I’m doing a lot of writing for work right now. Writing for work, to find work. Other work.
Writing for the soul? Not so much.
It’s too bad, too, because Spring is when one ought to be writing for the soul. Given it SNOWED last Thursday, perhaps Nature has had a hand in the Soul-Squelch Factor. Cherry blossoms be damned.
So, you know, soul-squelch aside and all, I thought I’d pop in with a warm-and-fuzzy “Yo, what it is, people” journalling post and see where that gets us.
It’s a difficult Spring for me. A lot is going on. But I’m also kind of kicking adversity’s ass as it continues trying to suppress me. Emphasis on it “trying.” Because I am Ass-Kicker Girl, and I am getting it done.
Back injury rehab is stupid, but somewhere on the other side of this town, a good man in his early 40s is nearing the end of his life, and I’m reminded that life is not always easy, but always worth fighting for, and some of our “struggles” can be important reminders of what we’ve not been valuing. How much I’ve realized that of late, I can’t tell you. Thank you, Derek.
There’s a lot going on beneath my skin these days, simmering-thought-wise. Just… so much to wrap my head around. Where I’m going, what I’m doing. Pretty pleased with all of it, scared too. A lot of choices on priorities have to be made, and it ain’t gonna be simple to get there from here.
If anyone gets there from here, though, it’s me. I’m all about journey-making… just forgot to get on the road for a while.
People forget that life is like driving — you can’t just be watching the car ahead of you, you gotta be watching the car ahead of the car. That’s where success is: foresight, anticipation. I’m working on that, and it doesn’t make for intelligent status updates, tweets, or emails.
Speculation sounds ass-hatty because so much of what we actually undertake and accomplish is bump-in-the-night. Or, should be. If you’re too married to the mapped journey, it really limits the ability to improvise with unexpected opportunity and divergent paths.
Going hands-free, unmapped the whole way ain’t so bright either. Can be amazing if you’ve the balls, luck, and creativity to make it happen, like someone else I know. Balancing a mix of planning and improv, that’s a tricky deal, but I think I’m starting to get it done.
Doing what I gots to do, I’ll tell ya ’bout it when it’s all said and done. Weeks? Months? Whatever, baby.
Yes. WorkWorkWork. Weeks, months. God knows I hope it’s weeks before the future reveals itself. Months, whew.
I’m tired of having nearly no time for people. I have to be rehabbing, recharging, that sort of thing. I need to do the self-employed looking-for-work stuff, working the work I’ve got, and juggling the rest. I watch TV to shut the brain down in between. I need the dumb-ass recharging provided by network television today. People enter the scene sparingly, and not many of ’em.
It’s a tricky balance the best of times, working/rehabbing/finding more work, but it’s one of those times I know I’ll get to the end of it and feel really damned self-satisfied, since I’m the one putting this tired ass to bed every night and I know what it’s taking.
In the meantime, it’s so isolated and repetitive.
GoGoGoGoGo, STOP, Rinse, Repeat. GoGoGoGoGo, STOP, Rinse, Repeat.
Fuck, man. I tell you.
You know who’s got it going on? Cats.
We call cats stupid, but that’s just what they want us to think. We say, “Oh, stupid cat, just lying in the sunbeam, batting a little ball around. Lazy thing.”
Cat’s lying there, thinking, “Yeah. Stupid. Uh-huh. Look who feeds me, washes me, pays for my medical, and works 40 hours a week to get it done. Oh, look — the sunbeam moved. I’ll just wriggle to my left. Drive safe, schmuck. Seeya in 10 hours. Bring me some bacon.”
When I die, I want to come back as a cat. A long-hair, just to really fuck with my owner.
But, for now, I’m the hamster on the wheel. Thank god I don’t have a cat, might just find myself eaten one of these days.
Summer’s here, though. Or, almost. I still have slippers on. Naked warm feet, THAT’s summer. The sunlight and slow-warming trend is a welcome battery recharge and brain-jumpstarter of late.
Meanwhile, I know what I want: To be a cat basking in a summer sunbeam.
Or, you know, [mumblemumble_TellYaLater_mumblemumble].
For now, I’m a gimpy girl hoppin’ on a bike before a busy day ahead.
Have a good one, minions. Stab ’em with your plastic forks if they give you a hard time.
Category Archives: writing
After A Morning of Job-Surfing
Dear Human Resources* People:
I’d like to work for you, I would. But given that first impressions are everything, that first impression kinda cuts both ways — starting with your help-wanted ad.
If you’re not getting the really awesome people applying for you, maybe you might want to make sure you’re not writing ads that include the following, and here’s why:
1. You want a “rockstar.” Give that I’m not really a fan of doing cocaine off hookers’ bellies on bathroom counters, I’m not sure I have what you’re looking for. Keith Richards, maybe he’s your deal.
2. You’re looking for someone who can create “viral” content. If one KNEW how to make viral content, do you know what they wouldn’t be doing? Applying for your job. No offense. Anyone who consistently create “viral” content is the next producer of the year, okay, and not a $20-an-hour employee. If you want well-circulated web content, though, I can do that. That’s realistic, and it’s something you can ask for, and is what I’d deliver.
3. You want a “guru.” Sorry, but I’m still learning social media, and I guarantee you that anyone worth their salt is, too. Social media ain’t OVER, it’s still evolving, and we’re all on this ride together. Some of us are intent to be students and don’t think we’ll ever be masters — just highly consistent and always awesome. It’s not about where your “guru” is today, it’s what kind of an online community they’ve built for the long-term, because staying power is HARD on the web today. Some of us, though, epitomise it.
4. You’re using super-hip lingo buried in long paragraphs of uber-corporate jargon. You’re hip or you’re corporate, so decide which type of person you want on-board, because one isn’t the other, and you don’t seem to know which you are.
I can’t tell you how many jobs are written with the above styles, and they’re selling what they’re unlikely to deliver, because they’re overwriting and overselling.
This does you, and me as the job-seeker, a huge disservice.
Make sure your job posting reflects who you are and what you’re really looking for. Buzzwords might give you the impression you’re attracting those who are “a cut above,” but you might just be isolating more than those you’re attracting, because it doesn’t sound sincere.
I want to work for you. But, based on your advertisement, I can’t.
I’m a great communicator, a fun team-player, loyal as the day is long, and always thinking forward, not backward. I say exactly what I mean, and don’t need to oversell things, because quality sells itself.
When it comes to writing movies, books, stories, and songs — less is more. It’s true also of job advertisements.
Until we get to salaries.
Let’s be realistic — for most of us, the world revolves around money, and in Vancouver, there are a lot of folks who won’t apply if you don’t list a salary range. (I’m not necessarily one, but I certainly look for that information.)
We’re not expecting you to nail a number down, or to have you promise us the world, but we need to know if our financial responsibilities can be met with your position. If not, then let’s spare both of us some time.
We all know it’s not just about the paycheque. We all want to be valued, and find the right place. Know the job you offer, and who you want.
We don’t need to be oversold on our jobs. We just want to work someplace we fit into, and your job advertisement is where that relationship begins. Please think twice before posting.
Love Steff.
*Mostly PR, marketing, communications, writing, and editing jobs are what I’ve been surfing, obviously. Got solid part-time work? Maybe I’m your girl.
To Sleep, Perchance to Remember a Dream
For more than a decade, I’ve woken daily without remembering my dreams. There’s been a handful of dreams in that time that I remember. Literally, probably under 10 for 10 years.
Photomanipulation by @Chiaralily on Flickr.com, Creative Commons.
And then, this week, I remember flashes of dreams from no less than four nights now. Poof! Like that, suddenly my “dream memory” is coming back to me.
And they’re not significant dreams. Just flashes of odd snips of people on my life’s peripheries. Not like the times in ’00 and ’01 when I dreamed my dead mother came back for one last goodbye conversation — after which I’ve never since remembered a dream. Funny how that works.
I’d tell you I’ve done nothing different in my life, but there’s one thing that has changed recently: My bedroom.
I removed the distracting clutter, got rid of the ugly fucking window treatments, brought in plain, simple, beautiful flowing white sheers and a white “blackout” blind. That’s it. But, suddenly, poof. Dream memory, back.
When it comes to dreams, I’ve had some incredibly trippy ones in my life, and it’d be wild if I had that back. My drugs-before-drugs, as it were, those early strange dreams from 20 years ago, when life was simpler. If I could have filmed some of those dreams, it’d have made compelling abstract art.
I never did remember dreams often, and I’ve never been prone to nightmares, so I’m unlikely to have either as a constant presence, but what if I could? I wonder what it’d do for my creative life, to have that odd mighty-fucked subconscious tap-in within reach, daily. Clearly dream memory is working for Tim Burton.
Someone like me, I’m constantly creative, but in a very only-slightly-left-of-centre kind of way, day-to-day, anyhow. I look at other people for whom outside-the-box is thinking small, the kind of people whose imaginations live in the clouds, and I wish I could be a little more detached from the straight and narrow sometimes. It must be… fun. I know it exists inside me, I’ve certainly had my moments. It’s something I wish I could more easily access.
Maybe there’s hope for that, yet. Maybe life can constrain that creativity out of us more than we know, like wearing a constantly too tight belt might do for one. Maybe it can be loosened. Maybe I’m loosening it now.
I mean, how is dream memory suddenly coming back to me now?
Is it merely because I changed my room from a distracting and cluttered place to a womb-like relaxation room? Did that help my subconscious take a chill-ride?
I don’t know.
What I do know is, I sure as hell will take every bit of insight my little brain can muster these days.
Cue the subconscious. I’m ready.
This Word, That Word, Any Ol' Word
I’ve been thinking a lot about language lately; useful if you’re a writer paid by the word. Words count. Every one of them. That’s why we charge you for each.
That’s why, when I watched this opening passage from an episode of The West Wing this morning, this exchange really tickled me. They’re talking about a pianist set to play a concert in the White House.
LEO: He’s North Korean, God knows how he managed to even learn. Their music’s all hymns to the barley harvest, not that they ever have one.
C.J.: To busy reprocessing plutonium to feed anybody.
LEO: Why they’re a rogue state.
C.J.: “Rogue” state… makes them sound bravishly charming. Should be “thug” state; “psycho” state.
LEO: We’ll ask the UN to re-designate.
C.J.: Punk state — that’s what they are, a bunch of punks.
LEO: Bunch of punks, with what could be six nuclear warheads.(west wing transcripts: here)
There’s a lot of weight behind them there adjectives. Each one changes the matter drastically.
As far as North Korea and the adjectives go, the “rogue” is the Count of Monte Cristo. I don’t mind him, a namby-pamby guy, not scary.
Perhaps if he had asked for assistance with a more well-thought sentence, we wouldn't be laughing at his untimely demise.
The “thug” conjures images of 50 Cent. Not a fan, he smacks of “itchy trigger finger.”
Then, with “psycho,” it’s Norman Bates; translation: “don’t ask for pillow service.”
Finally, you have “punk” Sid Vicious, which I guess makes South Korea their ‘Nancy.’ (Which takes on still more interpretations when you consider the British slang of “nancy.”)
The last three dudes: Ixnay the ombbay, eh?
Exactly who I don’t want to have a finger on The Button.
Speaking of people I don’t want with a finger on The Button: For anyone thinking cultural terms are as interchangeable as Lego blocks, I give you Sarah Palin. The Alaskan village idiot’s speechwriter sure got a lesson in that one when Sarah Palin made her ridiculous hyperbolic claims of “blood libel,” regarding the “target poster: let’s-get-Palin” fall-out after the Arizona shootings.
It’s just another Tea Party attempt to paint her in a Messianic light, but it’s also a cruel insult to Jews, who’ve had century after century of persecution, of which this term speaks, when it’s someone as privileged and plain-Jane white as Palin claiming that brand of persecution. And she’s being persecuted only for her own choice to employ irresponsible rhetoric, too!
Then there’s the recent oh-so-asinine choice to willy-nilly swap out “nigger” for “slave” in Mark Twain’s lamentable “New South” edition of the classic Huck Finn. Like my friend says, such a context-lacking blanket noun switch is completely irresponsible. It ascertains that all slaves are niggers, and therefore all niggers are slaves. Hello?
Word choice is critical. Language is powerful.
Sadly, in an age where everything moves at the speed of light, people take too little responsibility for things said anymore — or too much. Either flippancy precedes everything and words zing across social networks with zero regard for their permanence, or else people are so terrified of permanence that they add very little of any consequence to the dialogue, or they magnify the least relevant detail because of perceived slights in the language.
I realise much of what I’ve said in the past few years can, and likely will, come back to haunt me, but considering the truth in what I try to say, and the standards I hold for myself, I can’t say I have a lot of regrets for putting my truth out there in as choice of terms as I have.
Do I wish I perhaps took the paid-by-the-word attitude of precision when choosing those words? Well, sure, that might cover my ass a little more, but it is what it is.
Sometimes we have to take a bigger-picture look at language. Instead of microanalysing every little word, take the whole of it together. It’s often akin to a symphony. A piano can do wonderfully on its own, but really has so much more to give when played against, and with, other instruments. So too with any word you offer; they play importantly both ways — solo and ensemble. I like how mine play, either way.
But with so little regard paid to much of what we say these days, I’m afraid that, both ways, we’re often largely at a loss.
When it comes to language, think of words as your tools. Not just any screwdriver will tighten that couch leg when it wobbles, so why are we so given to such casual word choice?
Think. Choose. And then mean what you say.
Maybe then our conversations will offer more of consequence, more to be gained.
Whitewashing Who We Were Doesn't Erase Slavery
We live in the age of anti-bacterial hand-sanitizers. It’s as if we scour enough, we’ll get rid of everything offensive about us, even the bacteria.
We’re overkillers when it comes to cleaning, so it was a matter of time before such practices overtook the literary world.
We’re so politically correct now that it’s easy to forget things were ever offensive. Better to pretend we’re a happy-shiny society than to wallow in our real, albeit largely-past, flaws.
There I was, chillaxin’ on Twitter, when @PublishersWeekly tweeted that a new whitewashed (pun intended) version of Huckleberry Finn is being released.
In it, the word “nigger” will be replaced with “slave”.
Here’s the thing.
When you think about that horrifying chapter of America’s history — the era of slavery — what cultural works come to mind right off the bat?
Two. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.
Even though the Library of Congress and other organizations have listed them amongst the books that have “changed the world,” both have been banned — even recently.
Yet, if we had a time capsule that was to reflect who and what America was in the 1800s, you can bet those two books would make the cut… whether you appreciate, in modern terms, the language used or not.
It’s pretty easy to argue that, during those times, people weren’t exactly breaking their typewriters pounding out future classics that recorded the slavery horrors around them. Ignorance was the safer order of the day.
Literature was about escapism then, not realism.
I get that “nigger” is said too much (219 times) in Huckleberry Finn. But are we really trying to suggest that, back then, the norm was using niceties like calling them “coloured folk” or “black” or even “slave”?
Isn’t the whole POINT of Huckleberry Finn being a classic the fact that it captures, in a beautiful and heart-rending story, the racial hatred and poison that marred America’s early days?
Isn’t the point that, in the middle of those times, bi-racial friendship could evolve against all odds? Wasn’t the story a glimmer of light about a darker era?
Shouldn’t the presence of the “offensive” words give schoolteachers the opportunity to discuss how powerful language can be — especially when used against people, in an attempt to oppress or hurt them?
Isn’t Twain’s language merely a stepping off point for talking about how word choice is important, how words can hurt as much or more than sticks and stones, how they ring out in our head long after blows stop landing?
Can’t that discussion help us in the battle we need to fight against modern bullying and other kinds of “schoolyard oppression” that change into darker themes as we age?
Whitewashing the language used in Huck Finn by taking the racist rhetoric from the book is exactly the kind of soul-destroying move that makes most writers cringe.
Language is everything in writing. We obsess over word choice. We wake in the night just to change a noun in our text.
“Nigger” is not “slave”. Nigger is a soul-crushing, race-dividing epithet. “Slave” is what we call them now — not historically relevant in words spoken then, though it is historically accurate.
Rewriting literature because of how society evolves is how we lose the impact of that literature, the relevance of that writing, the truth of its wordy-snapshots of our times. It kills truth.
That we once lived in a world where one could haphazardly toss around crushing racial epithets like “nigger” without anyone thinking twice, that’s something we not only need to remember, it’s something we need to remain aware of — to accept as part of who we once were and who we must strive to never be again.
We’re in a better day, but not by much. Not when African-Americans are a fraction of the population butalmost a majority of the penal system. Not when Tea Party freaks are shouting down a black president because they can’t handle his skin colour.
Huckleberry Finn’s linguistic offensiveness is exactly the way to further the almost non-existent dialogue on race in America. Instead of shutting it up and putting prettier words on the page so it’s less offensive, let’s wake the hell up.
HEY, it’s SLAVERY. It IS offensive. It SHOULD offend us. It should make schoolkids’ skin CRAWL when they learn what REALLY happened. WAKE UP.
They should learn how horrible tarring-and-feathering was, that slaves would be killed by being made to drink boiling water or oil, that lynching was a common “behaviour tool”.
Slaves weren’t just treated badly, all right? Let’s get real here. Let’s be honest about how horrible it was.
Saying the word “nigger” 219 times barely even scrapes the surface.
The country’s moving past its civil rights days, but race IS an issue in America and the conversation still isn’t something suitable for dinner parties. It’s skirted and avoided.
Our race is a part of who we are — we need to get to the point in society where we’re comfortable when comedians like Russell Peters joke about all the cliches that define us race-by-race.
We do that by accepting what we did wrong in the past, and then celebrating what we share in common — as well as celebrating those things that make us different, because it’s in that difference that we find the beauty of contrast.
Let’s get past this ridiculous apologist crap about whining over words and try to accomplish real change by discussing why those words still need to be heard.
All this confusion keeps the real issue off the table. Just because America has a black president doesn’t mean society’s past this. Our refusal to discuss racism because of the presidential elephant in the room does us no favours.
Let’s not kid ourselves. Racism exists today.
Let’s show how horrible it was then; we do that through the language.
Teach the book, the original language. In so doing, teach the pain, but also teach the better way we need to behave.
Teach that talking, not ignoring, is how we heal and grow.
Teach. Don’t confuse.
Not For You: Undoing the Undoings, And Writing
Just another cliche sunset shot. Taken at Vancouver's English Bay, looking south, in December 2010.
I’m writing again.
Let’s not talk about resolutions. They’re stupid. I’m just trying to undo some of my undoings. There have been a few. Simply achieving the undoing of undoings will lead me to a pretty wonderful place this year.
With writing, my goal is very simple: Try to write every single day.
I’ve been forgetting that I’m a writer. I’m not sitting down to build word cities anymore, and I wonder why my emotional landscape seems so barren.
Writing is a verb. It’s helpful to remember it requires doing.
There are those who claim inspired writing is like trying to catch fireflies or something else as fleeting and unlikely.
Like, you see a bright spark and chase it. Sometimes you catch it, sometimes it eludes you. The point is, you give chase. You try. You look in the darkness and hope some spark finds you, that you can catch that spark and embellish it, create something illuminating and amazing.
Oh, bullshit.
The truth is, inspiration comes easily when you have work ethic. By writing every day at a certain time, it’s almost like you can turn inspiration on within five minutes of pounding the keys. I know, I’ve been there.
Only twice in my life have I resolved to write daily on matters that move me. Both times I managed to segue into the best writing of my life. The first time, it shattered six years of writers’ block. It was simply a matter of working on it, daily.
Instead of thinking a thought, write it. Simple.
I know this. I know it takes work. Scheduling, regularity, routine. These are a writer’s best friends.
In the manic ways of our modern world, it’s easy to forget how simple work ethic — a little every single day — adds up over the long term. Writing compounds like any other effort.
I’ve had a terrible time with writing in 2010. None of it went as I wanted. Much of what I did has been worthy of trash heaps.
A false start here and a false start there, sooner or later it all feels false.
Hemingway said he wrote as an exercise of truth-finding. Any writer worth their salt, he suggested, was one who sought truth and wrote truth. The truth shall set you free… and make for some pretty entertaining reading.
The kind of writing I aspire to requires exactly that. It’s easy to lie to you, but insufferable to live with lies. Through my year of failed writing and wrong-perspective-having, I feel like I’ve danced through a darkness filled half-truths and white lies — leaving stories incomplete because incompletion is better, more true, than inaccuracy. Why end a story when you’re unhappy with the conclusion?
Anyone who complains about how hard it is to find a pair of jeans to buy has never tried to find a story to write.
I’m at that point, too, in my writing journey, where I question my creative instincts. All of them.
Is that story really one with legs? Can I make it walk? Does the journey have a point? Should I bother?
Creatively, I’ve been filled with false hopes for some time. That fog is starting to lift. My clarity is returning. I’m remembering that writing must be a daily pursuit. More importantly… I’m wanting it to be a daily pursuit.
Two truths:
1) I like myself better when I’m writing well.
2) I only write well when I write often.
Pretty simple to add 2+2 on days like this.
For the first time in years, though, that daily writing will be private. All in the name of The Book That Will Be Written (TBTWBW).
It’s the new year. Ahhh, that silly marketing ploy to sell us calendars filled with puppies and bikini-wearing babes.
In theory, the year is unwritten. Unmarred upon the page. Waiting for me to give it adventure, love, humour, drama, pathos, and more. Just a naked page, yielding to whatever I desire to impart it.
I like that feeling.
2010 was a hard year for me. It started poorly and pretty much stayed there. I had a lot of moments of light-in-darkness, but I ultimately let my year get the better of me — personally, writing-wise, professionally, physically, and more.
Life happens.
I’m not a big fan of New Year festivities and think they’re largely overhyped, but this year I’m ready to flip the script on the Year That Was. And for whatever 2010 wasn’t, I’m grateful to the things it suggested could be possible. I’m grateful to experiences like speaking at Northern Voice 2010, the people I’ve met, the bucket-list items I checked off.
But those 2010 moments were few and far between.
I’m not in some “thank god it’s over” naive mindset that the date somehow implies everything has changed.
I realize my life is pretty much exactly where I left it last week. Financially, spiritually, and more. But I don’t care.
I know any change that comes this year will be self-driven. I’m aware any writing that comes from me will have to come from me, be OF me.
I get it. I’m nowhere better than I was before “2010” flipped off my calendar.
And yet.
A Christmas Candy Story, by Steff
This Christmas, people in my life are getting simple gifts. I’m making candy for most people. Fiscal Frugality is probably wise in my world — and in most worlds.
Look around, right? The economy’s fucked. I could overspend, but I’d rather use my time and efforts and put ME into my gifts than injecting concern into my life. Makes sense.
It’s probably why I’m having so much more fun this Christmas. I can afford what I’m doing. I’m having to do it from my heart, too, because I want the candy to be awesome, not just some phoned-in treat.
Candymaking is all about the temperatures, that controls texture.
Friday, I got to play Santa Steff as I took my first batch of candy around to people. Tonight, I’ll be making another 11-12 pounds of the convection, with a good chunk of it being used for charitable purposes–my small way of giving back to a valued member of Vancouver’s social media community. I figure elbow grease turns into a donation from someone else. The circle of good.
But this isn’t just any candy.
This is the kind of candy that comes with a story.
Isn’t that the BEST kind?
As a kid, my mom always made us this homemade brown sugar candy. She called it “fudge,” so we did, too. Supposedly it’s “brown sugar pralines,” but there ain’t never been a batch that had pecans in it at my house, man.
She died in 1999, and that’s when I learned that it’s not the big posthumous regrets that weigh down your soul — it’s the little shit. Like childhood recipes.
When I realised her death came and I’d never gotten the recipe for brown sugar candy from her, it broke my heart. No one in the family could find it, either. She’d kept it secret.
But then, 10 years later, a friend of mine, ZoeyJane, helped me “purge” my home. I was made to go through all the old papers, sort all my boxes.
Another friend came over and we were goofing off, and I showed him my big purge-find of the day: My 1983 Girl Guides & Brownies Cookbook.
My friend starting flipping through the pages–thwap-thwap-thwap– “CRANBERRY JELL-O MOLD? This is totally 1983! Oh, hey, here’s yours–Brown sugar pralines.”
WHATWHATWHAT? LEMMESEETHATLEMMESEETHAT.
I snatched the flimsy recipe book from him, and lo and behold, there it was. Mom’s candy.
My eyes watered and my heart pounded. There was a piece of my childhood, RIGHT THERE. It DIDN’T die with her.
I was elated. Over the damn moon. I planned to make it soon. I’d need a candy thermometer. Duly NOTED.
A couple days later, I’m walking to work. Looking down on the sidewalk in Yaletown, there’s a candy thermometer in its package–$2.49. A fissure crack made it useless trash, but I picked it up and fell deep into thought as I found a bin to toss it in.
Later that day, I bought one myself.
That Friday, I took a deep breath and set about rekindling a part of my childhood. It was time to make some candy.
Immediately after I pour my first batch into trays to cool, the phone rings. It’s my brother. He’s with my dad. They wanna pop by.
I’d lived here 10 years, then. It was the first time ever they just “popped” by.
So, they came over, happy to know the “fudge” awaited. The candy was made of fail. I didn’t hit the right temperatures. It’s not cooking, it’s alchemy–and I had much to learn. My candy that day turned into a taffy-like chewtoy one could spend hours nom-nom-nomming but never melting down.
But it took us all back to a place that spoke of Monopoly nights with candy and a fire in the hearth, pizza delivery, pajamas and goofing off.
When my folks’ marriage started truly failing, the candy stopped making appearances. It became increasingly rare. Mother always made a double batch and put half away, hording it for herself. She had false teeth. (Obviously.)
In the 16 months since I found that recipe, I’ve really made it my own. I never make it plain as Mom did. Now it’s a vehicle for great flavours. I’ve made it with bacon and whiskey–a small circuit of the American deep-South barbecue circuit speaks of it like a barbecue urban legend, thanks to a friend who bragged about my work in competitions down there. But it’s the peanut butter-vanilla one that’s really popular with friends and family.
This Christmas is a new version and is my favourite. I think Mom would have loved it: Browned butter, toasted walnuts, and Butter Ripple Schnapps. It’s toasted and carmelized goodness that’ll make you understand the value of a good dental plan.
There were a few things I could’ve made to gift this year, with much less work, but my brown sugar candy is closer to my heart than any of ’em.
Don’t ask for the recipe. The Next Generation Cameron will carry it on: Nephew knows now what’s involved in making it. One day, Nephew too will be a Candymaking Ninja. But, for now, the alchemy eludes my little grasshopper.
Mother would be pleased. She’d love knowing her candy made Christmas special in two provinces last year, since I sent it to other family too, but she’d be more thrilled to know she played a part in candy-for-kindness and other Christmas goodness this year. She liked it simple-but-generous, life.
My folks went the extra mile to make Christmas memorable when I was little. One day, I grew up and the season became shrouded in the cynicism that makes stories like A Christmas Carol resonate 170 years on.
This year, being frugal, using my time and energy to make old-fashioned candy, is the first time I’ve really felt seasonal “joy” in a good 15-plus years. There’s something about returning to the simplicity of the traditions.
Being single and childless, that’s more easily accomplished than it’d be for others, but what a fantastic choice I made. I’m so glad.
Well, then… girl’s got some candy to make. Today’s most-epic-batch-ever requires a 20″ whisk, 24-quart stockpot, and a 24×18″ bun roll sheet with 1.5″ high walls. And, you know, 90 minutes of whisking.
Pray for me.
Ho, ho, ho.
If you can’t attend the fundraiser here in Vancouver tomorrow and you’d like to do a random act of kindness to support a couple good folks financially-felled by health crises for months in the past year, here’s a great place to drop five bucks and do just that.
What I've Learned Slowly in Life & Writing
They don’t tell you that knowing who you are isn’t enough.
They don’t teach you that having a sense of identity doesn’t equal understanding how that identity fits into society.
They don’t say that loving what you’re gifted in doesn’t mean you’ll ever be able to make a living at it, or even that you’ll ever be guaranteed access to doing it.
No. They don’t.
That’s the way the reality dice roll.
Shamelessly borrowed from Ebaumsworld.com.
I remember a day in early May, 1994, sitting on a rocky shore in Oregon, as waves crested and broke below me, a notepad wobbling on my knees, wanting more than anything for the ability to break through the writing-blahs I’d been wallowing in, and wishing I knew how to do what I wanted for a living. I remember staring into the waves and thinking the only thing I ever really cared about was being able to just explore writing in my own way, and to do it for myself first, always.
I had no idea then, but that was the start of a very long, strange ride for me — within 4 months I’d be living in the Yukon, within 5 years my mother would die, within 10 years I almost died, and then came the struggle through the Weird after, much of which I’ve written about at length.
I had no idea what would loom, where I’d go, and just how goddamned far from my dreams my road would lead.
Ironically, the further from my dreams I’ve been led, the better my writing has become… and somehow, I’ve come full circle, closer to the ‘writing life’ I’ve always wanted to live. It’s like an existential whirligig, one that takes some 20 years to come ’round to its start again.
Experience is the best teacher, and this is true also of writing.
You’ll always be a shit writer until life dunks you in the tank a few times. All the Sufi mystics would tell ya we’re only as broad as what we’ve lived through, right?
I guess the gift of Aging is that we start to realize we’re shaped by our pains as well as our joys, loves as well as hates, and we’ve learned through repeated exposure that we are built for survival, not perishing.
Look at what we can endure. Look at the Chilean miners rescued this week, and those who overcame the most ridiculous of engineering feats to manage that rescue.
And, yet… Life isn’t an engineering challenge.
It isn’t something one can solve with a drafting program, some applied physics, and a ruler.
Life’s a cosmic dodgeball game — played in a big-but-small room, where more balls than you can imagine are bouncing and ricocheting wildly, with no discernible pattern, and no reason for who or what they take out in their bouncy-travels.
Knowing who you are and what you can do doesn’t ever guarantee your efforts will be made of win, it doesn’t mean life won’t hit you in that game of dodgeball, sidelining you instead of sending you sailing successfully into the next game series.
I don’t think it’s a “Work hard enough and you can get it” scenario for everything in life. Methink that’s idealistic and what Random House et al want you to believe so you keep buying self-help-guru books when The World somehow shuts the big door on you.
In life, I think luck is as much a factor as work. Some folks are the pigeon, some folks are the statue — shit or be shat upon.
For what it’s worth, I don’t feel life’s posed enough of an obstacle to keep me out of the game. Some of us don’t come into who we’re supposed to be until later in life, and I’ve always suspected my 40s would be when I mastered the whole “world domination” thing.
The mentality of “you gotta be someone by 30” is the biggest piece-of-shit fallacy in the world.
It doesn’t happen that way. The school of life doesn’t run in semesters and grades, not everyone gets a pass at 18. Life lessons come and they go, but never fear — they’ll be back. The lessons will always be back.
The great dame of acting, the fabulous Ellen Burstyn, wrote an autobiography called Lessons in Becoming Myself, published in 2006, when she was 74. She was asked if she had “become” herself, and she answered no, that even as 80 loomed, she was still constantly learning about herself, forever becoming someone new, better, and more evolved than the woman she was, even a year, month, or week ago.
I remember watching her delivering this slow, well-thought answer, and smiling. I smiled too. I could do with getting old if it meant I’d always keep improving, and wasn’t relegated to becoming a lesser version of that which I once was.
And that’s another thing they don’t tell you.
They don’t let you know that you may think you know yourself, but ya don’t know jack, Jack.
You don’t know yourself until you’ve faced demons and betrayal, loss and hopelessness. You don’t know yourself until you’ve hit bottom and gotten back up.
The trouble is: “Bottom” is relative. Every time you hit what you think is bottom, don’t worry — you’re not bottomed-out. You can always go lower.
Believe that. Know it. Respect it.
Just don’t fear it. It’s a teacher, and you’re built for survival, remember?
When you’re young, they also fail to share that life ain’t about perceived successes — it’s not about who you become at the office, or the cachet you carry with you at meet-n-greet events, or the hot babe on your arm. They don’t teach you that life ain’t about money, glam, swag, beauty, or praise.
Life’s really about being able to like what’s in your head when the lights go out at night. Like Grandma Death in Donnie Darko says, “Every living creature dies alone.”
I think, ultimately, just getting to that side of life (death) and being able to die alone, but die truly knowing who you are, what you’ve had in life, must be the greatest departing gift one can have.
They don’t talk about that. Or just how hard it is to get that place of knowing.
You can’t teach people in advance about the pain that comes from a life lived, or how much any one person can endure. No one can know endurance till they’ve had it, any of it. And some just can’t go there, be that; they’re not built Ford-tough.
But I am.
Somehow, I wish I knew that 20 years ago. I wish I knew long ago that protecting myself was just foolishness, and I’d get hurt often and deeply regardless of safety measures. I wish I was taught to just go, do it, fail, and do it again.
But I wasn’t.
Yet I’ve begun to learn it.
Like I say: Some of us don’t come into who we’re supposed to be until much later. Perhaps it means we’ll be better at who we’re supposed to be because we’ve had more practice with the bump-in-the-night of it all.
I have a feeling I’ll be finding out myself, soon.
Older, wiser… this shit ain’t so bad.
Office Life: Thar Be Meanies
In Virginia, there’s an esteemed literary magazine called The Virginia Quarterly Review.
There, an editor has committed suicide, and the Review has been shut down amid a new investigation that the suicide was as a result of workplace bullying and harassment.
I found the story fascinating on a couple levels.
Photographer unknown.
One, there’s a strange perception, I think, that these sort of things don’t happen in intellectual/cultural offices, and I think this sheds light on the reality that people can be mean fuckers whatever their aesthetic tastes.
Two, it continues the realization I’ve had since reading William Styron’s Darkness Visible years ago — that is, to be literary is to be predisposed to depression and potentially suicidal tendencies. The “Overthinky Syndrome” comes on something fierce when one is closely aligned with literary pursuits.
Three, I don’t think we really give enough weight to mental health on the job when it comes to the people around us.
A few years ago, as I was descending into the darkest depression I’ve ever had, I was working at an office where I felt put down and distrusted daily. It was a very difficult environment to work in, but I had no choice, I’d run out of employment insurance and had to take something.
Given my declining emotional state, I didn’t really trust my feelings — maybe I just felt like shit. Maybe I was misreading the things said and done around the office.
One day I was sorting through papers and found legal documents relating to a case involving one of the company’s principals and the province’s labour board. Apparently there were allegations of psychological abuse by the company’s principal, made by former employees.
I suddenly felt a little vindicated. It wasn’t just me, this person actually was kind of mean and cruel.
A year later, I was working for another employer who would mentally beat me down now and then because I wasn’t sacrificing myself for the job like she was. (I don’t own the company, woman, and I was told it was 9-5, not 55 hours a week, and I was getting paid for 40. Liars.)
I know what it’s like to have the opposite kind of bosses, too.
I’ve had a lot of employers who’ve been people who stopped me from doing negative self-talk, who told me how valued I was. I’ve had a lot of luck working for good people.
There’s a world of difference between going to that kind of job, where a bad mood is just part of life’s occasional fluctuations, versus one of the jobs where I’d be lucky to make it through a day without some mocking, blaming, or guilting kind of assault happening, where a bad mood would spiral into dread about returning the next day, and more dread about enduring five full days in a row with no escape.
One of the reasons I want to be self-employed is, the good people I was working for are in a precarious part of the film industry and job security is a thing of the past. I’m pushing 40. I could’ve handled that uncertainty in my 20s, but I can’t anymore. I can rely on myself, though.
Another is, my last experience looking for work landed me in both of the above jobs, and I do blame both experiences in part for the depression I then spiralled into.
I also credit them with making me ANGRY enough to change my life.
But some people don’t get to reach angry.
Some people get beaten down day after day, told they’re stupid, useless, and lucky to even be employed. Management puts hurdles before them they’ll never overcome, and the economy ensures more hurdles.
The hopelessness of being stuck in jobs like that, in the face of an economic climate like we have now, it makes sense it’d be driving people to suicide.
And our dearly departed editor? Well, there’s not really a growing market for literary review editors, is there? If he felt trapped, if the university was looking the other way on complaints just to avoid controversy, if daily badgering and emotional assaults were happening, if he was your typical overly-analytical literary genius, then… tragically, it does compute.
Workplace bullying is as bad as childhood bullying, if not worse.
At least when you’re a kid there are potential adult figures who might ride in and save you from bullies.
When you’re an adult, there’s a veneer of judgment that comes with admitting you’re being bullied at work. Most reactions are along the lines of “Suck it up” or “It’s just a job” or “Hey, just three days till Friday! Chin up!”
When a job becomes your jail, you try shrugging it off. One can logically think “Oh, it’s just a paycheque”, but there’s a toxicity that comes from being exposed to these people on a day-in, day-out basis.
Like a river can passively wear down even the strongest of rocky terrain, just running over the same ground day after day, so too can a person’s soul and spirit erode.
When I quit the job that had me working daily for six months just 10 feet away from the most toxic, negative, and belittling woman I’ve ever known, it took me more than a year to start finding the positivity and hope in myself again — the things I said were just nothing like the person I used to be. That negativity changed who I was.
And I’m a pretty strong chick.
That was six months, just six months of being broken down by intimidation and judgment and belittling.
What about others? How far does that daily treatment go, how much worse does it become over time? How deeply does it seep?
This kind of treatment isn’t business as usual.
It shouldn’t be overlooked.
Employees should have greater rights about how they can expect to be treated, especially if they’re performing good work and delivering results. (Some useless fuckheads who don’t care about their jobs or quality could use a little yelling at, but all within reason.)
If this was just another unhappy Wal-Mart or McDonald’s or city-sanitation type job, the story would’ve been dismissed. “I’d commit suicide if I had that job, too — har-har.”
But all this guy had to do was read and write for a living. These were literary people, they had soul and the ability to communicate well.
And yet, here we are.
Cruelty and harassment knows no boundaries. There is no class distinction. Intelligence isn’t immune to meanness.
We’re supposed to be a kinder, gentler society. Maybe now we can stop with the lip-service and get on with the reality of being better than our predecessors.
Closet Skeleton Pioneers
A friend of mine laughed at me the other day when I suggested that I was an “oversharer” on the internet.
“Hah! You? Oversharing?”
Yes, I know. Just a smidge. The thing is, I’m pretty good at toeing a line these days. I don’t tell you what I don’t want you to know. Pretty simple.
Learning how to toe that line, though, WHOO. I done fucked up on more than just a few occasions, s o much so that I jokingly referred to myself and those like me, who’ve been oversharing for years, as “Closet Skeleton Pioneers”.
By that I mean that everyone’s got skeletons in their closets — some lover they treated like shit, a job they stole office supplies from, a friend they betrayed, a speeding ticket, you name it.
EVERYONE has been a dick at one point or another. Dig deep enough and you’ll find dirt. (If not, you’re boring, live a little.)
Luckily for me, I hit the age of 21 before the internet got invented.
And my record’s been expunged. Hardy-har, right.
The point is, despite what you think you know about me, I consider myself a really ethical person and there are things I’ve done and said that I hope never see the light of day because I don’t want them taken out of context, since we all know context is EVERYTHING.
And that’s the problem. When you see a photo on the web or a snippet of a conversational exchange, context gets lost and objectivity goes right out the window with it.
We all know that’s true of many events in our lives.
Don’t we?
So who the fuck is doing all the judging?
Are you? Are employers? Is your lover?
Who’s doing the judging when my friend on Twitter reacted yesterday morning after he received an email after a husband found his wife “Facebook cheating” and sent the entire exchange out to their kids’ school’s parents mailing list? Ain’t just the hubby judging now, is it?
What were employers digging up that led Germany to introduce a new law that will make it illegal for them to do job-applicant background searches on Facebook? Probably they were digging up a lot of skeletons, right?
It goes without question: Things you say or do on Facebook, Twitter, and in other areas of the web can absolutely destroy your life.
But who is doing the judging?
There’s a reason it’s so damn hard to become a Saint in the Catholic Church, you know — perfection’s pretty fucking difficult to come by.
When I was a kid in Bible school, I was told a story about Jesus intervening in a stoning, saying to the angry crowd of sanctimonious rock-chuckers “Let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone”, or somethin’ thereabouts.
Really: In 2010, who’s without sin?
I mean, the Catholic Church outlawed SPEEDING, for crying out loud. Everything’s a sin. The Pet Shop Boys had it right.
When I look back upon my life
It’s always with a sense of shame
I’ve always been the one to blame
For everything I long to do
No matter when or where or who
Has one thing in common, tooIt’s a, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a sin
It’s a sin
Everything I’ve ever done
Everything I ever do
Every place I’ve ever been
Everywhere I’m going to
It’s a sin
Was Neil looking back at his life on the web? Woulda if he coulda then, I bet.
So, let’s just accept that everyone’s imperfect, and, instead, (like this guy here and his “degrees of evil” guide to killers), get ourselves a handy cheat-sheet of just what level of assoholic or just plain edgy social behaviour one is guilty of and how it ranks them on the Good Versus Dick scale, okay?
Such as:
- Never emails or messages you back, but pathologically lurks and knows Everything That Happens every time you talk in person. Creepy but not mean.
- Likes kinky sex and lets everyone know it.
- Thinks “cleavage” and “profile pic” are synonymous.
- Considers social media his personal dick-dipping pool and has more numbers in his contacts than the CIA does.
- Just LOVES drinking wine and doing so liberally. While telling you all about it. Every single night.
- Keeps getting caught in masturbatory lies that make them sound great, but you know through the grapevine that they’re barely making rent and are shopping at Thrift Stores, while judging others for doing the same kinda “posing”.
- Has, like the majority of people over 21, tried marijuana or something else questionable at a party at least once.
- Speaks frankly about their disgust for political figures or employers.
- Has a spouse yet endlessly flirts with others, without boundaries, and in public.
- Has a pulse.
I mean, seriously. Half the things I do on a daily basis would probably get me fired from most jobs, because I’d never keep my mouth shut about what I hate and why. My old employers got a giggle out of it, but I assure you — it’s an acquired taste.
Despite what you may think of my loudmouthed, in-your-face, drinks-too-much, full-of-innuendo online persona (and, yes, it somewhat exists offline, and without a backspace key), I’m a good person.
I’m a really, really good person.
I hold the door open for men and little old ladies. I say “please”, “thank you”, and “sorry.” I look people in the eye. I pay my taxes. I’m honest, I don’t steal. I’m a quiet neighbour, a good daughter, a great friend. I bake muffins for lovers. I pay back my debts.
So, if you want to jump to conclusions about me based on the image I portray on the web — knowing I’m a creative person with a gift for fiction — then you’re entirely entitled to do so, and I’m entirely entitled to think you’re a narrow-minded presumptive dick who’s not worthy of my time.
Or maybe I just see you as someone who needs to think outside the box a little more.
Who I am online might have hurt me in the past but it helps me now. I have something to gain from keeping this persona/point-of-view alive. There’ll always be a price I pay as a result of it, but I’m hoping that’s just the cost of doing business.
I’m not the only web-user with a persona, or with skeletons; I’m just hyper-honest about it.
As time goes on, though, all of us will have our skeletons exposed. Then, with more to compare and contrast, we’ll know who the real assholes are — unless, of course, none of it’s true.
And that’s the problem with reaching any conclusions based on the web.
How do you know it’s true? When everyone can enter information and nothing’s necessarily vetted on the web, how do you know it’s true?
Simple: You don’t.
Here’s how I operate.
I watch for how people actually are with each other, online and otherwise: How they argue, how they’ll never let up, how they want the last word, how they judge others, how they talk about others, how they scheme or gossip. Because it’s in their everyday words and behaviour that we really see who people are — special events, like parties with hijinks, are too out-of-context to really give us an inkling of who someone is.
Me, I’ve written a lot over the years, on topics about everything from drinking and drugs to kinky sex, but you’d be wrong if you thought I was particularly wild or exciting anymore.
I’m being boring nowadays. I just make it sound exciting.
And there you have the web in a nutshell, and why laws like Germany’s are long overdue — when it comes to the internet, you can’t believe everything you read. You certainly can’t dismiss it, either. But there are no litmus tests or polygraphs one can administer to online “personality” accounts to judge the veracity of their content.
It’s time people started realizing you really can’t judge any of us on the little you see of us online, and that the skeletons in our closet aren’t nearly as big or scary as you think they are, especially when brought into the light.
If you want to supplement what you know of someone by how they are online, and you can do so judiciously and with many grains of salt, then knock yourself out.
Just don’t be surprised when that spotlight hits your life, too.
In fact, some of your skeletons probably look awfully similar to ours. After all, dontcha know? It’s quid pro quo season on closet skeletons.