Category Archives: Uncategorized

RANT: When is Enough Enough? Fuck the NRA.

In a few days, I’ll be wringing my hands with glee before I give an awesome plush dinosaur to a 6-year-old boy I know, and a hippo to his little sister. The notion of being surrounded by giggles and silliness for a couple days before Christmas has struck me as a great thing for a while now.
But on Friday a mentally-ill kid took a .223 assault rifle, a commercial model of the military M-16, and blew away 20 adorable children my friend’s son’s age. I can’t wrap my head around this, even now.
I’ve been having a problem putting a point on my anger. I don’t even know where to start with my emotions. I’ve purposely watched none of the video associated with the day’s events unfolding live, because there are some things I don’t want to have living in my head, and humanity reeling from confronting its lowest moments is one of them. Especially when little kids are involved.
I remember where I was for Columbine. I was on vacation in the United States. I pulled into a roadside diner in some backwater town in Oregon for a bite as I made my way to holiday in Newport, and locals were bleary-eyed and fixated on a crackling old TV in the corner over the service counter.
They mumbled things like “Never thought I’d live to see…” and “How did this happen?”
Now, nearly 15 years later, the heartbreak grows wider with every shooting I hear about, but so too does the complacency of dismissing guns as being part of the problem. Every time, the reaction has been increased gun sales. You could say mass shootings are the best advertising the NRA has ever had.
In 1996, Australia had its worst mass shooting. 35 dead. Within a couple weeks, everything changed. A massive gun reform legislation was tabled and passed. The idea of 35 dead for a stupid, stupid reason of the wrong person having a gun was enough to affect a political body and the country it governed, and change happened. Since then? They’ve never had another mass shooting. In fact, murders and suicides by guns are down by as much as two-thirds since then.
And yet stupid fucking people who don’t deserve the oxygen they breathe have the audacity to claim that the answer to Newtown, to Virginia Tech, to Gabby Giffords, is more guns, more guns, and less laws.
Never mind that an entire world has seen the folly in allowing its populace to easily own weapons that can kill a dozen or more people in under 60 seconds flat.
The trouble in America is the foolishness in believing all guns are created equal. I’m all right with people owning hunting rifles. I’m not okay with pistols carrying more than 9 rounds, or semi-automatic anything. Assault weapons… come on! The NAME tells you what they’re for. How is this legal? It makes no sense!
If you need a weapon that fires any more than 10 rounds a minute, you’re a lousy fucking hunter. Get a new hobby.
This anger I feel, I can’t let this go.
This culture-of-the-gun thing is exactly what’s wrong with America. Selling fear? Everybody’s buying, baby!
An American tourist had a couple Canadians ask him in an “aggressive tone” if he had been to the Calgary Stampede just this summer, and the off-duty Kalamazoo, Mich., cop wrote a Calgary paper to say he regretted that he couldn’t carry a gun when he was here because he felt he had to protect himself in the exchange.
Funnily enough, all the two men were trying to do was promote the Stampede and give him free tickets.
America is a shoot-first-ask-later country.
Gun-toting Americans seem to believe the average person is up to no good, rather than the opposite. Where I come from, we assume most people are kind and decent. I’ve never seen a gun in person. The only three people I know (peripherally speaking) who’ve been murdered in my lifetime were killed with knives, and yet knowing three people on the outskirts of my life to have met with such violent ends is really enough for me. How many people murdered would I know if guns were aplenty here as they are in the States? I’m glad I’ll likely never experience that.

In the 9 years after 9/11, 270,000 Americans were killed by guns. And yet… get the terrorists! BASTARDS.


I just… [sigh]
Like, where do we draw the line and say “This isn’t working anymore?”
Seriously, is the fact that twenty 6-year-olds and several school staff dead in a town deemed only last year to be the FIFTH SAFEST PLACE TO LIVE in the United States ENOUGH?
Is this the tipping point? Is this when America wakes up and says “You know… this isn’t normal. We’re the only country in the world that suffers these crimes, and guns are easier to buy here than anywhere else in the world?”
How does ANYONE smarter than a doorknob NOT MAKE THAT CONNECTION?
Who the fuck NEEDS anything more than a hunting rifle?
I know implementing gun control won’t take all guns off the street, but all I want is a roadblock between the angry lover, the pissed-off employee, the drunk motherfucker, or the mentally-ill guy looking for a rampage. I don’t really care about gangs killing each other as much as I do about people with short fuses getting the opportunity to go on a spree, because that’s when innocents die.
I’m not asking for a fucking miracle here, America. I’m asking for you to look at the fucking logic. Keep your hunting rifles. Make everything else really goddamned hard to own. If you’re a law-abiding person, having issues with any of these very basic requirements makes you kind of an ass.
And if you want to debate this topic with me, don’t even fucking bother.
This is 2012. We do not need efficient methods of killing readily available in a world that does not have easy access to mental healthcare.
Scratch that. We do not need efficient methods of killing. Full stop.
Take your pro-gun debates elsewhere. You won’t get ink on my blog. And fuck free speech. I get free speech here. You want pro-gun free speech? Get your own fucking blog.

When Writers Stop Writing

I feel like a fraud. A zombie Steff in a fake world.
I haven’t been writing. Haven’t had it in me. I’m on auto-pilot. Wake, skate through life, meet required time obligations, get the 40 hours of work in per week, plus the paid blogging, plus the client stuff, plus the rehab back appointments, plus… plus… plus… Oh, look at the shiny sunset.
When life becomes a thing of clock-watching, it’s hard to find the inspiration.
Every now and then, I’ve wished I could stop time and just write, but the day has been full of needs and requirements, and pressing pause would mean falling too far behind to make it through the week while sleeping through my nights. So, instead, I take a picture and I move the hell on. (The photos seen here are all in the last 10 days.)
But these are the choices in the life of those who do what they love outside the hours of that which they do for survival.
When you’re a writer, the unexamined life is like the tree falling in an empty forest. What’s the point?
I’ve taken pictures in the month that has lapsed since I last wrote for you. I’ve made a lot of good food, cleaned my house, walked a lot, spent a lot of time just sitting on the ocean shore and staring into I-Don’t-Know-What.
It hasn’t been an exciting life, a life worth writing about, but for all the little brief moments of awe and wonder during a life filled with stress and time-management, I think I found a livable balance. For a time.
But that’s not who I am. I can’t do “livable balance.”
I want to do life.
Balance THIS, grasshopper.
You know, when I got my new driver’s license photo issued in October, I spent a while reflecting on my last five years, four of them spent with chronic back pain issues. I refuse to believe my back can’t be healed despite all the obstacles and setbacks I’ve had. No one has told me it’s a cause not worth fighting for, either.

A young couple catches the sunset at Victoria’s Clover Point.


That was the catalyst for my choice to make my back a priority, the top priority, for 2-3 months. I’m tired of a life spent in half-measures.
Working so much so I can throw money at trying to make my body relax after years of trauma and stress is a strangely paradoxical life, and it does not fill me with joy, inspire me to wordsmith, or make me feel like sharing myself with others.
We do what we have to, so we can do what we want, is what Forrest Whitaker’s character espouses in the rousing drama The Great Debaters.
What I want to do is travel. I want to be able to go on long distance cycling trips. I want to hike into the backcountry. I want to be that chick you look at and go, “Look at her go.” I want to know my limitations are far and that it will take me a long time to reach them. I want to know the world out there isn’t too much for me.
I want more than what I have now.
If that means I walk around for a little while as a zombie, while thoughts wither and die without being recorded on the page, then I guess that’s what that means.
I hate it but I need it, I guess.
I may have to get all Dylan Thomas and rage, rage against the dying of the light, because that’s what not writing is starting to feel like to me.
I’ve been here before, almost dead inside, just because I stopped writing after my mother’s death in ’99 till ’04. It’s not about writing for a living or a big audience or for slow-claps or rousing applause.
When you’re not writing, the idea of writing isn’t about the end-user’s experience, it’s about existential relevance.
Deep down inside, I think there’s a kind of egoism that writers have to have. We believe we see the world through an interesting filter. We believe our thoughts have relevance. Unfortunately, this feeling applies to far more people than it should.
Fortunately, some of us are right.

Just before a foggy nightfall, Victoria’s Beacon Hill Park.


Not everyone cares about having an audience. I’m not sure I do. I’d like to have the money that comes with one, but even that barely motivates me to do a “real” book or product for purchase. (But that day is coming.)
I toyed with advertising a long time ago, and hated how it made me feel pressured to produce, and loathed the standards I was churning out as a result.
It’s why I won’t create content for you right now “because I need to post something.” I won’t stoop to the Obligatory Posting point ever again.
For now, I need to fix my back. It’s the number-one thing that will prevent me from going further as a writer, because I do not like the filter I see the world through when I’m in pain. The limitations hurt my soul, and it affects what I put out in the world. That’s not the writer I want to be. Not anymore.
Not writing, though, makes me feel the same. Ah, a cruel contradictory ailment.
I’m five weeks from the end of my hardcore time-management needs for back-rehab, and similarly five weeks from my first REAL time off in more than a year, since this year’s vacation time all got spent on finding a home and moving into it.
But in the last few weeks of not-writing-just-staring-at-the-ocean, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about life and my place in it. Who’s expendable, who’s not. What I value, what I don’t.
Yesterday, I awoke with back stiffness, it was grey and miserable, and I spent 20 minutes talking myself into a dawn walk. By the time I returned home 90 minutes later, I felt grateful for where I’ve moved, the life I feel I’m on the path to have, and the world around me.
I also realized I’m at the dramatic midway point in the film that is representative of this year in my life.
It started with adversity, began in a turn-around, and now I’m at that challenging climax where the protagonist has to ask herself how badly she wants it, and how much she’s willing to do to get it.
And just on the other side of all this is the triumphant conclusion where she rides her bike off into the sunset, without taking an anti-inflammatory, then can skip stretching so she can write a blog post about it. Or something.
We do what we have to, so we can do what we want.
Somewhere in the mix of this zombie-like obligatory sense of life, my frequent pauses to enjoy the world around me, and the quiet I’m starting to find, I feel like this miway-movie point in my present is a really, really neat place to be, if also blood-draining exhausting.
I’m still looking forward to what’s around the corner, and especially finding the intersecting of both the will and the time to write, albeit I’m finding a lot of little small moments to enjoy in the middle of all my crazy.
Sometimes, it’s not a sin to live life. Sometimes, it’s the only way you’ll survive.
Even writers have to make choices. Today, this writer chooses Everything Else, but only because this writer knows that simply won’t last. Eventually, the word volcano has to bubble over and spew. The writer inside always emerges.

Enhanced by Zemanta

CYCLING & MEC: Fat Girls Not Allowed!

The weather is coming.
We woke to fog yesterday, then a bank of clouds rolled in and parked upon us. Now, the weather cautions that rain, lots of it, for four days, will suddenly shatter the record-breaking drought we rainforest folk have been enjoying since late July.
As a girl who’s taken to a cycling/walking-only lifestyle after spending 60 hours-a-month-plus on Vancouver’s buses last winter, having great rain gear is the most important thing to me.
Unfortunately, in the last two years I have regained 28 of the 75 pounds I lost, and my cycling gear is too snug and a transit strike looms here my fair city. I cannot be without gear, and the idea of going and buying men’s industry rainpants because the fitness industry thinks a size 18 girl can’t pedal a fucking bike is getting pretty insulting to me.
So, I wrote the “leader” in getting outfitted for the outdoors here in Canada. Here is my letter to Canada’s MEC.ca.

Dear Customer Service:

I’m very, very frustrated.
You have so little available to larger women in your outdoor gear. I’m a 16/18, and I have moved to a city where I’m now 24/7 walking and cycling, and the rainy season is upon us here in Victoria.
My old XL MEC pants are coming apart at the seams after a very stressful year in which I added another 10 pounds to my frame, and I’m proud of my efforts to try and get fit of late since I’ve battled a lot of injuries to get here, but there’s no denying:  I’ve certainly gained weight, and I can’t NOT cycle just because the rain or wind are rolling in and I don’t have the option of proper gear.
You don’t have anything beyond XL, really. And you’re frequently sold out in the largest sizes.
It’s not like you seem to have a surplus of any of your biggest clothes at the end of the season, so you can’t argue they’re not selling, and yet you refuse to provide any sizes beyond!
I’m in a giant debate on Facebook and Twitter, where I have 5,000ish followers, talking about how little we can find at MEC, where we would EXPECT to find the gear, and how hard it is to cobble together something effective from other stores, usually where we’re forced to reduce ourselves to wearing men’s clothing, all because we have the indecency to be a size 18 or size 20 girl, or beyond, who’s trying to change her lot in life and be active outdoors.
You’re a LEADER in the fitness industry in Canada. If YOU don’t make it possible for the slightly-above-average girl who is ACTUALLY PRETTY AVERAGE to adopt a healthy, outdoorsy, fit life, then WHO, I ask, will do this for us?
Would it really be so horrible to offer fitness gear to people who actually want to become your customers, who are trying to change their lives, but who weigh a little more?
I keep hoping you’ll suddenly wake up and include us, but I guess it’s time I write a letter.
Also, I’ll be posting it as-is on my blog, to foster dialogue. That’s https://new.cuntinglinguist.com, and you’re welcome to reply there too if you like.
Thanks for listening. Here’s hoping next season it gets a little easier for me to be your customer for more than just my tires.
Regards,
Steffani Cameron.

Enhanced by Zemanta

My Topsy-Turvy Love Affair with Cycling

Just a moment ago, I was stretching my stiff ass on my balance ball, watching the Women’s Omnium’s final race in the Olympics. (If you’re not familiar, it’s a serious of cycling track races that get tallied up for an overall score for the winner, kinda like track’s Heptathalon.)
Canada’s Tara Whitten finished fourth overall and was devastated, crying on a teammate’s shoulder after losing a  medal.
The winner overall was a young Brit, Laura Trott. The announcer spoke of how the Trott family had been overweight, and their mom decided they all needed to get healthy. She took a young Laura Trott down to the cycling club, got her put on a bike, and now here the kid is, a Gold Medal winner at the age of 20 in the Olympics at home.

On one of Victoria's amazing pedestrian/cyclist trails for a sunset.


Shifting Gears

I’d been half-inspired to write about cycling this week, but my mind’s in a million other places, thanks to personal anniversaries and such, so writing’s not been “working” for me.
Then I saw this girl win this medal, and it was something that all she started out doing was wanting to get fit ‘cos her mom saw the light. That’s all.
And I got to thinking that cycling’s never just “that’s all.”
Cycling changed my life — for good and bad. Mostly good, but here’s both sides of that story.

The Bad

The back problems I have been rehabbing off and on for 4 years, thanks to the repeat blowout on March 15th, 2011,  escalated and worsened because of a bad bike fit. Had that injury never happened, I probably would’ve remained on that road to glory I was on when I’d taken off more than 70 pounds in one year, from October 1, 2007 to October 3, 2008, the day my back initially blew.
Before that, I’d been cycling 150km or more a week, and I was just loving it. My mood was better, my ability to handle stress was better, I was happier to get out into the world every day. Cycling was my moment of Zen, it was my ADD cure. I was more productive day-to-day, more focused, and I really, really loved who it made me.
But the next three years became a cautionary tale about how important bike fit is, because we (meaning *I*) never figured out until last August that my bike could be the culprit keeping my injury sustained. That, and the 60 hours a month I was riding the bus.
Every time I had new back twinges, I’d be asking physios / chiros / doctors if my bike could be the culprit, and finally Dr. Bryson Chow made a couple suggestions, and we realized, yeah, the bike was a big part of the problem.
But that was then.
Now, I know what was the issue. Now I’ve moved and have a new chiropractor who’s worked with Olympic cyclists, and he doesn’t see me as some fat girl with a bad back, he sees me as a hopeful athlete who’s had some bad luck and bad advice over time.

Just five minutes from that great sunset bridge shot is this cycling underpass, on the Lochside Trail, just one of a couple painted-underside downtown bridges for cyclists & pedestrians only.


Time for a New Normal

I moved to Victoria March 1st. It was mid-April when I was given the okay to get back on my bike, the first time since last September. I was told to start slow, and never cycle back-to-back days, so I could always assess it after 24 hours and a sleep.
I’ve been seeing my chiropractor at least every 3 weeks during this time. He gives me advice, tells me what part of my body’s reacting badly, and we try to figure out where I’m going wrong and what to do next.
In mid-April, I began by cycling 5 kilometres a time for a couple weeks. Now I’m cycling 30, and I can cycle 4-5 days a week, not 2-3.
It’s proof that conditioning improves quickly when on the road or trails for cycling, versus working out in the gym. Especially, when, like me, you’re hauling way, way more weight up those hills than some skinny bitch or straw-like dude.

(Hicc) Namaste, Yo.

Despite those early hiccups, I’m reaching that Zen place again, where seeing a hill doesn’t send waves of terror through me. Instead of being sure I’ll have to stop at the top to wheeze and die, I’m more often sure I have it in me to reach the top of that hill. Last night, a long steep driveway I’d recently had to walk the bike up was one I easily scaled and kept on goin’ after.

And further along the same path, up around Rithet's Bog or Blekinsop Lake, on the Lochside Trail.


Every time I’m getting on a bike and I don’t think I have the energy to do what I need to do, I somehow always find it.
But those first three months? They weren’t pretty. I had repeated setbacks as I found more and more things wrong with how I was riding, what I was doing. I had to make some fit adjustments, I’ve had postural mistakes. It just hasn’t been pretty, but for every step back, there were two steps forward.
Just three months on, I’m quite further along than I really expected to be. I’d looked at maps of places I longed to visit, and though I’d never make it that far this year. I had moments where I could only be described with words like “distraught” and “crestfallen.”
Now, I’d choose words to describe how I’ve felt of late like “persistent” and “victorious.” Now, I’ve been past many of those places I set as early goals. Now, new goals are needed.
It takes a long time of plodding through and feeling quite useless, I find, before you realize that it feels good now, or better-than-bad most of the time.
It’s really a great journey, that of getting back into cycling, and going a little further and further, and gradually seeing your conditioning change because the scenery you get to see is changing too, as that distance creeps up week after week.

It’s Not Exercise, It’s a Lifestyle

Now, I don’t bus. I walk, or I cycle. My saddlebags are my life on my bike. Every week I’m finding new food stores to cycle to, places to see. Know what’s better than a 20km bike ride? A 20km bike ride that includes a trip to an artisan salumerie, a signature wine shop, and an encyclopedic cheese shop. That’s a cycling gift that keeps on giving — and it’s my kind of cycling life, in between the days when I’m finding myself on some tree-canopied trail on the other side of town, that is.
Soon, I’ll write about some advice for beginners on bikes, from all the things I’ve learned the hard way, some gear suggestions, and ways to make cycling touring a lot more fun.

Curbing Kitchen Chaos

Hey! I have a sometimes-blogging gig for the good folks over at Build Direct, and this is my latest blog post, “Curbing Small Kitchen Chaos”. Have a read!
10 tips to dig yourself out of kitchen clutter insanity, by yours truly. And, trust me, my kitchens have been postage-stamp sized ever since I’ve lived on my own.
Oh, and “like” it, and “share it,” and “comment,” because commercial blog-owners like it when their writers are popular. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink. Thanks!

Making Sense of the Madness

Hello, minions!
For some reason, there are more of you reading me than there have been in three or so years, and I’m feeling the pressure to post at least a couple times a week as a result, despite the fact that I’m swimming the seas of crazy in these moving days.
God forbid you not get your Vitamin Steff, even if it’s a cheap placebo, like this.
There are 21 days before my life gets the brakes slammed on and I go from the rat race to the slow pace of life on the other side of the Georgia Strait. (For non-locals, that’s the body of water separating Vancouver city from Vancouver Island. Who names an island and a city that’s NOT on the island the SAME? Oh, right. The fucking British.)

My voyage home from the island last weekend, the Strait's incredible ACTIVE PASS, & the interplay of fog & sun.


Today, and for a few days now, I’m sick. I’m a mouth-breather who’s used half the Amazon to blow my nose since Saturday. I’m this close to buying shares in NyQuil, man, and dreaming of Prozac.
I have the remainder of my home to pack, my dad’s in the hospital, I have people I need to say goodbye to, a blog to nourish, and a job to work. If I’m not batshit crazy in 22 days, I might get over my sorta-atheism and be a believer. (But, you know, not likely.)

Oh, My. What a Load of Semantics!

I was thinking on the weekend that I realize now that there’s a difference between being UNHAPPY and being DEPRESSED.
After a long time of thinking I’d been battling depression, I’ve finally realized I was just unhappy and disliked where my life had wound up. I’m looking forward to seeing what finding my sense of self and rediscovering things I love — like strolling beaches, reading under trees in parks — and generally getting my life in balance does to change that.
In the meantime, my mind’s racing a million miles a minute with worries about my dad, who continues to be sick in the hospital, about whether all my furniture will fit in my new apartment, whether I’ll hate that I have less natural light in my new home, and all sorts of little things that are out of my power right now.
It’s times like these that being a thinker isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
But then I take a breath, I remind myself what it felt like last Thursday to walk down the street to an amazing little stretch of shoreline, what the slower pace did for my mind despite the pressure I had to find a place, and I feel like it’s all going to be all right… in, like, seven weeks or something.
Still, I’m excited. Deep down, I know I need this.

T(w)o Blogs or Not T(w)o Blogs

Have I told you I’ll be starting a new blog?
Right.
I’ll be starting a new blog! Yeah!
Yes, this one will continue. I may even return to writing occasionally about sex and relationships again. Oddly, I’m getting emails from people, and they’re sort of disturbing in their neediness — like no one else is talking frankly about sex. And, hell, I’m not even doing it anymore.
I got tired of being perceived as a sex-blogger, but then my Twitter handle never lets me live that down, and I guess I could’ve changed it but on some level I suppose I want that identity. I’m not sure. It’s something I’ll be looking at and probably writing about once I’m on the other side, and that’ll be happening here.
For instance, today Canadian courts are deciding if HIV status should be legally required to be disclosed before sexual relations, and unlike a lot of people who are sex-positive writers, I say FUCK YEAH. And that’s something I should write about. Maybe if I weren’t sick and could string ideas together, I would. Maybe later.
But my new blog will be where I record my moving adventures, and where I write about the transitioning from an unwanted big city life to a smaller pace in a little city, and what it does for me. It’ll be where my photos of my explorations are shared, my observations, my visits to local businesses, and more will be found.
It does have a name but I need to buy the URLs later this week. It won’t be live until March sometime, I guess.

I Feel Like Listening to Sam Cooke

It’s safe to say that my life in Victoria will be about reconfiguring my world from ground up. A lot of change will come. I’ll be keeping an open mind on things to try — everything from yoga and Tai Chi to adventuring.
I almost left Vancouver 12 years ago. The jury’s out on whether staying was a smart choice, but I lean toward “no” on that one.
I get why people love this city, and I’ll always love it too. It’s my home. But I never asked for the world to move here. I never wanted to be one in a million– or one in 2.3 million. It’s not about ethnicities or cultures, it’s about crowds and capacities.
There was a day last fall when I was working on a documentary TV show (I’m a TV captioner) and it was in the Scottish Highlands and an artist was commenting, “I love the city but after 2 days, I’m done and I want to come back to my quiet and my country.” My heart went through the floor because I could imagine it, and I imagined loving it.
I enjoyed the dead of winter when I knew no one during my one year in the Yukon. I also enjoyed the summer when I had a litany of awesome friends and endless good times. A line from Robert Service hit home for me up there, “…the silence that bludgeons you dumb.”
I like that kind of silence, always will. And, despite considering the rest of Canada for my move, I just couldn’t leave this area — not yet.

The Final Countdown

Today, as planes drone overhead, queuing for the airport landings, and horns blare out on the street as some ignorant ass tries to make an illegal left off the highway, and rain threatens to fall, it’s a silence my soul longs for… and one I know is three weeks away.
I don’t know who I’ll be, how I’ll seem, or what my life will really entail six months from now, but I like the visions I get of what it might be.
And sometimes I think that’s all we can hope for in life — that we like the direction we think we’re headed in, and we like who we are when the morning breaks.
It’s safe to say I’m excited, under all my fatigue.
For now, it’s time to refill the coffee cup, edit this, then put one foot in front of another, remember to breathe, and remind myself I’ll live through this. Change is a-comin’.

Alone Together: Urban Life In Vancouver

There’s been a lot of fuss of late in the Vancouver media about dating, meeting people, and the perceived isolation that seems so typical of Vancouverites.
I don’t know how we have a reputation for friendly people, but I’m betting those folk who think so are judging us from sunny days. This is Jeckyll/Hydeville, and it’s a rainforest. When weather rolls in, so does a whole new grumpified citizen.
But I read a reader’s response in VanMag this week and the writer later suggested on Twitter that perhaps our anti-social bad-flirting ways is because of our dearth of truly public gathering places, like European plazas and public courts, where people can really mingle together.
Unbelievably, it’s been nearly two years since the Olympics landed in Vancouver. Those halcyon days were truly amazing for us because we’ve never been that gathering kinda community in this town. It was a new world.
Cynics would say every time we get together it ends in a riot, but that’s bullshit. Riots happen in civilized cities too because asshats are omnipresent. Welcome to life.
It’s true, though. Vancouver doesn’t “gather” a lot. We’re not into community like some other places. We like to think we are, but we’re not.
We’re the city Arthur Erickson helped build, for all its pluses and minuses.
Instead of grand sweeping public places where you’re all in it together, we’ve got spaces filled with hideouts, different levels, and either manmade or natural divides.
Look at Arthur Erickson’s legacy project, the heart of Downtown Vancouver, Robson Square.* Littered with little spaces where you can shun others and be alone, it’s almost as if to suggest being in public is good, so long as you don’t have to actually mingle. Three people here, five people there… it’s still a gathering spot, just filled with micropockets of people. Alone together, the Vancouver way.
Ducking into alcoves for privacy and hiding seems like a great option, a wondrous thing for readers and lovers, but it encourages us to have distance from one another too.
With all our forests and twisty long miles of beaches for us to get lost in, and the pockets of ethnic neighbourhoods and the growing economic/class divides, it kind of makes sense that we’re this disconnected community here in Vancouver. We don’t chat or talk on streets. There are endless commutes between communities, which means picking a neighbourhood means likely committing to a neighbourhood, unless you’re driving a car.
Add it all up, and we’ve stopped talking to strangers, and have become insular. It’s frustrating for anyone who doesn’t want to be in that mode. Deep down inside, I’ve got New York-meets-small-island sensitivities, and this town confuses me.
Plus, this insular world is a game-changer if you’re single but don’t want to join a club or do the online-hookup thing.
So, this fuss about “Vancouver men suck” for dating, well, it goes both ways, sugar. I know I’m guilty of not flirting, smiling, or starting enough conversations.
That’s oversimplifying things, though.
I think it’s bigger than that. I think the cost of living here affects how much we want to date, I think the changing economy and how so many of us in the city have ditched cars doesn’t help the dating life either. Every added inconvenience or wrinkle makes dating, et al, a bigger social chasm to cross. This thing, that thing, those things — oh, lord, can’t it just be simple?
For me, personally, I’m in that “life is complicated” stage and dating’s inconvenient. Hell, life’s inconvenient. 168 hours a week, and I don’t know where they go.
I know a lot of folks who think the same as I do, “Well, sex would be nice but I don’t want to feel obligated to anyone right now” or however you want to define the resistance. Relationships are made for compromise, that’s what it’s all about. Give, take. When you feel like you’ve got little left to give at the end of the week or the pay period, well, why try at all?
Does money, commute, weather, geography, and everything else all conspire to make Vancouverites more insular and sucky for dating? Probably all of the above, yes.
I’m leaving town at just the right stage, I think. I’m ready to have a more insular work life that encourages more after-hours socializing, rather than vice versa, but I’m happy I’ll be in a smaller city where it might be easier to do all of the above, and on a more friendly budget.
I’m sure I seem like the non-dating type these days, but I wasn’t always this way, and I’m excited to change gears on that front, and many others. I’m open to blind dates once I move, and plan to dial up my Flirt Number too.
After I cross the pond, gaining an outsider-looking-in perspective on my hometown will be interesting, because much of Vancouver’s allure baffles me in my jaded hamster-on-a-wheel present lifestyle.
I don’t know what’s broken in this town, but it’d be nice if the locals would learn to smile more, talk more, and celebrate that we’re all in this life together. Being civil to people on the streets actually feels good. Engaging with humans, it’s a positive thing. Feeling like we’re all a little more connected makes the big expanse a little less scary.
Live a little. Get out of your head. Say hi to people. Smile. Character is who you are when no one’s looking, but it’s also who you are in passing, too.
And if they don’t say hi or smile, do it again until someone else does. Don’t stoop to their level of isolation. Be in the world, not just of the world, as the old Biblical quote goes.

And what do you think? Why are we so… Vancouverish?

*Arthur Erickson’s “alone together” style of design also makes Simon Fraser University what it is. The campus is bleak but beautiful in the dark season, filled with isolated spots and, ironically, convenient places to jump from.

Moving Day One: 59 Sleeps to Go

It’s a little weird dans Chez Steff this evening. Christmas is in boxes. Dust outlines litter the bookshelves where formerly-laid-objects have been hijacked and packed.
Total disarray. Promising disarray, but chaos no less.
I have decided to pack as much as I can, as early as I can. The thinking? Make myself live as minimally as possible for the next 7 weeks until the move. When I move, it’ll be the first time in 6 weeks I’ve seen a lot of this stuff. Maybe my thinking will be more removed and objective on what actually comes back into my home.
I’d like to be the “Less is More” type in every way except in space. Ideally: I get a place that’s 1,000 square feet or so. That’d be 50% more than now. I’ve seen a couple listings I’d kill your grandmother to get.
I’d love a spacious home, and would be willing to live a little more off the beaten path for the right place. I have some really nice stuff. To me, anyhow. I don’t want to pare down much more than I have. I like my mix of cool and retro, quaint and quirky. I think I’m rocking it, and I want to keep it. If it’s junk, it’s going. If it’s not, here’s hoping I get at least 750 square feeet.
Otherwise, I’m paring.
Well, anyhow.
The reality’s kicking in. I’ve got boxes now. In this old armoire of mine, I’ve crammed 4 boxes. Soon, I’d like there to be 12 in there.
Bits and pieces of my life, boom, there it is. Bits and pieces of dead peoples’ lives too. And live ones, besides me. Lotsa bitsa lives.
That’s what the bookshelves are for me. Repositories of life. Mementoes. Books, of course. Things others have made for me, photos of loved ones, weird little things that meant something to me and to no one else. Like that one solitary blue marble.
The story behind the one itty-bitty blue marble that’s sat conspicuously on the bookshelf since 2006?
I cycled Southwest Marine Drive after a blowout with a boyfriend. Things were getting weird and I would soon be nearly off my nut with estrogen poisoning and a bad experiment with “period supression.” I wrote in my journal that I was “losing my marbles” and was going for a bike ride in the hopes of clearing my head after said fight.
I rode toward UBC, stopped at a late summer fruit stand on the roadside, and while I was buying my Okanagan cherries, glanced down to see the marble beside my foot.
It seemed like a “sign” that I might lose my marbles but I’m also likely to pick some up along the way, and I should just chill and enjoy the ride ‘cos it all sorts out in the end.
After that came intermittent moments of chill and crazy, but at least I occasionally found my marble. Today it’s in my change bin.
Those kinds of things are fun. I keep mementoes from stuff like that.
Now these things will be increasingly hiding in boxes until I’ve flipped the script on my life. Then, they’ll come out and there’ll be an all-new context.
I start looking at the bare shelves and packed boxes, and I get a panic attack twinge. “Oh, shit. I’m actually doing this. Whoa.” And then I settle down.
Because, most of the time, I’m all antsy and LET’S FUCKING DO THIS! NOW! NOW! Move it, people!
It’s like I wanna put a freeze on today’s Craigslist, stiff my landlord, and move tomorrow. When I decide what I want, I want it now. But the world doesn’t work that way.
Besides, I’m a smart introspective grownup. I’ll get more out of this if it takes a couple months and I throw myself into the mix.
I don’t know. It’s a weird headspace. I’m thrilled I’ve got a good head start on moving. I’ll have all my tech to put together this weekend. No more packing then. Toys!
But it’ll be good to process it all a bit, too.
Moving is sort of embracing the future but also confronting the past. There’s a crossover time when it’s forward-and-backward thinking.
I love that kind of stuff. I live for it. But it’s not like I move often. Who knows then next I’ll have this in-between time? I’m milking it.
But right now I’m sneezing up a storm, thanks to kicking up long-dormant dust and firing up allergies. So much for the romanticism.
PSST: HAPPY NEW YEAR, PEOPLE.

Morning After a Heatwave, Summer Comes to a Close

I have not been writing. Noticed this, have you?
That’s the end of summer for you. Seizing the day, carpe diem Vancouver-style.
We’re probably losing about 4 minutes of daylight a day right now. That’s more than 25 minutes a week. On June 21, it was light from about 4am to 10pm. Now? 6:30 to 7:30. December? 8:15 to 4.
There’s almost a panic to enjoy as much daylight as we can in Vancouver. It’s 8:45am, I have my desk lamp on because I actually need it. Cloudy days are dark in Vancouver, I’m expecting many of these in months to come.
Soon comes the dread and doldrums of autumn — within a month. Today, I’m in slippers, and my legs feel cold. If it sounds like the season officially changed last night… it did.
Soon, sweaters, slippers, soup, and battened down hatches as storm season rolls in off the Pacific. Cue the howling winds and repressive rain, along with never-good-enough outerwear. It’s best to lower one’s expectations for the dark days of the winter months in this town.
But with that comes the routine of basic survival, and the built-in excuses for being anti-social. What, leave my house when there’s puddles everywhere, relentless rain, a steady wind, and it’s barely double-digit temperatures, let alone near-freezing? Hah! I have SLIPPERS and wine, fucker. Good luck with that.
And with that also comes the opportunity to read more, write more, and sleep more. It’s when routine gets you through the day. Get up, work out, drink coffee, write, go to work, get it done, go home, eat hearty food, rest, rinse, and repeat.
So, that’s coming, and I know this. Half of me is ready, half of me is kicking and screaming against it.
My back, however, is a main part of me really anxious for fall and winter to come. I’ve been forgoing rehab workouts for cycling and the outdoors, but I can’t do that for much longer. But I have a plan, Stan! Yes, yes, I do.
And part of it will include many, many walks in these leaf-strewn streets. Taking a deep breath is fantastic this morning — always is, after a heatwave breaks, but when it breaks in September and that lush musty sweet autumn air follows, well, that’s just heaven.
Hello/goodbye, summer/fall — it’s practically a Beatles song, this time of season.

Sorry I Couldn't Be Your Dancing Monkey

Now and then, someone says something really stupid to me, like how I’m not being as funny lately.
Um, okay, duly noted. Sorry I’m a disappointment. I’ll put that on my “Gaping Life Failings” list, right under forgetting to wash my sneakers recently and not flossing enough.
Actually, no, I’ll put it on the list under “go fuck yourself.”
Finding out yesterday that my back has likely had a herniated disc for quite some time has turned into one of those “THAT’S WHY” epiphanies that’s like the light turning on and heavenly angels singing.
I’ve been very antisocial since my back blew in March. I was having problems at least a month or two before that, but that’s when it went. I’ve been struggling with it since.
The LEAST of my concerns has been entertaining my online audience.
Unfortunately, people only remember whether you made them laugh last week or this week, and most of the time that’s that. God help you if you use the web to talk about your real life.
Somewhere along the way, people start feeling entitled to your content.
I’ve been pretty pleased to just survive on a daily basis. That’s been my only goal for months now. Anyone who hasn’t had persistently bad back problems — without a car, without living next to a store, and without the money to throw at it for rehab — doesn’t have a fucking clue what my life has been like.
I’m so proud of how I’ve coped and what I’ve overcome, considering the limitations I’ve had for doing either.
And if I forgot to stop and make you laugh along the way, big fucking deal. Your problem. Not mine.
In recent weeks/months, hether it’s family or friends or people I don’t even know, I’ve had a lot of people who seem to feel entitled to my time and efforts.
They’re not. No one is.
Sometimes, the best thing we can do for everyone is to do nothing for them, and focus only on ourselves. I feel I have a lot to offer this world, but I can’t do it when I’m operating at a fragment of my capacity, hobbled by pain and warning signs.
I’m getting my life back. Now I know it really was as serious as I felt it was. Now I know it’s a potentially lifelong affliction I’ll always have to watch, but it’s also something I can get past.
If you’ve ever been inclined to tell someone they haven’t been as funny lately, then shut up. Shut the fuck up.
There have been days in the last 6 months when I suddenly found myself laughing at something, when it’s been a really dark day, and then, next thing you know, my eyes are welling up with tears because I’m thrilled I found something funny again.
And that’s life. It’s not just a barrel of laughs.
And none of us are your dancing monkeys.
When content-creation is a day-in, day-out chore, such as with social media and the like, then you get what you get. Don’t like it? Go. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you saying you’re disappointed will matter at all. In fact, it’d likely make most people more depressed or fatigued. So, don’t say anything, and just go. We really don’t want to hear it.
Meanwhile, I feel like this is the turning point for me. Knowledge IS power. I’m determined. I’ll get past this shit.
I know a lot of people who just go to the chiropractor, as if that’ll magically heal their back. It takes discipline, constant work, and even diet changes. I’ve certainly been trying, but I’ve been treating the wrong injury, and even sustaining the injury with bad biking form.
Maybe I’ll be a dancing monkey again soon.
It’ll just never be on demand.
Welcome to social media and casual blogging, where you get what you get.