When in doubt, just spray shit gold and other lessons I learned planning a wedding.

March 24, 2018 By Emma Gillies in Humour, Life, Toronto Tags: DIY, Humour, Life, Love, Relationships, Wedding, Wedding Planning, Writing Leave a comment

Guys, it happened. I.got.hitched…

… Not entirely by myself, Dan was there too but whatever, mere trivial details.

It’s been nearly a year since the partner and I decided to senselessly tie our lives together for all eternity, so that means we’ve had almost enough time to slowly collect the lost pieces of our souls and pay off those soaring Visa bills.

We’re also at least 80% recovered from that terrifying bout of wedding planning PTSD. I am happy to say that we can now look back on whole experience with warmth, a smile, and only the occasional shudder.

You learn a lot in the year leading up to your wedding – about yourself, your partner, your relationship, and just how long it takes until one of you completely and wholly implodes from the stress of it all.

So first things first: what did Dan and I learn about each other’s coping mechanisms?

We learned that Dan likes to internalize his stress, bury it deep in the far reserves of his psyche, plaster a smile on his face and act like everything is perfect, all the while suffering from bouts of dangerously high blood pressure.

I, on the other hand, I prefer to release stress slowly, over the course of many months in the form of passive aggressive comments and mature declarations like, “Why did you make me do this?!” and, “Fuck the fucking wedding industry and everyone associated with it.”

So now that I’ve made it clear how unqualified we are to offer advice, gather around and listen to all this advice!

Here’s a not-so brief compilation of the things we learned planning a wedding:

1. Smile and nod at everyone’s opinion and then completely ignore their advice and do whatever the hell you want to do.

I don’t know why a throwing a wedding is open-season for people to offer unsolicited advice on literally everything but OH IS IT EVER.

But guess what? None of those people are the two of you. If you’re signing up to get completely financially rinsed all in the name of one perfect day, then that day should reflect the two of you in exactly the way you want to be reflected. The day will not be made or broken by your entree choice or where you source your flowers.

Stand firm. Eat what you want to eat. Smell the goddamn flowers you want to smell.

Your grandmother had her time.

NO ONE WANTS POT ROAST ANYMORE NANNA.

2. No one cares about your décor but you.

Ok this may be a bit of an exaggeration. I have been to weddings where I’ve heard people critiquing the décor, but here’s a little secret: everyone really hates those people and how did they even get invited to your wedding in the first place?

I think if you surround yourself with good humans, they may remember that it looked “nice” or felt, “warm.”

BUT if anyone you know actually spends his or her time getting into the nitty gritty of your table arrangements or colour scheme, then those people are lame and shouldn’t get to go to fun parties.

I think what people remember most is the feeling in the room, and I guarantee that feeling is going to be a hell of a lot more positive if you didn’t just blow $5000 on candles.

Which leads me to my next 2 points:

3. If you think you’re above IKEA, you’re not. And closely related:

4. If you think you’re above Dollerama, you’re definitely not.

I made Dollerama, HomeSense, Michaels and IKEA my bitch on a regular basis leading up to the wedding.

If you took a gander at the absurd Visa statement I mentioned earlier it’s just those four stores, on repeat, for three months. I can’t imagine what our wedding tab would have looked like if I didn’t opt for the DIY ghetto-chic décor options. But again, no one cares if your candles are made by the wax of purebred bees, or if your linens are 7000 thread count.

And it begs repeating: those people who do care, really suck.

5. Things to cheap out on: midnight food. Things to not cheap out on: a photographer and a live band.

It’s very important to note for all future event expenses that drunk people will eat literally anything that’s put in front of them.

I’ve awoken the day after a night out to realize at 3am the night before I just poured Sriracha on plain rice crackers and went to town.

Cold corn straight from the can? Yep.

Makeshift nachos comprised of just goldfish crackers and melted cheese? Check.

So don’t spend your money on artisanal pizza or fancy midnight sliders, as I guarantee the same person dancing shirtless on the floor is not going to appreciate the tang of red pepper relish on their delightfully tiny burger.

HOWEVER, a solid live band or DJ is pivotal to success and good party vibes. Are people going to be soaking in sweat rocking out to Counting Crows or are they going to be sitting at the table rolling their eyes while that one Uncle dances the Macarena?

Is it actually fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A?

N.O.P.E.

Also, spend the extra dough on a good photographer/videographer. I’ve had friends spend so much time and energy and money planning their weddings only to be disappointed in their pictures.

That day is a goddamn whirlwind that has you spinning in circles, too over-stimulated to really absorb any one thing. I promise when you blackout for 7 hours and come to at 2am sitting on the floor of your hotel eating a bag of Doritos still in your wedding dress, (No? Just me?) you’re going to want to rest easy knowing someone properly recorded all your memories for you.

6. Make a budget. Then tear up that budget while cackling evilly like everyone else in the wedding industry who is just out to slowly and methodically castrate your bank account.

You know the rule for converting Celsius to Fahrenheit? No? Me either. But Google tells me you double the temperature then add 30.

…Yea, wedding budgets are a lot like that. It’s a daily punch in the vagina/nuts so just make sure to wrap your head around that before you dive in.

I don’t know if people in the wedding industry are assholes, geniuses, or some combination of both. All I know is at some point in the planning process you too will find yourself getting inexplicably attached to a certain type of stupidly adorable dessert or table runner, lose all sense of logic and pay triple what you should for it out of some completely misguided sense of “need.”

You think you won’t. You think you’re above it.

So did I.

But then I went and spent $120 on 24 of these because Pinterest told me I should:

No one is above it.

7. Outsource as much as you can.

I know this contradicts the part where I said the wedding industry is a sadistic motherfucker, but the only thing worse than getting help is taking it all on yourself.

Case in point: me.

I decided early on that to save money I would try to do as much as I possibly could on my own. This meant dealing with vendors and throwing linens on tables and yes, crouching on my balcony in 5-degree weather spraying everything I could find gold.

Beer bottles or vases? You tell me.

And I don’t know, maybe I saved some money, I couldn’t really tell you.

But I can tell you it made me a goddamn nightmare to be around.

Because if I’m being completely honest, taking the reigns had less to do with saving money and more to do with one of my more charming, delightful qualities: being a bit of a control freak who insists on doing everything herself, rejects all offers of help, and then complains she’s doing everything alone.

Remember that time someone shackled himself to me for the rest of his life?

What.a.sucker.

8. IF you relent and give the future husband a to-do list, include supporting photographs, a carefully laid out Google map, weblinks, a firm timeline and pre-programmed daily reminders.

Don’t get me wrong, I found myself one exceptionally good dude. It’s just that whereas my timeline is very much, “Now. Immediately. Today. This minute” his is much more, “As long as it’s done before we’re walking down the aisle, I have been tremendously successful.”

So perhaps I should have trusted that his to-do list would have gotten done without my near constant harassment and enraged/frustrated sighs…

…But we’ll never know.

Because I didn’t become a passive aggressive control freak over night, I’ve had years of practice perfecting it!

I’m also not sure he’s come to terms with the fact that even if the end result is flawless, if he doesn’t do it precisely my way I consider it a swift and mighty failure, so that’s also fun.

BUT to be fair, Dan has a tendency to be incredibly self-congratulatory and sort saunter around without an ounce of humility when he does accomplish the one small task I’ve been stalking him to do for three weeks, so I like to think we’re equally infuriating.

That’s why we’re married guys! A crippling fear that no one else could stand us.

9. Once the day starts, try to just roll with the chaos.

It really is the most tired of clichés but the whole day does just fly by. So look up once and awhile, and try to accept this day for what it is: literally the last time you will ever be one-half of the centre of attention ever again.

After this it’s usually kids and frankly once that happens no one will notice or care if you’re in the room ever again.

Breathe. Get a respectable amount of drunk. And enjoy the damn spotlight.

I became an #Instawriter and everyone thought I was screwing with them

September 30, 2017 By Emma Gillies in Humour, Life, Poetry Tags: Friendship, Humour, Instagram, Life, Love, Poetry, Relationships Leave a comment

Guys it’s been ages! It’s been way too long since I posted up in Jimmy’s Coffee and wrote something long enough to warrant the title “blog post.” Which is of course a TRAVESTY for all my loyal follower… singular.

But what can I say, when your blog doesn’t have any obvious theme, or direction, or consistent subject matter outside of sporadic tales of some city chick’s life, it doesn’t pay you da cash money. And when it doesn’t pay you, it unfortunately takes a back seat to the things that do.

So blah blah *insert stream of excuses here* – I’ve been getting my Real Estate license, yadda yadda, planned a wedding and it took over my entire human existence – YAWN.

If it’s two things I know for certain in this life it’s that:

Everyone is busy and,
No one cares how busy you are.

But I, like everyone else, am a slave to the September guilt, which for some reason, feels more like a new year than the actual new year.

Blame it on the fall foliage or pumpkin spiced everything, but that bratty little bitch in the back of my head has decided to resurface in a BIG way, being all, “hmmm, what form of regret can I torture you with today?”

So chalk full of that late-2017 guilt, here I am, typing away.

That being said, I have been writing… on Instagram that is.

I started up a little side project there almost a year ago that couldn’t be more the antithesis of everything I write on this bad boy.

In fact, one of my best friends, upon reading it for the first time, had this eloquent feedback to bestow upon me:

“Wait… are you fucking with us?”

As if I had gone to the trouble of creating an entirely separate writing portal solely for the purpose of mocking the whole #Instapoet phenomenon…

… Which, quite frankly, is definitely something I would do (so in retrospect I suppose her reaction was warranted).

Except I didn’t do it to mock, or to ironic. First time for everything folks!

Said Instagram account is super emotional, and vaguely poetry-esq if I thought I knew how to write poetry. In truth, I have always assumed poetry is just regular writing but pressing the Enter Key way more, so there’s that.

You should definitely follow me there if you like quote-of-the-day websites, and kittens, and cuddling in soft blankets while reading quotes and petting kittens.

Here she is:

@vodkataughtme

Click above to enter the flip-side of my brain, where I think things like this:

And this…

Oh ya, and this doozy…

Seriously, I’m barely recognizable.

Told you, my brain is one scary little muthaf*^ker.

So why did I do it you ask? Is it because I had always has a deep-seated want to become a super famous Instagram influencer, get sponsored by Tim Horton’s and have my writing compiled into a trendy book to sell at Urban Outfitters for $30?

Ummm, HELLS YES, that is the millennial dream after all.

Nah, I mean this is the first time I’m even mentioning its existence to the general public, so clearly I’m not in it for the followers or the free face masks.

I did it because I knew I wasn’t writing enough, and short little snippets of half-assed thoughts are easier to put on paper than these long-winded beasts I call blog posts.

It’s a good brain exercise and also allows me the opportunity to dig down into some of the deeper wells of what makes me tick.

All kidding aside, the truth is this:

I’ve always suffered under the premise of being “one thing,” or of having only one dimension to my personality (see: last photo).

Everyone who knows me knows that I have a tendency to hide my feelings under layers and layers of sarcasm and sass.

But here’s a secret: I’m also highly emotional. Strip away that last coat of sarcasm and you’ll come face to face with a human puddle. The girl who most recently found herself loudly crying to a Levi’s commercial (*sob* “They really ARE for everyone – young old, gay or straight” *sob*)

I find a lot of things beautiful in this world, and I also find a lot of thing wholly heartbreaking. On any given day I am bombarded by images of tragedy and hurt and of wonder and appreciation.

The nice thing about not having any semblance of a “brand” is that no one is telling me I can’t write about all of it.

I am a realistic romantic. A control freak who loves a good free fall. A highly organized mess.

And as you can imagine, a god damn RIOT to live with. Dan loves playing a good round of, “Which of Emma’s personalities do I get to be married to today?”

Sometimes what I find interesting involves a woman with zero self-awareness walking down the street pushing her dog in a stroller, and sometimes it’s sitting in a living room having a conversation with my girlfriends and being awestruck by the fact that I get to call these strong, intensely loyal, ambitious women my people.

Sometimes I want to scream at the top of my lungs at the absurdity and violence and cruelty in the world, and sometimes I watch people being so selflessly kind to one another that I think if we all stopped senselessly hating each other so much we might actually have a solid shot at this humanity thing.

So I do the only thing that makes sense to me: I write it all down.

The magic and the mess.

The hilarious and the painful.

To sum it up, I’m going to stick with doing both.

This blog will stay what it is, i.e.:

Advice no one asked for from someone who has no right to give it.
An intimate look at the inner workings of a relationship/marriage that my husband never gave me permission to write and only ever succeeds in making him extremely uncomfortable.
My continued blissful ignorance at the two points above.

In turn, my Instagram account will stay what it is:

Basically the word equivalent of the weeping emoji face.

But, like, still follow me I guess? Because how else am I supposed to get that prime Urban Outfitters shelf space next to Unicorn floaties and pineapple EVERYTHING?

K thanks team.

My friend is raising twins and I can’t even find the remote control

April 2, 2016 By Emma Gillies in Life Tags: Humour, Knocked Up, Life, Pregnancy, Relationships, Toronto, Writing 2 Comments

I spent this past Easter Monday staring at the one-week-old faces of identical twin boys, incubated and birthed by one of my best friends Melanie.

That’s right. To all you young people out there currently considering having kids, let’s take a minute to really absorb that…

…You can have TWO of them. AT THE SAME TIME.

So I’m sitting there, watching these two tiny humans form neural connections and learn and develop before my very eyes and all I could think was:

All newborns really look like shrunken old men, and
Oh man, this is SUCH real life.

If you’ve read anything I’ve written in the past, you know I’ve spent a huge bulk of the last two years attending bridal showers, bachelorette parties and weddings.

So you’d think I would have already comprehended that this “real life” started long ago and that I’m sitting smack dab in the middle of it.

But although I love a good wedding (friends celebrating friend’s love and whatnot), unless all my friends find themselves immune to those, “Global Statistics” the unfortunate truth is, some of those relationships will last and some won’t.

And before you say anything, get off my back; I’m not being a pessimistic downer. Because for the MOST part (aside from a little emotional turmoil and the mass drinking of one’s problems away) people are capable of picking themselves up and moving on.

Marriages and the relationships that comprise them are as permanent as you actively choose and fight for them to be.

But now, the babies have started; those living, breathing, miniature mirrors into your own human abilities and inadequacies.

And babies are FOREVER.

The time has come for getting knocked up. When people get to sit back in their new-parent smugness only mildly haunted by that tiny voice in the back of their minds that they can REALLY screw these little people up.

Now don’t be fooled by my rejection of certain traditional life events – I want myself some babies.

I want them in that weird biological-clock-ticking-feel-it-in-my-gut-constantly-trying-to-hold-strangers-babies-on-the-street kind-of way I thought was completely made up by men and projected on women as a way to keep them from becoming CEOs and taking over the world.

However, the idea of someone’s entire emotional and physical existence being reliant on me? Me – the person who crumbles under the pressure of deciding between crunchy and smooth peanut butter?

That’s some scaryyyyyyy stuff.

Aside from paralyzing fear, here are some of my thoughts on having kids:

Pregnancy is SO WEIRD.

When I say this verbatim to friends, most of them laugh awkwardly and change the subject. Because you know, as mammals the process of being pregnant and giving birth has been firming ingrained in us as natural since the moment we stopped believing those stork stories.

So the fact that as a fairly educated woman who is not 5-years-old, I still can’t wrap my mind around the whole baby-making process is considered a little off-putting to some. BUT COME ON – we take 3/4’s of a year to grow another human in a giant sack full of fluid, letting it feed off our innards and then spend 20+ hours of excruciating pain excavating that now-grown bundle of cells from our bodies and BAM! – Instant life commitment.

That’s.friggin.weird.

2. Not all babies are created equally cute, but it’s amazing how if they are even vaguely related to you you’ll be signing up for baby model agencies before they’ve learned to control their neck.

My nieces are goddamn adorable, but both have gone through a definite “Rob Ford” phase (all chins and lesbian-chic blonde hair sticking in every direction), all of which we can look back and laugh at now, but one that not a single family member seemed to notice at the time.

Similarly, when I joke around about my extended awkward phase that lasted 11+ years my father STILL actively refuses to admit that this was a thing and continues to say I was always beautiful.

… I assure you when I was rocking inch-thick glasses and trimming my own bangs into sporadic projectiles from my head I definitely wasn’t landing any beauty pageants.

So what I’m saying is, if I have a weird looking kid, keep that shit to yourself. Hormones are going to trick me into thinking they’re cute as fuck and every kid deserves to have their parents look at them through rose-colored glasses.

My parent’s unrelenting belief in my beauty meant when I was called a four-eyed midget for two torturous years in junior high I was able to let it role off me rather than have it absorbed into my fragile pre-teen psyche. Kids need to grow up strong, and this strength comes first from their parent’s blind support and encouragement.

I plan on taking full advantage of the nine months I’m pregnant to be a full damn nightmare.

I spend most of my life trying to maintain a personality one can describe as “laid-back” or even “aloof.” But I still don’t understand why pregnant women don’t spend more time having full-fledged tantrums in the aisles of Loblaws if they don’t carry the exact right brand and flavor of ice cream.

For nine full months women have the ultimate excuse to shift between Zen and crazy-bitch and only have to utter a simple, “It’s for the baby”

Who needs to be passive-aggressive when you can just be aggressive?

No one wants to let you have a seat on the bus? Dump hot coffee on them. Restaurant accidentally puts bean sprouts in your Pad Thai? Launch a formal class action lawsuit. Your baby daddy doesn’t anticipate every want and desire at least 12 hours in advance? Have a suitcase constantly packed and ready by the door with threats of, “Never seeing his child again.”

SO MUCH FUN. Screw trying to be casual and low-maintenance in some attempt to not succumb to the crazy girl stereotype.

After all, it’s for the baby.

4. How do people plan for kids?

I’m a planner. Sure life demands a certain amount of spontaneity and if anyone wants to invite me on a private jet anywhere in the next 20 minutes SIGN ME UP.

But kids demand a certain amount of pre-thought. I need to understand what I’m getting myself into. The whole, “As human beings we are evolutionarily programmed to know how to raise a child” is a GIANT amount of horseshit.

Our ancestors never had to plan for death-by-peanut allergy or trying to save for college tuition in a city where affording a 12-pack of Timbits feels like a luxury.

I don’t think my human heritage means I’m innately prepared to know how to raise a kid in a high-rise condo. When our ancestors had to send their kids out to learn how to forage for food did they have to teach them how to take an elevator to the park?

No, they just had to worry about little things like dysentery, starvation and animal attacks. You know…the easy stuff.

At least the forest has great square footage.

5. Kids make everything immediately scary because you don’t want to be the first one to break your child.

Kids are going to fall down, and hit their heads, and end up with black eyes and bruises and lumps. I had a permanent soft spot on my forehead as a kid I ran into so many things (probably a clue I needed those inch-thick glasses early on).

But you always hope someone else is the first one to let your kid fall down, or drop him or her. You know, so you can sigh and act very superior and forgiving, all the while wholly relieved someone else got it out of the way first.

At my friend’s house Monday I was holding one of her sons and she went to walk down a set of stairs and I was like, “Nope, I’ll be staying put up here.” If she hadn’t been there to assist me I probably would have:

Remained on the second floor and lived off food scraps until someone more qualified to jointly manage breakable babies and stairs came along, or

Wrapped said baby in some impenetrable cocoon of pillows and blankets to ensure that should I slip and fall, he would be so fully encased in feathers he would bounce ever-so-gently to the first floor.

Similarly, my boyfriend recently caused a line at Starbucks to form behind him as he diligently examined the physics of pushing his niece in a stroller down ONE STAIR, assuming doing so would cause her to launch headfirst out of the stroller like a little human rocket (despite her being securely clipped and harnessed into said stroller).

When you have kids every crack in the sidewalk is a possible broken leg, every pebble means choking and every fruit fly and mosquito a transporter of death and disease.

On that pleasant note, if anyone wants to volunteer to babysit my future child really early on and scuff ‘em up a little so I can maintain that classic motherly moral superiority that would be fantastic.

Come on guys, it’s for the baby.

These are the Hopes I Have for My Friends

October 2, 2015 By Emma Gillies in Life Tags: Friends, Friendship, Hopes, Humor, Life, Love, Wishes 2 Comments

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,

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

July 2, 2015 By Emma Gillies in Life Tags: Breakups, Humor, Life, Quote of the Day, Random Thoughts, Relationships, Writing Leave a comment

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

An open letter to my future self

April 26, 2015 By Emma Gillies in Life Tags: Life, Random Thoughts, Writing Leave a comment

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 6^th 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.

Eternal sunshine of the jobless mind

March 22, 2015 By Emma Gillies in Humour Tags: Humour, Life, Unemployment, Writing 1 Comment

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.

Love Apptually: A Tinderella Story

February 24, 2015 By Emma Gillies in Humour Tags: Humor, Humour, Life, Relationships, Singlehood, Tinder, Writing 1 Comment

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

“I hate the way you fill ice cube trays,” and other adorable things you find yourself saying when you live with a significant other

January 25, 2015 By Emma Gillies in Uncategorized Tags: Humor, Life, Relationships, Writing 4 Comments

It was back in July 2014 when my boyfriend and I decided to embark on the ultimate young people’s social experiment. After a mere year of dating, we made the leap to move in together.

I wish I could say this decision was made purely from a place of deep romance and poignancy; that we were so enraptured by one another we immediately dumped our roommates out of a desperate, passionate need to share a bathroom.

But alas, we were the dumpees.

My beautiful and spunky former roommate decided she would prefer to live every day accompanied by above-zero winters and an ocean view and moved to Vancouver to live with her boyfriend.

She now wakes up to cartoon birds and mice that enchant her with high-pitched songs as they dress her in only a jean jacket because apparently that’s all you need to survive a west-coast winter.

Traitor.

Similarly, the boyfriend’s roommates decided they both wanted to become fully functioning adult males and live in their own places with bizarre home décor contraptions like doors…and curtains.

I tell you all of this because it is important to note that when it comes to relationships, I am more of a wade veryyyyy slowly into the water, turn and bolt out, skulk along the shoreline and then finally begrudgingly dip a toe in, than I am a dive-right-in sort of gal.

Another less delicate way to put this is that I only make important decisions on relationship commitment and progress when forced into a corner, and then kept in that corner for an extended period of time with a gun to my head.

In this case, the gun came in the form of…gulp… LIVING WITH A BOY.

To prepare myself for this dramatic change in my life I made a lot of both mental and physical lists. Things like, “Worst case scenarios” and “Ways that I am more mentally prepared for the zombie apocalypse than for living with my boyfriend” and finally, “The pros and cons of keeping a completely full ready-to-go storage locker in case I have to quietly slip away into the night.”

It has always been the case with me that I operate better in situations when I prepare myself for the worst possible outcome, and then anything that differs from that outcome is deemed a pleasant surprise.

SPOILER ALERT: It’s all been one GIANT pleasant surprise. I mean, pleasant in that way that’s it’s almost been TOO easy a transition, and that most days I have more difficulty choosing between light or regular cream cheese than I have living with him.

That being said, let’s be honest, no one really wants to hear about some perfect couple made of rainbows and honey that falls asleep every night holding hands on a bed of clouds. Life isn’t like that; I would never want it to be.

The most beautiful part of life lies in its imperfections, and in caring about someone enough to continually enter the battlefield together.

And oh how we’ve battled.

Living with someone is the equivalent of placing all your worst habits, insecurities and characteristics on a platter and then offering them to another human to accept. And not only do we expect them to be accepted, we are somehow insane enough to believe that this other human should them endearing. Like we should all just be walking around uttering a continual stream of, “Oh babe, I think it’s cute you’re the spawn of Satan first thing in the morning, and that pizza box that’s been sitting by our front door for the last 3 days is friggin adorable. Awww, is that a recently clipped toenail on the floor? How charming!”

All the pretense of dating, the ability to be the best version of yourself when you’re out with them, all of that disappears. There is no acting; that other person is going to see you for all the sides of your personality, and from unfortunate angles you’ve probably never even seen yourself.

On that note, word of advice for both sexes: if you want to keep the fire alive, never put on socks naked if the other person happens to be sitting directly behind you.

So naturally, this dropping of the curtain can cause some pretty ridiculous friction. I mean think of all the absurd things you couldn’t possibly imagine having a disagreement on (e.g. cracker brands, toilet paper costs, what temperature the room is set at).

Yep, you’ll argue about all of them.

Take for example the below nonsensical differences of opinion we’ve engaged in:

Why I am the only human who’s ever deemed the microwave an appropriate place to bake a potato. (I’ll tell you why – 3 minutes BEGINNING TO END people. It takes 20 minutes just to heat up an oven. I would much rather spend the extra 17 minutes trying to find just one pair of matching socks in my closet. It’s called PRODUCTIVITY)

His remarkable ability to make the bed in the exact wrong way on a daily basis. You’d think with 2 throw pillows and 1 quilt there would be a maximum of 5 ways to screw it up but no, I’ve been the witness approximately 62.

My refusal to walk 10 feet to the recycling chute of our building. I prefer to create an elaborate Jenga-esq pile of boxes and tin cans under our sink. The taller it gets, the easier I am able to detach myself emotionally from its existence.

His use of our communal bath towels to shower with after hockey. Have you ever smelled post-hockey hands? I feel like it’s a serious issue that probably comes up often in marriage counseling sessions, and the smell rubs off on EVERYTHING. I’d rather host a condo bonfire than have to get close enough to wash them.

My general inhuman behavior before I’ve had coffee in the morning. This is less an argument in itself as it is the trigger of almost all of the above arguments.

A mutual dissatisfaction with each others’ inability to refill the water jug in the fridge. This isn’t even some fancy Britta-type situation where you have time to conceive and birth a child while the water trickles through a filter. No, we have a dollar store jug that we fill with tap water to keep it cold. Yet neither of us has developed the aptitude to complete the two-sstep process of turning slightly to the left and turning the tap on to keep it constantly refilled.

Now who wants to come over to our party pad and enjoy a baked potato and some room temperature H2O?!

And yet, here is what I can tell you in short: Sharing an 800 sq ft condo with a significant other has been one of the best experiences of my life. And it’s been so fantastic not in spite of the above arguments, but because of them.

Because if you can’t stand the way someone makes the bed, the way they leave every door in the house ajar, and the way they chew food like they are sound checking for Madison Square Gardens; if you hate all that and you still want to stick around to see what new annoying habit they develop next…well, that’s love baby.

And I haven’t even come close to using that storage locker.

Vodka taught me how to dance

The random musings of a city girl in pursuit of the rad life.

Tag Archives: Life