Reckoning: Redux

Let's talk about that big elephant there in the corner.

It's a sex blog and I never write about sex. Not anymore. It would help if I was getting laid.

But I'm not. And haven't been for a year. I have totally not had it in me to get involved. Oh, and let me count the reasons why. I haven't been happy, not at all. I've been overworked, overstressed, overeverything. Hell, in the last year, let's see what I've been through -- now, this isn't me whining or anything like that. I'm sort of glad I've gotten a big dollop of adversity in one chunk. Maybe I'm over that period now. Sure feels like it.

But here's a bit of it, and in chronological order 'cos we just roll like that:

Laid off. Employment insurance ran out early, unannounced, and I had to find a job pronto. Took a job with a company where I'd later find out the chief boss had been taken to labour relations for "psychological abuse". I could see why. this coincided with me spiralling into a near-suicidal chemically-induced depression brought on by The Pill. Went on meds. Got fired a month later. Returned to old job. Father nearly died when diabetes complications started shutting his body down. Fortunately he lived. Knew a lay off was coming after Christmas with the job so I bought no one any gifts and felt horrible about it. Had a job interview and was about to sign the dotted line when the woman decided I didn't "look healthy" enough for her clinic and didn't get the job. (Three days later I got bronchitis.) Then I got laid off. Then I took a job after only 9 days unemployment, which I proceeded to start to hate when overtime became a way of life and my health began to suffer and my depression began to reappear. Then I quit. And here I am.

Long story short, I haven't really wanted to share much of that with anyone else. I was involved when all that shit started to come down and really didn't need the bullshit that came with the relationship -- the demise of which I've never much written about but suspect that I feel like unloading about that as much as I do the rest of the drama I've been experiencing the last year or so.

I haven't even wanted to BLOG about what's really been going on inside because I've just been completely unable to allow myself to be vulnerable. Sometimes we need to just be Darwinians and fight to survive, and vulnerability is a liability at times like those. Or at least we allow ourselves to believe such things.

But it's taken me a long, long time to realize that I allowed my life to become more complicated than it needed to be. This huge whole fucking circle of life of mine has just led me right back to where I started... same job, same Bat channel.

For whatever the reasons, I had to endure these things I've endured. I guess I needed to take the scenic route to realize that all those things I thought I needed were things I'd already had.

And I'm there now. I get it. Now I'm focusing on me again. Even though I've been sick, I've kept up with my self-imposed "box-fit" program I've started since giving my notice... keeping television-watching in the regime, but kicking my ass while I do so. I need to FEEL sexy again before I can actually be it. I really just stopped staying on top of "feeling" sexy when all this shit began to come down. So, that's changing in a hurry.

But, yeah, sex has been a little outside the realm of my reality this year, and I haven't missed it at all... but I'm starting to. I'm starting to get that hunger back and a desire to get back into character, so to speak. I really crave feeling like my old self, and I know it's on the rise. I just gotta take care of a few things first.

So, if nothing else, here's what's going to happen: I'm going to start being a little more honest about those things I don't really feel much like discussing. And I also intend to revisit my past and take a look at some of the defining moments in the last year -- things that shut me down, locked me up, and turned my world on its side. I didn't want to share, but now I feel I really need to do just that in order to move the fuck on and retake my life.

And you, you get to come along for the ride. Buckle up.

Oh, and it's my birthday tomorrow. Love me up. 34 kick-ass years and ready for more.

*The photo, ironically, was taken on the day that this whole 17 months of mine began. "Sunset on quitting day", I called it, thinking I was seeing the sun set and watching it usher in a beautiful new time in my life. Never could I have imagined how much stress and chaos awaited me, but now I'm kinda at that brave new world of mine. Funny how it all shakes down, eh? Anyhow. Sunset from the West End. Right behind me's about a half-million people. Come to think of it, about the same's on that other shore. Wouldn't guess it, eh?

Right Outta Left Field: Bumper Stickers

Well, I've lived to tell, people. Yes, indeedy. I'm officially on a four-day weekend after struggling through another week of work sick off (on, rather) my ass.

But the important thing is that I'm enjoying work, and that the job, which historically has been very hard on my neck, shoulders, and back, hasn't bothered me at all. Methinks my recent taking to "boxing" with free weights might be finally giving me the kind of upper-body support I've long been lacking since my series of whiplashes and concussions in my 20s. HMM. (FOUR concussions. THREE whiplashes. Beat that, you pansies!)

Anyhow, I'm as happy as all get-out. Yay me.

***

I just wanted to pop in, though, and speak for a moment about bumperstickers. I've been pondering them all night. I have bumper stickers like you wouldn't believe. There's the notorious "Evolve" fish under my scooter's headlamp. There's the one on the right side that reads "The last time we mixed politics with religion, people were burned at the stake". There's the "trailer park trash" one that makes up for my long-missed "Lemme show ya how we do it in the trailer park" I used to have on my hatchback (RIP).

Then there's my trusty iBOOK, which is completely covered in stickers like "Fuck censorship", "I am a fucking genius", "Satan works for ME now", and the "Rocket condoms -- 5 cents!" I just love to death.

See, it's all about just having a voice in any little small way, isn't it? Plus, anyone sees my laptop in a cafe window as I'm typing, I invariably get chuckles and thumbs-ups.

Trouble is, sometimes my stickers inspire other people to think I give a fuck what they have to say, which is sometimes true, but oftentimes, no. Like, the guy who decided a stoplight was the right time to engage me in a conversation (which happens all the time when you ride a scooter or motorbike, I gather) of semantics. He points to the "the last time we mixed politics and religion..." sticker and says, "In what context?"

"What it says," I responded tartly and sped off under the now-green light. I can smell a religious conservative like a fart in the car, my friends. I mean, really, ANY time you mix religious and politics, things tend to get a little ass-backwards on the personal freedoms front, and even still you find people dying for their beliefs -- which apparently is all saint-like if you're dying FOR a religion, but if you're dying for your plain-ol' size-regular freedoms, then you're apparently morally bankrupt.

Like the folks who get executed in Iran for having "gay" sex. ("Sodomy" isn't a word I like; Sodom was a city of amorality in the Bible, so let's stop using words that pass judgment on behaviours, shall we?)

On the upside, I did, however, have an uplifting chat with a very cute man earlier today who just loved the Evolve Fish and had to share. (Pity about the wedding ring.)

For the most part, I get thumbs-ups and accolades on the "burned at the stake" sticker. Every now and then a religious zealot lets me hear a few words, but it's worth it when some guy in a Jaguar says he's never liked bumperstickers but mine's the first he'd ever proudly put on his stank-ass rich car.

Hey, freedom of speech ain't just for bloggers, right? It's for scooters, too.

Anyhow, no fucking clue why I started this post but I know why I'm ending it. Girl's gotta eat and then it's back to "girl night Thursdays" with the return of Ugly Betty and Grey's Anatomy. I can see the tampon and yeast infection commercials already. (When will someone tell the marketers that we women spend money on things other than makeup, haircare, and tampons? Sigh.)

Snippets: Postings for the ADHD Out There

So, I don't want to get into anything deep, but here are the snippets flashing through my mind at this late hour.

(I have written... I will not edit. I am sick in the head. Go easy on me. I should edit. Considering I'd overlooked "this lat hour" until this late minute, I should edit. But fuck editing. I'm an adult and I can do what I want. Tomorrow I shall aspire to better grammatical correctedness, perhaps even stellar spelling. Tonight I aspire to sleep, so fuck all else. There: I came I saw, I wrote that ass.)

_________________

I had a moment watching a show tonight. I began to wonder just who of my dalliances would be the ones I remember in flashes and sensations when I'm at the end of my days? Who's gonna rate? When I'm that much more wiser, I've travelled more, done more, had more, who is it that's gonna stack up against The Rest? What am I most gonna remember about them? What gave 'em that memorable edge?

You ever wonder who's really gonna be memorable at the end of 75 years? 85 years?

_________________

A kid died after crowd-surfing at the Smashing Pumpkins gig here in town last night. I'm gonna be 34 on Saturday, and one of the things I'm promising myself I'm gonna do this year is to get back into the live music scene.

Nothing fills the void like a wickedly energetic gig in a small venue.

But here I am, now, right? I'm 34. There was a time when I was front-and-centre at the gigs. I got the close up shots and could see beads of sweat melting into their t-shirts, y'know? Sigh. I don't know if I have it in me to get into the mix with "kids today" and their "unruly state" and all. Throw this dude's mysterious "no obvious wounds" death into the mix (drugs?) and I have the "hmm, maybe I'll find a stool and power up the Bic" bullshit mentality creeping into my head.

I guess I'm starting to want to embrace my inner rebel this year. Hell, I said screw it to the man, quit my schmoozing, networking job for something lowkey and behind the scenes, and who knows what's to come. First, I'll get over this cold. :P

_________________

In Argentina, a minor has won the right to have a sex change. It's an interesting story, and one that I'll probably look for more information on in the coming days. We like to think that kids under 18 are so ill-informed, but the thing is, we keeping lowering the bar, right? We're looking at norms and averages, and perhaps a good many kids don't have the savvy to make informed life decisions, but some do.

You can look at this two ways. One, life's long. What's the hurry? Let the kid wait till 18 or 21. They have the rest of their life to live in that body. Don't rush the knife; it comes soon enough, yeah? Or, two, life is short. Why waste a single day? What if he/she's hit by a car in a year, or is stricken with some rare cancer in the mid-20s? What then of the wasted days spent counting and waiting on something they knew was the only way they'd ever feel whole after a lifetime of feeling dysfunctional?

Yeah, they're both great arguments. Who's to say who's right? I know what the safe, conservative answer is, but if I was safe and conservative, I'd have ridden out the last job for the usual year, but it occurred to me that I'd already lost a whole summer to overtime and fatigue, and I couldn't waste another day. But this is a teenager, and how can a teenager truly know the range of emotion and need they might have? They think they're going through horrors, but wait till their 40 and then let's rate 'em outta 10, okay?

So, you see, complicated issue and I haven't the foggiest whether I think it's the right or the wrong action to take. I bet if I had a beer with the kid, I'd know within the hour what I felt, but going off tempered press, well, who knows anything, eh?

Hmm. So, I have a head cold and I'm going to bed now. Curse you, sinuses. Curse you, I say. But, hey, Happy Wednesday, y'all. Half way there, baby. (Three day weekend for little old me.)

The Morning Of: A Reckoning or Something

Today I go back to my old job.

I worked there for about 6 and a bit years, and I've "returned" now a couple of times. This morning I have that same dread I've had at other times, but it's tempered with more self-knowledge and understanding of the Steff Cosmoverse and how to navigate it, y'know?

The dread is this: "Oh, you can't cut it in the real world. You need to go back to the safety of your little captioning cave. You couldn't climb the corporate ladder, so here you are: Back."

I think it's unavoidable for someone to have that sense of "wow, I must suck because I'm back again" when returning to a situation like this, so I'm not giving myself a hard time for going there. I wish I wouldn't, but I'm not going to pile onto the already-existing crap sandwich with more guilt and derision.

Hell, that's the society we live in. I was raised on Bret Easton Ellis and the yuppyification of North America. We're the original "me" generation. We came of age with cell phones, personal stereos (the three stages: Walkman, Discman, iPOD). We're all about image, baby.

So, I go traipsing back to the old cubicleland and it's natural Eau de Failure should be lingering about me this morning.

But then there's the "fuck you, I'm 34 and I know better than that" voice that crops up and says "the rat race is for pussies who can't make it out there without excessive approval". It's the voice of the chick who grew up listening to the Ramones and Dennis Leary, who thinks she's seen both the workaholic life and the successful slacker life, and has the scars to show from each.

I mean, I'm 34 in five days. I saw my mother die at 57. This notion that every person gets a golden age, every person's gonna retire by 60 and live a life of their choosing is a pretty fucking foolish notion. If I go early, I'll be going after living a life on my terms. I saw myself looking at my most recent boss and thinking, "Wow. That's what happens when you let life pass you by." She works all the time. I remember her sitting in my apartment, looking at my intricately decorated pad and saying, "You have too much time on your hands" and realizing she, in a phrase, summed up the difference between she and I.

See, I always thought I had too little time on my hands. If I was unemployed for the REST of my life, I'd be able to fill every single day. I do not need to be validated by work. In fact, I often feel invalidated by work.

So, going back, tail between the legs, to this comfortable old job of mine is me literally putting my money where my mouth is and deciding that, right now, living life is more important to me than selling out. If I'm going to need to work for a living, then, well, this captioning job of mine is the literary intellectual's equivalent of Kevin Spacey taking on a burger shack job in American Beauty when he decides he's missed out on too much of life, and being 20 was the best he'd ever been.

Yeah, I'm cutting and running to the security of Easy Street. The question, though, is why aren't more people?

PS: I'm fighting illness. I'm hoping like hell it's just the bank of clouds and moisture over the Pacific that's fucking with my head. Heroes is on tonight and I wanna watch! So, to steal strength and shore up motivation, I'm drinking copious coffee. The good thing about this job is, I go in whenever the fuck I want to. Means I can write when the whim hits. It's 9:25. At 10 I'll shower and go. Nice. :) A week ago I'd already be slammed with customer demands and drama. Ha. Bliss.

I Write, Therefore I Am

Well, tomorrow I begin anew at my old job, where I spent the better part of six years making television and film more watchable and enjoyable for those with hearing disabilities. I'm quite looking forward to it. It'll be the best thing to ever happen to my writing.

I've felt rather literarily blocked for some time now. Fancy way of saying I've suffered writer's block, which some people think is a fiction. Shrug. It's real enough. It's overcomeable, but it's real. I'm almost over mine. I've been thinking a lot about writing today 'cos I saw that I had a comment posted late last night on one of my favourite old posts. Inspired by wine and nothing better to do, I began to read the old post. Suddenly I was struck by how articulate I sounded back then.

I haven't felt articulate for some time now. It's like the perfect fall day when it happens -- everything gets crisp, clear, fresh, vibrant. It's fantastic. When I'm not articulate, it feels kind of like how you would imagine that once-brilliant stroke victim as you stare at them, knowing that they're absolutely aware of what they want to say, but are tortured by the inability to know how to say it.

Granted, writer's block is not even in the same postal code of that horrific affliction, but every now and then I feel like I understand how painful that must be and I'm overcome by empathy for it.

It's interesting, my old job, in what it does for writing, for me. Imagine, if you will, the task of sitting there hour after hour working painfully slowly on a single television show, about six hours for an hour-long show, and just how much one would need to focus on language and the order of words in that time. It's just remarkable how much I will have to focus on the ways in which things are said.

I always want to come home and write for a while after I've had to sit there methodically programming in the words spoken by others. It's a sense of reclaiming the self. I come home and I use all my words, in whatsoever order I choose, at a length I desire. Every day I get to reclaim myself when I go home... something I've been unable to do for months.

Then, to have this little spate of FUBARedness in the last few days whereby I was robbed of my ability to post and blog at will, and I'm left with this very happy little bit of me who thinks this uncanny combination of a few little ingredients might be making what could be the best time to be a writer I've ever had. I love writing in the fall and winter. I'm about to make my laptop wireless so I can write anywhere at any time. I'm on the verge of self-controlled work hours and a little financial relief. Things are good. It's a very, very good time to be Steff.

PS: My morning so far? I got up at eight and I've been watching a marathon of the last five episodes of Heroes. I'm about to watch the final hour of season one. I'm a happy camper that season two begins tomorrow. I love a story about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Fun! Ahead looms a bike ride. The last decent Sunday before the rainy season begins, if the weather prognosticators are right this week. Sigh. Have a good one, minions. :)

AND WE'RE BACK! YAY!

I'm SO FUCKING HAPPY!

My blog's been unable to post anything new for three days thanks to some invisible thing preventing my shtoopid HAAAAAAAAALP! emails from getting to the support guys on my hosting co, who installed new servers and changed the site paths without telling lowly blogging peons like myself.

BUT it's fixed now! So, the shit I've posted in the last couple days is finally up. Sorry for the "what the fuck? But my RSS said you had a new post!" bafflement. Look, there it is!

Tomorrow I'll be writing, but today I'm wining and dining someone so, make do with whatcha got, kiddies.

But yay, I can publish!

Female Circumcision

Work's a bitch, kids. Long days, long days. Tomorrow, however, a short one, then beers, then a concert, then apertifs, then getting to know the local transit. Then Stage Anew in my life officially kicks off with a three-day weekend. Colour me giddy.

But I wanted to pop by because I just found this article to be so good. I really dig The International Herald Tribune, and every now and then an article comes along and just pushes a button or two.

So I thought it was appropriate to share this story about girls who no longer have their buttons. Pardon the pun, but in all seriousness, the act of female circumcision is one of the most barbaric, ass-backward fucked-up "traditions" still going. This whole freedom-of-religion thing is great and all, but to go and cut out a woman's clitoris (which often can result in fatalities) for some dated, stupid, superstitious reason goes a little too fucking far.

Yeah, all right, so now I'm some pigheaded Westerner dogging Islam. Uh, no. I actually think Islam's pretty cool and that most Muslims I know are about the most decent you can imagine. It is one of the most giving faiths there is. Terrorists suck, but they ain't all Muslims. And the American religious right is just as full of shit as anyone.

Heh. Gotta love a tangent. And all I was gonna do was post a linkie.

When Ibrahim was 11 years old, she said, her parents told her she was going for a blood test. The doctor, a relative, put her to sleep and when she woke, she said she could not walk.

The memory haunts her now, and though she says that her parents "will kill" her if they find out, she has become a volunteer in the movement against genital cutting, hoping to spare other women what she endured.

I've had a lot of Muslim friends over the years so I really hate seeing stories like this that paint such a hardcore picture of their faith. Whatever, man. But here's what the IHT had to say about this barbaric tradition's links to Islam.

...the Ministry of Religious Affairs also issued a booklet explaining why the practice was not called for in Islam; Egypt's grand mufti, Ali Gomaa, declared it haram, or prohibited by Islam; Egypt's highest religious official, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, called it harmful; television advertisements have been shown on state channels to discourage it; and a national hot line was set up to answer the public's questions about genital cutting.

Yet still the tradition continues. It's a strange thing, but boy can men get intimidated by a teensy thing like the clit. But there's hope yet. Here's another bit:http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

...But now, quite suddenly, forces opposing genital cutting in Egypt are pressing back as never before. More than a century after the first efforts to curb this custom, the movement has broken through one of the main barriers to change: It is no longer considered taboo to discuss it in public. That shift seems to have coincided with a small but growing acceptance of talking about human sexuality on television and radio.

For the first time, opponents said, television news shows and newspapers have aggressively reported details of botched operations. This summer two young girls died, and it was front-page news in Al Masry al Yom, an independent and popular daily. Activists highlighted the deaths with public demonstrations, which generated even more coverage.

Duh.

So, I own an iBOOK I've had collecting dust for a while now.

Not no more! Plugged the wench in last night and now I have stable internet again. Still gonna fix the PC but the iBOOK will officially be my surfing friend from now on. Wait'll I get that airport card I've been planning on. Whee, fun!

I work today and tomorrow, Then It Is All Over. GayBoy's taking me to some fancy gig at a fancy theatre for my birthday, and then everything changes. I'll be writing Friday for sure, so check in and you'll get something for the weekend.

Thanks for your patience. I can't believe it took me ten days to think of my iBook. Clearly I've been working a little much. :)

I'll Say It Slower, If That Helps

Okay, people, BEAR WITH ME a few days! My computer is STILL being consumed by shit. After 10 hours of muddling through my boggish registry and fucking around with my computer, my Computer Geek friend's words were "Well, keep doing what yer doing" and then the next plan is for me to throw about $200 into serious hardware for this fucked-up beast of a machine.

Plus, three more sleeps until I'm outta my job, which still has me on 12 hour days.

THREE MORE SLEEPS! Then freedom for my Steffs! Woot. Bear with me. Technical difficulties. Love you all to bits!

Of Trojans and Romans

I had a computer geekette friend of mine come and CSI the ass outta my computer. Her report? "Wow, this is one of the most impressive infestations I've seen in a while."

Her remedy? "Let's wipe Windows. Install a new hard drive. Keep Windows on C. Gut it. Put everything else on D."

I'm gonna spend $175 this week and do just that. Fuck it. If scanning for hours and fucking hours continues to result in all the same trojans and downloaders cropping up, let's fucking gut this pig like it deserves and start anew.

For that $175, I'll get a gig of RAM and 250 gigs of hard drive. Ooh. I'm titillated already. For a further $50 and my friend's gift of a router, I'll have my iBOOK go wireless and will have a backup computer for when Shit Hits the Fan next time.

Another $250 and I'll get another gig of RAM on my iBOOK and 250 gigs of hard drive. How titillated am I now?

Gotta love problems you can throw money at, eh? Here, take money. Now fuck right off. Gee, if only all of life were like that.

Four more days, then I'm unemployed for a whopping three days. Heh. So, in 2006 I was officially unemployed for three weeks. In 2007, for nine days and now for three days. Love this! :)

Okay, another week and a half and then there'll be no more bitching about jobs OR computers! LOVE THAT! Stay tuned. Now to back up all my photography and writing for a second time. Yippee. And now back to watching Rome. You know, just an aside, but they have great gratuitous sex in Rome. None of that namby-pamby sex, neither. The "get on your hands and knees" kinda nitty-gritty sex, too. Don't you just love HBO?

Why, is this a Friday I see before me?

I feel like that old woman in The Princess Bride who shouts down the princess bride in the centre of the square. Boo! BOOOOO! Hiss! That's the story of me and my computer.

I've barely had the motherfucker on. I log on to Facebook or any other place that uses lots of cookies and shit, and presto -- virus appears in the form of a trojan. I'm smart, I use Firefox, yet it still will cause IE to open and shower me with shitty websites.

And I'm no dumb girlie, either. I know my way around Hijack This, have downloaded all the so-called fixes, checked all the goddamned geek sites via Googling the names, etc. Yet still. I clean some 20 or 30 infections off this bitch each day and still they return.

I know I'm irresistable, but this is highly unnecessary.

I'm on the verge of Calling Professionals. Soon I'll arrange for them to come by and save my persecuted ass.

In the meantime, you need to wait until I've sunny enough a disposition to battle friend and foe to make my way through this muddled web of mine and post a thingie or two on Blogger.

Fortunately for you, I've just that sort of disposition on this fine Indian summer Friday eve. I'm keeping to myself with a $9 fancy-ass ribeye steak I'm about to grill and indulge in a bottle of a 2003 Chilean shiraz. The phone goes to ignore. Then I have to decide whether I feel like watching the torrid tale of Rome or if I'm feeling smug and anti-establishmentish and want to watch Thank You For Smoking.

Hmm, indeed.

So, the weekend, a four-day week, and I change jobs. Giggle.

You have no idea how good it fucking feels to realize that I'm at the mercy of MY decision right now. I have taken control of my life. One little decision and my world has 180'd. Cool.

And I was all dodgy about quitting, thinking it'd mean I was losing a week of pay this month. Ooh, could I handle it? Penny-pinch? Know what? Everywhere I turn, there's money. I'm not losing a week of pay; I'm gaining one! My paycheques are staggered. :) Then I got my medical money back, and something else came, etc, etc.

Things are headed in precisely the right direction, and now, to top all that off, it's Friday!

Tomorrow I'm cleaning house and shopping for obscure foodie treats at all the proper culinary shops here in town. Hell, I might even make some bread. There's some socializing, etc. I may play it solo this weekend. Madness ensues for another four days, but I'm having a party next weekend so things'll get fun in a hurry.

Life, in short, is good. I'm really, really looking forward to all the things coming down my path, whether it's tomorrow, Tuesday, or two months from now, things look like they're gonna get fun 'cos I know *I* am definitely getting fun to be around. It's a beautiful thing.

Have a bitchin' weekend, minions. Lord knows that's my plan. And fuck you, Virtumonde, Fotomodo, and all your cunty little trojan friends! :)

Sigh.

My computer is being consumed by malware and trojans.

Thus it is pissing me off. I don't blog when I'm getting pissed off by my computer. If anyone knows how to read and dissect a HijackThis log, you lemme know. I took a crack at it and it seems to have pared it down, but I'm scared to open Internet Explorer and really find out. Explorer is evil! All good bloggers use Firefox, but still. It opens Explorer all by itself and does bad shit. Mmf.

The only Trojans I like come in a box of 12.

Huh. An hour or two has passed now since I took HijackThis to my dumb box and then proceeded to nuke about 22 things that made me go Hmm!, hit "fix" and hope like all fuck my educated guesses worked out all right and rebooting could actually cycle. Maybe I said the right prayer for a change. Let's hope! I like this writing thing. Ha.

The OT continues, however. Loooong days. Four more of them. God give me strength, then the beer.

EXPOSED: The Sordid Story of Why I Quit My Job

I quit my job. I’ve quit it for several reasons, but this is the one that really rocked my boat and inspired me to leave.

Towards the middle of July, my boss called me upstairs for a quiet chat. It turns out she had discovered my secret double-agent identity, that of a sometimes-sex blogger. She didn’t know what to make of it, she said. If clients found out, there could be problems. If so, she told me she didn’t know what her reaction would then be, nor what her cause of action might be.

I was concerned. Very. I didn’t know what I would do. I needed a job. I asked her if I had reason to be concerned. She said yes, in a roundabout way. She asked that I never write about my job, nor mention where I worked. I agreed that I could at least abide by that.

After hours, though, I approached friends and told them how concerned I was. I began asking myself how important my blog was to me, and whether I really felt like working where I thought I might have to put a cork in things and keep my mouth shut. I wondered whether I should get myself as far from my blogging life as I could, especially if it was going to be some stigma following me around for the rest of my life. I started wondering a lot, about a lot of things.

Still, I needed a job. If biting my tongue put food on my table, then that was the first concern. Complicating matters, though, is that I love most of the job. The bustle, the people, the chaos… it all works well with my personality. The more I began to think about it, though, the more I realized how much work was having an impact on my will to write. Worse – my writing, I thought, had seriously gone down hill. It wasn’t creative. It wasn’t inspired. Hell, I wasn’t creative. I wasn’t inspired.

I spent the next several weeks slipping into a funk. I had taken the wrong job, I began to think. (I had two to choose from; an opening came up in my old job the very day I was offered the one I’ve been working.) I was realizing now that I had taken a job that seemed right for me, but instead in was turning my life into everything I didn’t want.

And now I had to censor myself. It didn’t matter that, in my eyes, this blog’s more about me and my wrapping of my own head around the world and my ongoing journey of becoming myself, and not so much about the sex, but hey. Semantics, I guess.

My mind wrought with all these thoughts, I was just barely keeping my head in the game at work. I certainly noticed that my job performance was slipping something fierce. I chalked it up to fatigue.

The thought began to occur to me, however, that maybe all this fogginess I was enduring was because of this prolonged writer’s block I now acknowledged I’d been suffering. Maybe, just maybe, my focus would improve if I could get the writing thing happening. With that thought my priorities began to shift.

It was perfect timing then that my holiday was to begin on Aug. 25th. With my holiday in mind, my boss called me in for a “plan of attack for fall” meeting. At the end of the meeting she again brought up the blog and apologized for leaving me hanging, but reiterated that she still didn’t know what she would do if it got found out by clients and brought up as an issue. Dirty sex blogger…

Afterwards, I walked out of the meeting and into the street, heading off to find some lunch. Sure enough, there I saw a film crew shooting in a nearby store. “Sigh,” I thought. “I sure miss the film industry. Why’d I leave, again?” But I morosely put those thoughts out of my head and instead began planning for how to be organized at the office in the fall.

I got home that day, checked my email, and saw a letter from one of the best post production facilities in Vancouver’s awesome film industry, asking me if I was interested in a position they had available. They had my resume from when I was looking for work in ’06 and held on to it, it would seem.

Was I interested? It took 30 seconds for the answer to hit. Fuck, yeah. After a few emails back and forth, a job interview was lined up.

Then it just so happened that my first day of vacation, Saturday, coincided with when I was having my old bosses over for breakfast. I told them all the drama about work and this job interview and how I thought the time might be ripe for me to make a change. They were more than sympathetic. They gave me encouragement. They agreed that it sounded like my situation was precarious.

With their kind words ringing, I headed in for my job interview. Well, I didn’t get that job (and I’m now happy about it for complicated reasons) and went in to visit the old bosses again Wednesday and thanked them for the support while telling them it was a bust. That’s when they offered me my old job back.

I went camping, pondered it, decided to go for it, came back, and I quit. I’m thrilled with my choice and I’m looking forwards to reprioritizing my life and getting back to my creative roots.

Now, I want to address something before anyone jumps on my soon-to-be ex-employer’s back. A) I’m fucking lucky she’s the honest kind of person she is with the integrity she has. She didn’t need to tell me she knew. She could’ve fired me then and there. Instead, she let me know where her thoughts were, and has been great about my resignation. B) I could have had a fight worth fighting if I wanted to do the whole “freedom of speech” argument, but I decided I couldn’t do that to them.

Why? Because I’m not a hypocrite. I believe I have the personal freedoms to live my life as I see fit, and in the free world I want to live in, employers should have the right to hire the kinds of people that mirror their values and lifestyle (within reason), provided it doesn’t infringe on others.

Freedom is a difficult thing to balance and you sure as shit can’t ask for yours at the cost of denying others’ theirs. I’m mindful of that in my life.

My old employers not only know about my blogs, but approve of them and have read them. I have nothing to hide from them after working closely with them for seven years. We’ve been through some bullshit together and we’ve always emerged well and on the same page. There was some instability in the industry that coincided with when I barely survived a serious scooter accident that should have killed me, and I was sent into a couple years of trying to find out where my passions lie in the world.

After some trials, travels, and tribulations, I’ve decided that (for me) work is work, and the easier it is, the better it pays, the less I need to do of it, the better the rest of my life is. I’m not looking to prove myself in the corporate world. All I wanna do is write, I guess. You can keep your rat traps and rat races. I want all the trappings of success, just not the trap. This job I’m returning to gives me the work-life balance I need and the flexibility to pursue other avenues while working hours that work for me. It caters to writing’s spontaneity and unpredictability. Everything about that job caters to writing.

And now I can do just that. Oh, and get this: My first day back, September 24th, is seven years to the day that I first started there.

Anyone who tells ya you can’t go home again doesn’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.

A Random Deep Post Lacking in Linear Approach

If I hadn't been drinking on a relatively empty stomache, I doubt I would have posted this. But booze makes me ballsy, so you can only imagine how cocky I feel after eating lunch at 4 and nothing since... but the three glasses of wine certainly help. So, hi. I'm Steff, I blog, and let's ignore my shame. Have at this, then. Sigh. It's Russian-novelist long. Next time we'll explore the appeal of brevity. For now, tho...

I am, as they say in the vernacular, having a moment.

A heady moment, at that.

I was watching some semi-lame yet cool true crime reenactment on the History Channel when the narrator began telling the tale of how the criminals behind the notorious North Hollywood Shootout had taken booze mixed with Phenobarbital before they set out upon their heist.

And I remembered this foggy old conversation with my mother about how I was on Phenobarbital as a kid when I had epic grand mal seizures nearly every day. I was hardcore epileptic as a child. I’ve never written about this before. My mother insisted I stop taking Phenobarbital when she learned it apparently fucked with one’s hormones.

Wow. Wow. I’ve never really thought about it before. The epilepsy. Much of my childhood is a blur. I remember this one time, and it’s really fucking weird, actually… again, something I’ve never before spoken or written of, but I can remember this third person memory… I remember looking down upon myself, my mother, and my father, all three of us on the old formal red velvet sofa in the sitting room, me either with another of my 104+ fevers, or another grand mal seizure. Both my parents were so obviously scared and totally there for me, holding me and talking about when the hospital should come into the picture, and how I was so precarious that a trip might not be the wisest choice right then. And I remember it from a looking-down-on-me perspective. I dunno what that says to you, but I know I just got the chills.

Fuck, man. Whew. Looking down on myself. That’s taken two ways: the nearly-dead out-of-body way, and the hate-thyself kinda way. I’d have to say this one occasion was a little of each. Let’s ignore the first and think of the second. I’ve lived my whole life more or less consumed by my insecurities. I’m always hyperconscious of myself and my being, y’know? I’m tired of the hyperconsciousness. It’s so over. Now if I can just wrap my head around that.

I’ve always tried to have the I’m Fine appearance, but the reality is that I’ve spent my life allowing myself to be sort of defined by the problems of my childhood. Grand mal epilepsy, severe hearing loss, constant ear aches, and when I was younger I even had a speech impediment. (Now, though, I’m told I have Radio Voice. Hey, practice makes perfect. Just ask James Earl Jones.)

I’ve mentioned recently how I’ve quit my job. The job has been interfering with my after-hours life. I alluded in one posting to my recent lack of desire to write and how I could no longer abide that lack of passion I was feeling for the one thing I once most loved to do: writing. Yeah, that’s one reason.

The irony is, I loved this job. There’s so much to love about it. I was good at it; that is, until I stopped writing. Once I’m not writing, so much of myself falls away from me. I get sloppy, negative, and unfocused. Writing, as Jerry Maguire might say, completes me. It is me. I don’t give a fuck whether others love my writing (okay, I do) but I know that I’m a better person when I’m writing well. (Or as what I perceive to be “well”.) I’m empathetic, passionate, articulate, infused with joie de vivre, and even have a magnetism about me. It’s rare, though, that I write as well as I aspire to do, so it’s also rare that I maximize any of the qualities I’ve just mentioned. Now, however, I seem to be in one of my rare golden times, and I’m fucking loving it.

Nonetheless, I’ve quit my job. The reasons are multiple. Another of them is that I’ve stopped exercising. No swimming, no Pilates, no cycling, no hiking. Nothing. I’m so drained at the end of each day that it’s all I can do to sit on the couch, watch TV, and not fall asleep before 10.

No fucking way to live.

So. I’ve quit. Turned that page. Now I go back to the unstable, unfulfilling, but strangely awesome television job of captioning (i.e. : subtitling) , where my hours are my choosing, sometimes even my days, and the job is routine and manageable… and anti-social, so my mind bubbles over, and when I come home, I blow my proverbial top and write an hour or two. Hey, I’ve built a couple good blogs out of it, y’know?

But, man, did I disgress.

Back to the hard topic, though: I was a serious epileptic as a kid. I was diagnosed early with a rare kidney disorder and had bi-annual visits with the foremost kidney specialist in Western Canada back then. Every six months, a visit with the good doctor at Children’s Hospital. A battery of tests were run on me every time. Blood tests were practically weekly. I had a rare disorder and wound up documented in medical journals as “the kid that could”. I was in the hospital for a prolonged stay when they were about to take a kidney out – it was clinically dead and filling with fluids it couldn’t pump out. Bad things were happening. I was prescribed Bactrim*. Presto! Magic! I went into remission.

My kidney cleared up, so too did my epilepsy, as well as my chronic bronchitis and my ear aches. But the battle with the evils had turned me into a lazy kid. I could never handle activity before that, and never discovered the joys of being active, and my body grew accustomed to sloth. Thus the Pillsbury Era began. Poke my belly and I giggle still. Exercise hurts. Sometimes this is good. But back then? Well. That’s another story.

Here’s a tangent for you: One day, I found myself in my mid-teens, hanging out at UBC, getting tested by geneticists. Turns out my kidneys and ears were a result of my father’s genes. One of the interns working in my lab, testing me, made the off-hand comment that “it would be interesting to see what [my] kids turned out like”. Someone later commented that it would be interesting if I would allow for testing of my child’s genes if ever I was to become impregnated. I’m 33, about to hit 34, and I’m childless. I intend to remain this way. I have no idea if that intern’s comment has impacted my desire to (not) have kids. Probably.

It’s interesting, though. I’m sitting here in my jammies, nursing a glass of wine under the golden tint of my Moroccan lantern, and thinking about how we know how bad pop/soda is to us today, but back in 1981, when I was 8 and visiting my aunt in Toronto, we didn’t know. She let me drink several pops each day when I was there over a few weeks, when we knew how bad my kidneys were, and by the time I got back to Vancouver, I’d gained 20 lbs and started becoming lethargic and depressed. Not to mention fat.

Which I am to this day, and have become increasingly more so since beginning this job I’ve been working the last six months and just quit. I’ve gained 7 lbs since my last physical, and probably 17 since my low point this past year. Not cool. Not sitting well with me. Not acceptable. Not going to continue.

I have a plan in place. Something to work towards. Hence quitting the job.

Long story long? Expect a lot of very, very introspective posts in the coming months. When one suppresses themselves for too long, it’s only fitting they should explode under pressure. I guess I’ve just got a lot to say after not saying much worth saying for far too long. Things are about to get interesting. And I’m digging it.

Tonight’s posting is brought to you in part by The North Hollywood Shootout and David Bowie.

*Drug used to fight infections, bronchitis, ear aches, et al.

PS: There is MORE to the story behind why I've quit! I'm saving the juiciest for last! Yes, you must STILL turn in! Doh! Tease! Tag! You're it.

i saw the sign, just opened up my eyes and...

[ed. note: this first appeared on my original-and-still-ticking first blog a couple days ago but given that my traffic there is, like, 12 or something, i thought i'd double my mileage and share here. two-fer!]

so, i'm a big fan of "signs", eh? i like to look for symbolism in the itty-bitty happenings of this meagre existence of mine as clues of whether i'm headed in the right direction or just totally missing the target. you know, you get fired, probably a sign you're not working the right job, right? not like it's fucking rocket science.

every now and then, though, i start opting for the more obscure shit.

like when i had friends over last monday night. i'd taken out the trash earlier and happened to glance over and see a 5-foot tall standing antique wooden floor lamp standing next to a Dumpster in the back alley. ho! nice piece! needs rewiring and the varnish's patination has bubbled up like it had bad heat exposure once, and the bottom looks like it mighta withstood a flood 'cos it's all dark-like (i'm goin' CSI on a floor lamp... nice!) but it's still a plum piece. it's now my winter project. gonna strip it, sand it, and stain it, then rewire it, and THEN i'll have TWO antique wooden floor lamps. a lucky gal am i.

anyhow. the sign? well, it coincided with when i first really began to realize how unhappy i am at my job (despite enjoying the job itself... kills my will to write, and that i can no longer abide**) and that i kinda needed to walk away from my job.

so i had one really big sign: work called me on my vacation about something. old-fashioned i might be, but methinks vacations are something sacred. then, two, i "see the light"... literally, when i see this lamp in the alley.

personally, i enjoy the thought of it as some kinda signal of where i was going wrong. i'm gonna really savour that memory after i spend the months ahead turning it from a throw-away find into a must-keep treasure.

y'know, now that i'll start having time on my hands again. loves me a project. :) that it'll be worth some several hundred dollars once done doesn't hurt, neither.

PS: on an aside? keep the hourly pay, people. salary's just another way of saying "yer staying late this week". i'm just sayin'. hindsight 20/20 and all...

**but, WAIT, there's more! there's a juicier bitsy behind my departure, too. saturday. really. at some point. saturday-ish, for sure. it could be a "stay home and nurse a bottle of red" kind of encounter. after all, i'm getting four cavities filled in the afternoon. medicating is a good thing. medicating and writing? priceless.

I am returning to the way things were Back in the Day, and will now answer ALL comments. I'm working OT all week this week, far more than I'd expected, but promise that I shall tell you all the dirt you deserve on Saturday. Meanwhile, see my comment in the below post if you need more. Thanks for the curiosity. And I mean it, I intend to start commenting back to y'all. I used to be so good at that and the time is nigh for me to get into some good old habits. =]

Call Me Needy, Call Me Crazy, Just Call Me!

So, after a few postings in one fell swoop, I've had barely any comments, but that don't faze me a bit. I'm not posting my big bombshell posting telling you why I've quit my job until I get some people commenting and saying hi because that's my prerogative. :) Besides, you have enough to read.

But if you wanna hear the drama behind me quitting my job all of a sudden like, well... you knows what to do, sweetums.

Oh, talk about your empty threats, eh? You just KNOW I'm dying to tell the story. I've decided to rewrite it, so yer waitin' while I trash edit one of the tale. Meantime, you get the chance to give me warm and fuzzies by way of sayin' 'lo for a change, right? Yeah. :)

And Then There Were Crabs

I’m not exactly Little Miss Adventure, but if I was to tell you the tale of my life you’d probably mistake me for exactly that – a year in the Yukon, thrown from a horse, a near-fatal scooter (motorbike) accident, camping all my formative years, been to Alaska and Mexico and back again…

…truth be told, though, I’m a bit of a pussy when it comes to facing Mother Nature at her finest. Spiders? Horrifying. Giant moths? Send me scurrying into a corner, ducking under covers. Creepy-crawlies give ME the creepy-crawlies, thanks very much.

Every now and then, however, I manage to trick myself into feeling like the calm, cool, collected adult I should rightly be now that I’m on the verge of turning 34. Hell, I’m almost out of the most coveted marketing demographic there is. I’d better be growing up.

Then stories like this come along. So, without much more ado… a tale of a Steff gone camping.

We pitched our tent bright and early. Our neighbours must’ve made the same ferry as we did, for the British couple showed up mere minutes after we begin staking our site.

We both got our sites rigged and then cracked into our local Limey’s collection of beer while playing Frisbee to pass some time. Finally the pub called Gayboy and I away, and we set on our local adventures – pub grub, beer, shopping for campfire foodies, and then back to the site we went.

Finding our pitch and the next door one both deserted, we decided to have a game of cards, drink a beer, and plan our attack. On three sides of us were the island’s shores. One side a beach, one a lagoon, and one a harbour/marina. We decided to head to the nearby beach by way of the lagoon. Being Slow-Drinker Girl, I wisely brought my yet-unfinished beer with, and we set upon our latest adventure.

We traipsed down the hill and came out alongside the lagoon. It looked pretty dry and had the unmistakable West Coast generations of broken clam and oyster shells peppering the landscape along with the dark coastal rocks. We shrugged and made our way onto the lagoon. The footing was a bit spongey but it was otherwise indicating a crossing seemed pretty reliable.

We took off along the western side of the lagoon, keeping alongside a little stream we planned to cross midway, thanks to dottings of rocks and boulders across its path.

Suddenly, a shriek.

“Jesus CHRIST!” shouted GayBoy. “Look at the fucking crabs!”

Suddenly I noticed the ground seemed to move in bits. Some very well disguised crabs were creeping sideways across the shell-covered landscape. They were all around one to two inches in width, but the more I scoured the ground for them, the more I began to notice them. The landscape wasn’t just dotted with clam shells, but the muddy surface of the lagoon was similarly dotted with crabholes. Every couple inches was another hole between ½ inch wide all the way up to two inches wide. The holes were fine until a crab would poke its head out and observe us.

Unlike GayBoy, I wasn’t that freaked out. Concerned, yes, avoiding them, yes, but terrified? Not just yet.

“Okay, this is really creeping me out,” GayBoy muttered. Clearly the dope we’d smoked earlier was toying with his perceptions and making things a little more intense than they maybe needed to be.

We decided to cross the stream right there, and I led the way, clumsily hopping across rocks and landing with a splash of beer spilling out my bottle on the other side. I took a couple steps and found myself beginning to sink some four or so inches down into grubby mud. And with every sink, more crabholes were vacated, the stupid critters heading AT us instead of AWAY from us.

“Oh, JESUS,” exclaimed GayBoy.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here!” I reacted. Then I began to mock GayBoy, muttering with great disdain under my breath. “ ‘Let’s cross the lagoon. It’s a nice beach on the other side.’”

“All right, FINE! What way do you want to go?” he bitterly retorted.

“Let’s go to the east side… it looks drier.”

So, naturally, we crossed back. I surveyed the lay of the lagoon and the spot that looked the driest was the direction in which we decided to head.

Big fuckin’ mistake. A few steps later, we’re sinking six inches down. “Fuckfuckfuckfuck!” I started gasping.

“Fuck this! Let’s head back to the path!” shouted GayBoy.

That’s when my shoe came off. I yelped and gasped, beginning to hyperventilate. Crabs were everywhere now. It seemed like they’d all heard there was a new show in town and clamoured for front-row tickets. Not only was I staring down in fear, teetering on one sunken foot as my mud-stuck shoe was hidden from view, but I was becoming increasingly aware that the scattered crabs were now out in force, all hovering around us.

Suddenly I flashed back to my old film job, remembering painful scenes of captioning poor fuckers dying in quicksand. I had clips of nature shows, crabs picking bones clean on shorelines. Then I had a vision of a blog headline, “Something Tragic Afoot: Crabs Dine A La Steff in Lagoon – memorial Tuesday at Twin Pines.”

GayBoy clasped onto me and refocused me. “Steady! Steady. Here’s your shoe.”

I got the shoe back on, and then, clenching my toes to hold the shoe on slipper-style (the heel was pushed down under my foot, it’s all we could manage), I had to use all my strength to hike my feet back out of the now-eight inches of sludge. Every footstep was an epic effort.

Then, the worst that could happen – one shoe came off… and then the other as I stumbled forward onto my bare-sock foot.

I began hyperventilating like a prison bitch trapped in a shower, but GayBoy acted quickly and got me both shoes, while barely keeping it together himself.

With another 20 feet to go, we continued trying to get to the dry path one step at a time. Fortunately neither of us became crabs’ lunches, and we finally made it to the shore.

And me, true Canadian girl I am, succeeded in failing to spill ALL the beer. Thank god for Alexander Keith, patron saint to Canadians lost in crab-infested lagoons, it would seem.

We spent the night exploring debauchery with our new best friends from England, laughing about all our misadventures as we brazenly worked towards the next morning’s hangovers.

Camping, anyone?

Below's the estimated route of our path:



Another view of the same lagoon, taken after the afternoon's follies:



And, finally, our fateful path out, and the evidence thereof:


And here, most importantly, is the beer I managed to keep alive all through the turmoil! Truly a Canadian girl with her Canadian beer! And yes I write notes on my hands and arms, hence the weird blue bit on the left there...

Thus the Tease Begins...

Labour Day weekend is a very strange time of year for me. Historically, some pretty Big Fucking Deals have come down on the last real weekend of summer. I've nearly died twice, for instance. So, you know, I'm sort of emphasizing the word "big" there. It's like the dog days of summer trip some biological Change Thy Life switch in my dusty old noggin, and it's amazing the things that have transpired in the early days of September every year or two.

Now, don't look, but it's apparently Labour Day weekend once again. Whatever can this mean? Change is afoot? Why, mysteries never cease. Only time will tell, dear minions.

It occurs to me that we're all one of two kinds of people. Either we believe one can never go home, or we believe one can always go home. Me, I believe the latter. The neighbourhood I grew up in never locked the doors. So while I believe one can always return home, I also believe it's wise to expect someone might've moved the furniture before your return, y'know?

I sorta digress. With any luck, the repercussions of this weekend's happenings might also be the kind of thing I can look back upon down the road and know was a catalyst for the start of great times. At least, that's the hope I now have.

Whatever am I talking about, you wonder? Well, like all secret double agents, I'm not yet at liberty to say.

Soon, though, my minions. Very, very soon. After all, I've only really made my decision today. Exciting. Exciting!

We came. We saw. We camped.

We left early.

I'm nursing a hell of a sun-burnt face. My sneakers may never be the same again. There's a story there, and you'll hear it later.

I return to work Tuesday and have already written a pretty bombshell posting for Tuesday night. I ain't even risking a teaser on that one. Just get your asses back here and read it on Wednesday, y'hear?

For Monday, I plan to spend some time writing tonight or tomorrow on my evil encounter with the lagoon from hell and the attack of the hermit crabs. Jesus Christ. I nearly had a heart attack I was so freaked out!

I have some pictures, but they fail to communicate the terror. But that's why I'm a writer, right?

Yes, I shall relay the Attack of the Hermit Crabs to you before Monday. With pictures.

Other than that, the camping trip entailed a great deal of drinking and smoking pot and eating decadently with our new best friends from the UK, Sheffield and Manchester to be exact, who were camping next to us, taking a nature break before heading in town for a wedding. Ironically, it was her birthday, so when in town we got Twinkies and sparklers: the perfect campground birthday cake, for a late-evening celebration. Along with the local herbal remedies, of course.

Yesterday was hangovers and rain showers. We packed up the tent, loaded up the scooters, and saw the skies part into beautiful sunshine right after we gave our spot away. Boy, were we pissed. But we didn't have rain gear, having packed poorly, and didn't want to risk a night of deluges when the next ferry was 18 hours away.

There's also another story in there about the trials and tribulations of my scooter's air filter and our comedic attempt to improve my pathetic uphill performance, but a last minute wrench attack saved the day and we made the ferry just in time. There's the punchline for ya, the sex writer who can't get her scooter up(hill).

All in all, it was a pretty intense camping trip. And let's hear it for enduring the onslaught of creepy little fuckin' hermit crabs. Repeat after me: Do NOT go into the lagoon! Check back for all the sordid details!

By the way, for those keeping score at home, having not set a camp fire in a good many years, I was pleased to see I could get a good fire going in less than 60 seconds! :) I was a Girl Scout leader, you know.