you move me 11:33

I didn't end up going to Alberta for the wedding after all. Which, in a way, is too bad because I rarely get to see that side of the family and I love rural Alberta. Well, love is a strong word. I heart rural Alberta.

It all worked out though because now I have a $530 Westjet credit and I was able to move all my stuff out of the old apartment and into the new place, as well as get all my many books and shelves from my parents' house and set most of it up over the last couple of days.

It was a good weekend, all in all. The neighbour behind our house (I'm renting with two other "dudes") is a Bonzai Master and has a garden of miniature trees in his back yard on little wooden tables. He's about 80 years old and moves with the measured purpose that my generation lacks.

Yesterday morning, as I was washing the dishes, a hawk (species yet to be determined - can't find my field guide to Ontario birds) sat on the fence bordering our yard with the Bonzai Master's. Great way to start the day.

I sleep well in the new place, though the mornings are cold and I don't generate the same kind of body heat I once did. Time to get the metabolism back up, which means morning runs are in my future, which in turn means cutting out some bad habits and starting some good ones.

I started smoking again. That's my confession to you. I intend to quit very soon. In fact, I've already thrown away a half a pack, but when I'm feeling self-flagellatory I mosey over to the store and blow ten bucks on the worst nicotine solution known to man: Belmont Milds. I left the pack on the porch of the house, so if you're in the neighbourhood (and you're not my roommate) please steal them and destroy them. It would really make my Monday.

god bless this mess 14:57

Life's messy. Man, is it ever.

I recently had the notion that messes have the potential to be incredibly productive. This seems counter-intuitive though, doesn't it? I often feel like I can't get anything done if there's an overload of clutter or too much noise in the signal. I don't like mess; but I think I need it. I think maybe you do too.

The thing about a mess is that there are hundreds of thousands of things that are just dying to help you clean it up. I suppose it's not the actual mess that is the productive space, but it allows for an unstructured and creative attempt to put things into some kind of order. Sometimes disarray is its own kind of order, and that's where the unexpected often comes from. You never get anything unexpected from a totally lossless system - there's just no room for improvisation.

But then again, on a macro level, the planet is a lossless system... right? But I think that's because there are so many organisms out there who are really good at cleaning up the messes everything else leaves behind.

What does this have to with the big guy in the sky? Well, I'm not sure. I have a funny relationship with Him, it's true, but how does a deity deal with waste? What day is garbage collection in Paradise? It's Tuesday at my place, but sometimes I forget to take it out and then I get black ants parading through the kitchen.

So, if its a matter of the what the great creator does with his compost, I think I know: He dumps it on the floor and lets the ants have a party.

the candle problem 17:04

Below is another TED talk. This one's about creativity, incentivizing, and why the standard business model is such a poor motivator for innovation.

This is stuff we all knew (hopefully) on an intuitive level, but Dan Pink gives us the goods from a series of scientific studies that suggest reward is bad for the right side of your brain.

Because I work for a creative communication design company, this video is particularly of interest. We're branching into marketing--a field which is becoming increasingly (almost exclusively) data-driven by a measurement system called "analytics"--which is a great way to stifle creativity. First of all, data-driven metrics are no help if you want to try anything new. There's no data set for something that doesn't exist yet. Will marketing techniques threaten to poach the Pink Elephant Group?

But I suppose that's the problem that's facing the creative mind in general, isn't it?

#foolserrand 02:11

I'd like to take a moment to commend the fool.

No one in history was as influential. No one saw as much. No one had the guts. No one was so insightful.

The Fool, the clown, the harlequin (my fave): s/he's likley your favourite too (so much better than Lear). S/he entertains at parties, she lightens the mood, she brings the house down. And who doesn't want the house down?

My advice: heed the Fool. Alas, poor Urich, I knew him well Horatio. Urich was the only one who ever gave Hamlet, the ill-fated Prince of Denmark (if you don't know, I'm not telling you) a modicum of joy. And joy, boys and girls, is the product of play. And probably the best thing we have to fight the afflictions of depression, anxiety, sadness, and lonliness.

We all need play. I need it, you need it, Barack needs it. Play is where creativity happens. Play is the work of childhood, says Freud; and it's true. Without play, we're nothing. Without play we're just cogs in someone else's machine. Without play, I'm convinced life isn't worth living.

So play. Every day. Use your imagination. Get outside your box. Acknowlege that you never grew up and have fun doing something imaginative and without the constraints and containers that "the real world" forces upon you.

There are lots of ways to play. I'd LOVE to hear some suggestions, and maybe join you because I could use some of that action, too.

roger wilco 08:38

My absolute favourite band right now - and they have been for a while, and I don't see that changing - is Wilco. My favourite musician is Jerry, with whom I've been playing music since high school, also likes Wilco, but I'd wager not as much as me.

The thing is, though, they're really sad. And of course, when there's something awful going on in your life (your dog dies, you get sick, your best friend tells you they never liked you and you're ugly, etc.) the music to which you listen has a profound effect on your mood. Some might say that this is cathartic, but they're probably wrong.

Now, this does not mean I will stop listening to Wilco to improve my mood. Rather, I will listen the sh*t out of Wilco until it stops being sad. I call it "the Sad Test". If you can endure something heartwrenchingly tragic with a smile on your face, then you've passed. Congratulations: you're a monster.

un/packing 10:29

We're getting rather close to the week during which student populations and often the recently unencumbered pack up and relocate for the next 8 to 12 months.

Though I managed to largely avoid this bad habit during my academic misadventures, I am no stranger to the ordeal of moving house; and this year I'm doing it for the second time. You see, I've been "summering" on William Street (perhaps the worst place to do such a thing given the perpetual construction at William and Park) and at the end of month will be shifting a few blocks over to Allen. It's not a big move, but it is significant.

Life does some things that many of us would probably rather avoid. I'm no exception. I wish I weren't moving; and not just because I'm lazy. Nor is it that the new place is trading down, or that I'm particularly attached the current dwelling. The (dis)organizing, the cheque-writing, the losing-of-things, the breaking-of-things, the changing of rhythms, setting up hydro/internet/water/gas accounts, changes of address (yeah right), the ushering in of new eras... all these things bear far too much symbolic significance for me to handle very well.

I think one of the symptoms of the quarter life crisis is an apathy towards upheaval. But that malaise is a symptom of our generations' over-exposure to events which dramatically alter the roles in which we percieve ourselves and those of the people in our lives. Marriages, divorces, deaths, births, construction, relocations, career changes, rejections, broken refrigerators... all of these things should bear some symbolic significance but are far too common and omni-present in our culture to hold the kind of meaning that would help us adjust to life afterward. In anthro-speak: we are perpetual initiands and forever hold an Other within us, never truly completing the rites of passage that we aren't even aware we participate in because, well, that's just life.

Instead it seems as though most of us simply carry on as though either a) nothing really changed, or b) the change doesn't really matter.

Well, I'll tell you: change matters. It matters to individuals and it matters to whole groups. The rate of change, though, has accelerated to the point where we're inundated with it and coping properly requires so much energy and attention that many of us exist in a state of constant anxiety.

So here's what I'm going to do. When I get back from a wedding in Grand Prairie (an event which makes moving that weekend extremely impossible) and I'm unpacking the material possessions that represent my culture of one I intend to just slow down and do it with the kind of attention that I need to give it in order to internalise my new digs. Wish me luck. Or bring me some bread and salt.

Can.'t lit. 14:07

Below is a link I stole from the Walrus Magazine's twitter feed. It's a fabulous blog entry by Emmet Matheson that reads like an obit for publishing in Canada.

It's a prescient piece as Cassie and I try to breathe new life into Will Magazine (which I can't even attach a link to for shame because securing ads to fund the print costs to get the content out there is like climbing the mountain to get the oxygen tanks that some douchbag left halfway up there).

For a country with such an amazing literary tradition, we sure are a bunch of illiterate textual consumers. Hard to call anyone a "reader" if all they read are the snippets and slugs attached to photos on the internet.

Have a read and judge for yourself:

A Bulldozer With A Wrecking Ball Attached: Purdy in Pink

Dear Monday: go eff yourself 13:07

I left a double-shot of espresso on the counter at home this morning. Had no bread. Forgot to put on a belt. I had also slept about 90 minutes longer than I wanted to - intended to go for a run before it got so bloody hot.

Now the office fan blows dry air into my eye-sockets every 9 seconds and I brought couscous and vegetables for lunch, which I am not looking forward to.

In short, I'm grumpy. Not so cynical today, just mopey because Monday's - this Monday - is a reminder that each fleeting weekend draws us closer to... what, exactly? The next monday? Winter? Retirement? The Apocolypse? Or maybe just the sad realisation that my life of leisure - ie. post-post-graduate part-time employment coupled with freeloading off my parents (who are lovely) - has ended. And I have not a lot to show for it other than a decent collection of clothing from The North Face and a few merino wool undergarments.

But as the sun breaks through the freak downpour in KW and lights up the water on the concrete and Cassie asks me why I would say such a terrible thing to Monday, I have to remind myself that it's all a work in progress.

The downside of being results-oriented is that results are stupid. Nothing ends, there are no "final products," and I don't have to eat couscous. I can order Chinese with my teammates. I have options. Choices. And despite some of the (very) questionable choices I've made in my life, I'm going to get a million more before next Monday or winter or retirement or the Apocalypse.

Dear Monday: I didn't mean it. Can we still be friends?

need a good cry? 12:04