I know I just posted, and well, this one isn't really much about Christmas; though knowing me it could quite possibly turn onto that topic, hence it being Christmas day and all. I need a new direction. In life, in whatever the fuck I'm doing. It's 5 a.m. and really the only hour logic consumes me and I feel like myself, or the person I'm content being. The free one. I guess that's why journalism made sense, in the fine words of one of my professors, journalists don't have business hours. In fact, writers aren't exactly sleepers. But this structure, this going out and writing what the people want to hear, this building up; this isn't what I want. I grew up in a family that didn't follow any order, my parents didn't go to college. Now I see them and despite their good financial state, they have no organization, there were never any goals. My mom works a 9 to 5 job, she likes it well enough, but what does that even mean? I've read the stories she wrote in high school, I've seen the pictures of her as a gymnast and how inconceivably good she was at both. But she was in a rush to live, she found love and had kids and stuck out the rough patches. I had an unbelievable childhood. I'd be a liar to say I wouldn't love to just quit this all and be free from the structural chains. I hate that to do what I love for the rest of my life means going through four years of something I hate. I'm not cut out for school, I know that, I have always known that. But I'm good at it. When I want to be. The motive isn't there, I'm only here because this is where everyone with intellect goes, I am torturing myself for proof that I'm just as good. I am the first and probably the only in my family to be going to college, and the people and even the program is great. My brother is so smart, and he's wasted it on alcohol and having the world handed to him. I know I will never waste what I have, I would never throw away my love for art and literature, but does that really have to mean I must follow what everyone considers to be achievement? Writing a book while my baby naps and my husband plays his guitar sounds like fucking achievement to me. And you know what is really, truly, sad? That it sounds like naivety to everyone else. But there is always better. The poet from Ryerson structures their words a little more gracefully, the director a more clever thought, the photographer a clearer eye. So they sell more books, their commercial airs a few seconds longer, they afford a better lens. One day I would love to wake up and just do it. One day just go out and throw my talents at companies and see what the fuck happens. The greatest writers never studied Shakespeare. I'm as good as I want the world to see, not where their systems place me. Why bother with the stress of numbers and times? Because I don't want to be the seed of judgement, the one people can pretend they are better than because their number was higher. Never in my life have I made someone feel low just because a system told me I was better than they were. I can't conceive it. Maybe you think I'm lazy because I don't know how to fit into a place where you go to decide your future. I'm not looking for a shortcut, I'm just not looking to have every change of mind cost me thousands. When I think out loud in reference to why I'm here, they say "because you're good at it". No, I'm just half decent at a lot of things, I'm only good at what I love. I do not love this. Working for a newspaper for a few years, being the pest, following the schedules of wherever the action is; it isn't what I want. I'm here because one day I was reading a music magazine that has literally changed my life and all I could think is how fucking outstanding it would be to someday write whatever the hell I want about whatever band I want, or movie or anything. To have my opinion matter, or acknowledged by some punk ass teenagers who don't give a shit about anything else. To have my career be part of the easygoing scene of music, or something like it. But I accepted somewhere that if I were lucky I'd be writing online for some stupid Toronto newspaper with editors that fuck lead singers for interviews. I mean, shit, if I had this attitude all the time I'd be golden, but by morning the structure is going to eat me alive and I'm going to forget why I even bothered with questioning. So they give you awards, they give you grades they say represent something publishable. Guess what? They give those to me too, when I care enough. I am so far from jealous that it eats me alive. Because this loathe for the people that eat up the fact that they know they've done better, it's there to prove that I stand completely aware of their misconception of what better is. I'm not a goddamn journalist, I'm not an author and I'm certainly not a photographer. I'm a writer, I love art and I try my damn hardest to create it. Of course it isn't any better than yours, the reason for that is that no matter how hard you try, I'm never going to care as much as you do. I do not care how good structure believes I am. If it counts for anything at all, I am not trying to punish anyone. I am not placing the blame of my hatred towards ideals onto any given person place or thing. People live their lives as best they can and I am so happy for the majority that can do that the way they were taught to. I am not stuck between a family of no structure and a life I was meant to lead. I've just always belonged in the middle, without choice, without decision. Now it's my turn to really decide and I won't because being between never meant moving, not until now. I miss acting, I miss directing, I miss designing; I miss everything I won't ever be. The reason; I am too fucking afraid of my certainty that the world will tell me that there's better. But man was I good. There's somewhere I really need to be, there is someplace and someone that will help me prove the world my head created wasn't just the stupid idea of an artist. I am not waiting for the boy with the guitar to sweep me away and pay the bills. I'm not a blathering idiot heading nowhere. I am someone who wants to do something beyond the books, but refuses to do that if it means making the people trying to be the same thing feel lesser about themselves. I literally refuse to become the sort of person that made me hate what I once loved. Maybe I'll never reach any of this, but trying can only get me somewhere different. Somewhere else. Somewhere I need to be.
Anyway, Merry Christmas.