Category Archives: Uncategorized

Yes, There Be Monsters

I fear for the “bubblewrap” generation, raised by helicopter parents, moms and dads hovering in the wings, watching so their kids never get hurt.

From media to games to books to playgrounds, an entire generation has been shaped from the mold sheltering them from all things objectionable or damaging.

Being 45, I’ve watched the evolution of safe-safe-safer coming on since my teens. It’s all around us in North American society, where liability has made our world one of safety rails, warning signs, and adult-content ratings.

It’s the backlash from a generation of latch-key kids. Our parents worked, so we had keys and took care of ourselves. Far too many of my generation grew up vowing their kids wouldn’t feel so abandoned, and then they swung the pendulum the other way.

It’s one thing to calm a toddler who fears the fictitious monster hiding under her bed. It’s quite another to kid ourselves that evil doesn’t exist.

Now, it’s a generation of kids caught between two extremes – on one side, angry they were sheltered from reality while adults fucked it all up, so now they’re fighting for a voice in a world wrested from them that’s in the throes of environmental and political calamity. On the other side, it’s a generation oblivious to calamity, dismissive of real evil, and frustrated that life actually requires adulting, sacrifice, and struggle.

So, when studies come out, like the one in Canada that found 22% of Canadian millennials have not heard of the Holocaust, I worry about what kind of adults we’re creating.

Ideas that Made Me

If you asked me to list books that made me the woman I am today, I’d likely be hard-pressed to come up with ten, because too many made an impact in too many ways. But I know one that’d make the list. Helter Skelter by Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi.

Helter Skelter is somewhat sensational. I don’t remember the writing or whether it might have inspired me to be a writer, but I remember what it taught me when I read it in college. Evil isn’t just a thing done, it’s spread through words. What most people don’t compute about Charles Manson is, he never killed anyone. He simply twisted people’s brains so hard that they did the killing for him.

There’s an important lesson in that: Ideas can be dangerous.

Why do you think every successful dictator ever has basically attacked intellectuals and libraries first? Hitler burned books. Mao killed intellectuals. Franco banned Basques from speaking their own language or learning about their culture. Today, Trump decries the “elites” while living a gold-plated life. It’s why Hungary’s Viktor Orban has slowly consolidated all control of Hungarian press.

Ideas kill. Education changes the world. What we learn, or fail to learn, shapes who we become as people, as societies.

Oversheltered = Vulnerable

If we’re wrapping our kids in a blanket of safety and love, we’re failing them.

Yes, there are good people, beautiful people, inspiring people in the world. Yes, love moves mountains and makes life worth living. But evil is out there too. Far less frequent, thank God, but it’s out there.

The one place we control what the world becomes is in school. By teaching our kids the reality of what we can do, and have done, to each other, we can help avoid such behavior ever triumphing again.

One country that knows what hate can do is Poland. In Poland, like in so many other places, there’s a hesitance to be truly honest about that history. We want to teach kids some of what history entailed, but we don’t want it to be so scary-real, so we only pull the curtain back a little, rather than showing the full extent of the horrors it hides.

Teach Them, Or Someone Else Will

I taught English to students between the age of 10 and 17 in Poland during the summer of 2018, and I loved the kids. Intelligent, well-read, kind. One girl’s name escapes me but her face is burned into my memory. Among our conversational sessions was a chat on racism. She told me how sad it made her to hear classmates belittling a Muslim kid.

“Their parents need to do better,” I told her.

“It’s not the parents,” she said. “The Internet teaches them to hate.”

This is the battle we have before us – if we don’t teach our kids, teach each other, then there are interested parties who will fill that role.

Chaos Ushers in the Unthinkable

The strangely funny thing about Charles Manson was that his goal, he said, in doing the Tate and LaBianca killings, in scrawling “death to pigs” on the wall in blood, was to make the city think Blacks did the murders. He wanted to cause race riots, to send the world into what he called “Helter Skelter” mode he dreamed of. In ripping society apart, it could be put back together again.

During the rise of Donald Trump, Steve Bannon spoke about that too, how they envisioned visiting chaos upon America, to dismantle the Republic as it was, so it could be rebuilt in a way that accommodated their world view in all its racist, hegemonic ways.

Remember, it was in the consequential vacuum and chaos of post-World War I that allowed Hitler to point fingers and create a new political era in Germany. Chaos creates a vacuum, and it’s in that vacuum that the unscrupulous capitalize.

Preventing that disorder and the onslaught of ignorant hate all comes down to what’s being taught in the third, fourth, fifth, sixth grades and beyond.

Childhood Ideals Are Powerful

When I was about six or seven, my favourite book was a story of Nazi gold, Snow Treasure, which told how Nazis were basically bad, and how Norwegian children managed to dupe the Nazis and smuggle Norway’s gold out of the country as Nazi occupation began. I didn’t know it then but it was my indoctrination into a life where social justice would be somewhat of a focus. It probably belongs on that list of mine.

At age nine, I was with my mother when a poor, drunk man begged from us. My mother made me give money to him. He’d been made small by life and time, had rotting teeth, dirt all over. I pressed a $2 bill in his hands, a lot of money for someone in his situation in 1983, so he sputtered his gratitude, got on his knees, and prayed for God to bless me.

I was left shaken that Mom “made me” be the donor and upon asking her about it, she simply said I needed to understand that not everyone was lucky in life. It was a significant lesson about the suffering some endure.

Two years later, my father brought me home a book as a gift, Underground to Canada, a young adult reader about the Underground Railway and those who escaped into Canada to leave slavery behind. I learned a sanitized version of slavery. I didn’t understand why one group of people felt justified in owning another group of people, but I knew it was motivated by greed and evil.

The same year, my Yugoslavian classmate was asked if he understood why his family had emigrated to Canada. He promptly told us of the country’s dictator, Josip Broz Tito, and how he tortured dissidents, how his parents were dissidents, and that the fled to survive. That’s when I learned what a studded “cat o-nine tails” whip was.

So Much to Learn

But for all the social awareness I may have had, I grew up financially ignorant. All the people I knew grew up like me, in nice houses, without wanting for much. My parents hid from us how tight things could be with money and the result is that I grew up without good money sense. I would be in debt by 18, and 27 years later I’m still trying to reckon with that.

We’re doing the same thing to the youth, raising them without understanding what the Nazis wrought, what Stalin wrought, what Mao and Franco and Pinochet and Tito and the Khmer Rouge and the Boko Haram all wrought.

Evil isn’t an idea in books, it’s a reality. The only avenue we have to fight it is in teaching our youth who these people are and why we can never, ever go down their road. Whether it’s the man who shouts racist epithets on a street corner or a president who mocks the disabled, we must teach children that small acts of cruelty often segue into something larger, darker, more disruptive.

The small acts are just a test of what we will abide. We must abide none of it.

There Be Monsters

There are monsters. They’re not under the bed. They’re in offices of power, in dark trucks on lonely roads, in the Catholic Church. They’re in all kinds of places we need to be honest about, lest we allow them to remain.

Evil isn’t an abstract idea, it’s the enemy we must fight every day, in every place.

There’s good news too. Just like hatred can be taught, so can love, kindness, and strength.

But for them to understand how important love, kindness and strength are, we must teach them how insidious and easy evil can be. And if we choose to teach neither, someone else will decide the lessons for us.

The Adventures of Fat-Ass Begins

It is a new day, a start of my final chapter. In 89 days, I’ll be homeless and off to live a life of adventure.
Today, though, I’m a woman who’s stiff, bloated, and sore, who’s gained back 74 of the 85 pounds she lost, and who’s also on the verge of living on a continent without a lot of elevators, where hauling a 40-pound duffel bag along cobblestone streets will be a regular activity.
I’m starting a new plan in hopes of getting a little fitter, more energy, and having less fear about the new chapter. I cycled 8.1km before work, it took me 35 minutes, and was a reality check that I’m not the cyclist I once was.
And that’s okay, because we start somewhere. I remember when it used to take me 1 hour and 14 minutes to cycle 12 kilometres (more than half uphill) to get myself home from work, back in 2008. By the time I was fit just 3-4 months later, that same ride took 37 minutes.

Luckily cycling here is not without its rewards. Dallas Road Sunset last Saturday Night.

Luckily cycling here is not without its rewards. Dallas Road Sunset last Saturday Night.

Taking stock without guilt

I can’t hate myself for the weight I’ve gained back. It’s been 6-7 years since it started coming off. I blew my back out catastrophically in that time not once, not twice, but three times. I had two knee injuries. I rode my bike into a road sign the week I moved to Victoria — stopped myself with my face hitting the metal pole straight-on, screwing up my entire right side for 6 months.
Somehow, I’ve overcome all that, all while earning more money than I could’ve dreamed. By the end of next week, July 10th or so, I will have earned more money so far this year than in any year previous to 2014. In October, I’ll likely become debt-free as I begin travelling the world.
If I’d taken my foot off that work-for-it pedal even a little bit, my trip wouldn’t be happening. If I’d eaten out less, if I’d had more fitness, if I had more friends/social time, I would NOT be leaving for five years of travel.
Every drop of effort I put into my career is resulting in a massive return on my investment.
My fat ass? Part of the price I’ve paid to take my life into a place that most people barely even get the chance to dream about, let alone do.
Today, and I suspect the day I step off that plane, I think I would pay that price again for what I will soon get to live every single day for about 1800 days.

“Journey of 1,000 miles starts with 1 step”

But today, I’ve done what I’ve needed to do and now I need to get myself into a position where a travel life can’t hurt me. I need to increase my cardio, improve my energy, take a couple inches off my ass so the plane isn’t unbearable, all while staying focused on my finances and earnings.
I think I can do this now. I hope I can.
Making this choice, though, that’s the easy part. The hard part is getting up every morning and being excited about taking an 8-10km bike ride, eating well, and not giving up. The hard part is saying it’s as important to my day as breathing or putting on pants.
But I know hard. I’ve done hard. I’ve beaten hard. “Hard” ain’t got nothing on me.
Whether I change myself here, or it happens abroad, I guarantee you — a lot more awesomeness, a lot more change, it’s on tap for me in the months ahead.
Because I work for that shit. It is a choice. It’s a choice I have made every single day. Now it’s just a new choice I need to make, that’s all.
And so it begins.


PS: There are healthy “heavy” people out there. I am not one of them. When I am “fat,” I am out of shape and it affects every part of my life. This isn’t fat-shaming of others, it’s accepting that I’ve really done a lot to upend the health and balance of my life, and it’s showing outwardly. That needs to end. I will likely never be a size 6, and I really don’t care about that. I’ll be fine being a plus-size size 14 or 16, as long as I can kick your ass on a bike.

Travelling: The Writer's Master Class

I wrote this late last Friday night and have only gotten around to editing it now. As of today, the numbers below are right — 90 days until I’m homeless and a world traveller. If you’re not following my travel blog, you should.
It’s hard to find great movies on writers. Funny, that.
But I guess it’s such an internal experience that it’s very hard to relay that visually or in any other way. It’s why a movie like Eat Pray Love can suck so hard while the book is a delight to read.
So it’s with great enjoyment that I’m watching Jane Campion’s biopic on New Zealand author Janet Frame, who I’d never even heard about, despite read. Don’t let my ignorance dissuade you of her import; her list of writing awards spans nearly six decades and would be intimidating to nearly any writer. An Angel At My Table is the name of both the film and the corresponding books.
Frame was unique, to put it lightly, and suffered mental illness in varying (but it turns out manageable) degrees. She was due for a lobotomy when word came that her first book of poems was an award-winning publication, and some wise doctor realized her malaise was also the source of her brilliance.
I’m at the point where she’s coming into her own as a writer but is still troubled by the demons of anxiety and other illnesses, and like any proper writer, she is only her complete self when writing.
 

London, England, by Unsplash on Pixabay. Creative Commons. My first stop in my travels.

London, England, by Unsplash on Pixabay. Creative Commons.

Doing what a writer’s born to do

It makes me think that a writer who isn’t writing is a person who can never be happy. Without writing, we’re haunted. If we can’t do what we are, then what are we to be, if not cursed?
I write. Boy, do I write. I can’t say I don’t write. Know how many words I’ve written since April 1st, about 90 days? Over 70,000. Maybe over 80K. Until this quarter, I never knew how much a writer I am. I set a goal, then I blew way past it, so much so that I’ll be the writer anomaly when I travel, as I’ll be completely debt-free.
Strangely though, with all that production going into paid blogging and other professional endeavours, plus some unpaid personal blogging, I have to tell you… I really wish I had some time to write.
There’s writing for the dollars, then there’s writing for the soul, and there’s very little of the latter I’ve been able to execute, only because I’m so riddled by the chase of the almighty buck that I’m too full of emotional holes to really write what I wanna.

Zagreb_1_Ilica

Creative Commons image from Sobrecroacia.com. Ilica Street, Zagreb, my second stop on my travels, and near where I’ll live for three weeks, except for a short stint in the next town — which is… see the next picture!


 

Stealing back my time

In the movie, Janet Frame has just launched herself on her first international voyage. She’s told, to be a better writer, she needs to travel and expand her horizons.
It calls to mind what I wrote about how my travels are, even if others don’t say it, essentially most writers’ dream life. Go abroad. Travel slow. Soak in the world. Record it. Process it. Love it.
That’s writing for you, it’s a writer’s master class — travel.
I’m 90 days away from that life. Travel. No appointments, no obligations, no friends, no family, nothing but a schedule to meet for work, the ability to be in some exotic place for a month or so, and enough time in the day to write for an hour or two EVERY SINGLE DAY. Maybe more! Tee-hee-hee!
Ask me if I’m more excited about the distraction-free time to chase a writing-first life or the opportunity to see the world for five years, and I would honestly struggle to choose. I love the idea of both so completely that it blows my mind I’m getting both at the same time.

Ljubljana, Slovenia, from PopSugar.com's list of 23 places to visit. And stop number three for me!

Ljubljana, Slovenia, from PopSugar.com’s list of 23 places to visit. And stop number three for me!

Writing is not a “hobby”

I’ve been through a lot in my life. It’s all gone whizzing past in a blur of survival and perseverance. Seldom have I had a chance to percolate and absorb it. I haven’t processed half the emotions I’ve felt over the years.
To some, they might say I need therapy. But the writers, they know. They know I need silence, a phone that doesn’t ring and a door that doesn’t knock. They know I need a window with a view, a desk at a good height, and fingers that won’t weary from a day or a year or a life of pounding out the truth.
It’s better than therapy, writing. It’s more honest, and it’s less selfish, in a way.* Put it down, push it into the world, and watch it resonate with others. When one taps into how fucked up they are, shares it with the world, resulting in a cacophony of voices rising to say how much it resonated with them — that’s the original therapy group session.
Something tells me, though, that landing on the far shores of the Atlantic isn’t going to be when and where I realize what a mess I am — it’ll be where I realize how together I’ve got it.

Motovun, Istria, in Croatia, where I'll be spending 4 weeks this fall -- stop number 4. And this photo's from Sobrecroacia.com.

Motovun, Istria, in Croatia, where I’ll be spending 4 weeks this fall — stop number 4. And this photo’s from Sobrecroacia.com.

Choosing passion

It doesn’t matter how I think I’ll do. My expectations don’t matter either. In about 105 days, after I’ve whirlwinded through Vancouver and London, UK, it’ll be my chance to see exactly how it unfolds. But there are no doubts in my mind about travelling improving me as a writer.
There haven’t been many opportunities in my life to spend 10 or 20 hours a week just writing for myself, let lone more, but the few times I’ve had that, my writing has been top-notch and I’ve been enormously proud of it. It’s a whole ‘nother writing level when you’ve got the time, focus, and dedication to achieve consistency.
This is what I hope to experience again. A chance to become more plugged into words and flow. I want the noise and distraction of life to evaporate, and the cadence of something exciting and new to fuel what I write.
What’s that they say about asking and receiving? 100 days.
*But therapy is awesome if you can afford it. For real.

The Life I Chose: Thoughts On Manifesting Destiny

I should feel guilty about being a loser and staying inside on a sunny day like today, but I don’t.
I should want to go out and soak in this amazing world, feel gratitude for living here right now, but I don’t.
Instead, I’m 100% tired, dreading my Monday, and knowing that I’ve got to Make It All Happen for another five days. It’s the same feeling I’ve had just about every Sunday night since January, 2013.
Fact is, I’m two years and four months into “working overtime.” When I started this whole journey of Working More, it wasn’t with a dream of seeing the world. Hell, I didn’t even know if I could get enough scratch together to live abroad for a year. All I knew was, I needed to claw out of my unending financial desperation so I could finally do things others took for granted, like maybe get some takeout dinner and buy a $15 wine instead of $9.
But back then, I thought I’d be working so hard so long to get what I want that I’d have to move abroad just so I could pay down my debt. Somehow, I kept finding new gears. I kept working more, finding different clients, trying out different writing jobs.
I valued myself more, I charged more, I earned more, I paid down more.

When the first two weren’t getting me anywhere, I finally doubled down on the third.

Faking It Like a Pro

Somewhere along the way, I started thinking more about Anywhere But Here. What would living abroad mean? How could I do it? What model of nomadic life might be the right fit for me?
Next, I became a classic case of Fake It Till You Make It. In fact, I’ve developed a superhero power for my ability to, no matter what the conversation is about, mention in the first three minutes that I’m on the verge of “selling everything and travelling the world for five years.”
One could easily assume I’m just being a braggart and a jerk, but in reality, I’m still so much in disbelief that THIS is what I’m doing that I’m telling everyone in an attempt to make it more real for me. Sometimes it even works and I believe I’m that girl. I try to tell someone new every day or two.
It’s weird that I can undertake such a massive life-change while being completely unable to tell you when I actually decided to DO IT. The idea just kept evolving.
The more I learned about long-term travel, the more empowered I felt that I, too, could be a nomad. The more I learned about the stuff I owned and the unavoidable emotional pull it all has, the more I started to think minimalism and Owning Nothing might be the best crash-course of psychic healing I could ever get. The more I learned, the less I felt like it was a life for Other People.

wpid-img_139641969635076Choice Happens

Eventually, I decided I was brave enough to say I, Too, Will Travel Like Them. Eventually I thought I was exactly that kind of person, even though I spent my life thinking I wasn’t. So I told other people this was my audacious plan.
Then a funny thing occurred when I started to think about what it would take to do what I’d need to travel: I just started to make it happen.
It’s like I wrote for my friends on Facebook this past week:

“It’s real weird when you say, “Self, this is what I need. Now go get it,” and then, like, you DO. You go get it!
Sometimes life is all about making choices. Nobody said what comes after those choices is EASY.
The choice is the easiest part.
But you just gotta choose to pay that price. Then, poof. Sometimes magic happens.”

Every time I’ve gotten more specific about what I need to make happen in order to Leave On A Jet Plane, I’ve gotten exactly what I outlined. Is it just a matter of knowing what’s needed then pursuing it? It is some mystical law-of-attraction aka “The Secret” thing?
Meh, I don’t care, I don’t need to know. It’s kind of like writing. I don’t need to understand what different clauses and phrases are called — all I need to know is how to get it done.
And hey, I’m getting it done.
choice signs

All The Drops Count

With 13 weeks left in Canada, it’s amazing how everything is coming together in the final weeks. Financially, organizationally — it’s all coming together better than I could’ve hoped. So much so that the prospect of leaving the country 100% debt-free is a growing likelihood rather than the faint hope I pegged it as just three months ago.
Leaving debt-free was never part of the dream. It wasn’t. I’d have scoffed if anyone suggested it could be done.
That was then. Now, I’m a believer.
And here’s the thing: If I hadn’t been antisocial and a workaholic, I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in. I wouldn’t be leaving in October. I’d have more debt. I’d be less tired, but also unhappier, more worried.
Somehow, all the times I’ve worked longer and gotten takeout instead, every time I’ve turned down plans and rested after a six-day week, each time I spurned the great outdoors in favour of recharging mentally so I can write more — it all conspired to get me right here, right now.
I cannot tell you how important every single drop of water in that bucket is. I kid you not when I say it looks like it will literally come down to the week I leave that I pay my debts off in full.
It will be one of those written-by-the-cosmos storybook endings to about 12 years of struggle — but the last five years had me clawing my way out.  It will all culminate with me handing in my housekeys on my 42nd birthday, and within a week, likely becoming debt-free as I leave to travel the world for five years. I couldn’t have written it better.

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For many, this is true. But I have had depression and I know that is not a “choice.”

Mastering Fate

It’s like the poem “Invictus” says: I am the captain of my fate, I am the master of my soul.
There are days when I think I will regret not being Little Miss Outdoorsy more while I’ve been in Victoria, but then I realize that this place has been exactly what I needed it to be: The place where I fell in love with writing again, rediscovered photography, learned how to deal with my back, and where I finally fixed my finances.
Those were the goals I set for moving to Victoria, and I gave myself five years to accomplish them.
I will be leaving 3 years, 6 months, and 29 days after that clock started ticking, and with a “100% done” stamp on those four goals.
Inspirational-Life-Quotes-120379761

All I Did Was Choose, Then Keep Choosing

It’s nothing amazing, what I’ve accomplished or set out to do. All I did was make a choice and never stopped being aware that everything I was doing — all the extra work, all the long hours, all the tired days, all the weekends I opted out of — was a choice. It wasn’t punishment or suffering, it was opportunity to take what I wanted. I wasn’t allowed to whine about overwork, because A.) I made a choice and B.) the universe gave me the opportunities I needed in order to make that choice real.
Making a choice is the easiest thing you’ll ever do. The trick is never letting yourself forget that you CHOSE it, and always being willing to pay for it.
Don’t like your life? No one says it’ll be easy to change it. Other people might have it easier than you — God knows folks had it easier than me (and still more have it harder) — but either that holds you back or gets you angry so you move past it.
It’s all still just a choice.
Like me, staying inside today, sleeping until 10, cleaning my apartment, and just being still. You pick your battles and you go where the struggle takes you. That’s what choices are all about.


I’m travelling the world for five years, starting on October 5th. Follow along with my travel blog, The Full Nomad, as those plans come to life.

How Not to be a Douchebag When You Travel

Today, there’s a big story about idiot travellers in Malaysia who summited a peak in Borneo and then stripped naked for photos at the top. Coincidentally, an earthquake later occurred on the peak and 13 folks are dead.
Reports are these idiots could face charges tomorrow. Two of them are Canadians.
Still, I have zero sympathy for whatever punishment is meted out.
Here’s your wake-up call, travellers. It doesn’t matter what your culture or your beliefs are. You’re a guest in a foreign country and you are privileged to visit.
Ours is a gloriously large world with untold cultural differences spanning the globe. From weird superstitions to religions, it’s a delightfully odd mix of contrasts, but dangers also lurk in those differences.
When you pack bags and travel, it is entirely upon you to know what you’re getting yourself into. What does its culture frown upon? What offends them? How strict are their laws? What freedoms fail to exist there? What are ethical grey areas to avoid?
KEEP READING: Visit my travel blog, The Full Nomad, and read it here!

My Other Writing: A Way for You To Support My Travels Without One Penny!

It’s that time again! Coming up on the end of my quarter as a writer for BuildDirect. You can financially support me in my upcoming travels by reading my BuildDirect content and sharing it socially off the blog page.
Look for the social share buttons at the bottom and click the blue “F” to share it on your Facebook, or share it on Twitter or Google Plus. Even commenting on the blogpost itself will pay me money. (But not commenting on this post!)
YouRock1_answer_1_xlargeWhatever you can do, I appreciate! Thank you for all your support and help. It means a lot.
Here’s some of the most popular posts so far this quarter, but you can see all my work going back to April 1 (the start of my bonus period) by clicking HERE.


A Simple Wedding Might Save Your Marriage

Far and away my most popular post this quarter. It shares stats and anecdotes that show how folks getting married with simple weddings are more likely to not divorce! Read it here.

My Childhood Home: The House that Built Me

A simple, personal post about my childhood home and how it’s changed in the years since it was bought by its new family, and how it shaped me in my youth. That’s right here.

How Pork & Cork Are Saving An Entire Ecosystem

A story about how pig farmers and cork plantations are working together to keep an arid ecosystem functioning. Cork oaks can live 600 years and stewardship of these mighty trees is considered a privilege and calling in Portugal and Spain. Read more about this interesting symbiotic relationship. (Seeing this first-hand is a bucket list travel item that will come true in 2016.)

9 Ways to Protect Your Home While On Vacation

This has been popular this week since I guess some of these tips aren’t ones folks have read that much. If you’re going away for a weekend or longer this summer, here’s how to sleep easy knowing you’ve protected your home the best you can. Go here.

How to Stay Sane While Packing for a Move

From fighting dust allergies to protecting your hands and avoiding bugs, I’ve got little-shared moving tips I learned from what was the Move From Hell in 2012. Since then, I’m way smarter, and I pass my Jedi ways to you right here.

The Not-So-Tiny House: Simplifying for Families

My successful realtor friend Matt lives in a 3-bedroom apartment with three kids, and wouldn’t change it for the world. What tiny-living families give up in the home, they get back in an exciting urban lifestyle at their doorstep. Read more here.

Hoarding: Not Just a Bad Habit

Severe clutter can debilitate people and damage their lives and relationships. Why is it so insidious, and what can people look for in identifying whether their friends or family are living in these conditions? How can they help? Read on. 

The Book-Lover’s Guide to Purging Books

I was so sad to get rid of all my books but now that they’re gone, my clutter is reduced, my home is bigger, and my allergies are doing better. Here are ways to help cull the chaos and off-load your books. Click here.

How to Change Your Life by Working from Home

It’s not for everyone, but working from home changed my life. Commuting less, I work for myself more, and I’ve paid off tons of debt and I’m just under 4 months from taking the show on the road and travelling the world for 5 years. Here are ways to make the adjustment to being a work-from-home type, and why it’s such life-changing thing to do. Read on!

How to Be a Good Neighbour in Tough Times

I’m proud this was popular because I think it’s so important that we help each other through difficult times. Whether your neighbour’s lost their job, lost a loved one, or is just really facing a tough illness, I’ve compiled a bunch of ways you can be of help, and even how to offer said help. Learn more here.

How to Hire a Contractor without Getting Conned

People are far too lenient when trusting contractors with their homes. It’s no wonder so many folks face terrible con-jobs and shoddy work as a result. I scoured the web and found all the ways you can do background checks, and why it’s critical, and stuck ’em all in this handy article.

Should You Rent or Should You Buy?

Buying a home is quickly becoming a less solid idea in some areas, like where I just moved from. What are considerations for you? Have no fear! I’ve done my research and here’s what to know before you make that decision.

A Brief Introduction to Native, Exotic, and Invasive Plants

This is an important read for anyone planting a garden or doing some landscape. Planting the wrong stuff can have terrible consequences to the local ecosystem, and you don’t want that! Learn more right here.

Brewing a Solution: Alternatives to the K-Cup Coffee Conundrum

Coffee courses through my veins. From my cold dead hands will you pry my cup! But here are enviro-friendly alternatives to the biggest commercial issue facing landfills today: Single-serving coffee pods. Get your java knowledge here.


 
And so much more! There are more than 30 other articles I’ve written since April 1st. Have a look right here if you’re wanting to read my stuff (and like it and share it and make me money).
Thank you so much! 🙂
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In Which X-Files Returns Where It Belongs

HEY! Anyone who supported me in the last two weeks by liking my content over at BuildDirect, I LOVE YOU. THANK YOU. With your help, I am officially able to pay off 45% of my remaining debt, bringing me one step closer to my dream of travelling the world debt-free. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

The Prologue: The Truth is Out There

downloadI was writing this update on Facebook and thought, “Gosh, this is pretty long. Hey, look, a blog post.”
If you’ve been sleeping under a rock, you might not realize that Mulder and Scully are uniting to once again save the world, and X-Files is returning to film a new 6-episode season in Vancouver.
I’ve worked in Vancouver’s film industry since 1999 and I know that X-Files’ legacy in Vancouver is huge. Just watching the the series’ final three seasons makes you realize how much Vancouver affected the feel and eerie mood that made the show such an evocative fan-pleaser. But some of the soul was lost after the move to Los Angeles, and I think that made the film industry here feel like they’d been vindicated after such a high-profile snub.

The Facebook Update

I’m so excited that X-Files is returning to Vancouver. I think their departure from Vancouver was a mistake and they never had the same mood again.
X-Files was a large part of why we became such a sci-fi filming hub for so long, but we’ve had a little less of that filming over the last few years, and it’s great to see that genre as a whole picking up again.
But X-Files? It’s kinda like winning back the ex you never should’ve broken up with.
Before I got into film, I was a bookseller at Duthie Books, for the last year of X-Files’ time in Vancouver, and David Duchovny would come in every Friday morning, I think it was, to buy a copy of the New Yorker, the New York Times, and sometimes a book.* He was never social, would smile and be polite and was gracious, but wasn’t chatty. This was right around when he griped about the Vancouver rain on the Letterman show and got inundated with Vancouver hate for speaking the truth — surely not helpful towards the decision to leave.
i_want_to_believe_01-area-51-the-new-conspiracy-from-x-files-creatorAnyhow, if he wasn’t already carrying a big Starbucks coffee, that’d be his next stop. This was a routine the entire time he was in town shooting.
Tea Leoni, his wife at the time, once wandered in when he was working, and she asked me a question about travel books and, next thing you know, I was talking to her for over 20 minutes about all kinds of things. She was the nicest, most down-to-earth movie star I ran into at Duthies. She was funny, and she was interested in my stories. One of those RARE people who just gets into what you’re talking about and gives you back so much energy. Or she seemed that way that day. I totally get why he married her.
They were nice people. I was sad when the show left, because I felt Duchovny left on the worst terms — and not because it was his fault. He fell in love. Who wants to be apart from their spouse for 70% of the year? And he worked in Vancouver from late summer through the entire rainy season — anyone thinking it DIDN’T rain all the time was deluding themselves. He wasn’t insulting us, it was simply an inconvenient truth.

Coming to Your TV in 2016

Ahh. The old X-Files memories. Know what, though? It’ll be nice to see how they capture Vancouver now, 15 years later and with so much change since then. Plus, there’s new filming tech, new shooting styles, and all the people involved are so much better at their craft today. Duchovny was a young punk who was on top of the world. He’s been through the highs and lows since. Gillian Anderson has come into awesomeness and is riding the crest of The Fall, which some call “the most feminist show ever made.” They’re both better, smarter actors.
Gotta tell ya, as much as the series itself, I’m looking forward to seeing Vancouver in X-Files. How does the ritzy city of glass today stand up to what was a seedier Vancouver then?
Funny, but by then I’ll be long gone. Just because I’ve broken up with Vancouver and it crushes me to see so much of my past with the city vanish under the negligent hand of a city council who doesn’t preserve heritage, well, that doesn’t mean I won’t always love the town.
*Best book I ever sold Duchovny — The Lives of the Monster Dogs. Google it. I secretly dreamed he would make it into a movie. Alas.

My Evolving Thoughts on Valentine's Day & Being Single

I’ve blogged now for more than a decade. I have written ALL the Valentine’s Day postings. Angry, disaffected, anti-commercial, Catholic, whatever. Been there, done that.
I used to hate Valentine’s Day and now I guess I don’t care. I’m sad some people “need” Valentine’s to keep the romance alive. I can almost see their impending break-up. I’m happy kids enjoy it. I dislike big business profiting off it. Enough said.
In life and in love, I tend to be a romantic. I always will be. Fancy meals for no reason, unprompted kindnesses, attention to detail. I don’t need a day for it, and I wish others didn’t either. I’ve always been the thoughtful girlfriend, fond of surprise dinners and other things. I’ve never understood how people can let that slip away in their relationships.

Tree in Sicily by Djacoby.

Tree in Sicily by Djacoby.

Some of Us Learned the Hard Way

For those of us who’ve had the opportunity to cheat death in any way — serious accidents, surviving disease or illness, that sort of thing — there is a very clear lesson we often learn: This moment is the only one that counts. Then the one after it, and the one after that.
Memories are nice but they mean fuck all if they’re all ya got.
In a relationship, if your best days are behind you because you’re doing nothing to honour it in the present, you might as well call it quits. You’re done. It’s over.
If that idea makes your heart sink through your belly, then lucky you, there’s hope. It’s time to sit down and make love a priority. Date night is critical. Romance is critical. Valuing each other is critical. Surprise and fun and trust, all critical.
Some folks can’t understand that and don’t know how to make ’em happen. I don’t know how to help those people.

When Single Becomes the Status Quo

God knows I’m single and I have been for a long time now. My last two relationships really fucked me up in that I sort of lost who I was and didn’t know how to get back to myself. Other things had brought that mix of phenomena into my life too — job woes, financial troubles, serious injuries, other things.
I had a lot of shit to solve, and solving those things while involved with someone — oy, that’s a tall order. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I couldn’t write, I wasn’t photographing, I wasn’t even cooking creatively. I was surviving life, not living it.
I never intended to stay single my whole time here in Victoria, but that’s somehow been the case. At first, I needed the space, but then in the last year, my thinking was “I don’t want anyone to hold me back.”
For a while there I had been telling myself that this life dream trip of mine was just an elaborate means of saving money. It was a last and desperate step. Would I have easily fallen for someone and opted out of the harder route of anteing up for an adventure of a lifetime to instead cop out and live with someone for savings and love and steamy sex?
I can’t tell ya. Like I say, I’m a romantic. There’s no telling how much I’d think a good relationship trumps an adventure. I do know this time I’ve been using for myself this year has really helped me remember what’s important to ME. What I want out of life, what I want to see, and what I think I owe myself.
Now five years around the world isn’t a “last and desperate step”. It’s my greatest and boldest step. It’s awesomeness wrapped in optimism and dipped in unbelievable with a side of fuck-yeah.

Norman hunting tower in the countryside of Erice, Sicily, by Terry Feuerborn in 2011.

Norman hunting tower in the countryside of Erice, Sicily, by Terry Feuerborn in 2011.

Acing The Art of Being Older, Wiser, And Not Giving A Fuck

I do know one thing about the loves I’ve had. I don’t think there’s a man I’ve been with in my lifetime that could be the man I’d need today. I’ve changed too much. I think few are the relationships that let us continue growing and becoming better people. It’s hard to have two trajectories rising at the same rate, you know what I mean?
Singleness isn’t the end of the world. It’s harder to handle at the beginning, I think, but it can be wonderful, too, if you don’t make yourself seek reward or happiness through others.
I think writing makes that easier for me. I’m able to use this — my words — as a filter for my life and my memories. That’s the gift of writing. It’s the existential pause button that lets me stop and sift through it all. Without it, I’m not sure I’d find the same enjoyment out of life. I’m not sure I want to find out.

My Valentine’s Isn’t Special

Today is another overworked-Steff weekend for me. I need to put THIS writing-for-self aside and write for the big machine. Money makes my world go around. Or rather, will make me go around the world.
I still need to remind myself of why I toil so often and so long. If it’s not work, it’s personal projects in preparation of my time abroad. Yesterday, I found new inspiration as I pored over photographs of Sicily, wondering if it might be where I am a year from now. I can’t fathom what life is like, living in an area so old and steeped with passion and tradition. As a writer, it makes my heart swell. What a Valentine’s gift to myself that would be.
But gone are the days when I’ll rail against Valentine’s Day. Make it what you want it to be.
Self-love, romantic love, love of the moment, love of nature — it’s all the basis of a life well-lived. Whether you’re alone or single, a wonderful meal, a gorgeous sunset, some time in a park, a great movie — all these things can be savoured without being a part of the big marketing machine.
Whatever you do, whoever you’re with, wherever you go, I hope you do something this weekend that reminds you of what your passions in life are. And if you’re not pursuing them, it’s time to ask yourself why not, and remember that it ain’t ever too late to wake up from oblivion.
Maybe that’s what Valentine’s Day should be to you. It kind of is for me.

Video Vigilante: Hell Hath No Fury Like the Internet

I’m a product of the internet age, but I also know what life was like before the internet too.
When you fucked up, you did so with the knowledge that only a few folks might really know about it. You’d go down the rabbit-hole of bad behaviour and would rise to live another day.
These days, not so much. There’s often a camera in proximity. The internet is rife with people experiencing their worst moment while some fucker with a camera has caught it all to share with the world.
Facepalm Girl
I understand there are all kinds of wrongness with being judged for our worst moment. Lord knows I’d be pink-faced if mine got posted. But I’d also deal with it, because like it or not, I was the one who had the power to stop that ball from rolling. I was the one who lacked manners, empathy, grace, or whatever it theoretically might have been that got me shamed on the intertubes. I’d suck it up, own up to my crap, apologize, and move the hell on.
There are all these web pros who talk about just how awful it is that your prior bad act should taint you forever, and how this is some new public-shaming horror we’re living with, but accountability was a big thing in most of history.
Back in the day, newspapers printed the arrest blotter weekly, letting it be known who was busted and for what, often with mugshots there too. The fear of getting caught on the blotter often inspired good behaviour.
Pretty basic, that: Don’t want to be exposed for law-breaking, being an asshole, or other crimes of poor judgment? Then behave like you’re a citizen in a lawful society. With good behaviour in public, your chances of being shamed on the internet decrease dramatically.

If I Can Restrain Myself, You Can Too

I might be a loudmouth on the internet, and I may even speak with bravado and edge in public, but I’m also restrained, polite, and gracious. I hold the doors open for folks, I thank shop staff for allowing me to browse, and all that kind of stuff.
Hell, even when I found out that I was in for a 17-hour flight delay on my 4-day weekend in Vegas to celebrate my brother’s wedding, I started off with “Oh, for FUCK’S sake.” Then I said “I know it’s not YOU inconveniencing me, but–”
I handled it with a couple swear words followed by tact. I think that’s acceptable. Of course we can’t keep every emotion in check. But the way some people behave is not okay, it’s not within the “acceptable” outburst parameters.

Newsflash: Decency Isn’t a Modern Creation

And here’s the thing: It’s not some NEWSFLASH that it’s uncool to harass people or treat them like shit. It’s not like you’ve been on the planet for 30 years and then someone changed the rules and said “being a dick ain’t cool, yo.”
“Oh, man. I can’t be an asshole now? God, why don’t I get these memos?”
We’re taught from KINDERGARTEN that we have to be nice and polite. How are people missing this?
If you’re past the age of 20 and you haven’t figured out what basic human decency involves, maybe you deserve to be shamed on the web. Maybe that’s the only way it’ll get through your thick skull.
If you have outbursts like these and rage issues, then you have a problem and you need to deal with that shit. Because guess what? The rest of us are tired of dealing with it, and we have omnipresent video cameras now.

You Go, Girl: Indian Women Fight Back

highfiveTake this incident on an Indian flight where a creepy old man thought he was entitled to touch the legs/ass of a woman sitting next to him. She had enough. She stood up, turned the camera on him, and shamed him.
There is no way a man gets to age 60 not understanding that it’s not his right to touch women. There is no way this behaviour is an “oopsy-daisy.”
Or how about these two Indian sisters who went viral last December for raging against the men pawing them on a public bus?
I’ve been on the bus when a man has fondled my ass. I only wish I had the guts THEN to do this. I sure as hell would NOW. I’m over 40 and I’m over that shit.
In India, a culture of rape has been practiced by some and ignored by the law and most other folks for far too long. The internet is giving these women the chance to fight back for the first time ever, with what is a very powerful weapon in their culture: Shame.
Shame is a big deal in India, much more so than here in North America, and I have no doubt this man will suffer consequences with his family and friends as a result of this outburst. Do I pity him in the blowback he’s about to experience? Not really.

Suck it Up, Buttercup

YOU are accountable for your actions. When YOU act like an ass and then you experience consequences for it, the world isn’t to blame. You are. If you had just taken 10 seconds to think about your behaviour before acting on your basest instincts, then the world wouldn’t have had to take you to task for it.
If you thought for a split second, “Would I want this treatment returned to me?” maybe you would’ve pressed the “no asshole” button and backed off. Are we really saying that modern life is SO HARD that people can’t stop for a split second to consider the consequence? Come on! Get real!
I’d rather live in a world where everyone gets to make mistakes and grow from it the old-fashioned way, but when it comes to men like this and their feeling of entitlement with harassing women, or people who shout and rage at others just doing their jobs, or who are knowingly acting incredibly petty and mean, then maybe this is the only way we, the decent folk on the planet, can say “DUDE, it’s NOT OKAY to do that.”
Because, dude, it’s not okay.
with-it-you-shall-deal-yoda

The Scientist & The Shirt: One Giant Step Forward, A Little Step Back

Hey there, minions! I’ve been swamped since “going viral” and have been focusing on getting life back on track. Which includes working a little on the “Best of the Cunt” essays collection I’m getting together for an ebook to release at the New Year. Woohoo!  Get updates on that by signing up here.
In a moment of stunning precision, a bunch of scientists landed a robot on a comet hurtling through space, and in a split second, the future of cosmology took a giant leap forward.
We have yet to see how that all plays out, but for a moment, the entire science-nerd world was elated that this highly unlikely scheme worked out as well as anyone could’ve dreamed.
And this guy got up to talk about it. Dr. Matt Taylor is a very popular scientist, and his “cool” factor makes him a legend amongst his peers and audience. For what it’s worth, he sounds nice enough and I like his tattoos.
However ethical and moral he might be, all we saw was his “cool” factor getting completely overshadowed at his lack of fashion logic when he wore a shirt covered in women who went to the Barbarella PVC-fetish school of style.
Cue the internet denizens! Unleash the rage! Hail the righteous indignation! Hell hath no fury like the angered left-wing citizen online! RAWR, Dr. Taylor. RAWR!
Today the inevitable hue and cry is tempered by those who say “Whoa, man. It was just a shirt. He fucked up.”
Well, sure, that’s true. It was a mistake. Probably a one-time only thing, but maybe not. If the guy’s willing to wear Barbarella’s babes for a history-making press conference, is he liable to be Mr. Gender Progressive when the cameras are off too? You know what? I don’t really care.
Fact is, Taylor doesn’t even really matter here.
Because, for me, this isn’t really about Dr. Taylor. This is about how the European Space Agency didn’t even blink when he stood up to handle the dialogue, wearing the least-subtle shirt ever designed.
This is about how women work in sciences. This isn’t 1898, when Madame Curie was breaking new ground with radiation. This is nearly 2015. We put a rocket on a comet after a 6.4 billion-kilometre chase scene. Women were on teams that made this happen. They were in the room.
They deserve respect, whether it’s beyond the glass ceiling or on the TV screen. The “brotherhood” of science, the bromance of it all, that all needs to end. Women deserve to be at a press conference where some guy isn’t wearing a shirt that shows women as being mere sex objects. They deserve not to hear a world-class scientist describe his project as “She’s sexy, but I never said she was easy,” as if normally sexy and easy are one and the same.
Are women too keyed up about sexism these days? Are they lashing out about misogyny? Is it all a little much?
No. It’s got more to do with this being a long time coming. Cameras are everywhere today and a 24-hour news-cycle and omni-infoworld means sexism that once failed to hit the radar is cropping up far more often, and when it does, it’s having greater reach than ever before. And rightly so, says I.
We have a world hobbled by serious issues. Water challenges, food supply issues, climate crises, and so many other grave problems are threatening us. With places like the European Space Agency not giving a shit when blatant sexism stands up at the podium, it’s hard to argue why women don’t feel that sciences and maths are industries they want to jump up and join.
Our world being fraught with problems really needs everyone at the table so we find solutions. Let’s stop creating work and study environments that leave some 50% of the planet feeling unwelcomed and unvalued.
It might be “just a shirt,” but it’s representative of an entire culture that taints what is arguably the single most important professional discipline in the world, which needs to attract all the brilliant minds — male or female — that it can.
Let’s stop dismissing these things as momentary lapses of judgment. I don’t want Matt Taylor’s head on a platter, and I don’t want his job jeopardized in any way. What I do want is for him and ESA to realize that this was indeed sexist. Luckily a lot of men agree and are calling for change as well. As unpleasant as the dialogue has gotten, Philae lander and the Rosetta Mission now have the power to create a watershed moment in cosmology and other science labs around the world in more ways than one.