New Project: This Is A Story About You And Me

I'm starting a "Creative Writing" project. So far not many words have been written but we'll see what happens. I'll be interviewing basically anyone I know who consents to be interviewed, about whatever they want to talk about, or I might have something specific I want to discuss with them. Whatever inspires me is what what I'll take out of the interview, and it might turn into a prose poem, a piece of fiction, a sort of journalistic profile of a person, or anything at all. There aren't really any constraints I want to put around this. It's a challenge for me to experiment with different kinds of writing and also a challenge for me to talk to other people in a real way, more than just a 5 minute conversation while we wait for the elevator or something.

It's also incredibly interesting what you can learn about someone just by asking them simple questions that might not come up in every day conversation.

Anyways, it's called This is a Story About You & Me, put it in your RSS feed or don't, and more information is on the site if you're still curious.

How To Leave An Essay To The Very Last Minute

1. Get essay assignment ~1-2 months in advance.

2. Realize you have ~1-2 months to do it, tell yourself you'll "do it later".

3. Be reminded by professor that you have ~1-2 weeks before your paper is due.

4. Repeat step 2, replace "months" with "weeks".

5. Decide on a topic.

6. Feel accomplished.

7. Do nothing for a while, bask in accomplishment of choosing a topic.

8. Take some books out of the library ~2 days before paper is due.

9. Become addicted to a TV show, decide you are "stressed" from thinking about your paper, need to watch TV to "relax".

10. 1 day before paper is due: begin to panic

11. Start working on paper.

12. Go on tumblr.

13. Eat.

14. Have a mental breakdown for ~3 hours.

15. Lie in bed recovering from breakdown.

16. Go on tumblr.

17. Panic some more.

18. Realize you are not going to any classes the next day, start counting in terms of hours, convince yourself you can write a paper in 12 hours, no sweat, no need to sleep.

19. Write a blog post about how to not write an essay.

20. Pour yourself a drink and settle down for a loooooong night.

PS. This was me in high school, not me now. Minus the drinking part. That part is now.

ETA: I should also add that writing one sentence = feeling of accomplishment = worth 1 hour break. Repeat until done and/or dead.

ETA2: 21. Learn a new song on the guitar/develop a new hobby that will take years to master thereby ensuring you have a way to procrastinate for every next paper.

To The Jungle Through The Night In Paradise

[cut copy - take me over]

This song makes me want to dance. I'm going through a Cut Copy phase right now, which is good because I need upbeat music so I don't die during this essay-writing period.

Nobody Cared About The Giant Goldfish In My Bathtub

Last night I had a dream that a giant goldfish came out of the drain while I was in the shower in a giant 4-story home where I lived on the 2nd floor with a couple with a baby, but nobody cared about the giant goldfish because somebody related to me had just given birth to a baby and everybody (and by everybody I mean my cousin and this girl I used to work with?) was all obsessed with the baby. I was in my towel like, "you guys, a GOLDFISH. In the BATH." And they were like "BABIES BABIES BABIES BABIES".

image via autostraddle's prop 8 recap, a thing totally unrelated to my dream

What does this mean in my life. Please advise.

Then I had to stop crying and eat dinner.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

wore sweatpants today. no longer care if i run into [redacted].

Monday, November 1, 2009

Today I bought cigarettes so I could stand outside on Maisonneuve and potentially see [redacted]. Except that I bought bitchsticks and she wasn't there.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Goal of the day: don't cry. Accomplished. Got the job at American Eagle. Really, really, really tired. 2 exams left.

Saturday, November 14 2009

Went bar hopping on St. Laurent. Decided to text [redacted*]. She never answered. Met up with [redacted] at Biftek. [redacted*] was there. She ignored me. I got drunk.

++

Wednesday, October 27 2010

She said she really wants to hug me in the winter. Then we talked about other things which were nice, like sweaters and heat.

Monday, November 1 2010

tried to get some work done on my break but didn't accomplish much. Went grocery shopping at night.

Wednesday, November 10 2010

worked 6-9:30. [redacted] got mad at me for standing around and made me feel bad. But I had just zoned out and there was nobody in the store.

Sunday, November 14 2010

She asked if it was something she said but it wasn't. I didn't know what it was. I went in my bed and cried and had a breakdown but I don't know why. I just felt lonely. Then I had to stop crying and eat dinner. Also [redacted] said she bought me something for my birthday. Everyone is so nice to me and I don't know why.

Bottle Up And Explode, Over And Over

[elliot smith - bottle up and explode]

put it away, and check out for the day.

(via)

when you wait for the dawn to crawl through the screen like a burglar to take your life away*

I am a 20 year old getting my BA in Creative Writing with a minor in Political Science and yeah, I know those are two completely different things.

My therapist told me there are steps to becoming [x]. Like there are steps to becoming anything. Like if I want to be a writer then I have to do this this this this this this and this and this like everybody else and then I will be a writer. And if I want to be something else then I will have to do all the steps to become that. I said I feel like I should be doing more things right now. I said my life feels boring and like a habit. My therapist said what did I expect I am an undergrad I am doing all that I am supposed to be doing right now.

I grew up thinking there was a world of possibilities for me. I could be anything. Anything! Anything in the whole world! When I was 12 we had to present a project to our class of what we wanted to be when we grew up. I wanted to be a hockey player. I told my teacher I didn't need to learn math because I would be a hockey player and I could pay someone to be my agent and do that shit for me. I wanted to go to the olympics.

Then I learned that women cannot (yet) be professional hockey players (unless you're Hayley Wickenheiser (but you're not)); they have to pay to play and have jobs on the side. Or, really, have a job and play hockey on the side. And there are 80 trillion people in Canada who play hockey, and ~23 players on the olympic hockey team, so, yeah, you do the math. I can't.

Anyways, the moral of that little story is that I learned I can't be just anything. So in high school I decided I wanted to be a writer, which was the other thing I was good at. I liked to write fiction but I really wanted to be a poet because I loved to read and write it. Cool, but you know where this is going right. The moral of this story is that I can write poetry but I can't be T.S Eliot (toilets) and I had good ending for this sentence but I can't remember it.

Blah, blah. That's depressing, yada, yada. But I'm still doing what I like to do, which is nice. Only now, instead of being confident that YES I WILL BE A MOTHERFUCKING WRITER LIKE JK ROWLING i am terrified by the statistics and the idea that I will have to work a part-time job at American Eagle to make rent because only 5 people will read my poems and only 1 person will buy it because everything is available online for free. And I am terrified that I'm only average. That my writing is mediocre. That I am good, but just "good", and not like, Irving Layton Award Finalist good. You know? Ever felt like you were just "average"?

I was wondering, as I left my therapists office, when adults lose their sense of possibility. When is this shift from thinking there's more than one way to do things, to being convinced that everyone who doesn't walk in a straight line is lost? I feel like I am on the cusp of maybe realizing that I do need to do this this this this this this and this and this to "become" a "writer". And I'm doing it? I am totally following this nice little path that's been paved for me. Is a BA is the new high school diploma? What is life?

Part of me is trying to cling to this idealistic rebellious free-thinker hopeful defy-all-odds mover shaker dreamer achiever view of the world. Is the 'real world' a box that, once you go inside of, you can never get out of?

Katrina dropped out of college but she's one of the smartest people I know. And when she writes, she has 10 times more stories to tell than I do. See, I want to be a writer, but I don't have much to say, which might be a weird thing for me to say as I've had this blog for over 2 years now.

It all just sounds average to me. Like everyone else feels the same way as me and we are all going to write the same thing.

*bukowski wrote this

like a sad song on a rainy day

[six organs of admittance - wolves' pups]

this song is like staring out the window on a rainy day and it is one of the most beautiful things i have heard in a while.

st laurent to mont-royal

When we climbed up to the top of the mountain it was like 4am and I was pretty drunk. It was cold it was sometime in November I think. No, it must've been October because Ryan didn't hate me yet. It was just me and him and Karen and I think Ryan liked her at that time. I liked Casey but she kept getting me down. That night I had seen her outside the bar sitting on some other guy's lap and ignoring me, well screw that.Why do girls do that. Let's go to the mountain Ryan said. You'll feel better. So we went up the mountain and I was feeling pretty down and Ryan and Karen were racing each other. Karen was so fast it was like they were so free and I felt heavy 'cause I couldn't run as fast as them. But when we got to the top the air was so fresh and I didn't care about anything anymore. Except maybe I was feeling down that Ryan and Karen were making eyes at each other. We stuck ourselves in a telephone booth to keep warm and wait for the sunrise. We must've listened to Bon Iver because whenever I hear "re:stacks" I think of running up the mountain and the view and the cold air. But later that song would come to mean something else to me and that was alright. The sunrise wasn't even that good I think it was on the other side of the mountain. But after that night I didn't care about Casey anymore. We went down the mountain and I was feeling pretty good about it and I fell asleep on the bus.

That was all before Karen moved to Thailand and I met Lainey who's a good girl. I don't get drunk anymore but sometimes I miss those days when it hurt to breathe. I guess no one's hurt me like that since then so I never needed to go back. Everyone changes I learned so we just grew up like everyone else. And growing up doesn't mean not fitting in telephone boxes anymore it means not wanting to or not even being there to do it. Shouting "fuck you Casey!" into the night doesn't mean anything anymore. When we were young we used to hear our voices ring around the city, now we just hear it in our heads. We don't let people get us down like Casey got me down anymore. But sometimes I miss climbing the mountain thinking that's what love is.