Growing Up

I’ve done a lot of growing up this year. I guess by year I mean school year (I’m still not used to the year not actually starting in September), so I guess I haven’t done THAT much growing up. But I’ve done some. Or maybe it’s just that I feel quite overwhelmed with all of the things that need doing. But I feel like that’s part of what growing up is about – becoming responsible for more things. Or maybe it’s more than that, because even a child could be given the responsibility to do a large number of things. But a child isn’t able to keep track of all those things and make sure that they get done. Though sometimes I feel like I’m not able to either.

 

But for the most part I can. Yet on days like today it feels like my head is spinning with all the things that I need to get done. I have a calendar of appointments; a list of To Do’s; and a few papers and other tasks scattered around that are always in the back of my head, and which receive my attention every once in a while. There’s got to be an easier way to do this, doesn’t there? I get a bit worried sometimes that I’m going to forget something and it’s going to slip through the cracks.

 

It feels good. It feels good to be productive. But it’s really difficult sometimes. Any longtime practitioners of the art of adulthood have some sage advice for the newbie?

 

P.S. This is the first time in recent memory that I’ve written a post before Sunday. Booyah! <–mark of a kid at heart

Social Media Explained

My brother found this, and since I don’t have much time and haven’t put much thought into this week’s post I thought I’d share it with you. I think it’s a perfect summary of exactly what I aimed to do when I started this blog, and exactly how I feel about all the ridiculous variety of things out there now that I’ve looked into it.

I’m still gonna keep up the blog. I love writing. I just won’t necessarily focus on the net. In case you couldn’t tell from my recent posts.

And I may dedicate my next post to what the heck Quora is, because I had never heard of it until this picture.

Amateur Journalism

I haven’t talked about my new blog project for a while, and there’s a reason for that. It’s taking a lot of work to put together and so it still isn’t ready yet. And again, like the last few times I’ve mentioned it, I don’t want to say too much about the project, because I and the business I’m implementing the blog for are pretty excited about it and don’t want to give anyone any ideas before we have a chance to give it a shot.

That all sounds super-secretively awesome, but don’t take it like that, please. This project is not a huge deal. We just don’t want to put the cart before the horse.

What I can say about it, is that the project began with my spending a lot of time poring over newspaper clippings, and doing a lot of library research that way. However, the project has now morphed into more of an interview process. I’ve been privileged to be able to purchase a recorder for this project and write it off as a business expense for this purpose, and with this in hand I have set out to capture on 1’s and 0’s the interesting things that certain people say in regards to….*trails off into obscure vagueness*.

Anyway, I had my first interview today, with my uncle. My initial idea was to just sit down, ask my interviewee to tell me some stories related to *blank* and away we go. And this idea went pretty well. My uncle is a good public speaker, and he was able to make the stories come out in a natural, conversational-sounding way. Then after the recorder was off, we were chatting and more stories started coming up! I had to turn the recorder back on, though discreetly so as not to make him aware, or at least not to change the comfort level of our conversation. So it occurs to me, that maybe a better way of going about this whole amateur interview thing is to just engage my interviewee in a casual conversation focused on whatever topic I’m looking for. That way  stories come out more naturally.

Actually when I started this project my cousin, Lucky, had given me this very same advice along with the suggestion of interviewing people for their stories instead of looking in old newspapers for the information I wanted. So I did start off using some of his advice, though now I’ll be using all of it. And why did I ask for his advice in the first place? you may be asking. Well, Lucky’s a bit of an historian, which is a gross understatement to be sure. My cuz creates memoirs for people from their stories. He sits down with them, and has conversations with them about their life, recording the whole way through. In the end, he has a collection of stories from their life or a special time in their life that they or family and friends can look back on for years to come. And let’s not forget he’s also an author of the newly published ‘Voices of British Columbia.’ It’s a collection of stories (in print and on CD) that he discovered and restored while working with the CBC’s audio archives. It gives a pretty cool picture of what life was like in days gone by for those who lived in the province of BC. This is his his site, MemoriesToMemoirs.ca.

I didn’t start this post intending to make an endorsement, but Lucky’s stuff is really worth checking out. And by the way, if anyone has any more tips on amateur journalism, leave a comment!

“Where’d all This Snow Come From?! and Other Comments

For those of you who don’t know, I live in Toronto, Ontario. And the last couple days has been beautiful spring-like weather.

Now you might be thinking, ‘oh brother, here we go – a Torontonian complaining about how much snowfall there was.’ but I swear, that’s not what this is about. This is about feeling hoodwinked. Like I said, it’s been beautiful the last couple days. Highs of 6 Celsius, and some light rain here or there to wash away the ice. Then last night, there was some more rain. That’s fine, because like I said it helps wash away the gross grey ice on the sidewalks. But then, while I was out with friends it turned to snow! Come on! I’m not complaining about the amount (once there’s snow on the ground, you might as well have enough to make a fort with), but it was warm 12 hours ago! And now there’s snow! I just needed to share that, because I’m having a bit of a hard time getting over it. Then again, it is kinda pretty…

On another note, this morning I had a very gradual awakening. Have you ever been having a dream that lasts until waking up, and you wake up is so slow that the dream doesn’t just disappear from your thoughts, but you slowly compare it to reality and realize how ludicrous it is? That happened to me not thirty minutes ago.

The dream harkens back to last week’s post where I expressed my longing for the continuation of the hockey season – yes, this dream was about hockey. I think a confluence of factors contributed to this dream’s making.

 

1. A buddy of mine that I’ve been playing shinny with a lot called me a couple times last week to play, but I thought the outdoor rinks had all closed, so I had made plans for the whole week sans hockey.
2. I realized after looking into a beginners summer hockey league that I won’t be able to play, because of my work schedule.
3. I was watching the Leafs host the Blackhawks last night in between dinner conversation.

 

All of these things, I think, came together to create this hockey dream. The gist of the dream was being in a change room, lacing up for a game. Not just any game though – an NHL game. A pretty big deal considering that I had only been playing for four or five months. I’m not sure what happened before that, but this is about the point I started to wake up and compare my dream to reality, so maybe that’s why I remember it so well.

So as I started to surface into wakefulness, it occurred to me how irresponsible it was of an NHL team to put me on their roster.

But don’t worry, it was just for an opening game. “Oh! Well that makes sense.”

Ok… but I’m not that good, not even that that good. Can the Leafs really afford to have me and my upstart buddy (yes some faceless beginner shinny buddy was there too)  ruin their first game of the season? (Insert Leafs joke here).

No worries, I realized, this isn’t for the leafs, it’s the Marlies. “Oh! Well that makes sense.”

But wait, I’ve never even played an organized game, I won’t know when to get off the ice! Yes, I was actually worried about not knowing when to rotate off the ice. Out of all the inadequacies I would bring to the table, this was my most pressing concern.

And at that point I realized that my dream was just that. Sigh. I don’t need to play in the NHL, but I would at least like to keep playing into the summer!

This is just like that time when I was a kid, and had dreamed about having a hoverboard (hovering skateboard) like Marty gets his hands on in Back to the Future II. In my dream I even hid it under the couch in my parent’s room. I anxiously awoke, knowing that it would be there for me, and raced into their room… I looked everywhere for that damned hoverboard.

Biggest disappointment ever.

On a higher note, if you’ve made it this far, I have a recommendation for you. Check out CBC Radio 3’s website. I’m a big fan of CBC radio, and CBC radio 3 is pretty sweet. They do a top 30 every week of Canadian artists, and they always find some super cool ones. Their website has a collection of recording sessions of artists that have come in to play live on the show. It’s kinda like Grooveshark, which I mentioned in a previous post. There’s no uploading to complete your library or anything, but they have a huge selection of artists, and you can create your own playlists and share them on your social network of choice.

That’s my post for this week, and I’m sticking to it.

P.S. Finding the time to write in my blog now that I have a full time job is tough!