best to remember life is a marathon, not a sprint, and all things come to pass.
I fucking hate turning to Confucius-like fortune-cookie-style wisdom to get me through, but some weeks it’s the only weapon left in my arsenal.
Between the oppressive rain, the soul-crushing Conservative-majority national election victory on Monday, my friend’s death on Tuesday, the barrage of Mother’s Day advertisements for the last couple weeks, and hardcore PMS, my thread is really goddamned thin.
I’m not depressed, I’m moody and pissed off. I’ve passed the sadness phase and I’m just angry.
Still: Nothing that has happened this week was unexpected.
We knew the election might go sideways. My friend’s death had crept upon him for four years at varying paces. Mother’s Day is something I dread annually. Another reason I don’t EVER buy commercial cards anymore. Fuck you amping up my therapy bill for profit, Hallmark! I will not be buying your cards. (I buy blank.)
It’s amazing how hard someone’s death can hit when you see it coming so long. I’m always surprised by that. Relief, sure, glad their suffering ends, sure, but the LOSS is stunning.
It’s like we sit around damming it all up in an attempt to Keep Our Shit Together when they’re around — I call it the KOST factor. Then, they finally slip away and that dam doesn’t burst, it explodes like a sidewalk-hitting water balloon from four floors up. KAPOW. The coping KOST factor.
It’s been 12 years almost and I still can’t get my mother out of my head the week before Mother’s Day, no matter how much I try to avoid the advertisements.
We try to pretend we get over the deaths, but, we don’t. Not really. The hurt always stays there, the regrets, the sadness. It lessens in its sharpness as time passes. It’s like the slow layering of dust over furniture in the attic. Just because it’s getting covered doesn’t mean you can’t recognize it, you know what I mean? I know the size and shape of my grief and loss like it’s my social insurance number. But that’s love. I’m glad love only fades in loss, it doesn’t vanish.
It’s bad enough I try to avoid Mother’s Day ads and malls, but these days I log on Facebook and there’s all these “Change your profile picture to your mom to show her how much you care” bullshit status updates. Like it didn’t suck enough that Hallmark and Friends were dumping all the emotional shit on those who’ve lost their parents, but now our friends and social media are in on crushing any safe space we have. And not just for a day, but for weeks on end.
I HEART MY MOTHER TOO, but she’s ashes in a goddamned ocean, people, and putting a fucking Facebook status up ain’t doing me any favours.
It’s three weeks now that I’ve been seeing Mother’s Day crap everywhere. Seriously? Awesome.
And I live in a rainforest. A really grey, dark rainforest full of bitchy people who dislike living in a rainforest.
And I have PMS and I’m bitchy about living in a rainforest with bitchy people who dislike living in a rainforest.
And I could use more money.
But, hey, I have a blog, man.
Sigh.
Seriously, though, if there’s anything this week has taught me, it’s that some things are missing in my life — and that’s for me to take stock of — and that I really, really, really love being able to write when my life takes a hard left turn.
Derek Miller’s posthumous blogpost, his self-written epilogue, has reminded me how everything we live or experience enhances our craft of writing. (He’s reminded me of so much more, but…)
Salon wrote about how illness/death can bring a kind of clarity one would never have otherwise, and a blog like Penmachine is the output of that clarity when in the hands of a masterful writer.
Well, I don’t want to write about those things this weekend, not without this air of flippancy. I can’t dive into my emotional reserves right now. I’m a bit scared of how deep the dive would go. And this is an experienced mental-spelunker typin’ here.
The Dead Mother Week thing combined with the death of a brilliant young father, and the worst election result I think Canada could have had, all mixes into a super-heady storm of past-present-future.
Where’s my country going? How far have I come/have I yet to go since my mother’s death? What am I doing wrong when a young dad with everything dies feeling he’s lived a full life at 41 and I feel like nothing I wanted is close to done? If I died tomorrow, what would my epitaph read? Who would cry for me? What’s really important to me here, now, today, and how do I make it happen?
These are things running through my head as my estrogen’s at 10 on the PMS-o-meter and the rain beats down on dreary concrete all around me.
I had already started down that path, the what’s-important-to-me-here-now-today. I think I’ve made some progress, but there’s so far to go. I’ve always felt the best way to honour those who leave us, who we claim to be inspired by, is to actually allow their memory to change us.
So, today, while I fume and grumble my way through my day, I know I’m giving myself the day off from emotional resiliency. I’m letting myself be the grumpy bitch I feel like being. I’m embracing this.
I’ll be awesome on Monday.
I grew up on Star Wars. I know giving in to the Dark Side is a BAD thing when you go all Darth Vader and get-me-a-costume shit about it, but if you just dally with the Dark Side and return to the fight for the Rebellion, using the Force, then it’s an exciting plot-point!
I’m a writer. I’ll go with the exciting plot point.
So, back the hell off, buddy. Bitch comin’ through. Come back Monday if you want a nice person.

A Good Man Is Gone: Words About the Penmachine

There’s something really right about how people around the world are being moved to tears at the amazing end-of-life “The Last Post” published posthumously by my friend Derek K. Miller.
If you don’t know the story of Derek, you can read the Vancouver Sun’s tribute to him here.
I didn’t know him well. I had the good/bad luck of befriending him when he had less than a year left to live. We were in touch online for a few months before that, but we didn’t even meet until a year ago this week. After, I only saw him twice more. He invited me to his 41st birthday at his home, where I met his family, as well as his incredible Living Wake celebration of life in March of this year.
It’s with great sadness that I know now that Derek was friends with friends of my brother, more than 20 years ago, but we never met until 2010.
There are a lot of people I “know” today about as well as I knew Derek, but few could have me this devastated upon news of their death.
Did you see Harry Potter, the first movie? Remember the opening sequence when Dumbledore stands on Harry’s street, and plucks all the light from all the streetlamps, and the world falls dark?
I sorta felt like that when I woke yesterday and heard the news that Derek had passed. Few lights will ever shine as brightly as that man. Not for me.
On the page, erudite and expressive, profound yet simple when commenting upon the world around him, and in person, the warmest, kindest face you could ever see, with eyes that just drank you in because he was THAT interested in everything you had to say.
He was one of those rare people I consider a “hundred-percenter”. He absolutely gave 100% of himself to you, to his work, to his family, to his blog, to life. He did everything seemingly effortlessly, with grace and cool that people just don’t have anymore… even as cancer ravaged him, even to his final days.
In the end, I got to experience him the way the world did, electronically. Cancer’s not exactly awesome for one’s social calendar, so Derek wasn’t getting around much in recent months. His blog was all we got. But what a blog — an affirmation of life being worth living, death not being so scary, and how important little things are — from Diet Cherry Coke to walking the dog.
I knew he was dying, so I read his blog as he wrote it, but now I have years and years of archives to read, and I’m thankful his friends will be keeping that temple of Derek alive online for us all to experience.
Derek found me. He started following me on Twitter. I checked him out. There, in his bio, was “stage IV colorectal cancer.”
Me and cancer, we go back. My immediate reaction? I wasn’t gonna make the mistake of befriending this guy just so he could go and die on me.
And then I read his content.
I thought about it. Pretty fascinating guy. And, “it’s only Twitter.”
Followed him back. We engaged. He read my blog, commented regularly, and the exchange and mutual respect grew. Pretty standard digital story.
Then the Northern Voice conference came along in May, 2010, and I had to do a speech. The auditorium was packed with a lot more people than I’d imagined would come out, and my nerves were at Puke-Alert Level 3.
They tell you one of the public speaking tricks is to find the face of the kindest, most interested, most riveted, gracious-looking person in the auditorium, and look to them when you need someone to buoy you.
Instead of my friends, I made eye contact with Derek K. Miller and felt safe. I felt really, really safe, I let my guard down, and I had one hell of a successful talk. I don’t know if I could’ve had that same vulnerability without lucking into someone who was so incredibly responsive and supportive in the audience, like Derek was for me. He had this little smile throughout the speech, never broke eye contact for the whole half-hour, and now, whenever I think of Derek, I see him sitting left of centre in the front of that audience, his legs crossed, leaning on the armrest, his camera in his lap.
But, because the advanced stage of cancer left me unable to experience more tangibly the gift of his in-person friendship, the part of me that will mourn Derek the most is Me the Writer.
Even seasoned writers will tell you that ripping the Band-aid off and exposing your gaping wounds on the page is a tough, tough business. So many of us get wrapped up in the drama of it, dressing up the experience and making it so much more, or else totally missing the ballpark with this clinical detachment that “tells” and doesn’t show what’s going on. In those weak and affected retellings we lose the truth of the experience, and it’s nailing the truth that makes for great writing.
Derek, though, he had this incredible balance, an economy of language, and it just worked so well. His scientific predilections made him irrepressibly truthful, always, and frankly straight about it, but his heart infused his passion in his words, and his boyish wonder of the world would be inescapably obvious. Few writers can offer that combination of heart, passion, matter-of-factness, and childlike wonder, and Miller brought it all with a bang. His voice was rare.
And he wasn’t afraid. He had no pride getting in the way of telling us he was wearing diapers at the end, or in explaining physicality of the disease itself. He didn’t play the sympathy card. He simply wrote.
He wrote for the purest reason a man can write — to share his story because he knows he’s not alone in the human condition, and even if he would never meet that face on the other side of the world, he’d have told his story. A ripple in the pond. That’s all most writers really want to make — a ripple in the pond.
Derek K. Miller had one of the earliest online presences in this country. He had a legendary history on the web. He kept a weblog for almost as long as they’ve been around — 14 years now.
He wrote because he simply had to write.
He’s the kind of person I want to be when I grow up.
And he doesn’t exist anymore.
We, the Vancouver community, will forever remember you, Derek. You used the internet in the way we dream the whole world would — to teach, inspire, communicate, shed truth, entertain, build community, record posterity, and, most of all, just plain make friends.
Another good man’s done and gone, too fucking soon. Rest in peace.

**** **** **** ****

My Dream For Derek:
I love that Derek’s The Last Post is causing people to stop and rethink life around the world — from Roger Ebert all the way down to a housewife sobbing as she reads it on her iPhone in the WalMart parking lot (like a friend back east told me she did). He was that good a writer. He deserves the audience, even if he’s gone.
It’s his ripple in the pond, and I hope it ripples forever.
I would love a publisher to take his work and make it into book form. I would buy that book. I would gift that book.
I would love his amazing daughters and wife to receive royalties on his life’s work.
If Derek’s work could have a life after him, and provide a life for his daughters, it would be a beautiful, wonderful thing to behold.
The world would be a far, far better place if it were men like Derek that we all aspired to be, not celebrities.
Derek K. Miller, a man for the ages.
PS: The photo’s caption isn’t displaying for some reason. It’s a self-portrait taken in the photo booth at Derek’s Living Wake, about 6 weeks before his death. He chose it as his last Facebook profile avatar, and I think it was Derek’s funny way of toasting his friends for being a part of his life. ‘Cos he’s that kinda guy.

Emotional Hangover: The Morning After

A Conservative majority was elected in with barely 60% of the country’s registered voters caring enough to do their civic duty.
For all you cynics out there who bitch about governments then don’t vote, claiming “it doesn’t work anyhow,” you get the government you deserve: A government that legislates as it sees fit because too many of its residents are more pleased to whine and moan about policies than get involved.
It’s devastating.
I don’t know what I’m more angry about today — that some 40% of registered voters never showed up, never mind the eligible asshats who’ve never bothered to register — OR the fact that some ridings had, say, 70+% of residents voting for several LEFT-wing candidates, but because none could amass a sizable lead, a Conservative could win with less than 30%.
Our system is broken. It’s a fucking joke.
I’m forced to strategically cast a YES/NO vote because I’m more concerned with end-numbers and whose figurehead will get into power as our Prime Minister, because Canadians vote for one Member of Parliament for their little pocket of the world, a “riding.” The dude(tte) who wins the “riding” goes to Ottawa and represents that town/city/region, and their “seat” is counted into a total, and whomever’s party wins the most “seats” out of the 308 available then forms the ruling government. We don’t vote for a leader, just our local MP.
Minority/majority breaking point is at 155 seats. The Conservatives didn’t just win, they spanked the Left.
With 167 right-wing seats, there’s a whopping 26-vote lead over the 141-seat TOTAL opposition. That’s four political parties that somehow have to work together and still have about a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding at defeating measures that are likely to throw the Canadian social safety net’s sanctity into question.
I expected the Conservatives to win, and secretly wouldn’t have minded it. I didn’t want a majority. I wanted a weak minority, mostly because I do fear messing much with the national financial mix in a world where the global economy has the stability of hitching a unicycle ride with a drunk.
I’m not a fan of extremism in any form.
I was a profoundly religious child who grew up with bad experiences in the Catholic church, I’ve seen both sides of the financial coin from a first-person-life point of view, have paid for my own education and worked my way through school, have seen what abuse and addiction and crime can do to families, and how long even smart, capable people can be unemployed in hard times. My politics are absolutely shaped by my experience, but as sympathetic as I am to the left, I favour a more centrist view. Too bad that party got smoked like Bob Marley on a fatty last night.
I’m scared of a majority government that stands unsympathetic to most of the issues I hold dear, with a party run by a man who has shown tones of wishing autocracy was doable in Canada, and who is profoundly religious, and who I consider one of the SHREWDEST political tacticians Canada has ever seen.
I’ve said over the years that Harper was like a man on a tight-rope who understands to his very core what the advantage of balance was when faced with a minority government. Has he pushed his limits in the past? Yes, but not often.
Will he seek that balance now that he has nearly a 10% lead over the combined opposition? Heh. Insert cynical chuckle here.
I find it hard to believe a man who tried to rename the country’s government from “The Government of Canada” to the “Harper Government” is likely to squelch any ambitions now that he’s been handed a broad mandate.
I’d love to be wrong.
So, today I’m stuck here with this pretty sullen state of mind as I realize this is the shape of the government until October, 2015. Someone last night said “Cheer up, the Americans suffered 8 years with Bush and got Obama!” I countered with, “Yeah. We’ve suffered 7 years under Harper to get 4.5 more years of Harper. Great.”
Canada’s system is broken on several levels.
Our citizens, with their apathy and refusal to get involved, are a mockery of democracy. You people don’t even deserve to vote. You don’t deserve the advantages of a socialist nation if you refuse to participate in its operation. And that’s what you’re going to get, a lack of social systems, more prisons, and more defense spending, because that’s the platform you elected. You embraced the status quo by choosing to have NO vote.
So, you get what you apathetically chose, Canada.
My parents used to take me along on the odd election day. They said, this is what you do when you live in democracy, you vote. They taught me civic responsibility. Have you taught your kids? Or are you teaching them cynicism and that you have zero power to change the world? Are you okay with that? Are you okay with your friends raising kids that way?
People often say “Oh, we have no real power anyhow.”
Yes, you do. If you, and enough like-minded people, all believe and fight for something, you can get it. Sometimes it’s as easy as putting check-marks on paper.
It’s called voting. It’s powerful. It shapes laws that define everything from how much tax is on your bottle of wine tonight to whether your kid can afford university or whether your spouse will be struggling to pay medical bills after your death like Americans do, or just mourning you like Canadians usually do.
So, way to fuck that one up, you 40% who didn’t show up, and the countless others who’ve just never registered.
The take away I’m hoping to see grow into something bigger?

  • Justin Trudeau won his riding, and as much as he’s been a bit of an idiot in the past, the Liberal party is too important to his family’s legacy for him not to get a reality-check slap in the face and grow up FAST as far as developing a political acumen goes. He’s his father’s son, and I can’t see him not reading this election correctly and growing very quickly from the experience. If anyone can resurrect some of Canada’s dream for its left-of-centre roots, it’s a Trudeau–but the kid has a lot of savvying-up to do. (The whole family in fur coats on a Christmas card. Really, Justin? Sable farmers are a big electoral backer? Slick.)
  • The NDP are more likely to continue in an idealistic point of view, and I think the country needs that with all the crap going on in the world today, and given more time to campaign, they might have turned this election into something for the history books. They don’t have the economic know-how to get this country through tough financial times YET, but they have 4.5 years to really strap on those big-boy pants and get sound policies that embrace reality rather that fairytale finance.
  • A lot of people I see who are smart, motivated, and driven are now wanting to get involved politically, because it’s clearly not happening with the people we’ve got.
  • The chance of Canada’s political system melding down into fewer politics are stronger this morning than they’ve ever been. While I loathe the one-or-the-other system in the United States, the alternative in Canada hasn’t exactly floated my boat either. Maybe less is more in a frustrating political time like this.

This morning, I’m trying not to conjure my inner-Darth Vader and give in to the Dark Side, but it’s really hard to pretend to have optimism about Canada’s future.
Four and a half years… that’s a long-ass time, friends. That’s a big majority.
We need more anger in Canada. The passive-aggressive bend-over-and-take-it nature that seems to come with a Canadian passport really shows up come election time, and it’s tired and old.
We should expect more. We’re Canada, for fuck’s sake.
If YOU care, then you have 4.5 years to make your compatriots care.
No vote is a vote for the status quo.
You wanted it? You got it. Enjoy your government.
Me, I’m just getting started.

Election Day: Democracy Makes Good Eatin'

A rainy election day has dawned here in Vancouver. A low rattling hum comes from my refrigerator with the whistle of wind outside and the splatter of rain under passing roadway tires. It’s a murky aural mess that seems an ominous forboding of the day ahead.
I don’t follow politics as well as I should, given my aspirations, but the peripheral glances I take have me pretty riveted in this contest, and apprehensive, of outcomes tonight.
The NDP’s amazing ascent over the past six weeks is well-deserved. I think their platform at times equal parts unicorns and fairy dust, economically speaking, but a left-wing opposition under a minority government of a would-be autocrat should be the closest thing to balance this country has seen in decades.
I’m nervous about the notion of the NDP running the country, despite liking Jack Layton a lot, but if that’s what it takes to save the social system that defines what it means to be Canadian — a country where we’re in it for one and all, where my tax dollars are your security net and yours are mine, where healthcare access should be a basic human right — then so be it, bring ’em on.
That’s the country that defines who I am. It’s the nation that lets immigrants in, helps businesses grow, provides education among the best in the world, and celebrates arts and the freedom of information.
I don’t know what this country is that I’ve been living in. I feel like it’s America-Lite™. But I’m Canadian, not American, and that won’t be changing in my lifetime.
I’m unsure how we’ve become a place where a Tim Horton’s donut shop is converted to triage because there aren’t enough beds in the hospital across the street. We were the headline gag on The Daily Show that week. I don’t know where Tommy Douglas’s ghost is, but I bet he’s pissed.
Somehow I woke up in a Canada that began razing the Albertan tar sands, the environment be damned. A place where, on the one hand, the Prime Minister at long last apologizes to the First Nations for the horrors of the residential school system’s abuses, but then denies access to clean water for more than 100 at-risk Native communities nationally.
In today’s Canada, women are being legislated into regression by having 43% of federal funding cut under Harper’s administration.
Instead of being a Canada fighting for human rights internationally and advanced-thinking domestically, “my” government decided it wants to build more prisons, despite falling crime rates. Incarceration has never been the solution in Canada, our social programs have been a large factor of our always-lower crime rates compared to our Southern Neighbours, but now we want to replicate their system here? How does this make sense?
Don’t even get me started on issues of internet privacy and the business of bandwidth. If bandwidth is information, and information is power, and power encourages change, then the Conservatives’ position on access to bandwidth isn’t very encouraging for society as a whole.
Education is already priced out of reach of some; protecting bandwidth-access is a way of equalizing that.
Then there are the Liberals. I’m not happy with them, either. They’ve been incohesive for years, and they can’t figure out a leader who can win. I respect Ignatieff but there are issues I have with his record (a politician who doesn’t show up for votes is a politician who’s not interested in the details of legislating, I’ve always felt).
It’s your classic Canadian contest: Who do you want to win? I sure as hell don’t know, sir, but I know who I want to lose.
Long story short, it’s a good year to have a say and play a part.
The above gripes of mine are barely even scraping the issues of what we need to contend with in Canada.
We have climate change issues, and thus need a government who’s thinking about alternative energies, not just sucking the last of our fossil fuels without recompense.
We’re still in a shaky recession that Canada barely got through, while nurturing a massive personal debt/credit-load across the country, and we’ve a dangerously uncertain financial precipice before us.
Education is at a crossroads, as is the entire medical system, so too is the Canadian Pension Plan.
Cutting spending and thinning the spread only gets you so far. Then, one day, you’re not a socialist country anymore, and it’s every man for himself, like it is for our American friends.
In a perfect world, there will be a better distribution of power and no party will have a clear majority.
I’m not a fan of the hoodoo-voodoo economics behind an NDP platform, given it’s a combination of “if the stars align and the genie grants our budgeting wishes”, but if ever Canada needed a Socialist voice in the national government that carried a little weight, I’d say today, this election, THIS is when it’s needed.
Because I love the Canada I was raised in. And, like the rest of the world, I know what a dark and difficult path lay ahead, and we’ll be better for the long-run if we protect this Canadian way of caring for, and helping, our brothers and sisters.
My name is Steff, I am Canadian, and I have voted.