All posts tagged: Lifestyle

Record: There Was The Mountain Waiting

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As I get older, I find that it becomes harder and harder to keep in touch. But I’ve also discovered that the friends I have held on to, mean many more things with each passing year. Besides the weight of shared memories, experiences and events that solidify these relationships, there is also the growing multi-relational positioning that I love. After the common experience of university, friends also become partners and lovers, become competitors in the job market or colleagues, become drinking buddies and hobby sharers. The little huddle of friends I have has evolved in many different ways over the years, but our fondness for gathering together to make a ruckus remains consistent. The people who show up have slowly changed over the years, as new friends are made, old friends fall out of touch or more often, leave the city for new adventures. But the feeling of comfort, of familiarity and of rest remains – over food, over new places, over fun activities. When we are together, there are basic tenets of acceptance, mutual understanding, …

5 Lessons I Learned From Freelancing My Gap Year

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When I graduated last summer, I had no idea what the next year would have in store for me. I intentionally kept my vision relatively short – spent the summer traveling with friends and family, savouring the ending of my undergraduate life chapter. When I landed in Toronto early September, I threw myself straight into the fray of resumes, cover letters and interviews. I had made the decision pretty late in my undergraduate career that I might want to try this writing thing. Up to that point, my whole working life had consisted of building up a strong teaching trajectory. The decision to switch so late meant that I graduated from university with a resume for writing that resembled a first or second year student. But I was 22, fresh out of university and unemployed, looking to take whatever anyone would or could offer me. I ended taking the part time route, just so that I could gain the equivalent of a few years of job experiences in a shorter time frame. This past year I’ve worked …

Record: February 25th 2015

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City space is my favourite space. As much as I love the open country, star-filled skies, mountain tops and the shorelines, I always find my heart most enraptured when walking in the city. Even in its dirtiest, ugliest, and stinkiest, I find that there is so much for me to absorb and know, so much I can turn over and take apart, so many layers of time and space just haunting, just hovering. Recently I have been forced to take longer walks in the city in this deathly cold, and although I detest the cold, I do think that a cold city has its own flavor. I think a lot about Michael Ondaatje’s Toronto, and Michael Redhill’s Toronto. Then I think about Dionne Brand’s Toronto and I sometimes feel like if I looked around I might see them walk by, ghostly inhabitants of this city rising out of words on words.   Sometimes, days happen to take you to roads you haven’t walked before, neighbourhoods you’ve never seen, and you might just catch a glimpse …

OOTD: A Different Kind Of Hat

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I’ve been working a lot this year. Different kinds of jobs: short-term, longer-term, contract, one-off, productive, tedious, sketchy. For each job I’ve had to take on different mindsets, apply different skills and figure out what combination of my talent and ability will best enable me in each position. It’s a tricky way to live. I think a lot about wanting to do other things. Some of my intended projects left abandoned temporarily while I juggle the many responsibilities of working. I often tell my inner artist to be patient, that she needs to be able to sustain herself in order to have the muscle to pursue her desires. But it’s not an easy thing to hear daily. It’s even harder to say it daily. I’ve been meeting all kinds of people at work though, and as I expand I come to appreciate more and more the multiplicity of experiences that we each have, and in particular, that I have. Meeting other people makes me aware of my own life, and what it means to be …

Record: January 20th, 2015

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Lately I haven’t had as much time as I would like to do posts for this blog. As someone who works in social media, there is a constant pressure to be consistent and to generate content in order to build a strong online presence. I am supposed to have a strategy, optimize, use analytics and streamline based on traffic. I should be looking for ways to make content relevant, to make it highly engaging, to make it easily accessible and less time-consuming. Life isn’t social media though. I find myself looking in many different directions, taking on different types of challenges, and having to make decisions on a rolling basis: What shall I do? Why should I do this? How shall I continue? Can I do everything? More importantly, must I? When time becomes something you get to exert some semblance of control over, the questions take on more weight, and clarity becomes more elusive. I find that these days often fall into the same series of decisions I make, yet yielding different results each …