i can’t even remember how to doubt my competence.

the post-grad bug has bitten me and hard. there was a time when i thought of the future and it looked like: nothing, only months and, sadly, weeks ago.

now it looks like so many things and places! toronto, guelph, ottawa. masters programs in literature & gender studies. it’s like the culminations of all the things i have loved and lived inside of! it is application and real life and sometimes i get so excited that i can’t sleep at night. it looks like real life and it is not happening fast enough.

last night i saw bright eyes and stood on the balcony, on the ledge, and he sang lots of songs that i had never heard before and he was older and calmer and more comfortable in his skin. he grew up and we grew up with him and i think it’s okay to be nostalgic sometimes, as long as you’re only thinking yesterday and always seeing tomorrow.

lately it feels so good to be working towards something.

and we can make something bigger than any one of us alone.

oh right, that’s why i gave up boys for lent.

you’re all fucking crazy!

fourty days? give me fourty years.

hipster:
a subculture of twenty-something guys or girls that live in gentrified areas of large cities who aesthetisize their life as a means of justifying their existence by shopping at thrift stores, hanging out at used book stores and listening to indie music that has not yet been picked up by the mainstream. hipsters generally drink a lot (pabst blue ribbon), smoke a lot (parliament lights) and usually went to college majoring in art, philosophy, or english. while hipsters enjoy elements of the indie aesthetic like unknown bands, thrift store clothes and appreciation of art (indie films, contemporary art, beat writers of the 50’s), they also can appreciate mainstream things (i.e. justin timberlake). however, they will usually justify their tastes by claiming to like whatever the mainstream thing is in irony.

i’ve spent the bulk of my day googling definitions of the word hipster, initially to laugh at while later realizing that each of these definitions adds up to: my real-life interests. the hipster-time-space-continuum actually is really confusing! have i been hating hipsters all this time because i really am one?! self-loathing…commence!

i have six hundred more important and interesting things to do. like a paper on queer identity and another on motherhood vs. creativity! how lucky am i that i get to write papers on things that actually interest me and, in most cases, that i really really love? i am really itching for grad school now and i’m eager and nervous about getting my grades up. i want all of the good academic things! i want to apply to a million programs when i graduate, and specialize in gender and 17th century literature and to get to write about women.

i get so excited when i remember that not only do i not need a relationship, but i don’t even have time for one. instead i have two jobs, great friends and tons of school-work to keep me busy, entertained, engaged.

i’m finally ready for march.

i’ve decided to give up boys, love and sex (collectively my number one vice!) for lent. this is the most brilliant idea i’ve come up with in ages!

by dedicating the amount of time i spend thinking about or engaging in these activities i can easily cure aids, cancer and presumably feed an entire starving nation.

or at least become a relatively interesting person!

day one concludes with some awesome yoga and mental cleansing. onto the next 39 days! c’mon universe!

being home has been so strangely wonderful and so restful. my body has gone through all of these cycles and big changes in such a short time. when i arrived here my soul was heavy and tired, with days and weeks of stress and anger built-up so high and blocking out the sun. almost immediately i cired, got sick, spent a day filling myself up with juice and toast and cured myself (emotionally and physically!) and then spent a couple of days drinking tea and running errands with my mom. she hugged me and talked me down from the proverbial ledge and i love her for it. things shouldn’t be so destructive so much of the time.

now i feel so much lighter and happier (excited!) about my return to the city. i am planning a grocery shopping extravaganza! we have been cooking a ton, the consequence of having a fully-stocked kitchen is more oatmeal-bran-chocolate-chip muffins and biscuits and leftover vegetable tortellini soup and bean dip than you can shake a stick at. yesterday afternoon we canned soup so that i can always have warm meals, even when it’s deemed too cold and blustery outside to even consider cooking. braaaain food!

yesterday i recieved a postcard from liza in the mail. a marketplace in ecuador and on the back a note scribbled, try and tell me that seeing this indigenious market in the andes doesn’t make you want to run away to peru with me? i’ve been thinking about her for days and days. she is full of adventure and always running away to beautiful places, learning languages and meeting the most wonderful people – it’s enough to make a girl feel stuck.

two months left! i am simultaneously ready and not ready but we are pushing forward, nonetheless. maybe one more summer in the apartment, with cass, eating vegan chili and probably smoking too much pot, afternoons spent in the park visiting the ducks. i don’t know how i know, but i do. it will be good somehow. i’m not ready to move ahead, but itching for change.

i love, i love.

i found a notebook from the year i was eighteen.

it was filled with lectures about macbeth and in the margins i scribbled lyrics from the strokes and drew pictures of julian casablanca.

there was one page ripped down the center. the assignment was to give three examples of a simile. i wrote:

your smile is like the loudest sound in the room.
your smile is like fingerpaint on my new rug.
your smile is like the fourth of july is happening inside of me.

next to this, in blue pen, someone wrote why?

i think this pretty much sums up who i was at eighteen. and why i am now.

oh, but people look well in the dark.

you know what’s terrifying and depressing and terrible? the report released by the ipcc.

the fact that all of these fears about the risks and consequences associated with climate change, the ones that people were still claiming are unfounded, have actually been confirmed! there is ninety-percent chance that we are entirely responsible for climate change. now what, stephen harper? because plans for obscure long-term solutions to the problem are not only unrealistic (and NOT a solution to a problem that needs to be addressed immediately) but unsupported by a whole lot of people. vowing to control greenhouse-gas emissions in the future is not the answer, affecting change NOW is. a firm position is what’s needed, lax policing on environmental policies is what got us here in the first place.

we’re leading an entire planet into absolute destruction and waiting some more, thinking over your options, is the solution? no. it’s not! it’s entirely wrong and counterproductive and frustrating. this is real. and this is really happening. in ten years this will still be really happening. in fourty years…forget the solutions, the problem itself will be unrecognizable by that point. it will be a way of life. not to mention a way to end life.

instead of inspired i feel completely hopeless.