The slow creep of corporations; Day 15 of Writing 101

You know the most important thing to do if you want to be a writer? Practice. And yet, you get home from a long day at work and you know the last thing you want to do is sit down and write. Me too. Until I signed up for Writing 101 – WordPress will sent a prompt every weekday for the month of April.

Day 15: “Think about an event you’ve attended and loved. Your hometown’s annual fair. That life-changing music festival. A conference that shifted your worldview. Imagine you’re told it will be cancelled forever or taken over by an evil corporate force. How does that make you feel?”

 When this prompt was emailed out, I feel like the people behind Writing 101 wanted a fiction, wanted the passion imagined, but the reality is, all of our events, all the time are being taken over by an evil corporate force.

Okay, maybe not evil, and maybe it’s not a hostile takeover, but are you telling me that you don’t notice the slow creep of corporations at your favourite events.

When I was in high school, my mom and I used to go to university basketball games. That was one of my favourite activities and had a huge impact on me as a young, female athlete. When I went, it was all about the game and the players. Lately I attended a local game, and it was all about a fast food place giving a sandwich to the person is row P, seat 34. The first point was brought to you by the automotive repair place around the corner. No it wasn’t, it was brought to you by that 20-year-old who has put hours of work into getting to be on the team and scoring that point.

Music festivals spend a major part of the introduction of each act thanking the sponsors, everyone from that international mining corporation to the airlines that flew the musicians there at a reduced rate.

The question is – how does this make you feel? The answer, it makes me feel tired.

I am tired of sharing the things I love with multinational corporations whose activities I often don’t agree with. I am tired of constantly feeling like I am the target of advertising, that I can’t go somewhere without being told what to year, eat, drink and where to buy it. I am tired that the content of events, education and activities change because of the influence of these corporations.

The most tiring part though is realizing that there isn’t much I can do about it on my own; that many of these events can no longer happen without the support of said evil corporate force. So I pose a new question.

Once you establish how you feel about the evil corporate force talking over your event, what do you want to do about it?

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Panic, the art of finding; Day 13 of Writing 101

You know the most important thing to do if you want to be a writer? Practice. And yet, you get home from a long day at work and you know the last thing you want to do is sit down and write. Me too. Until I signed up for Writing 101 – WordPress will sent a prompt every weekday for the month of April.

Day 13: “Write a post about finding something.”

It would be wrong of me to write of finding only one thing.

I am that seemingly oh-so-fortunate person who is constantly finding thing. Of course in large part that is because I am constantly losing things. My mom always said I would misplace my head if it wasn’t firmly attached.

My cell phone goes on top of a desk at work during a conversation; I walk away, my phone remains. Panic. The keys get tossed into the wrong part of my purse; I need to open a door. Panic. My glasses are a similar colour to most of the wood surfaces in my house, I didn’t put them in the exact place that I always do (always might be stretch here). Panic.

The good news is, if I spend any time thinking about the previous few minutes, I manage to track down my belongings quickly. The bad news, the thinking always comes after the panic.

My mantra is: Stop. Think about where you left it. Check purse. Then panic.

I’m still working on it. Speaking of which, where is my cell phone? Uh oh. Panic?

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A whole lot of pink; Day 11 of Writing 101

You know the most important thing to do if you want to be a writer? Practice. And yet, you get home from a long day at work and you know the last thing you want to do is sit down and write. Me too. Until I signed up for Writing 101 – WordPress will sent a prompt every weekday for the month of April.

Day 11: “Where did you live when you were 12 years old?”

When I was 12, I was a people pleaser, more aptly I was a parent pleaser. I wanted my parents to feel good about the decision they helped me make (read: made for me), so I dutifully agreed, to four different sports, music lessons and dance classes. You name it. I did it. And even today, I remain so grateful for all the opportunities.

However, I also agreed to lace, and pink and hearts and flowers. When I was a kid I ran with the boys. My closest playmate was my brother; all the kids in the neighbourhood were boys. They ran around, I ran around, they climbed fences, I climbed fences – I’m sure you get the picture.

The year I turned 12, my parents decided it was time for an adult room and I would get to help choose what it would look like. I was ecstatic. I was already picturing bright purple or red walls, dark brown or black furniture, photographs and posters.

My mom had a slightly different idea in mind. She saw her only daughter as needing something more grown up, she saw me appreciating the light pink wall paper, with the lace hearts and ribbons on it when I was older. Being the parent pleaser that I was, and I mean, hey, they were adults, they probably knew way more about being older than I was, I went along with it.

My room was beautifully decorated. Pale pink walls, perfectly level wall paper and borders. My name was hung on the wall in stuffed pink letters. The desk was pink, the bookshelf pink, the headboard pink, and the dresser pink. My bedspread was a soft purple, but when you go closer you realized it was not purple, by tiny purple and pink flowers so closely together that it gave the illusion of a solid colour. Everything else was white and lace.

It remains that way today. I am one of those kids who is lucky enough to still have her childhood bedroom when she goes home for a visit. Honestly, I still think the room is beautiful today (company who visits my parents comment too), but I am still waiting for the day that I find I really love the pink, lace, hearts and flowers. Maybe I’m just not old enough yet.

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Opposites attract; Day 7 of Writing 101

You know the most important thing to do if you want to be a writer? Practice. And yet, you get home from a long day at work and you know the last thing you want to do is sit down and write. Me too. Until I signed up for Writing 101 – WordPress will sent a prompt every weekday for the month of April.

Day Seven: “Write a post based on the contrast between two things — whether people, objects, emotions, places, or something else.”

She is cold, but he is hot (seriously, her toes are constantly ice and it’s like he has a built in furnace)

She is left, he is right (there have been arguments over the environment, world politics, etc.)

She forces herself to eat healthy; he likes cheese melted on carb followed by dessert (she wishes she could eat that way)

She is likes 80s rock, he likes pop from the 2000s (at least they can stand each other’s music)

She is outgoing, but he is shy (so sometimes she finds herself talking for him)

She bounds out of bed at 6 a.m. ready to take on the world; he needs a few coffees (and would rather worth to midnight, long after she is asleep).

BUT

They both run.

They both believe they can help to make the world a better place.

They both love to travel.

They both love language, arts and culture.

Birds of a feather flock together and opposites attract.

Either way you look at it, it’s still love.

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She is human too; Day 6 of Writing 101

You know the most important thing to do if you want to be a writer? Practice. And yet, you get home from a long day at work and you know the last thing you want to do is sit down and write. Me too. Until I signed up for Writing 101 – WordPress will sent a prompt every weekday for the month of April.

Day Six: “Who’s the most interesting person (or people) you’ve met this year?”

I hate girl dates. You know when you have to meet someone who you’ve only seen in photos. In photos my boyfriend’s best-friend’s girlfriend always looks amazing. Not a hair out of place, smiling, well-dressed, skinny.

Basically she is everything I think I want to be, and now we get to go on a double date. I think I was less nervous the first couple of times I met my boyfriend.

But, I am an adult, I will suck it up and we will hang out. And it’s a good think I did. She is great – vibrant red hair and blue eyes that match her outgoing personality.

She is talkative, like me, often speaking up and filling the void left by are sometimes-all-too-shy boyfriends. And at first glance I find her incredibly confident, but like most things there is more that meets the eye.

I realize some of her stories are less because they are a defining moment, and not to make people laugh or share some insight, but rather to cover up a vulnerability. She wants us to like her, she is as nervous as I was. As time has passed, my nervousness has disappeared, but her vulnerability hasn’t gone away. It’s interesting how we can believe something of others (in my case believing appearance means everything) and yet forget how human we all are.

[Not my best post by a long shot, but it’s late and I am tired. Apologies]

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A taste, a glimpse; Day 2 of Writing 101

You know the most important thing to do if you want to be a writer? Practice. And yet, you get home from a long day at work and you know the last thing you want to do is sit down and write. Me too. Until I signed up for Writing 101 – WordPress will sent a prompt every weekday for the next month.

Day Two: “Today, choose a place to which you’d like to be transported if you could — and tell us the back story. How does this specific location affect you? Is it somewhere you’ve been, luring you with the power of nostalgia, or a place you’re aching to explore for the first time?”

When you miss somewhere enough, you start to feel pieces of it in the other places you go. After being out of Africa for two years, I started to feel parts of the continent everywhere I went; in the smiles of kids living on remote aboriginal communities dotted across North America and in the red sands of the Northern Territory in Australia.

Unfortunately, as with most addictions, a small sample does nothing to quell the urge, but rather deepens it and increasing the sense of longing.

So like a smoker who is determined to kick the habit, I push a continent from my mind. I don’t look at the photos, I avoid my journals and I turn off the radio when a song comes on that takes me back. But sometimes, something slips through and I am taken back not just to a place, but a time.

At noon the sun was always oppressively hot, even when it has rained it always seems that the sun was shining at noon. In fact if it has rained, it is not really a help, because instead of a cooling effect it just turns the world steamy. But unlike those ones that you slip into after a day of skiing to relax tired bodies, this sauna is inescapable.

And when it rains the red dust, which clings to the sides of the roads, paints the backs of the white and blue taxi buses, and fills the air, turns into a sticky, red mud. I could never make it through without getting dirty, but the locals, the Ugandans that make Kampala their home have no problem. They show up to everything from church and offices to a night out, clean pressed, despite the best effort of their environment.

Wandering down the street, carefully picking my way between the cars jammed up so tightly at intersections that you often have to go back and follow another route simply to cross the street, I loved the rhythmic clap-clapping sound.

The first time I heard it, it was maddening, it wasn’t music, but the tempo upbeat enough that it couldn’t be workers or equipment. Finally I had to detour from my route to find the source. A tall man wearing a stripped soccer jersey and poorly fitting black track pants was standing at the edge of a bright orange tarp. He was set up on the edge of the street, not quite in traffic, but not quite blocking the masses of people streaming past him on the sidewalks. The centre of the tarp was piled high with shoes; fake-leather men’s business shoes, athletic sandals, and rubber flip flops (known there as slippers). He had a pair of the latter and was slapping them together – slap-slap, pause, slap-slap – in an effort to catch people’s attention and bring them closer to inspect his product and haggle over a price.

That scene plays over and over, and in many variations. So quickly what at the beginning seemed as an assault to the senses, the heat, the dust, the smell, the colour, becomes the normal. My real world faded away and became strange, but eventually I had to return home (or at least my definition of it at the time). And now I am stuck, like the shunned addict, getting small tastes of what I desire, where I can. It’s all while I wait for the opportunity to return again.

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Vegas baby

Have you been? Go.

I thought I would hate Las Vegas, but I wanted to have a warm holiday that wasn’t going to break the bank (I’m not a gambler so no big deal). I figured the glitz, the glam and the quality of people I expected to find would make me hate the place.

Now there were bits that I found seedy, and parts that are sad, and overall it bothers me that there is so much wealth in one place, but if you set that all aside, just for a minute, there is something incredible about the level of detail to all the grandness. My favorite part, was walking through all the hotels.

Also, Vegas marked the completion another of my 101 in 1001 goals – visiting five new cities.

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It’s the simple things

People always say that – it’s the simple things in life that make you happy. To which my external response is to smile, and my internal response is to flip them the bird. Seriously, sure little things can make you happy provided you have the time and situation in which to appreciate them and to create that space you need to have a lot of big things sorted out.

My counselor is trying to work with me to get past that mind set. So to that end – a list of the little things that actually truly do make me happy and a plan to make space to appreciate them:

1. Good radio/podcasts
2. Movies for escapism – simply comedy/action/romcom
3. Documentaries
4. Reading – interesting articles, a good book
5. London Fogs (skim milk, vanilla syrup and tea)
6. Music that is upbeat (everything from Bob Marley to Brittany Spears)
7. A good run
8. Engaging conversation
9. Glass of wine or a quality gin and tonic
10. Travel
11. Trains – and train travel
12. Sudoku puzzles
13. Art
14. Writing – news, fiction, anything
15. Photography – taking pictures and looking at good ones
16. Good food – home-cooked, ethnic, comfort

 

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101 in 1001 update

I am 50 per cent of the day there. Not so much with completing all of my 101 tasks, but rather I have only 499 days left. This is significant to me for two reasons.

1. There is a good chance I will finish my list (or at least 90 per cent plus of it). Even though I am (according to the project day zero website 27 per cent finished), I have a lot of things underway. Things that require me to take a moment and focus on myself, which to be honest can be rather difficult at times.
2. That means I have less than 500 days left at my job. I started the 101 in 1001 to coincide with completion of a work contract, one that I was fairly loathe to sign. The end of this marks the beginning of something new for me. (Something, which honestly I am still trying to figure out).

One of the things I have completed recently – that was on the list – was a Myers-Briggs Test. I really struggled with it though. I don’t clearly fit into any of the four letter areas perfectly – there is a lot of even spits for me. So the other day I was introduced to the Enneagram. This is an amazing tool; there are nine categories and I clearly fit into two, which overlap. I believe this will help me find the place in the world that I fit! I am starting to do more ready and more dreaming about the future.

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Proud owner of an iPhone

I finally did it. I took the plunge, took a deep breath, handed over my Blackberry and was presented with a shiny, new iPhone 5s, which I promptly put in a case, because I am a klutz and I want to avoid the smashed screen I’ve seen so many people with.

If you are asking what a Blackberry is … don’t worry about it, it’s a Canadian thing and if you asked anyone I worked with, it belonged in an antiquity museum alongside the rotary dial phone.

The biggest learning curve for me has been texting and writing emails without a key pad. I have to use the screen. I might as well be using my elbows to try and hit the buttons I miss type so often. It’s frustrating – I type die instead of for … which is not good when I’m saying I’ll do something for you.

But, I have also been introduced to the world of apps and I am like a child with a video game. I cannot keep my eyes off the screen. I have an app that tells me how far I’ve walked, one that I record everything I eat, one that lets me create my own music, another that plays sounds of rain to help me get to sleep. If I’m curious about how I’ve slept, I have an app for that. The upcoming conference I’m attending has an app.

I. Am. So. Excited.

And being able to record what I’ve eaten and how much I should eat with a few simple pushes of a button, or scan of a barcode has helped me lose some weight already. And yes, today is Day 6 of the ab challenge!

 

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