Author Archives: Emma Gillies

These are the Hopes I Have for My Friends

October 2, 2015 By in Life Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments
These are the Hopes I Have for My Friends

I wouldn’t call myself introverted by any means, but I do enjoy a good reflection on life. And yes, sometimes these points of reflection involve a juicer and a four-hour cry, and sometimes they involve feeling down and out and devoid of all the good energy. We all have those moments. They suck, you live them, and then you move on.

But more often than those days, there are days like today, where I sit and think about everything I am lucky to have. I am fortunate that I definitely have more good days than bad, and am surrounded by some of the most fantastic humans to occupy this little earth of ours.

I’m not sure of many things, but this I know: I have the most beautiful friends. They are the most loyal, weirdest, laugh-until-I-spit-out-my-food-at-a-Sunday-brunch friends. They are the most spirited, driven, ambitious, gracious and humble friends. They are the sassiest friends; some of the most back-away-slowly-because-they’ve-gone-temporarily-insane friends.

For these friends, who can change my day with just a wink and a hair flick, who talk me off of every ledge and who listen (I mean REALLY listen) to all my ridiculous rants, this is the life I wish for you.

To the women in my life:

Fuck I adore all of you. I grew up a tomboy, thinking I would never have anything in common with females.

Dear God how you have proven me wrong.

You have proven women can be offside, and fall-off-my chair hilarious. Each of you gives me something to aspire to. I am in awe of all of you constantly; you are bundles of ferocity and positive energy. You have shown me that we don’t need people to pick us up and dust us off in our darkest moments; we are more than capable of doing that ourselves. But you’ve still picked me up, time and time again and for that I am forever grateful.

For you, you vibrant, feisty, vivacious little specimens, I hope so much.

I hope as you grow up, you continue to be protectors and supporters of other women, as you’ve taught me to be. I hope you continue to compliment other women without comparing yourselves to them. I hope you don’t pick yourself apart, say your fat when you’re not fat, or push and prod at your skin. Because at some point all of our asses will jiggle, all our arms will develop those weird little flappy skin wings, so we should probably just accept our fate, laugh, high five each other and let those little wings fly.

And know that when you call yourself fat, I’ll be there to support you in the mature, poignant way I always do: By saying, “Oh my god stop it, you’re SO skinny, I’m the fat one.” (Just kidding… we’re both hot).

I hope you understand and absorb every ounce of your own worth, and only let it be dictated by the strength of your own character. And never NEVER let this worth be shaped by some barely-good looking tool who decides to not text you back.

Let’s be honest, even you know he’s and idiot with a small dick. You deserve to be looked at with admiration and respect by someone with a bigger personality and a substantially larger penis.

…Also, he probably has mommy issues. Ok, I’m done.

I hope you never have to know the hurt of a disloyal friend.

I hope you continue to actually eat pizza and not just pose with it on Instagram like all those idiots we hate.

I hope you know you are never ever alone, not for one minute.

I hope you know that you are enough, and never stand for anyone who makes you feel like less than that.

If you’re one of the single ones, I hope you always let me live vicariously thorough your ever-changing, tumultuous, fun life because after living with someone for two years sometimes I just need to hear about that first date that ended at 6am.

I hope you only surround yourself by people who make you feel good about yourself. I hope that much like you’d cut away a significant other who made you feel bad, you trim your friendships down to those people who lift you up rather than dampen your spirits.

I hope if you want to have kids, you have a whole barrel of them. And if you don’t want to have kids, I hope no one ever makes you feel guilty for it. Growing up comes with an understanding that most of the time, just having the balls to make a decision is the hardest thing. Your choices are just that: yours; no one else has to live with them. So surround yourself with people who support your choices without judgement, regardless of whether they agree with them or not.

I hope for just one moment you let me tell you what a radiant beacon you are instead of laughing and shrugging it off. It’s too easy to cast aside the compliments and concentrate on the criticisms. Hear the compliments you stubborn little fool.

For those of my female friends in relationships, I hope you fight and battle your way to absolute bliss, and never ever settle for a relationship that is, “just OK” or “fine. I hope you stay, not because it’s comfortable or convenient or because, “Well, we’ve just been together so long.”

No, if you stay, I hope it’s because the person you’re with is YOUR FUCKING PERSON and you just can’t picture life without them. You don’t have to spend your life making excuses for why someone is acting like an asshole but is actually really great. You are a partner, not a mother, and definitely not a martyr. Please don’t dull yourself to let someone else shine.

You are vibrant, you are a force; you are God’s fucking gift to men so shine on.

To all my friends of the male persuasion:

If you’ve even managed to read this far, (I assume most of you hopped off board somewhere around “small dick”) I know you think it’s easy for women to get all ranty and anti-male in their trials and tribulations. But long before I understood the value of female friendships, my life was surrounded by men. I was, “One of the dudes” not so much by choice but by overall terrible haircut, glasses, and 11-year awkward phase. No one wanted to put their mouth on this mouth, so I became the friend.

You guys don’t have it easy either, and I imagine that’s not going to change as we get older. Sure I think I have some of the most ridiculously attractive and intelligent female friends, but for every one of them there is about 72 Toronto chicks who I would qualify as ABSOLUTELY FUCKING INSANE.

This city is full of women who ask what you do for a living before they even ask your name; women who want to be taken care of because they never learned to take care of themselves; women with horrific insecurities that you end up having to carry and placate; women who view other women as competition rather than comrades.

These are not my women, but they do exist in hoards.

… You know, those high maintenance, fake tittied club rats you all seem to fall victim to.

The men I consider friends are some of the most absurdly handsome, dependable, hardworking, passionate, hopeless dreamers. They are men who I see as having such bottomless potential to be relentlessly successful in their careers and personal life.

You guys are who I go to when I need a male perspective, or just someone to tell me to get outside my own head a little. Because sometimes everything doesn’t need to be talked to death; sometimes I don’t need the in-depth study of females, or to map out a SWOT analysis for every problem. Sometimes I just need to drink too much and hear one too many testicle story.

For you guys, I hope you eventually find one of the normal ones. The girl who makes you feel secure and valued rather than jealous and taken advantage of. I hope all your hard work and charisma pays off and you are eternally successful so I can continue to let you pay for drinks without feeling guilty (It’s OK if I do it because you know I’m sticking around for life and also pay you back in wing-man capabilities).

I hope you realize that although being a man comes with certain expectations – to be strong, to provide, to win at all costs- that you will inevitably fail. And I hope you know that that these moments of weakness are as unavoidable and important as the moments of strength. Sometimes you’ll need the picking up and I hope you know that this is OK.

I promise that when you fail, I’ll be there to pick you up and once again, let you buy me a drink.

I hope you never lose your sense of humor, because there’s something about a 50-year-old man who still finds the word “balls” funny that’s really quite endearing.

Oh and obviously I hope you a never-ending stream of good, consistent sex because isn’t that the most important thing after all?

And mostly, for all of you: The new friends, the old, the ones I’ve lost touch with and the ones I had falling outs with. Thank you. Thank you for being the people I can rely on, for being the humans I disrupt people sitting next to us by laughing loudly with, who listen and care and don’t check their phone when I’m speaking to them.

Next to my family I have been molded most by you. I trust and love and fight and mourn the way I do because of all of you, and for that I will always be thankful.

I hold all of you in such high regard. You are MY FUCKING HUMANS.

Thanks for hanging in there with me you beauts, I promise to do the same.

Love Always,

E.

Prone to Wander

September 25, 2015 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , 3 Comments
Prone to Wander

So here’s a little observation I’ve made this year: my friends need to stop getting married.

If that sounds like a selfish statement to make that’s because, well… I’m being selfish.

But here’s the thing: When people complain about hitting 30-years-old and experiencing the Domino effect of their friends getting hitched, the only complaint people take seriously is that of the mammalian species, “Singlesadpandalis,” more commonly known as the, “Ugh-I’m-so-single-and-lonely-and-weddings-are-just-three-hours-of-people-asking-when-I’m-going-to-find-someone.”

And maybe it’s because no one wants to sound like an asshole, (as I’m about to) but no one talks about the other major downside to weddings. Screw the “I’m single” birdsong, that just gives you more time to practice your Chicken Dance do what I always did when I was single: date alcohol. No one can be sad and lonely at an open bar, it’s NOT ALLOWED.

 Instead, my core issue with weddings is twofold:

  1. Celebrating human love has become ABSURDLY expensive
  2. Referring to point 1, it gives you no time or money to do anything else.

I guess I didn’t really need the entire pretense; I could have just come right out and said that attending an average of a whopping NINE weddings a year means I’ve been too broke to travel.

In my 20s, travel was pretty core to me as a human. If I ever forget this I am reminded in the form of someone I haven’t seen in six years who asks, “What crazy adventures have you been up to lately?”

Except that because I have an onslaught of friends who have all decided to ditch Tinder and put a ring on it, I haven’t been on any crazy adventures. Instead, I’ve been at champagne fountains and Bachelorette parties abroad and in churches and at event halls and event barns across North America.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a COMPLETE jerk, I love the whole, “Celebration of a friend’s love thing.” Don’t mistake this post as being some giant middle finger in the face on my friend’s happiness; that’s THE BEST. I’m all about loving love and I’m never one to turn down an open bar.

It’s just that it’s all starting to feel a tad too much like real life.

I have a sneaking suspicion that despite my best efforts I have landed myself back on this fast moving train of life and I’m going to blink and it will be five years from now and all the bar nights and bad decisions will have morphed into afternoon teas and serious debates about the most gentle brand of breast-pumps.

And before you roll your eyes and l throw some reference to Peter Pan Syndrome my way I GET IT… We all have to grow up sometime.

I revel in the idea of getting older; I just don’t want to equate growing up with the end of adventure.

The more I delve into the world of schedules and weddings and babies the more I miss the days of exploration. I miss waking up in hostels and for a second, not remembering exactly where I am. I miss smelling like earth, and never really knowing where the day will bring me. I miss the human growth that comes with feeling completely uncomfortable and figuring out how I deal with that discomfort.

I’ve always suspected I have the soul of a wanderer. Clues to this fact include but are not limited to the following:

1. I am physically attracted to world maps and globes.

In all seriousness, if I stumble across a really attractive wall map I have an actual bodily reaction that I thought was reserved for my 16-year-old self, lusting after a sweaty Josh Hartnett in Pearl Harbor. Much like if 2001’s Josh walked past me at this moment, there’s something about a good map; I just have to reach out and touch it.

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2. On a related and equally-disturbing-to-other-people note, I feel what I can only describe as sexual excitement when other people talk about their recent trips abroad.

So next time you’re telling me about that trip to Iceland, don’t mistake those noises I’m making as passive encouragement my friends, I’m getting fucking TURNED ON. It, give or take, goes something like this: “Oh ya tell me where you went. Bali? Yessss!!!!! Namibia, oh so good, say it to me again! Mmmmm, did you say you camped in Argentina? Whisper it to me slowly you filthy little minx.”

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3. I have on multiple occasions seriously considered becoming a flight attendant.

Just for the staff discounts and the feeling of your daily office never being in one place.

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4. I think I could happily live in an airport

Just for the people watching potential (and access to 18 different Starbucks).

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5. I think flights are the only thing I want to spend my money on for the rest of my life.

There is a part of my brain of course that realizes this is wholly irresponsible, but the bigger part of my brain often tells that side of my brain to shut the fuck up and stop contemplating mortgages and square footage because there’s still 51 countries in Africa I haven’t explored yet.

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The point is, (after all those points) as much as I often try to bend and twist and shove myself into the form of an upstanding, contributing member of Toronto society, there is always this little voice in the back of my head whispering, “Remember how much you love waking up in unknown cities with no idea where the day will take you?”

There was a time in my life that I thought my motivation to travel came from a discontentment of what I had at home. And hey, there was a couple of years in my 20’s where that was probably a major contributing factor.

At 24, I was constantly itchy, busy building and burning relationships in an attempt to satisfy this itch, and then really drawn to the idea of running away instead of mending all the fires I had lit. I was young, and stupid, and careless with other people’s hearts. And I was cocky enough to think I could always find something “better.”

But I’m not 20 anymore, and I don’t consider myself reckless, naïve or cocky (at least not MOST of the time). Instead, I have come to realize that in this lovely world of ours, people place value on different things. Some people choose to own objects. There are those that want to own things and see value in chasing after these things.

And I’ve never thought there was anything wrong with that. I respect the hell out of anyone who is capable of owning anything in downtown Toronto. If you have acquired your own toothbrush and at least seven pairs of acceptably clean and attractive underwear you deserve a resounding applause for nailing this whole adult thing.

But there is also nothing wrong with chasing experiences; there is nothing wrong with collecting stories instead of objects.

It’s easy to allow yourself to feel guilty for not wanting what everyone else wants. For not having a predetermined checklist for life where you start knocking off:

  1. Graduate School
  2. Get a career
  3. Find a significant other
  4. Trick that person into thinking they want to spend 50 years with you
  5. Lock that shit down

Often it seems that if you don’t want all those things in that exact order you’re cast aside into the abyss of what some so kindly refer to as, “The fucking weirdos.”

IF you rock out life in the most socially acceptable way, you travel in your youth and then you settle down. You build a life for yourself in your own city. You get older and you form and solidify relationships. You develop ties and roots.

But a desire to travel doesn’t come with an expiry date. It’s not like you have to hit a certain age and suddenly feel completely fulfilled by one place and one city and one group of people. You don’t just, “Get it out of your system” and move on.

… Or maybe some people do, who knows, I’m not an expert in the travel psyche. But I do know that for some (i.e. ME) there still a part longs for the elusive, “Other.”

And what a boring place the world would be is we were all searching for the same things; if the same things made all of us happy.

There has to be some space for the fucking wierdos too!

What I know now is:

  1. This whole wandering soul thing of mine isn’t a phase and,
  2. I don’t feel even vaguely guilty about feeling this way anymore because I know it has nothing to do with a discontentment with my life here.

I love this insane life I lead. I love Toronto and its street and it parks and its patios and its charisma and magnetism. I adore the friends I have here and my boyfriend with his big feet and bigger personality. I even love the horrendously expensive condo we share. Marble countertops are all the rage on King West and quite frankly I’m obsessed with them.

But I also know now- after years of suffering under the weight of gypsy-shame- that you don’t always have to be seeking something else because something is lacking in your life; sometimes the wander is just for wanderings sake.

You wander because of some deeply innate human impulse to explore, with the knowledge that we were never meant to stay in one place for long. Because before all the bricks and concrete and towers we were first and foremost migrators, and therefore there is some part of us that is prone to want to navigate unknown lands.

You wander because there are those of us that will never feel more connected to humanity than in those rare solo moments of being tired and dirty and more uncomfortable than we’ve ever felt.

You wander because you see new places differently than you see your own city; it’s like using a completely different set of eyes. New cities and towns and villages are like a complete attack on the senses. You notice more, absorb more, hear more and smell more because everything is different.

And you wander because you love people, and travelling allows you the opportunity to meet so many humans from so many different backgrounds. And in the end, isn’t life more about what connects us rather than what divides us; in noticing and appreciating the core commonalities that all humans share?

We’re not searching for something better, or something more.

We’re just searching, because that’s what we were built for.

So wander on my little explorers. Or if you can’t afford to, do what I do: just buy a really hip vintage wall map off of Etsy and Google street view your way through other countries.

Explore

 

Love lessons you won’t find on an Inspirational Quote of the Day website

July 2, 2015 By in Life Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment
Love lessons you won’t find on an Inspirational Quote of the Day website

I spent a couple of Sunday’s ago at one of my high school girlfriend’s wedding showers. And although wedding showers usually make me want to get day drunk and give an offiside speech to all the grandmothers about how the bride lost her virginity just to liven things up, the time other women spent making miniature wedding cakes out of Playdough did allow me to reflect on this period of our lives.

Three of my good friends are getting married this year, but they’re all these bizarre species of female who have been in relationship with their fiancés for 7+ years. I treat them like strange little aliens they are.

For the rest of us who find ourselves in stable relationships however, it comes from years of navigating the highs and lows of love, joy, chaos, destruction and heartbreak. For those of us who didn’t find our life partner at 15, we have spent the bulk of the last decade dating, falling in love, falling out of love and watching our partners fall in and out of love with us.

So I sat there, looking at these girls I’ve known for 17 years, reflecting on what it is about us now. What it is about these guys, this moment, and this time that has us all functioning in relationships where others have failed.

It would be too simplistic to reduce it to just the two people in the relationship. We are a product of so much more than just a He + She equation.

It’s more like: He + She + Environment + Age + Timing + Friends + Current Ed Sheeran song playing.

I may not be some 80-year-old woman full of sage wisdom with an entire lifetime of experience under my belt. But in my handful of experience, here is what I have learned about love:

 

  1. Love is NOT all you need

We get it Lennon, you were a damn talented man, but you were also so wholly full of shit. I’m sure when hopped up on acid and hallucinating cartoon submarines all of the world’s negativity really did melt away from you. I’m sure in those moments it did seem like life is easy and humans are intrinsically good and as long as you love one another everything is going to be OK.

But I’ve been in love with people, and been lucky enough that most of those people have loved me back. I’ve watched my friends be in love and watched other people love them.

And I’ve watched it all fall apart.

And yes, sometimes life does operate in black and white and you get to reduce this falling apart to one person just really fucking up. But most of the time relationships function in the many shades of grey; we don’t live in an easily polarized world of Hero vs. Villain, Prince vs. Witch, Princess vs. Jackass.

Because most of the time you love the hell out of one another and still have it not work out. Life would be a lot easier if we could just draw out a map or list of where it all went wrong. But perhaps one of the most poignant and adult conclusions you sometimes have to come to is, Just because nothing is wrong, doesn’t make it right.

At the end of the day, the Beatles can say what they want but it’s not all about love. You have to be able to communicate; you have to like each others families. You have to coexist in each others worlds and friendships. You have to be able to battle and scream and fight and then move on without building resentments or holding onto old grudges.

You have to like the way someone chews their food, the way they act when their drunk, the way they travel and they way they behave when nothing is going their way. You have to learn to like each other even when you hate each other.

It may not make for the same catchy love song lyrics, but in this many shades of grey world we live in, love is but one essential factor in a successful relationship.

 

 

  1. You have no idea how you fall in love I assure you, so don’t limit yourself

Very early on in my life I had this idea of how I fell in love. I mean, I only had a few instances on which to build my opinion but it had always happened in this real storybook ideal way:

Girl meets boy; girl is instantly attracted; girl pines; boy shows interest; girl pretends she never actually liked him in the first place; boy says screw it and starts to pull away; girl panics and draws that poor sap in at the last second.

…You know, a real goddamn Cinderella story.

But it turns out; I didn’t really know myself that well at all.

We spend so long and expend so much effort in trying to know ourselves. We start to see patterns in our own behavior and create lists of what we like and don’t like, characteristics in others we value versus those we could do without.

And then we start judging compatibility based on the presence or absence of these traits.

The problem is, when we do this it becomes very easy to reject or dismiss people because we can’t fit them into our preconceived patterns. We develop rules and limitations for ourselves – we will never date someone younger, someone shorter, or someone who works in finance; we will never meet someone in a bar. We will never date one of our friends, or even a friend of a friend. We hold onto the notion that attraction can’t be built, it’s either there or its not.

The most illogical part of all of this is of course that we reject people because they don’t fit the mold, failing to realize that the mold is what hasn’t been working in the first place.

Sometimes life and love is most beautiful in the unexpected. That feeling of being absolutely sideswiped by someone we never gave any consideration to in the first place. Sometimes chemistry isn’t being struck by lightning but is instead akin to a slow storm brewing.

Sometimes that person in the background you swore you’d never date becomes the only person you ever want to.

Rules are for sports and prison. When it comes to relationships, be a bit of a rebel.

 

 

  1. Regardless of the nature of a breakup, watching someone move on is a terrible fucking experience.

There’s this widely drawn conclusion that in the war of Dumpee vs. Dumper, there exists this huge power imbalance, and the person doing the dumping naturally gets the better end of the deal and moves on faster.

But here’s the thing about humans. We may have opposable thumbs and consider ourselves the mightiest of all the species, but we are also so full of massive contradictions, flaws and paradoxes. No where is this more obvious than in the sentence popularized by pre-teens and adults alike:

“Just because I don’t want him/here anymore, doesn’t mean I want anyone else to have him/her.”

We are all such horribly prideful people. Sure we enjoy loving someone, but we also get off on someone else loving us.

So the hardest conclusion to come to is that we are completely and totally replaceable. That, as much as we’d like to believe it, our significant others sun does not rise and fall based on our existence.

Human beings are made to withstand loss and heartache. It doesn’t matter how much we cared about someone or how much they cared about us – They will move on, they will forget, and they will replace old memories with new ones.

They will have new favorite songs that make them think of new people, they will change and grow and breathe and laugh and they will do all of these things without you.

And you know what makes it worse: SOCIAL MEDIA! The first time I broke up with a boy I found out he was dating someone else weeks after the relationship started, over a phone call with one of my friends. And that was it. It hurt knowing he had found someone else, but the news was confined to one conversation – one large but quick ripping off of the breakup Band-Aid.

Now you get to find out someone has moved on in small increments, all playing out its course in public forums. You get to see photos and posts and tweets. There is no quick ripping off of the Band-Aid. Instead it’s like a slow death by heart shaped, kissy-faced emoticons aimed at new people.

We bear witness to our own replacement, and to put things simply, it really bloody sucks.

 

 

  1. Loving someone doesn’t just happen, it’s a choice you make every.damn.day.

Ok so maybe I actually did take this one from a Quote of the Day website.

Most of those websites make me want to vomit butterflies (unless of course I’m going through a breakup, in which case, like everyone else, I throw on a 2001 Dashboard Confessional album and ugly cry to, “Love like you’ve never been hurt before”).

But once and awhile one of those bad boys really resonates with me. In this case, a little gem by Sherman Alexie that goes:

“He loved her, of course, but better than that he chose her, day after day. Choice, that was the thing.”

All of my relationships have ended because I wasn’t prepared to fight for anything. I was too young and too egotistical to think I couldn’t find something or someone else. I was a wandering soul and I wanted to soak up as many experiences and human connections as I could. I didn’t want to fight. I wanted to run.

I am not a firm believer in this whole marriage thing people keep pitching me on, but that has nothing to do with the example that has been set for me by my parents.

I have zero comprehension of what it must take to make a 37-year marriage last, but I do think it must mean that when you stand up on that alter and say, “I Do” you’d better not just be concentrating on the, “For better” part.

Let’s be honest, for most of us in our twenties and early 30s, we have yet to really have to fight for anything. Sure some of us have worked our asses off in school and continue to do so in our careers, but the real fights haven’t started yet.

Life is hard and relationships don’t always make it easier. Think of how much you’ve changed in the last decade. Now think of how much you’ll probably change in the next decade, and the decade after that.

You’re going to change dramatically and so is that other person and there are no guarantees you’re going to change in the same ways or in the same time scale. You’re going to grow at different rates and sometimes you’re going to grow apart. You’re going to be busier than you ever thought you could be and more tired than you even thought possible. You’re going to have all the romance and desire stripped away from your relationship at times, and you’ll have to wade through the muck to get back to it.

The beautiful end game is that if you last, if you choose each other over and over again, if you don’t get lost in the muck, then what you’re left with is an actual partner; a human extension of yourself. This other person who sees you for all your flaws and idiosyncrasies and late-night eating habits and still chooses you over all the other humans.

But if you’re not prepared for the worst- if you just love and don’t choose- life’s going to seem a whole lots longer and a whole lot harder than you’re probably prepared for.

 

 

  1. If you set someone free, they’re probably not going to come back to you, but that’s no excuse not to do it.

It is one of life’s greatest truisms that we are at times ruled by fear. In relationships this presents itself as an all-consuming idea that if we walk away from someone, they will move on, fall out of love and find someone else.

We let this rule us to the point that we keep strings attached, text when we shouldn’t text, late night booty call when we definitely shouldn’t late night booty call, post quotes and update our Facebook statuses in ways that are clearly aimed at that person.

We drop crumbs like Hansel and send out these small, almost invisible fishing lures trying to keep that person close enough that they find it impossible to move on.

It is cruel for both parties, and love at its most selfish and immature. It extends breakups and builds resentments. In the process you probably drag other well-meaning people into your bullshit. You break and squash and burn each other until there is nothing left to go back to – just an overall numbness where tenderness used to be.

Growing up comes with recognition that there are different kinds of love. The selfish kind of love is when you decide you only love someone when they are yours, when they “belong” to you. This is the kind of love that needs lures and breadcrumbs, because you feel like that love doesn’t exist unless they are near you.

If you can get past this point, you can let yourself delve into the real kind of love. Love at its most kind and selfless is the idea that you love this human regardless of time, of where they are and who they are with. An idea that you love them for everything they brought to your life and everything they are leaving you with. The idea that you may never see or know that person again, but a part of you will always love them just for what they meant to you once. This is the kind of love that doesn’t begin and end with a title.

If you can learn to offer love like that, if you can concentrate on the lesson and not the hurt, then all that fear just disappears.

Because maybe, just maybe, that’s the way that other person loved us too. And that, when we lie our heads down at night, there’s someone, somewhere, wishing us the very best.

 

E.

 

An ode to Toronto

May 24, 2015 By in Toronto Tags: , 1 Comment
An ode to Toronto

You have been called many things: Hogtown, Toronto the Good, Hollywood North, T.O., the T-dot, and most recently some no-name rapper from Degrassi nicknamed you, “The 6”

But I have only ever called you one thing: Home.

Toronto, you are my city. Born and raised midway between the Annex and Little Italy, I have worn down footpaths on your streets for 30 years. I have watched as you have changed and morphed and developed into the bustling metropolis you are now.

You are definitely not a town; you are not even a city. You have long since surpassed that to something that can only be described as a huge fucking megalopolis, absorbing other communities into your population as your boundaries have grown.

Scarborough? Mississauga? Etobicoke?

NOPE. Sorry, ALL TORONTO now people.

Toronto, I don’t see you through rose-colored glasses. I am all too aware of your imperfections. They are many and they are mighty but I adore you despite them.

Your waterfront, never particularly gorgeous to begin with now seems to exist purely for the breeze it provides one of the 200-condo towers that line it.

You tear down everything old and beautiful and build up 60 floors of glass and metal.

Your people are often referred to as the most pretentious of Canadians. They are called stuck up, self-absorbed, cold; and hey, as a local girl myself I can’t say I always disagree. Blame technology, blame the increase in population, but sometimes I try and see this city from an outsiders perspective and realize we are at times teetering on the edge of going the way of New York – where people are so plugged in and driven to move from point A to point B that no one really looks up and enjoys the ride anymore.

But a boring city you are not. Maybe your residents think they’re the center of the free world, but that’s only because, well damn, life is good here.

Tell me why you hate this city and I’ll tell you why you’re wrong.

Toronto, you have heart. Your people may love spin class, matcha tea and Instagramming morning coffee, but they also senselessly devote themselves to a hockey team who hasn’t given them anything to look forward to for almost 50 years.

You are a city of artists, poets, entrepreneurs, comedians, food lovers and musicians where creativity isn’t just accepted but welcomed and nurtured. Sure, you are a city with renowned Universities that turn students into doctors and lawyers, but you are also a place where bartenders can hone their talent and move on to open their own restaurants in the city.

You take creative minds and allow them to be entrepreneurs. You are a city of large corporations but also small businesses, where your neighborhoods rally around local coffee shops and revival movie theatres. You take high school garage bands and put them on stage.

You don’t just attract talented people; you breed talent.

Toronto, you don’t take a night off. You have the combined energy of the near three million people populate your buildings. Walk across Queen or King west on any given Thursday night at 3am and it still buzzes with the noise of financial district employees already regretting that night’s decisions, with servers just getting off shift who still need to unwind, with people from the surrounding Etobicoke, Mississauga and Scarborough all trying to figure out which vomit soaked blue-line bus will get them home.

And somewhere behind this hum of alcohol and hormones is the music.

This may be a bias from someone with a personal infatuation with live music, but Toronto THANK YOU. You make me feel lucky to live in one of the few Canadian cities that artists from abroad choose to play shows at. Do you know what a rarity it is to live in a place where that much talent will come to you?

You have venues with history, where the beers and concerts of the past literally soak the walls. The Horseshoe, the Dakota Tavern, Massey Hall, the Phoenix, the Opera House and Lee’s Palace are all venues that are extraordinary to hear live music at simply because of the history that reverberates through its walls.

And sure you have 9-month long winters where freshly fallen snow turns to black slush within a half hour. Your ski hills look like the premature inbred cousins of Whistlers and Banff’s. I can honestly say I have never even set foot on a hill and the only reason I have felt lacking is because of the top notch handsome dude factor that accompanies the sport.

No, your people don’t relish the winters. We don’t dance in the snowfalls because we know it only means ridiculous traffic and TTC delays. Maybe we toboggan on a sunny day, maybe a whisky-infused night might end in a disfigured snow angel, but mostly we deal with winters in the only way we have learned how to: complain about fucking EVERYTHING.

But Toronto, your summers make up for it. Do you see what happens to your people when the weather goes above 10 degrees? When they venture out, are kind to one another again, when your streets are lined with patios, people take long lazy lunches and beer flows quickly and without guilt.

You are a summer city. Your people suffer through your winters because they know summer means art festivals and people watching in Trinity Bellwoods Park. Summer means rare instances of hiking and the Queen East beaches being more than just a horrific wind tunnel of despair. It means farmers markets and taking the ferry to Wards Island. It means group BBQs on condo rooftops and trying to sneak into other people’s condo pools. It means lawn seats at the Molson Amphitheatre and nosebleed Jays tickets when the dome opens.

And you may not be as friendly as Halifax. And let’s be honest, NO ONE is as friendly as St. John’s. And unlike Vancouver, your residents don’t wake up every morning with an ocean view and mountains as their backyard. And Torontonians definitely don’t cure hangovers with ginger Kombucha and an early morning 10K hike.

No, in Toronto we couch, we self-loathe and then we eat some Goddamn magnificent brunch. No one loves brunch more than a Torontonian.

WE.BRUNCH.SO.HARD.

And you don’t have Banff’s glacier water, and Toronto kids are too delicate to handle a weeks worth of Calgary’s Stampede. And when it comes to Winnipeg….

…I’ve got nothing; you have everything Winnipeg does.

I have travelled often and fallen in love with many cities for many reasons. Toronto may not be the most scenic or its people the most welcoming. We may all get early onset asthma from the smog and raise our kids on the 40th floor of a condo building because we’d have to sell said children to another country to afford a house with a backyard.

Yet still, I have never wanted to live anywhere else. Toronto you are many things – manic, busy, stressful, vibrant, diverse, dazzlingly beautiful, monstrous and a constant assault on the senses.

But still, you are simply put, home.

E.

An open letter to my future self

April 26, 2015 By in Life Tags: , , Leave a comment
An open letter to my future self

This week’s been an emotional one. My 94-year-old grandma is in hospital for the first time, after fracturing her hip falling in her apartment. She’s the toughest of the tough old birds – still rocking life solo in her own apartment, doing her own grocery shopping and with a better memory for things that happened 40 years ago than I have for what happened yesterday.

She’s an absolute force.

And although every Christmas for the last two decades she has vehemently declared that, “You’d better not buy me gifts this year, I may not be around to enjoy them” I think in the back of my mind I thought she was some impenetrable conglomeration of cells and neurons, constructed before food allergies and air pollution could take their toll.

I mean she lived through Prohibition for god sakes! I thought she was unbreakable.

Seeing her lying in the hospital, I was faced with the idea of mortality for the first time in years. Lying there, having to be taken care of for arguably the first time in her life, I know she’s not thinking about the bills she didn’t pay on time or how much of her pension she’s spent.

All that matters are the people in the waiting room.

Isn’t that all we can really hope for after all? To have someone to tell our stories? To be missed when we leave?

So being stuck at home all week with a bad bout of the flu, I have had nothing but time think about what I want my future to look like. We all have these all-encompassing goals – get a career, find a partner, have a couple of kids, and try to live without killing one another. But when we picture these things growing up, the goal careers are often hazy and lofty ideals, the future partners might as well be heavily pixelated faces set atop bodies that we move from life event to life event.

So rather than these over-arching goals, I thought I’d take it down to the specifics. What do I really want my life to look like? Who do I want to become? Who will come along for the ride?

Here I present to you, a letter to the future me.

 

Dear old Emma,

How’s it going you wrinkled, saggy little lady?

As I write this, I’m trying to picture what you might look like as you read it; are you holed up in a Toronto apartment in the middle of winter, drinking your 6th coffee of the day? Or perhaps sitting in a hammock somewhere in a different time zone, warm and sun-kissed, letting a tan cover up the stretch marks from that year you accidentally forgot to go the gym?

Have you found any of that elusive perspective yet? Is life beginning to make sense in retrospect? As you’re reading this, are you able to look back and pinpoint one or two big decisions you made that set life on a different course, or does it all just look like a series of small decisions, seemingly inconsequential at the time, that you laid down like cobblestones, building a path through life.

Has life reached some plateau of stability? Or are you still a wanderer: seeking, imagining, free falling?

I hope you never let yourself be pressured into a job you didn’t love. As I write this, even after just 4 months of trying to live the free-spirited, “damn-the-man” lifestyle, I sometimes wake up with the weight of everyone else’s expectations squeezing the breath from my chest. It’s impossible to not compare yourself to those people who have check marked all the boxes in their life list and seem to float around with this blissful air of contentment.

I hope you’ve continued to remind yourself as you’ve aged that you are not these people; that you’ve never wanted to be.

Do you still wake up every morning an hour earlier than you have to, just to have coffee alone, give yourself an extra 20 minutes to sit in front of the mirror and reflect on what’s to come? Do you still smile at the life you lead? Or do you wake up feeling rushed, discombobulated, squeeze yourself into an uncomfortable pencil skirt and run off to some job that you, “Don’t completely hate and it pays the bills?”

If it’s the latter, you’ve failed me woman. You swore you’d never do that again. So comfort be damned. Unzip the pencil skirt, strip off the button-down, and run.

I hope at some point you learned the art of aging gracefully. There is something so intrinsically beautiful about women who can do that. And it’s an art that at 30 I still have yet to master. There’s that forehead wrinkle I cover with bangs, that patch of skin on my stomach I’ve tried for years to cardio away. Are you comfortable in your own skin yet? Have you learned to love your thighs?

Just remember that all the women you love most are those that unabashedly appreciate the beauty of youth. Those that laugh loudly, radiate sass and tell young women how fantastic they look. The ones who are jealous of youth, or worse cling to it in a perpetual state of discontentment and envy are the people you swore you’d never become. Remember how negative their energy is.

Now go out and tell a 25-year-old girl how god damn pretty they look.

Have you popped out a couple of kids yet? Do you love those little life-sucking vampires more than anything you ever thought imaginable?

I think you’ve always known that even in your most unsure of states, when everything seems up in the air, that kids are in the cards for you; even when you’ve had no idea about anything, you know you’d be a good mom. I mean fuck, at age 30 I still pick worms off the sidewalk after it rains and collect humans like stray cats. I have a sentimental attachment to a bag of Skittles someone got me when I had the flu 15 years ago and full conversations with flies when I attempt to catch them with a cup and a piece of paper.

I hope you still value life, and remain aware of your own ridiculousness. The world is full of hard things, but loving your kids… that should always be easy.

I hope you’ve kept your sense of humor and that at some point you learned to drive you weird city girl. I hope you call your parents twice a week, and that you and your brother have really gotten to know one another.

I hope you’ve had serious debates with your niece about the hottest Disney princes, and continue to unashamedly defend your long-standing crush on teenage Simba.

I hope you still go to live music shows and haven’t once complained about it being too loud. But I also hope you’ve grown enough of a pair to walk up to those people in the front row who talk through the entire set and tell them to fuck right off.

I hope you’ve gotten rid of some of your acquaintances and spent more time on the people you value. Life is pretty easy right now, and I bet from where you’re sitting, you’ll laugh and say I actually had no comprehension of just how good I had it.

Growing up comes with an awareness that for some, marriages will turn into divorces, and friends will start losing loved ones. I hope you haven’t watched these things happen from a distance, or merely offered a polite hand and empty offers of, “If you need anything, let me know.”

No, when your people have hurt I hope you have crawled with them through the war trenches of pain. I hope you have sat in the dark with them, cried with them and opened too many bottles of wine with them. I hope you’ve never made excuses of being, “Too busy” to do this. I hope you’ve managed to be better than that.

I hope you’ve been a good daughter to your parents. I hope you’ve continued to love them for all of their faults, idiosyncrasies, successes, strengths and failures. I mean, how could you not? You learned how to love first from them, and this is always how they have loved you.

And then there’s him. THE guy. This live-in life partner that I adore so much. At the moment, when I think about my future, he’s the one thing I try not to think too much about. Like just the act of planning or imagining a future will make it untrue. If you don’t make plans then the plans can’t fail right?

But here is what I know, without having to think about it too much. Right now, the biggest arguments consist of who ate the last of the goldfish crackers (him), whose turn it is to Swiffer (his) and who forgot to turn off the lamp (ALWAYS him). And you deal with these arguments in a health, mature fashion – by blaming him until he exasperatingly caves and leaves in a huff to go buy more goldfish crackers/Swiffer sheets.

This weird little bubble of relationship bliss is bound to pop at some point. The big fights haven’t even started yet; I know this. The ones that last weeks and leave you feeling emotionally numb; the ones that feel like physical pain.

In the past I’ve been a cut-and-run person. I’ve told myself, “It shouldn’t be this hard this soon.” I hope when it came to him, you chose not to run. I hope at some point you decided to dig your heels in, plant your feet and resolve that what you have is worth fighting for.

I hope when you’ve had the big fights, you’ve managed to remember that this is the meat-and-potato eating Scotsman whose grocery list now consists of quinoa bars and vegan protein powder. A guy whose previous mattress was lovingly titled, “The Taco” by all his friends because it was so soft it folded up on both sides, but who now sleeps on bed comparable to a concrete slab because of your bad lower back.

Remember that for every time you want to smother him with a pillow for snoring so loud, there is a time he has brought your grandmother flowers on Easter or huffed his way through a hot yoga class just to hang out with you.

And sure he talks ad nauseam for two months about needing a spring jacket only to never buy a spring jacket, and complains twice a week about needing a pair of brown shoes only to never buy a pair of brown shoes. But remember that he patiently chased you through the woods for 6 hours that time you thought it a wise idea to do a handful of mushrooms at a cottage. He didn’t even try to correct you when you made him lie with you on the gravel because you were wholly convinced it was made of human teeth.

And I’m sure as we get older, he’ll still have two white dress shirts he interchangeably puts on, then takes off, then puts the other on, then asks which one looks better even though he knows you can’t tell the difference. I’m sure he’ll still put his face way too close to yours when you’re sleeping, so you wake up feeling like someone is attempt to suck your soul through your nose. But he puts up with you being a she-devil at least twice a week, pretends almost convincingly to care about throw pillows and area rugs, and ALWAYS leaves the last bit of milk for you to put in your coffee in the morning.

I hope you’ve remembered these things as you’ve gotten older. I hope you continue to realize that all the things you roll your eyes at are the things you’d miss most about him if he left.

I hope you both chose to stay.

I hope you’ve traveled, and slept in hostels long past the age you’re supposed to sleep in hostels. I hope you’ve been so uncomfortable in foreign places it has made you scream in frustration, because that’s when you know you are truly present. I hope you still look homeless people in the eye when they speak to you, and never bring out your phone on dinner dates with friends. I hope you’ve held onto old photographs, but let go of old grudges. I hope you’ve managed to afford an espresso machine, because that’s going to make everyone’s life easier.

I hope you smile at the life you lead, because it really is just such a crazy, messed-up, awesome adventure.

I hope you’ve done all of this, and along the way, I hope you’ve written it all down.

E.

 

Love Apptually Part 2: Clowns and Pirates and Fishermen oh my!

April 7, 2015 By in Humour Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

In Febraury I shared an emotionally crippling tale (cue the dramatics) about my own embarrassing incident with Tinder. But save a 20-minute involvement that turned me off dating apps forever, my experience with any sort of technologically assisted dating has been sporadic and always secondhand.

This doesn’t mean its existence and effect on human relationships doesn’t continuously intrigue me however (this is “Part 2” for a reason).

I majored in Psychology and Criminology in University, so the social sciences have always been my bag. Living in this crazy online world where face-to-face human interaction is becoming more of a choice than a necessity, it’s hard to ignore that little Freudian voice in the back of my mind that wonders what is becoming of the world and what inevitable impact technology will have on the way we relate to one another.

I remember being 19 the first time I encountered the wonder that is Internet dating. Working a summer office gig at the time, I had a 31-year-old male colleague who regaled me with tales of his experiences with Lavalife (for the youth, Lavalife is a washed-up attempt at adult dating that I now believe is entirely reserved for low-end escorts and gigolos who don’t want to advertise in the back of NOW Magazine).

At 19, I was but a wee nugget fresh out of high school and also recently out of her first relationship. The idea of going on a date with someone I didn’t have at least a 2-year personal resume for and 20 mutual friends who could vouch for his character was unfathomable to me.

The notion of meeting said person through a computer was absurd. At at the time it took me at least two hours bi-weekly to come up with a sassy and hilarious new MSN name, and here was someone telling me to put up an entire profile? For other people to actually see?!?

I quickly shelved Lavalife to the back of my brain as reserved for the very old and highly desperate.

Fast-forward 11 years and everyone and their grandmothers are partaking in online dating of some kind. There is a dating website for every genre and sub-genre of human.

Pirate looking for love? Sure, there’s a website for that.

Fisherman in search of a Fisherlady? Check.

And in case you’re looking, these also exist:

  • Equestrian Cupid: For those passionate cowboys just looking for someone to ride bareback with.
  • Amish Dating: Perfect for those who value hard work and candlelit dinners.
  • Clown Dating: If you’re down for being constantly fucking TERRIFIED because why clowns WHY!?!
  • Gluten-free Singles: So you can tell each other every single day that you don’t eat wheat and leave the rest of us out of it.
  • Hot Sauce Passions: I cannot tell you enough how into this I am.

So it was only a matter of time until someone thought, “Gee how can we take this huge industry and make it faster, way less personal, completely unauthentic, and ideal for absolute perverts?”

Enter TINDER. We are now at the point where people consider the hour-long eHarmony questionnaire too much of a time dedication to find a partner. I mean, why consider frivolous character attributes like family values, religion and interests when you can cover WAY more ground by swiping left or right based solely on a bikini photo and some strong eyebrow game?

It would be naïve, therefore, to think that this method of romantically relating wouldn’t filter into out expectations and desires in a relationship. We live in a society that respects and values quantity over quality; we are judged by how MUCH of something we have. Online dating in general and Tinder specifically appeals to this propensity; it makes the quantity of potential relationships exponentially higher. And with this it necessarily makes it near impossible for someone to invest any real time or energy into just one relationship.

Quantity up = quality down. It’s called a CORRELATION people. First year stats whaddup?!

And I know what you’re going to say: “Well that’s stupidly naïve Emma. People on Tinder aren’t interested in dating; it’s a hook-up App and who says a healthy sexual appetite is a bad thing?”

It’s not of course. Have an insatiable appetite for hook-ups you little minxes, and more power to you. I just don’t believe that every user on Tinder is there for the same reasons or with the same zero-expectations. I think many of them are there trying to wade through all the sexual innuendos and terrible examples of humanity in search for an authentic connection.

I have never witnessed a world that makes it more possible and feasible to connect with other people socially and yet is paradoxically making us all antisocial, starving us of quality human interaction.

We are not a generation of need but a generation of want. And with this comes the refusal to wait or fight for anything.

No one seems willing to dedicate the time to actively wooing anymore, or to being wooed. We have all become such easily distracted individuals, constantly drawn to the next shiny object with nice abs and a tight ass.

And, as one would expect, this propensity naturally filters into our face-to-face interactions and our expectations for said romantic meetings. I have a guy friend who takes home a lot of females. I mean, a warrants-his-own-personal-STD-PSA amount. And sure, he’s a good-looking dude with adequate sex appeal, but he’s not particularly suave. His method of picking up amounts to a series of grunts and a reliance on spending his limited amount of energy on a girl with just the right ratio of alcohol consumption to daddy issues.

Ladies, I am all for being a strong independent female who wants to get theirs, truly. Go forth into the night you self-assured, beautiful, toned ladies and give your nether regions a good meal at the 3am buffet! But at least make the guy utter enough full sentences to ensure he is both English speaking and has an IQ above borderline deficiency. Don’t let this weird technological world force you to forget that you are worth some goddamn full sentences!

And don’t mistake this for some feminist rant. Yes I think a woman should demand to be pursued. But similarly, I think men should want to have to fight for her a little. I mean gentleman, do you really want the foundation of your relationship to be a series of vodka-infused six-word conversations that only confirm you two are equipped with the right anatomy to roll around together for an evening?

…. Ugh, I KNOW!… the answer to that question is always a resounding YES.

I really don’t have an issue with online dating or even Tinder. Treat it as entertainment, or as a distraction so you don’t drunk-text your ex, but don’t treat it as a true microcosm of the dating world.

Mostly because in the unfortunate circumstance that I ever find myself single again, I can’t accept that a 5’4” 24-year old accountant intern who offers to slap me with an avocado as his go-to pick-up line is all the dating world has to offer.

And fellas, the next time you get a female’s number, do the unexpected and actually CALL her. Don’t text, don’t Facebook, and definitely don’t send her a direct message on Instagram (I just found out this was a thing).

A phone call. I swear she’ll be so shocked her pants may literally just fall off.

You’re welcome.

E.

Eternal sunshine of the jobless mind

March 22, 2015 By in Humour Tags: , , , 1 Comment
Eternal sunshine of the jobless mind

So here I am, 11 weeks into this little social experiment – this pursuit of the “rad life” as I deemed it on day one.

80 days in and I suppose if I had to really Coles Notes the whole experience, I’d opt for describing it as, “startlingly positive.”

I’ve finally been able to begin this little passion project of a blog of mine, and through doing so, I’ve realized that maybe there is still a little creative energy left swirling somewhere in the deep abyss of my mind. Somewhere, below grocery lists and appointments, hidden under layers of small talk and daily articulations on the weather, there still exists some small part of me that can have a semi-original thought.

That is, as long as I’m not hungover, overly tired or under-caffeinated, the air isn’t too humid or too dry, there’s a crescent moon AND I have uninhibited access to a 90’s slowjam playlist. But give me some Boyz II Men and a latte and the creative juices are a flowin’!

I have also experienced the support of old acquaintances, friends and well-meaning strangers set on letting me know that I am not alone in eternal feelings of discontent. I now know for sure what I have always suspected: that we are a world of hunters and wanderers and that very few of us really have anything figured out.

Sure we like to give the appearance of knowing what we’re doing; we have entire social media outlets dedicated to giving the impression that we are #flawless. Photos and posts and tweets, filtered and edited and carefully timed to tell the outside world, “Hey look at me, I’m on a beach, life is so blissful and easy” or, “Look over here at this new car I just bought, it’s so shiny and exciting, just like my life” and most often, “Check out this nauseatingly cute photo of me and my boyfriend/girlfriend/life partner that makes it look like we never fight and have sex eight times a day.”

Yet dig just a little under the surface, get rid of a little bit of the Valencia sheen and you’re left with a world of beautiful messes, all secretly waiting for someone else to exclaim “Me! Here! Look! I’m a disaster too!”

I’ve received a multitude of messages from other people who feel like their quicksanding through their careers, all with the common theme of, “Thank God I’m not the only one who’s considered hurling themselves down a flight of stairs to avoid going to work.”

On any given day I teeter somewhere between the two worlds. Some days I wake up just reveling in the messiness of it all. There are days I absolutely believe that if tomorrow, someone handed me my perfect career on a silver platter and I was left holding a tray complete with a great relationship AND was financially stable AND had a job I skipped to in the morning, that I would probably just crumble and self-destruct in its perfection.

It’s like the old saying goes: “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for life; give a man free-roaming access to all the fish in the world and all he’ll want is a steak.”

We’re not supposed to get everything we want all at once. It’s too easy; too boring. If it’s one thing we can all learn from women’s attraction to bad boys or men’s pursuit of aloof women it’s that we all love a challenge; if it comes to easily it’s probably not worth it and we probably won’t fight to keep it.

But then there’s days, waking up after a long night shift working in a bar, puffy-eyed and horse-voiced from 10-hours of small talk, that the idea of normalcy seems fairly ideal. At 30, my body isn’t cut out for walking on concrete floors in heels anymore. I don’t have the same patience for people I once did, and expending all my energy outward to strangers on a daily basis has meant I have had less energy to expend on the people in my life that actually matter.

In the last couple of weeks, the overall throbbing in my knees has left me leaning once again toward life outside the restaurant industry.

So although I haven’t written a blog entry in over three weeks, I have been writing. I’ve been writing all kinds: Cover letters and making minute edits to my resume in hopes of tailoring it to the specifications of a particular job. I’ve been spending entire afternoons trying to work “key words” into job applications in hopes of tricking the computer program that is filtering out resumes before actual humans even see them.

And I will tell you one thing: Job-hunting has to be one of life’s most horribly disenchanting experiences.

I loathe it.

I believe LinkedIn was a website created by soulless robots with the goal of making you seem horribly inadequate in all facets of life.

Job requirements in postings are akin to the dating profile of a high-maintenance girl with unrealistic expectations. The girl who wants a neurosurgeon with a 6-pack who can play guitar, who owns a Maserati and nurses abandoned three-legged kittens back to health between brain surgeries.

All job listings read like this to me: Oh for that entry level associate job you want 10-years prior experience, a Masters in sign-language, the ability to type 120 words per minute while in a handstand position, a proficiency in horse-whispering and an in-depth knowledge of the sport of cricket? No problem!

You’d like me to work 14 hour days fueled on a single banana, read Good Night Moon to clients in a David Attenborough accent, breathe my soul into a mason jar and store it on my desk every day, and give you my first born child to use as adorable office décor? Of course! Oh and you’d like me to do all that AND only pay me $45,000 a year? Why wouldn’t I? Who needs basic human sustenance like clothing and shelter? I’m just happy to be part of the team!

It looks like my uncanny road trip playlist-making abilities and unlimited supply of sarcastic zingers aren’t going to get me as far in life as I would have liked.

Listen, if we’re applying for a job in anything but computer programming, we’re all going to claim to have excellent communication skills and a completely made-up proficiency in Excel. Having worked in the 9 – 5 job market for a couple of years, these are not the things that get you through the daily trials and tribulations of office life. You can Google how to use Excel but you can’t Google how to survive spending eight hours a day shoved into a room with people who may rank close to zero on the likability scale. Is there a class somewhere on how to hold your tongue when every neuron in your body is itching to tell your boss he’s full of shit? Because THAT my friends, is an actual skill.

So if I had the opportunity to write my resume filled in with the qualities of mine I think are ACTUALLY important to career maintenance, it would look like this:

SUMMARY OF QUALIFICATIONS

  • Proficient in media monitoring; can provide a detailed daily summary of all recently posted BuzzFeed articles and most hilarious video clips.
  • Up-to-date knowledge of important current events including in-depth expertise on recent male celebrity beards and female celebrities in bikinis.
  • A highly motivated self-starter provided there is an unlimited supply of caffeinated beverages within a 5-minute walk of the office.
  • On a related note, will literally lick the face of anyone who brings me coffee in the morning, i.e. skilled at cultivating relationships with other staff members.
  • Excellent aptitude for elevator small talk.
  • Ability to stay neutral in all office-related relationship drama; has in the past been referred to as the “Switzerland” of the office environment.
  • Talented at getting the perfect amount of tipsy at work-related functions; has never been referred to as “THAT girl.”
  • Gifted at making grammar and punctuation my bitch on a regular basis.
  • Places great importance on elevating the self-esteem of my work colleagues. My horse-like laugh often accompanied by snorting makes those around me feel better for not sharing these qualities.
  • Has a very genuine looking fake smile and therefore capable of making even the most antagonistic and sociopathic clients feel liked and appreciated.
  • Multi-tasker who can simultaneously read, write, and pretend to care about your child’s birthday party/baby’s first tooth/that dog wedding you attended over the weekend
  • Excellent writing skills; highly gifted at responding to texts from your potential dates/boyfriends/girlfriends when you are stuck for ideas or in serious trouble.
  • A team player that places great value on the happiness of others; can offer many pieces of poignant advice to staff that are unknowingly just quotes of Taylor Swift lyrics (e.g. “Shake it off”; “Don’t be afraid, we’ll make it out of this mess”; “I’ve found that time can heal most anything. And you just might just who you’re supposed to be.”)
  • A superior sense of direction. You want a midday burrito? I definitely do too and know where to find the closest one.

Point is, a lot of the most talented, humorous, enjoyable people I know aren’t the ones that look that necessarily look that great on paper. It’s hard to slip in pieces of your personality between your experiences with Photoshop and how much you love spreadsheets.

Sending your resume out over LinkedIn or on a third-party job posting site often feels like throwing the garbage down my condo’s chute. Who sees it? Did I even throw it down the right chute? Does anyone REALLY know where it’s going? I picture the receiving end just being some R2-D2 type robot that scans my resume and then lights it on fire for overuse of semicolons or not employing the proper subset of Helvetica.

I learned about a month into my last job that whole, “It’s not what you know it’s who you know” isn’t just some toss away proverb; it’s how this city functions.

So on that note, if you know someone, let’s get them trapped in an elevator with just me, a Tassimo machine and a copy of Good Night Moon and get this girl a career!

Hunt on my little messed-up wanderers.

E.

Love Apptually: A Tinderella Story

February 24, 2015 By in Humour Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment
Love Apptually: A Tinderella Story

Once upon a time in a land far far away, sat a princess in her castle, carefully setting up the timer app on her iPhone camera. Once considered the fairest in all the land, long ago a fairy, fed up with the princess’ new-age vanity, cursed her with the inability to take a good selfie.

Banished to the land of poor lighting and double chin angles, only by finding true love (despite many an #instagramfail) could the curse be broken.

And so she sat, in the highest tower, of the tallest castle, on the largest hill in all the land, methodically swiping right on Tinder, hoping and wishing that her Prince Charming would see through her crossed eyes and duck face, and that he too, would swipe right….

…Ok, so a little dramatic sure, but tell me that isn’t a little bit more relatable than leaving behind a glass slipper or having to let down your long golden hair?

Dating in 2015 is a strange little monster isn’t it? In my last post I covered how I think the dating scene changes as you move from your 20s to 30s. But regardless of age, technology has entirely changed the way in which we find, forge and maintain relationships.

For obvious reasons I’m not on Tinder myself, nor have I ever been; I imagine my relationship would be a little less stable if I were constantly on my phone perusing half-naked bathroom mirror selfies of bachelors within a 2km radius of me.

Ok, part of that was a lie.

I was on Tinder once.

For 20 minutes.

And it scarred me emotionally.

It was two years ago, when Tinder was but a wee babe fresh out of the Silicon Valley womb. It was one of those, “let’s go out for one drink” kind-of evenings with a girlfriend that had quickly morphed into 3 hours and 2.5 bottles of wine.

Following numerous in-depth conversations on world news, Canadian politics and the state of Syria, our conversation pivoted to men.

Translation: we had been talking about men since glass one.

After a lengthy summary of her most recent escapades and a synopsis of my at-the-time battle with deciding whether to opt for monogamy or singlehood, she starts telling me about this hilarious new dating application that is, in her words, “Essentially a combination of Hot or Not, but with a location based component.”

I mean, how could I not be curious enough to check it out?

So I download Tinder, and her and I sat beside each other shadowing each others right and left swipes, until we ended up in a conversation with the same two guys, laughing as they fed us both the exact same cheesy pick-up lines.

For those who don’t know, part of the joy of Tinder is depending on how close a location parameter you set, you know if who you’re talking to is within a 10km radius of you, a 5km, a 2km, etc. It took about 6 minutes for both guys to begin vying for an in-person meet and greet with both of us, having no idea we knew each other.

That was about the time that the red wine buzz started to wear off, I became acutely aware that I was speaking to real humans somewhere within a 2km radius of me, both of whom I had mutual friends with on Facebook. I immediately deleted the application, curiosity satisfied and only mildly creeped out by the entire system.

Fast forward a mere TWO DAYS after said interaction, and I am with one of my best guy friends, watching a concert at the Rivoli. I turn and look at the door, and Tinder Guy #1 walks through…

…Followed directly by Tinder Guy #2.

Let me repeat, the only two people I have ever spoken to on Tinder, walk into the incredibly small, packed bar TOGETHER.

Now, despite only having had engaged in a 10-minute discourse with both of them, and having none of these messages include even the mildest undertones of the sexting or inappropriateness, I FREAKED OUT.

Looking back, I assume anyone who saw my next movements must have assumed I had lost complete control of my limbs, or was suffering an epileptic seizure.

Upon seeing both these men, I hurled my entire body down under the crowd, and crouched on the floor with my hands over my head mumbling various obscenities and threats to God.

My friend, standing beside me, was of course generally confused by my insane person behavior. I barely had time to hear him say, “What the balls are you doing?” because I was too busy forward crab walking, still below the crowd, to the bar’s washroom.

There I sat alone in a stall for 10 minutes, texting the friend who introduced me to Tinder various overly dramatic rants about how I will never EVER drink red wine again, how I plan on lighting my phone on fire and how I can now understand the plight of people who live in war-torn countries because isn’t this basically the same thing?

Her supportive reaction of course, “This is the best story ever, I want to marry your current situation and have its babies” and an equally supportive, “Well good luck, let me know how it works out. I remember the brunette being hotter if that helps.”

Some would call my frantic ground crawl and bathroom stall stay an irrational overreaction; others would call it a ridiculously irrational overreaction.

In retrospect, of course I realize it all sounds very illogical and over-the-top; like someone caught me white girl dancing to Alanis Morissette so I threw myself in front of a car. But as I said, I grew up in this city. My world already feels so exponentially small and I do everything I can to not to make it feel smaller.

And this made it so small I felt like I was wearing a parka in a phone booth.

I felt like I had just rolled over first thing in the morning, faced not with just one but two bad decisions from the night before lying beside me, and I wanted to chew my arm off rather than wake the beasts.

In short, Tinder made me feel like I had been part of a threesome gone wrong and I was traumatized.

Let’s also remember that Tinder was still so new at this point. There was no cushion of, “Well everyone’s doing it.” Walking back through that crowd, forced to make eye contact with my two Tinder BFs, I could only assume they were thinking, “Oh, how nice of her to leave the comfort of her home, her collection of stamps and 42 cats to come out for an evening.”

It didn’t matter that to know I was on Tinder they had to also be on Tinder. My brain at the time was not processing basic reason and deduction.

In short, I am chalk full of vanity and was just hugely embarrassed.

As it turns out, I think way too highly of myself, or the memorability of said 20-minute interaction because when I walked through the crowd- in what I imagined to be slow motion- the theme song to The Walking Dead playing on loop in my brain, they looked up, took me in, paused for about three-tenths of a second, and then turned back to each other and continued their conversation with ZERO semblance of recognition.

That’s right… I was the member of the threesome that no one even remembered being in the room.

It looks like they weren’t on Tinder some good banter and solid use of puns. Colour me shocked.

And although I was momentarily so outraged at my text game not making a lasting impact that I thought about walking up, licking both their faces and saying “How’s THAT for a right swipe?!” I realized the value of anonymity was too good and rare to pass up.

APOCALYPSE AVOIDED.

I know this is a relatively PG story. I’m sure reading the title you thought you were going to get a way more risqué tale, like, I don’t know, an actual threesome.

But I never really got to delve into the full gamut of what I hear Tinder has to offer. No one has ever offered to drink my bath water, told me about the toy hat that fits on his penis, or inquired about my desire to have them sit on my face. I’ve never gone on a Tinder “date” at 3am or had to stumble across the profiles of all of my exes on a particularly lonely night at home.

But for one brief moment in time, I got to be Tinderella in a not-so-Prince Charming sandwich.

To those still fighting the good fight, swiping right in the hopes of finding someone you’d gladly have sit on your face, I wish you a most sincere Appily Ever After.

The End

E.

The Single Games: May the odds be forever in your favor

February 13, 2015 By in Humour Tags: , Leave a comment
The Single Games: May the odds be forever in your favor

Right, so I have to pretense this with the following:

I am not currently a participant in the single games.

I think my post on couple’s cohabitation made it clear that I am in a relationship that teeters in favor of being very functional and successful 90% of the time (save a few chewing habits).

But this is all new to me. Two years ago I thought the ideal long-term relationship would involve separately owning two different houses on the same block, and participating in adult sleepovers three times a week. In short, I was horribly commitment phobic and REALLY liked my space.

Now I live in a condo the size of most people’s living rooms and only have internal freak outs about it once every 3 months or so. That folks, is what we call PROGRESS. This boy of mine I tell ya; he really Mr. Miyagi’d me.

This is not to say that I was previously unlucky in love. Prior to my current live-in life partner, I participated in some all around fairly fantastic past relationships. And although not right for either party in the long run, I shared these relationships with some really fantastic dudes. I don’t think breaking up and moving on necessarily requires slamming the exes; failing to obtain that elusive happily ever after doesn’t negate the high caliber of these individuals or the journey we took with one another. I only am who I am in a relationship because of everything I learned from them, and for that I will always be thankful.

Yet between those five great humans I would ever think to title with the word “boyfriend,” I too spent many a year treading the field of landmines that is being a single in Toronto.

And, to condense these years into one summary sentence: I LOVED IT.

Cue all my single friends shaking their fists at yelling obscenities at me.

I had a lot of fun when I was single. And I’m not talking the, “Stumble out of a stranger’s bed” kind of fun. I hold no judgment against those who enjoy a little roll in the proverbial hay with someone whose name they don’t know, but being a born and raised Torontonian my world in this city is so obscenely small that one-night stands were never in the cards for me. The way my world works, said stranger would have turned out to be my ex-boyfriend’s cousin’s best friend, they all would have shared a detailed account of my naked bod over a toast at a Jewish wedding, and I would have had to move to Uzbekistan to escape it all.

No, I reveled in singlehood not for the naked dance parties, but because I believed inherently in the importance of becoming a fully developed person with a keen sense of self before I attempted to coexist with another human.

Selfishness is so often given a bad reputation. Yet for most of us, our 20s is the last time in our lives we will get to choose exactly what we want to do and when without having to take the considerations of another person into account; sometimes it’s ok to be a little selfish.

When you’re single any experiences are uniquely yours. All the mistakes are yours to make, the serendipitous discoveries are yours to enjoy and the insights are only yours to savor. I think it’s pivotal to get fully behind the “I” before you attempt to develop the “We.”

Plus, as a girl who just recently got hugely excited to quit her job with no plans of what to do afterward, it’s clear I like not knowing where each day is going to take me. There’s something thrilling about that little corner of your brain that gets to wake up every day thinking, “Who knows, maybe today lighting will strike.”

But then again, this keen sense of optimism comes from someone who hasn’t actually had to navigate the single world in two years. It also comes from someone whose bulk of singlehood was in their early to mid-twenties; a time when you’re either too drunk or too distracted to realize someone is attempting to play games, or to care if you do notice. These are the years that you’re so new and full of unjaded enthusiasm, still operating under the misguided belief that world is full of good men and women and that respect and chivalry is alive and well.

Navigating the single world in your 20s is a breeze. Very few people are seriously contemplating their future at that point, we are all the best looking and most carefree version ourselves that we’ll ever be, and why hunt for a soulmate when there is an overflow of good-for-right-now’s?

Dating within the large and diverse dating pool of your 20s is akin to a game of Candyland where everyone is skipping merrily along Rainbow Trail on the way to Gumdrop Pass; it’s an age and a time in life where relationships are easily won and lost, careers are giant question marks and everyone you meet offers new experiences and lessons learned.

Then people hit 30 and Shit.Gets.Real.

The common consensus from my adult friends navigating those same singlehood landmines in their 30s is a resounding, ”You have GOT to be freakin’ kidding me!”

The game of Candyland has been swapped for Battleship, with everyone exhausted from learning and relearning the same tired lessons. Those first dates and first texts that were once enjoyed and laughed at are now forensically combed through for any trace of douchebag or evidence of a girlfriend/boyfriend/family/recent divorce.

My idea of singlehood being “fun” is now met with eye rolls or death threats, and the common consensus – both male and female – is that my friends would rather slowly impale themselves on a tree branch than subject themselves to another first date.

Much like a slow death by unstripped wood, other metaphors for adult dating I’ve heard in recent months include:

  1. “Trying to date in Toronto is like searching for a steak at an all-you-can-eat salad buffet.”
  2. “You know that feeling you get when you sit too close to a bonfire and smoke and ash gets in your eye and for a second you are in such excruciating pain that you forget anything good in the world exists and all of you can think is that this pain will never ever subside?… Ya, dating is a lot like that.”
  3. “First dates are comparable to 3 hours of repeatedly stubbing your toe. Dating is the raised floor board in the big toe that is my life.”
  4. “Dating is lot like that movie Jurassic Park. You think you’re going to an amusement park but instead you get eaten alive by a bloodthirsty prehistoric animal with a small… arms.”
  5. “I feel like I am stuck inside an endless loop of job interviews for a job I don’t actually want, but at least it looks good on a resume, you know?”
  6. “Is this a SICK JOKE?!”

I feel like my friends are continuously drowning in a pool of low expectations. One of my best girlfriends used to have such incredibly high standards for men. There was a time she said she would only marry a doctor that looked like 2001’s Paul Walker and who would gladly agree to sell his car to buy her a completely unaffordable rock of an engagement ring.

Last week this same friend went on a first date, and when I text messaged her to ask how it was going, she said:

“Dude, he helped me put on my jacket. I think I’m in love.”

Screw a medical degree and a personality. As long as he doesn’t have a secret other family and seems to fulfill the basic human function of replying to a text message within 3 days you best LOCK THAT DOWN.

The bar has been set so low for the male population I think to be declared husband worthy you just have to follow these steps:

  1. Walk in a straight line;
  2. Have the ability to walk and talk at the same time;
  3. Do not introduce yourself to a girl by sending her a picture of your penis over any form of social media;
  4. Remember her name;
  5. Open a door. Literally any door. Just once. Extra points if you hold it while she walks through it. Or, I don’t know, crack a fucking window and she’ll probably be impressed.

Similarly, for girls,

  1. Don’t be batshit crazy;
  2. Repeat step 1 for at least 3 months.

Listen, I am not negating the struggle of being single, or valuing the difficult experience of one gender over the other. Just because I happen to be in a relationship now doesn’t mean I don’t empathize with how sadistic the world can seem and how difficult it can be to find someone you genuinely connect with. Male or female or somewhere in between, times are tough out there.

But I also happen to think all of my friends and most of my non-crazy acquaintances are huge bloody rockstars who should never again settle for one of the good-for-right-now’s. The road of relationships is a long one, and those people who seem ahead of the love curve now may be miles behind in two years. Life has a way of blindsiding you at the precise moments that you think you have it all figured out.

By that I mean, to all those single people surrounded by smug friends with fiancées, husbands, wives and live-in-partners: Statistically speaking, for every two weddings you go to this year that someone patronizingly says, “Why are you still single?” one will end in a fiery pit of hate and despair.

There…feel better?

E.

Hedgehogs, cold feet and bae: Why writing is not for the easily distracted

February 2, 2015 By in Humour Tags: , , Leave a comment

Writing.is.hard.

The thing I don’t think a lot of people realize, and what I definitely didn’t consider about this blog business is that you spend a month coming up with a concept and then FAR too long trying to come up with that one simultaneously clever, funny and ironic name that will somehow encompass all your finest attributes and attract people’s attention.

But then, and here’s the kicker:

You actually have to write.

And not just write but write CONSISTENTLY.

That means you have to have original thoughts… like… all the time. WHAT AM I, SCIENCE?!?

This is especially hard when I have the brain of an ADD five-year-old at a puppy farm, constantly going in 16 different directions at once (yet coincidentally landing most often on puppies).

As insight into my very rigorous and demanding “artistic process,” here is more or less my thought pattern on any given day that I sit down  attempting to transform my thought bubbles into something resembling conjoined sentences:

  • The pen I brought is ALL wrong.
  • The Wi-Fi at this coffee shop is password protected and who has the time to get up and walk two feet to the left to ask the coffee shop’s employee for the password? My creativity is directly related to my access to the Internet people, STOP LOCKING OUT MY BRAIN.
  • I have to pee and should walk home to use the bathroom instead of using the perfectly good coffee shop bathroom.
  • I don’t to pee and have had two coffees and isn’t that weird and there’s probably something medically wrong with me so I should go home.
  • How is it SO DRAFTY in here?
  • Weather though, AM I RIGHT?!
  • The people around me are too loud.
  • The people around me are strangely quiet and does that mean that I’m loud?
  • Look at that bird. Man I wish I were a bird… Or a hedgehog.
  • I will buy a hedgehog and name him Marmaduke and life will be complete. *Cue YouTube search for hedgehogs taking baths*
  • It’s the end of January, why is that woman carrying rolls of Christmas wrapping paper? It’s probably really discounted in January and I should totally think of buying wrapping paper a year in advance and WHY CAN’T I GET MY ACT TOGETHER LIKE THAT WOMAN?!?
  • Man my handwriting has gotten terrible. When is the last time I even used a pen?
  • Didn’t they do a study that, like, 4 generations from now kids are going to be born with bigger thumbs because of how much we rely on texting? Can that be true? I hope that’s true because I’ve definitely told multiple groups of people about that study that was possibly just a dream I had once.
  • I am SO hungry.
  • *Checks phone*
  • *Checks phone again*
  • *Checks Instagram*
  • Are people for real with these pet accounts?! *Searches and follows all hedgehog-related accounts*
  • 20 minutes later, still on Instagram: ”Screw hedgehogs, I’m getting a pig!”
  • I think I may be the most hungry I have ever been.
  • You know what’s better than writing? NAPS
  • You know what’s better than writing AND naps? FUDGSICLES…. followed by a nap.
  • Food food food, I love food. Yummy food, get in my belly.
  • I should definitely go on a cleanse.
  • Why do all cleanses involve not eating cheese? I mean, that just seems rude.
  • I mean if you REALLY think about it, if South Africa represented the world food supply, a juice cleanse would be the Apartheid and cheese the struggling black South African. Ipso Facto, cleanses are racist and I therefore can’t support them.
  • Nothing makes me more dramatic than trying to separate me from dairy.
  • Oh man, what’s that song I liked 12 years ago? Come on Emma, you know the song…with the girl in the bee costume? Don’t look it up, just think…think….think….*Google search* BLIND MELON, NO RAIN….BOOM!! Man that was on the tip of my tongue!! (Definitely thought it Third Eye Blind)
  • Speaking of 12 years ago, I wonder what each of the Spice Girls is up to now?
  • If the Spice Girls were formed in 2015, do you think Baby Spice would have been named “Bae Spice?”
  • I still don’t think I actually know what bae means. YOUTH!
  • Urban Dictionary says bae stands for, “Before anyone else.”
  • Bae is an acronym?!?
  • My god I have officially become one of those parents who thinks LOL stands for lots of love.
  • How many times have I used that word wrong? What was I thinking using it in the first place?
  • Bae is also the Danish word for poop… TAKE THAT BEYONCE!
  • I should add, “Creating a nonsensical word” to my list of life ambitions. Somewhere below, “Getting a driver’s license 20 years after it’s socially acceptable” but ABOVE, “Having my nails and hands look like those of a woman instead of a 80 year-old retired male fisherman.
  • I bet endorphins are good for creativity; maybe I should go to the gym.
  • HAHAHAHAHA…. no.

… Like I said, writing is tough.

And this is only over the course of a short, 20-minute period. I am also constantly riddled by some pretty deep, poignant thoughts on the human condition, like:

  1. Trying to construct the entire life stories of the people sitting around me;
  2. Seriously pondering what kind of superhero I would want to be;
  3. Looking up child actors to see what they look like now;
  4. Promising myself THIS will be the week I finally start using the calendar on my phone instead of writing plans and appointments on scraps of paper;
  5. Once again attempting to convince myself I might like hiking.

Sigh.. sometimes it’s really difficult being weighed down by such reflective and philosophical contemplations.

I think the point is, like any other new endeavor, this is definitely going to take some practice. It feels like I’ve set about on this impossible task to rewire the synapses of my brain; to begin to view my life as the stories that comprise it, to think creatively rather than monotonously, and to try and become continually engrossed in a city that sometimes feels like it only breed’s ambivalence.

So this is it, you are my witnesses. From now on I will be centered and calm to the point of being Zen. I will form a long-term relationship with my computer based on deeply rooted feelings of trust and admiration. I will write everyday with zeal, and proudly accept the bad ideas along with the good ones.

And most of all, I will not, under ANY circumstances, be easily distrac….

…..Ooo, just got a text from my bae!

….that’s how you use that word, right?

RIGHT?!?

E.