Start. Stop. Start. Stop. Repeat.

In high school there was this substitute bus driver who only seemed to know how to drive with the 'pump the gas' method. Wherein he would floor the gas pedal for for 2 seconds, then let off completely, then floor it again, then let off. Same came with braking to a stop. Pump the brakes until we stopped....pump the gas until we go. It was like he was doing gym exercises with his feet alternating on the gas and brake.

As you can imagine, this start-stop-repeat motion, made the students on the bus look like waves on a shore, launching forward, and then back, forward and back, forward and back. The motion sickness was always evident and by the 10 minute mark of our 45 minute drive to school, my forehead would be forcibly pressed to the seat in front of me, cheek firmly pressed against the cool window, eyes  shut, willing the agony to end.

Luckily, this was only once in a blue moon, but those few times when I'd see the bus approaching with this man at the wheel, my stomach would instantly regret breakfast and I'd have to resist the temptation to jump into the nearest bush.

I'd long forgotten this feeling until recently, upon looking at my schedule. I've noticed my life seems to be running a pattern lately where everything will be due at once and everyone needs something from me that very minute, to absolute emptiness and exhaustion. Everything is either too much or too little and it switches on a dime. I feel like I'm either out of breath from trying to keep up, or have the wind knocked out of me when there's a moment to pause.

I feel like I'm on a bus called Life and that substitute driver is the one behind the wheel while I am a lowly commuter. The bus accelerates too fast, causing my heart to race as I'm pressed into the back of my seat by the G-force of deadlines, and then suddenly am lurching forward before I'm ready on a forced exhale. Back and forth I go trying to predict the motion of these waves and not quite getting comfortable in the rhythm.

I'm feeling sea sick, I want off this bus to one that is set to consistent cruise control.

The World is Watching

Ahhh the Olympics... a time when world nations throw their politics to the way side and cheer each other on in celebration of sport, right?

Alright, I couldn't even type that with a straight face. 

We aren't even 24 hours in to the games yet, and I know you've all started glazing over headlines about security cautions, LGBT protests, and the media superstorm regarding unfinished venues.

There seems to be 3 types of people I've noticed leading up to today's Opening Ceremony, see if you fit in any of these categories:

The Patriot: Decked out in national colours, every bit of flag related apparel, knows the entire event schedule and is a walking talking livestream of the games, inserting 'GO [INSERT COUNTRY] GO' into every conversation when applicable.
The Cynic: Is boycotting the games, protesting with a mile long list of civic issues, has lost faith in the organization as a whole and is pretty much a giant dark cloud of despair for the next two weeks.
The Doesn't-Give-A-Shit: meh I don't care  about sports really so-WHAT DO YOU MEAN MY FAVOURITE TV SHOW IS ON A 3 WEEK HIATUS.

You get the idea.

But when any one of these people interact with another, get ready for long passionate rants ('BUT YOU GOTTA SUPPORT THE ATHLETES') that all have valid points ('THE GAMES HIDE CORRUPTION IN SPECTACLE') albeit all start sounding the same after a while ('BUT IT ENDED ON A CLIFFHANGER').

It's even harder when this is all going on inside your head. The fact of the matter is that I love the Olympics but am feeling extremely uncomfortable with the politics that surround this year's games (and yes that TV show did end on a cliffhanger).

The LGBT issues have hit very close to home for me, but I can see where some are arguing that the unrest it has caused is starting conversations and bringing awareness on a global scale, and athletes are going to have the opportunity and drive to win in face of discrimination.

But the LGBT right issue is not the only thing that is political revolving around the Sochi Games. Russia has a lot of tensions with a lot of countries.  Though Russia's artistic culture that will no doubt be showcased in the Opening Ceremony is a rich and beautiful one, it doesn't mean the world's politics goes on hold for two weeks. Because the world is literally watching, these tensions give rise to risk of terrorist attacks and other such demonstrations. Many are on edge over safety concerns for the athletes, families, media, supporters, etc and are fed up of the ignoring of civil unrest to spectacle.

Obviously, Sochi is not the first place where these problems have occurred. Each venue has had its problems: Great Britain had security issues, Vancouver had last minute venue difficulties, China displaced entire cities and muted their voices, Salt Lake City was the first Post 9/11 Olympics .... the list goes on.

Sochi seems to be dealing with all of these things put in to a blending pot, and it comes at a time when people are fed up. The LGBT rights issue was the spark that lit a flame of unrest regarding social and political issues that have been plaguing not only Russia but the games for years.

The Olympics are meant to be about peaceful sport and the spirit of the athletes is where the heart of the games lies. It is a paradox where some say we must leave our politics at the door and focus solely on the sport, and where others say that politics are needed in order to participate ethically in peaceful sport. There will always be those two sides (or ever expanding sides).

Regardless, I think the thing to take away is to be conscious of what the Sochi Olympics are. We can't watch blindly and take the first observations that are handed us as the truth, but we also can't get so wrapped up in our political ventures that we forget the athletes who train their entire lives for this moment.

An example of commentary done right, has to be in today's simple Google Doodle for the games that has been making headlines for its cheeky and somewhat passive-aggressive reminder of the Olympic Charter to the political and Olympic leaders. 

I see what you did there Google...

It's going to be an interesting two weeks, and I think we can all agree...in the end we're going to want our TV shows back.

A Year in a Jar

Before the countdown to the year of 2013, I stumbled across a post on tumblr that had been circulating for an interesting project: “Start on January 1st with an empty jar. Throughout the year write the good things that happened to you on little pieces of paper. On December 31st, open the jar and read all the amazing things that happened to you that year.”

A few of you may remember... but 2013 did not start off well for me at all.  I felt depressed, exhausted, and unmotivated to the world - this after 2012 being an amazing rollercoaster of a year.

Regardless, I found a large old mason jar in my parents' cellar and dedicated it for this project. It sat on my shelf for days, weeks, completely empty (void of the one paper i had folded on New Year's Day explaining the project).

I started considering replacing it with a smaller jar, thinking that at the rate my life was going, I would barely be able to fill a small jar with a year's worth of good memories. But I let it sit there, collecting dust with only a few measly folded papers over time from hazy memories of small things I had forced myself to write down. Little things that made me smile gave merit to be written down, just so the jar itself didn't look so sad.

As the year wore on, I kept forgetting about the commitment I'd made and would go ages without updating the jar with good memories and slowly I had to start retracing my steps to days I felt good and noting them down. Just a few short sentences or phrases that would sum up a feeling.

As it turned out, by the time I dumped out the jar on January 1st of this year, I had to shake it vigorously to get all the piece of paper out. It surprised me how many little pieces had slowly accumulated over the last 365 days.

I had an odd sensation of remembering writing moments down every so often, but couldn't possibly comprehend the amount I dumped out of the large jar.

I sat on my bed opening and unfolding these little snippets of the last year, and found certain moments and phrases standing out against others.

I felt I should share a few of that jumped out at me:

These two struck me as important moments in the spring months for a turn around in my mental focus from the deep dark wintery place my mind had been living in for months. These little moments made all the difference in the world.

Free. Something I rarely feel, something that is much needed.

 Not everything was deep and meaningful... after being sick for a multitude of days, my ears popping was literally the greatest thing that could have ever happened to me at that moment.

I do believe this one is self-explanatory.

This was one of the last ones I put in the jar from one of my last lectures this semester in which my professor ended his class with: "If what you're learning isn't resonating - even if it will get you a job - if it isn't hitting you right here, in your heart or your head, then go find the thing that does." I scribbled that passage down in the margins of my notes as good school advice, but it is transferable to life advice that I have come to learn as well.

I looked at these notes of memories scattered across my bed and could see a year of transformation, adventures and growth. Finding your place and self worth is not something that happens over night, like this jar of memories, it build slowly and subconsciously before it is over flowing, ready for you to accept it.

Here's to another year and another empty jar.

Embrace Yourself

2013 has been a tumultuous year to say the least.

I could turn this into a reflective piece on the challenges and triumphs that have occured in the last 365 days or so, but I feel any Google search of 'year in review' could tell you pretty much all you need to know.
I could reflect on my own year through a series of anecdotes that only myself and a few others may under stand the references, I have a journal for that.

Instead, I'd like to share something I've been trying to learn this year, whether I knew it consciously or not: To embrace myself.

I can proudly say that I have accepted myself, albeit fairly recently as well, but that I have yet to truly come to terms with embracing myself. Of enjoying who I am as a human being in a world of other human beings - each with different pressures from the exterior and interior.

The problem, is that we are always changing. I'm not the same person I was yesterday, a week ago, 6 months ago, 2 years ago. When you learn something about yourself, its often your past self, as a reflection. You have moved on from being that person and look back with a detached perspective. It is much harder to look at yourself in the present and look objectively at who you are right now, in this very moment.

We are often easy to criticize ourselves. I don't exercise enough, I should eat better, I should sleep more, try harder, be more social, read more, watch less TV, get that tattoo I've been meaning to for years. And on and on it goes. We can promise ourselves the future: when I get my own place, then I'll get a dog; after school is done I will look for a relationship; once I have more money I will get that goddamn tattoo.

Around this time of year is when people start to panic about new year's resolutions. These things we've put off, these things we want to change about ourselves, NOW is the time to do it. The reset of a calendar means the reset of our lives.

But I say phooey to it all. I know any resolution I make won't last 3 months until that guilt and self-criticism returns. I know some can use that as motivation, and cheers to those of you that can do that, but my mind takes that feeling and makes it exponential with every passing day until I never want to leave my room again. Why should I make myself feel that way?

I have learned my limits, I have accepted them. And while I'm still not totally there yet, I'm learning to embrace them as part of who I am.

I am learning to embrace the fact that I am an anxiety-ridden goofball who loves nerdy shows and media, an open minded internet-loving person who legitimately enjoys learning, a queer introvert who sings passionately off-key and loves the idea of a tattoo but sometimes gets freaked out by the commitment.

I am learning to embrace this person, because she may not be the same tomorrow.

For all we know, she may go out and get a tattoo.

In the mean time, Happy New Year.

"Be yourself - not your idea of what you think somebody's else's idea of yourself should be" - Henry David Thoreau

Also take a look at BuzzFeeds "New Year's Resolutions that are actually realistic" for a good laugh and a few good pointers.

Dare Together

I'm not going to lie, this is a bit of a cop out of a post.

I haven't posted anything on here in months, and that's not due to lack of thoughts! But lack of time and motivation. But as the school semester comes to a close, maybe I'll get back to a few of those drafts I started...

In the mean time, I'm posting the product of a final project for one of my media classes - for two reasons:
1. As a back up link if my prof can't open the file via e-mail (because we all know it will be the one time a server crashes or the file accidentally gets deleted or the internet goes up in smoke... we've all been there)
2. For my own reference and hopefully as a useful gateway for others.

I was able to research the Toronto based organization The Pink Triangle Press. I created an info-graph as a way of presenting my research.

Click here to see full size image

It is basically Canada's leading gay & lesbian media organization, and a great resource for LGBT history, culture, and community. It offers everything from an online newspaper, to LGBT friendly travel and business guides, television shows and even a dating site. Their vision and tag is Dare Together, and after reading up on their controversial history, one can respect their perseverance to become what they are today.

Now I'm not saying all this as a suck-up if my prof does stumble upon this.... those of you who know me, know that this is right up my alley.

Actually, while digging through a series of links upon links upon links during this project, I stumbled across the site for the Canadian Gay & Lesbian Archives (founded by the Pink Triangle Press...so it wasn't totally off topic). While looking at their site I got more and more excited about what it had to offer. Partly because it is so similar to the art organization I work for currently. I found so much of what I already do mirrored back at me, but at the same time eager to learn more. While the structure is similar, the content is different.

Who knows whether the cards will fall for myself to grab an opportunity to work with this organization but it was extremely refreshing to see that what I'm doing is leading me in the right direction.

The Art of Photography

Why did the chicken cross the road?

What came first, the chicken or the egg?

What is art?

These are questions that have plagued our existence for ages. We've all been posed with answers that are never as simple as they may initially seem. Despite the high percentage of philosophical focus directed on the existence of chickens here, I'd like to focus on the last of these three inquiries for a moment.

What is art?

A question asked on the first day of every Arts 101 class that will spark debate no matter what. Everyone's first answer: A painting.
And then someone else will pipe up: Well, sculpture is art.
And someone else: What about music? dance? theatre? design? writing?
Before you know it there is a list of mediums running from animation to film noir, from jazz music to installation, from poetry slams to modern dance. The point is to understand that art can be almost anything creative, in the eye of the beholder.

Regardless, we all find our niches and create our own structured definitions for what art is. We find our style and our medium, forgetting about the rest. When that definition is challenged, however, it can be hard to accept what another defines as art.

I work at an art gallery and have heard many an interpretation of what art is or should be over the years, from many people. Sometimes I agree, sometimes I don't. Often I'm just intrigued by how others see the world.

Today though, a patron's comment struck me harder than any in recent memory. After viewing our current exhibit that features many mediums of visual art, she went on to say how disappointed she was to see so much photography in a show themed around landscapes. Triggered from the fact that a photograph won an esteemed award from the jurors, she declared how she would never enter a show where such a thing could happen.

"My 30 - 40 hours of painting versus a snapshot?" she told me, "Anyone can take picture, and then with all that technology, anyone can make it look good. "

True, anyone can pick up a camera, anyone can engage the shutter. 

But, anyone can pick up a paintbrush, anyone can make a brushstroke.

This isn't to say I don't see where her thought process is coming from. When an oil painting hangs on a wall, you can see the hours of work that went into it. In the layers upon layers of paint, in the detail and the complexity of movements from a brush. There are imperfections and - as Bob Ross would say - happy little mistakes. It is full of emotion and meaning.

A photograph... well it's just a moment in time, right? A frozen tidbit of a real world. How much work could go into that?

A camera is merely a tool, like paint or a brush. And it is the responsibility of the photographer to  create something with it. Hours of planning, preparation and set up can go into a shot. A photographer thinks like a painter - finding composition, colour, light balance, meaning.

Both a painter and a photographer must use their tools to create the image. Where a painter sketches a drawing, a photographer sets up a shot. A painter chooses their palate, a photographer uses filters. Where a painter creates a wash, a photographer chooses an aperture.

A painter can spend a meticulous amount of time on the detail of a piece or can abstractly throw paint at a canvas to demonstrate their vision. A photographer can spend hours setting up a shot, or capture a fleeting moment. Both require skill, confidence, and technique.

But is it art?

You can't photograph fantasy or imagination. The camera can only see what is actually there.
It requires someone with a vision to do the impossible. Art is about emotion. A photographer must figure out how to augment reality and stir up emotion from an audience.

It is the creative process that people cannot always see in the end product of a photograph. A two dimensional, flat image as an end to a journey of vision, creativity and technique. An image left with the task of connecting with its audience emotionally, reaching deep inside to spark the child-like feeling of wonder and curiousity.

If that isn't art, what is?

Maybe the chicken knows.


"You don't take a photograph, you make it." - Ansel Adams

The Drive for Potential

You know when you're biking or running or even sitting in your house playing a video game and you get that hit of an adrenaline rush where suddenly you're unstoppable. You pedal faster, run quicker, pound the controller until your thumb cramps (hey, it happens) because you know you can do this and you feel electric.

It's a great feeling. But it's one that we are often rarely able to associate with our day to day work or school. The monotonous ins and outs of work can rarely give you that rush. It's not like you're sitting filing paperwork going THIS IS THE GREATEST JOB EVER.

I LOVE TAX RETURNS!!!!!!

Alternately, if you do feel like that, then please inform me as to how I can get that job. But for the rest of us, it's easy to get bogged down by the mundane and lose sight of why we are doing what we are doing. Every now and then we need a boost to get that adrenaline rush going again.

Today I got that boost.

I met with a good friend and previous classmate for breakfast and we got talking about careers and changes and this very topic of feeling stuck in our ambitions. I couldn't help but laugh at how similar our lives are mirroring each other. Feeling stuck in a job, having an epiphany and then having that spark gather momentum into some sort of action.

I can distinctly remember two epiphany moments in my life.

First, when I was twelve, standing at the end of my driveway at 8:00am waiting for the bus, staring at the gravel beneath my feet and wondering what courses to take when I finally hit high school. I remember asking myself "Why am I here? What is my purpose in this life? There has to be a reason that I am standing here and not somebody else." I came to the realization in that moment that my purpose and my passion would be "To help, to make a difference, and to matter".

In my twelve year old brain this meant only one thing: well then I must go into healthcare.

I like science. I like animals. Guys, I'm gonna be a vet.

Looking back at my naive self who was having a philosophical existential crisis at twelve, I cringe a little that I felt that that was the only way to fulfill those things. Because, of course not. I've grown up in a family that is largely involved in the arts and I should know better that the arts can make a difference.
But at the time, this epiphany sent me on a surge forward into a focused drive at succeeding this dream.

Fast forward almost 10 years and I had achieved my goal in some way, and was not feeling that fulfillment that I thought it would. I had lost my drive, my ambition, everything I had planned for had fallen in on itself.

This is when my second epiphany greeted itself to me. This time while sitting at folk festival and flipping through a program. I've told this story to friends of mine before (and probably before on this blog), but it keeps popping up because it was such a moment for me.  I stumbled across an ad for a Media Studies for Social Change university program and my brain just sort of short-circuited into one word: yes.

I knew I was being sucked in by every advertising rule in the book but I didn't care because there was a spark. A rush of potential. This was something I knew I could do, something that I wanted and something that would still stay true "to help, to make a difference, to matter".

My friend experienced a very similar epiphany moment to the latter recently and we spoke for hours about these experiences. We talked animatedly, grinning constantly because we were hitting that adrenaline rush moment - but about life. When doors fly open with potential and you just want to surge forward with unstoppable force of endless possibilities.

I received second-hand rush from her spark. Just that feeling of I'M EXCITED THAT YOU ARE EXCITED WHICH MAKES US BOTH MORE EXCITED.

In true Chandler Bing fashion

I have been reminded today about why I am doing what I'm doing, and that I have found my drive for potential.


"I sat down and tried to rest. I could not; though I had been on foot all day, I could not now repose an instant; I was too much excited. A phase of my life was closing tonight, a new one opening tomorrow: impossible to slumber in the interval; I must watch feverishly while the change was being accomplished." - Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

Images:
I Love Colouring Kid (source)
Hyperbole & a Half (source)
Friends gif (source)

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A/N: I am aware I have been completely MIA on here in the last few months. Don't worry, I have many thoughts in the works just nothing else quite ready yet. Check back soon!