cranky 13:16

I have been recently: cantankerous, short, irritable, unlikeable, bored, unavailable, and fat.

It's summer, so it's hot, even at night. I hate it. Hate it hate it hate it. People get that way in the heat, but that's not really why I've been so cranky.

I've been cranky because, moreso than usual, I have been my only company and me and I haven't been getting along. Me does things I don't approve of: he wastes time, he puts things off, he makes selfish decisions. He's not a great roommate. But I'm stuck with me.

So, I'm going to start taking the initiative:

• gym membership (tour today)
• less waiting, more doing
• no more thinking other people know shit about shit
• a cease to compromise and empathy

okay, maybe that last one isn't a hard-and-fast rule, but I need to be a little more conscientious of my own needs and desires. I mean my real needs and desires – not the ones that please me in the moment. The actual, long haul, what I want out of life and to hell with me. 

More I. Less me.

Internet Dating 10:24

In addition to looking for a "job" job between freelance contracts, I'm still also trying to find someone to hang out with that doesn't make me cranky and is someone I can have the hetero-sex with on a regular-enough basis that we could get good at it.

In the last two or three years, I've been really social: I go out a lot and meet scads of people(when I should be at home in a darkened room, blogging). A small percentage of those people are women who are around my own age. An even smaller percent of them are single, and a miniscule number of those are "looking". By the time you eliminate the individuals that are less than compatible with myself, I'm left with about 20% of one person. Meeting people through the random chance machine of modern, accelerated life is the least efficient way to do it.

So, my brother's dog died about a week ago. He was pretty broken up about it, so he and my dad came out to visit me. We went for Chinese food and then to the pub by my new place in Kitchener – oh, that's right... I moved. Again. More on this another time.

Anywho, my brother is about 10 years my senior, divorced, and even though he lives in Toronto he has the same problem as I do: meeting women gets less easy when you're not 22 and hardbodied and in an environment where everyone is trying to screw everyone else – like university, or working in a bar.

I knew he was doing the online dating thing – he's been meeting women there for years and he's actually had some decent, medium-term relationships come out of it. I have, naturally, done it too – though with less rosy results.

Those eHarmony commercials are very convincing. The idea that you can meet someone online and have an instant and irresistible connection with them worthy of a catchy onomatopoeia – "click!" – is utter bullocks, though. Don't believe the testimonials; they're real, sure, but they're given by people who have bought wholesale into the fairytale that love is a powerful multimedia force beyond reason.

He, my brother, tells me that he had used Lavalife and Plenty of Fish, but found them lackluster as well. He's been on OK Cupid – "I actually meet people I have something in common with and when you write to them, they write back." 'Nuff said.

I signed on a few days later and was generally impressed with the website itself. It's not perfect, be he was right – people there are on the whole a lot smarter and more articulate than other services.

I've been on a few dates and I'm finding it exhausting. Maybe I went a little crazy and based my dating strategy on volume because I still like meeting new people and I'm not one to sit back and wait. And, my previous experience tells me that if you try to line up five dates, you'll get one out of it.

What I'm still finding though, is that internet dating is just a compression of time. The people I'm meeting – great as they are – fall along the same basic lines as the people I met in real life. I don't have a large enough sample yet for a real comparison, but things are trending towards that 0.2 attraction/person threshold. Not enough to want to pursue anything seriously.

I'm left with the overall impression that love is like the lottery – and you can't win if you don't play.

I'll keep you posted how things go.

It's not going so well 18:31

I kinda have two medium-to-long goals at the moment:

1. Find a romantic relationship that facilitates mutual contentment
2. Find a job with security, decent pay, and fulfilling work

You probably need to know a few things about me for context.

I'm notorious for falling for women who are excessively enthusiastic about being emotionally unpredictable. Maybe it's me (maybe it's not...), but I don't think that relationships should rely upon mind-reading, co-dependence, constant (I mean non-breaking) verbal effluvia, or boyfriend-as-therapistism. I like interesting people, and crazy people are interesting. 

I'm not even necessarily looking to settle down – not opposed to it – but dating is difficult because being "available" is taxing and connecting with people you just met is disingenuous. There is no efficiency to be found in pair-bonding. 

Likewise, finding a job is messy work. I'm freelancing; have been for a while now. It's okay. Being a writer comes with its own baggage... a lot like dating, actually. I meet people, get them to open up, make a bunch of conclusions, and say goodbye. Sometimes we get in a fight because of mis-communication or a legitimate disagreement that usually has to do with their being a bit of a douche.

It's risky, is what I'm getting at. And it doesn't really pay all that well.

So, as I'm pursuing both of these objectives, I'm finding that it's getting easier to slip between the voices I have to employ for each. They're different ways of communicating, right? I think I might test that assumption. 

Here's a cover letter I wrote today:

Dear Everyone at S––,

I'm writing to you because Facebook said you were looking for me. Maybe not me specifically, but I'm pretty sure you meant to ask for me – no worries. Still, I think we should get together for a coffee and talk about it. I'll even wear a tie.

The reason I think it's me you're looking for is because I read the job description for “Writer” for the Toronto office on your website, and I definitely fit the bill. I've been working in advertising and the media for the last four years. I started freelance journalism right out of grad school by writing arts and politics features for indie magazines, then moved into a copywriting gig at a boutique ad agency – with a staff of three – where I discovered that graphic designers are my soulmates (yes, all of them).

When our designer left for an agency job in the big city, we finished up our contracts and I went solo again. Since then, I've been writing advertorials for most of the local print media in Kitchener-Waterloo as well as reporting for O––.ca – a nifty little open-source news start-up that everyone should check out. I've also taken on independent corporate clients for advertising campaigns, and hired on design and web talent as needed.

Freelancing is good, but I'm longing for a stable creative culture to be a part of and larger, more challenging projects with great stories to tell. That's what drew me to you, S––. Your work is exciting and I really think we'd get along well. So, what do you say?

Call me. Let's make this thing happen.

Warm, squishy regards,

Marc Cameron

Think I stand a chance?

The Interview 14:02

I don't think I could call myself an artist. Creating art is one of those pursuits that, in my naïve outlook, should stand apart from monetary gain. It's about personal fulfillment, I think, and if you can make a living doing it, then sure – but really, what you get paid for is to leverage your talent for someone else's gain.

I had coffee with Bob Egan today. Bob was in Wilco in the 90s, and then he joined Blue Rodeo (he's still in the line-up, though they're doing solo things these days). He's interesting folk. We're in talks to do some work together (not music), but today we sort of felt each other up. Intellectually speaking.

We'd both had a rough weekend: my 31st birthday; his anniversary. Either way, the 11am meet-up was low-key and very informal. About ten minutes into the conversation though, I noticed I was working.

It's ironic, because we were talking about his work: music. He told me about the amount of travelling for corporate gigs and touring you have to do, and how un-glamourous it is when you've played the same song ten thousand times, but you still have put on a show because, for the audience, it's still a totally unique and special experience, "and if you take someone's money, you have to do what they pay you to do."

"Is it just another job?" I asked.

"Calling it 'just' a job discredits jobs," he replies with his wry smile and a dry laugh.

And he's right because jobs are important – they may not be about self-fulfillment, like art, but you do it because it's what keeps you alive and keeps you (if you're lucky) in a place where you can fulfill yourself.

For me, working means interrogating ideas wherever I find them. Usually, they're in peoples' heads and I have to tease them out. Then, I have to write them down in a way that other people will understand and that is faithful to the person whose head the idea came from. Before I knew I was doing it, I did it to Bob. Thank you Bob.

In(ter)vention 11:40

I moved around a lot as a kid. That's a thing, right?

I also don't know my biological father, which is only a thing if you think about too often or for too long. I once had a girlfriend say she wouldn't want children with someone who didn't know their family's full medical history. I think she was more concerned about her unborn childrens' medical future (sorry babe, they're gonna be brats, too).

There are a lot of factors that make up your personality. Some of them are deep; so deep that you never ever really understand how they affect your choices. Sometimes I think back on the things I said "no" to, or "yes" to, or "no" then "yes"... you get the idea... and I wonder if I would have made a different made a different choice if my family had stayed in Calgary, or never left Vancouver, or had skipped living in Sutton altogether.

I did an interview for MOST Magazine yesterday, with woman who fled Colombia with her family. She spoke no English when she left, and all the inventory of her life that wouldn't fit in a single suitcase got left behind.

Minimal baggage.

But, she was 48 when she left her home. She'd had a life and created an identity. That's something that I wonder if I've done in a really focused way. I've adapted to so many new situations that I wonder what about me isn't adaptable – what's stable.

I guess my question is "How sticky is identity?"

Businesses rebrand. Cities expand. Eco-systems collapse and (sometimes) the bounce back. What do people do if the processes that create them are interrupted.

The woman I spoke with yesterday didn't have the words to describe (in English) what she was going through as she left her other self behind. "We might call that re-invention," I offered, thinking about the opportunity that she had to make herself almost anything she wanted. She had a second chance, so to speak, to be somebody and fill a new role.

But why should anyone want to do that? Why, unless you're forced to for your very survival, would you want to abandon the people and places and things that make you. It's like having a fire sale for you soul – what do you do with the empty space once you've cleared out your inventory? Is the space ever empty, or does the ash in the air after the fire settle in any way that informs how you move.

I think about memory in times like this. What is it worth and how do you share it when the things it signifies are gone? How does an individual enact the things they don't want to forget for fear of losing themselves?