amw

It's been an emotionally tumultuous week. It started out with my contract hanging by a thread because my client's client compared our ballpark quote to ones out of India and got a nasty reality check of how much it really costs to develop software in Canada. It looks like i still have work, for now, but it was touch-and-go through the middle of the week.

Wednesday i also broached one of my elephants with my shrink - why i am still so fascinated by America and long to move there. The basic reason is clear - i moved around so many different places as a kid that i always felt like the outsider and never had the chance to put down roots. The only consistent thing in my life was the media coming out of America - movies, TV, music, news, internet - so i made that mine. The thing is, even if i got a green card tomorrow and lived there the rest of my life it'd still never really be "home", or not the way i romanticize it. Having changed my sex i know all too well how that works - you end up never truly understanding either side because your experience leads to a different perspective on both. That's not a bad thing, but it might not be the thing you hoped for. Yet despite knowing this, i can't just drop a dream i've had for 20 years, even as it keeps influencing so many decisions in my life. I don't know what to do.

Yesterday i got an amazing surprise in the form of a birthday gift from an unexpected person. I guess i really do have a new friend. I almost cried because it was so thoughtful and beautiful, and something that really means a lot for where i'm at right now. It's been a very long time since anyone gave me a gift like that.

I couldn't even hug her, you know, to say thanks. I was speechless to start with, but even when i settled i felt like there was a bubble around me i couldn't burst. It seems i've let myself become very physically isolated again. I finally started breaking through all those barriers over the last few years, but coming to Canada has brought them all back. I wonder if it's because when i first came here i felt so smothered and misunderstood by J's family that i started withdrawing again, from everyone.

I had a nightmare last night that one of J's relatives died so we went up for the funeral and her family was annoying me so much i had to get the fuck out of there. Of course when i sat down at a restaurant and spilled my woes to the owner it turned out she was another distant cousin who'd been waiting to meet me. I woke up fluttering with mild anxiety that only got worse when i remembered i agreed to a Friday Night Dinner tonight to placate their calls to do some kind of birthday event for me.

I can't help but think back to the last birthday dinner i had - not the one with my friends in 2008 that i organized, but the one in 2002 that i didn't. I remember we had gone up to T's mom's house... It didn't really click till someone wished me a happy birthday. I was so taken by surprise that they'd even notice or care. My family never really celebrated my birthday after i was about 12 or 13. I guess i shouldn't be surprised that J's family gives a shit too, but i feel so distant after everything that happened over the first few months of living here that i can't think of anyone i'd want to celebrate with less. Especially this year.

We were originally planning to go to NYC, you see, but that plan died in the ass when my immigration status got left in limbo. Not to mention the whole being-broke thing. Thankfully i received a "decision made" letter Monday so all i am waiting for now is my landing interview, plus i am starting to work... We still won't have the money to make it on vacation for a while, but i am pondering treating myself by going out clubbing next weekend. Actually i don't even want to start on thinking about next weekend right now, i'm fragile enough as it is. Fucking hell. Stupid dates.

I'll feel better when i've made it through the dinner tonight, no doubt this is mostly just the usual anxieties running wild. Blar.

Today started well. I slept "late" and headed out to the gym after 9. Our coach was at the Canadian Nationals this week and is going to be in Indonesia for the next few weeks so various different people have been running the classes. I have two to run next week, but i've been helping out along the way and i'm getting some "regulars" who like training with me, which is kinda cool. It rocks to see people's confidence and skills improving as a direct result of your teaching.

I grabbed groceries before coming home to cook myself an asparagus omelette. Watched an episode of Sons of Anarchy, bummed around online, did some writing - just had a nice lazy day. Then i headed out to basketball.

I was all full of energy when i arrived because i'd spent the trip listening to an album that always makes me happy. Joking around on the court before we started, i kept breaking into dance. The cold weather does that, somehow, turns me into a tap-dancing penguin. We started playing and within minutes my finger copped a loose ball right on the tip. I breathed the pain away and just let out a quiet "fuck" (we're not supposed to swear on the court). I knew i'd done the same thing as last November but i kept playing anyway because we only had 6 players. At halftime i taped my finger, but ripped it off after a few minutes because it was making me useless on the court. During a time-out i took two Motrin, but it was too late. I finished the game with tears in my eyes and a stint full of missed shots.

Of course J is working late tonight so after i got home i had to cook dinner before i could do my rest, ice and elevation. Le sigh. My neua pad krapow was good, though, damnit. And Zombieland was a funny distraction. But now i am hurting again.

I love playing basketball but i wonder if it's just not right for me any more, or at least not in these scrappy all-girl leagues. I've been boxing three times a week for the last six months and the worst injuries i've gotten are busted knuckles and bruised forearms. I've only played about 10 games of basketball and aside from these two finger injuries i've also been scratched up by chicks who don't cut their nails and stomped on by girls who don't know where they're putting they're putting their feet. It's getting ridiculous.

I wonder if i could get the same pleasure i do from basketball from some other pursuit, something that doesn't keep leaving me injured. What i love about basketball is the flow, the freedom of movement and the elegance. When i make a cool play i feel like a dancer. Boxing has a certain elegance too, but the precision always ends in a crunch - it feels more like a scattered collection of very tiny perfect movements. I can't really describe the feeling of taking the ball inside and pivoting to hit a jumper or making a lay-up and drawing the foul. The game makes me so happy, but i don't think happy enough to risk injuries that screw up all the other activities i love doing. So what now?

You know that call i was all anxious about? It turned into a surprisingly sudden job offer. The position i applied for was a freelance technical writing gig, but during the phone interview when it became evident i had experience working on medical software he pretty much immediately offered me a consulting contract. It's just 50 hours and they're only paying tech writer rate, but it's a foot in the door. I can set my own schedule (more or less) and work from home. If it turns out this goes well and i enjoy it then i might register myself as a business and try get some more projects doing business analysis or tech writing. It's still IT, but at least it's not hardcore software development, and i get to work from home and set my own hours.

It's funny, for years i thought being a self-employed consultant sounded like an ideal job in theory, but i never had the experience i needed to land that first contract or the confidence to bullshit my way in. Now, apparently desperate to have some help on this project, a local company is trusting me to be their business analyst and user experience architect. I've always believed i could do this sort of thing, but no one ever gave me the chance. Maybe i never really gave myself the chance. Tomorrow i am taking a very long commute to the outer suburbs so i can meet with the staff at a health care clinic and refine the bloated and vague requirements document they currently have. I will also be drawing up storyboards and wireframes. Then it'll be home to design the navigational flow and basic look of the system. It feels like a dream. I'm going to be the face of a company, i'm going to have to be sociable and outgoing and deal with people all day, and i don't have any partner or boss to fall back on. I am scared out of my mind, but excited too.

Perhaps that's why today was such a disaster. I slept through my alarm so was pissed when i woke up, then i had breakfast and started doing some work so that was good, then the client didn't pick up his phone so i started getting really anxious, then M canceled on drum practice tonight so i got depressed too, then i thought fuck it and decided to drum on my own which eventually brought my mood back up, and just as i was lost in my çiftetelli the client called so we set up the meeting and i felt great, but then when i headed out to surprise J at work i got tied up waiting to scan my signed contract at Fedex Office, then because i was so frustrated i took the wrong fucking train and was even later, then i got another one of those fierce low blood sugar moods and the rest of the evening was a write-off until dinner. Now i'm okay again. What a fucking day. I can't afford to be an emotional wreck tomorrow so hopefully i got it all out. And yes, i will be bringing a candy bar in case of emergency.

Anywho, the hecticness of this whole week has left me a bit turned around. I haven't really spent as much time on my own things as i'd like, so i need to make sure i do that on the weekend. I'd love to continue my drum practice, i was so happy in my little zone. I think i will meditate too. Yup. Okay so i am writing like i'm employed again - fucking boring. More contemplative entries pending. Somehow right now i need to put myself to sleep so i can be up before 6 without being a complete zombie.

Waiting for a scheduled telephone interview is so much worse than going in-person or even getting a surprise call. No time to let the anxiety creep if it's a surprise. I am literally trembling. Fuck!

Something that has been gnawing at me recently is why i stopped writing music. Or more, why i haven't started again.

I had been playing guitar for a few years by the time i got my first sequencing software in 1993. I remember the first thing i programmed was a synthy version of Stairway To Heaven. Over the next year i fell steadily more in love with electronic music - starting with a "classic synthesizer hits" compilation, then leading on to computer game music and finally the techno that was top of the charts in Europe. I started writing my own tracks in 1994 and released my first few on the internet in 1995. Over the next few years it was the most important thing in my life - i released over 100 tracks online and, after a few false starts, finally came out with a self-pressed album at the end of 1998. The local DJs liked it and a local label solicited new material for a second album. And then... and then i don't know what happened.

Actually a lot happened. I became extremely disillusioned with the rave scene and all the messed up shit that goes down behind the curtain. I got desperately paranoid that my roommate and biggest fan was also an obsessive stalker. I fell in love so deeply i don't think my words will ever do it justice. Oh, and i decided to change my sex. So i got my first "real job", barreled headlong into the gay scene and cut off everything from my old life (ahem). And somehow i managed to break my own heart in a million pieces as i broke someone else's, which seems to be some kind of fucked up speciality of mine. Somewhere in all that i lost my muse.

I did try to write music afterwards. I spent 10 years buying and selling synthesizers and guitars and other equipment, looking for inspiration. I tried new software and i tried old software, but nothing brought the magic back. Even today i can sit down with my keyboard and jam for hours, but i have a block when it comes to recording - actually composing a piece. There are still riffs in me, but they never go anywhere. I don't know what i'm scared of. I don't know why it's so hard. As i type this there are tears streaming down my face i'm so frustrated. Trends i would have loved to ride have come and gone, i've watched friends and peers succeed doing what they love, i've seen the industry turned completely on its head and all the while i'm on the sidelines.

What really stings is it's not my general creativity that's lost - i can write till the fucking stars burn out, i can dance and sing and draw and express myself in a million different ways... But the one thing, the one thing i love most continues to elude me. I'm terrified i've just lost it, that i don't have anything new, anything good left in me. God, just thinking that i feel like throwing myself off a bridge in despair. Ugh, and now i'm sounding like i'm 19 too. I just don't know what to do. Every time i hear some kick ass new artist or nifty tune i haven't heard before it kills me because they are doing it, they're just doing it and i'm not. I pinned this Duke Ellington quote up on my board the other day - "i merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues". Why can't i do that? God knows i have enough fucking shit saved up to write a dozen albums.

I feel like i just need to be away on my beach somewhere, no one around, no partner, no internet, no bullshit, just some palm trees and me. But i've just had a year free to do anything i wanted... A year and nothing. A palm tree isn't going to make all the difference right now, it has to start in me.

Note to self: avoid bookstores, hardware stores, craft stores, office supply stores... Yesterday i was at Staples to pick up a new notebook and bought a bunch of other random things with money i don't have. Things have been a bit chaotic the last week or two, i guess. Everything affects everything else... i stay up too late, forget to eat, forget to take my meds. The other day i started seeing those little sleep deprivation ghosties, which set off a whole nother chain of anxiety and some very dark fragmented hallucinations. Having my partner then start on the whole "that never happened" thing when it's so clear in my mind just pushed me deeper into self-doubt and confusion.

I weighed myself at the gym yesterday and apparently i've dropped 5 pounds in a week. That would be good if i was trying to lose weight, but i'm not and it's 4 pounds outside the low end of my normal range. J has started a diet recently so i have been cooking more healthily, but surely i eat enough bread and cookies and things to offset that? I have very little body fat right now - tiny boobs and a stubborn belly - so any weight i lose is probably muscle. Since the winter started i've been getting light-headed, experiencing what might be hypoglycemic symptoms... I really need to see a doctor but i am trying to hold out till next month when my health insurance kicks in. Perhaps i need to massively crank up what i eat to match my new levels of activity. It's hard, though, because sometimes i'm just not hungry and all i want is a coke or some coffee. I used to love eating so much, but lately? Hmm.

Something i am struggling with at the gym at the moment is folding and weaving. I have very good control of my upper body above the belly button, and i can move it all over the place while keeping the rest of me stationary. That looks lovely in the mirror, perhaps if i was dancing, but it doesn't really help me capitalize on my height advantage in the ring. My coach wants me to be able to bend (without moving my hips) from somewhere lower, my core - some thin band just at or below my belly button. It is driving me crazy because my body just doesn't want to do it. I feel like i am missing something so obvious.

I don't mind when i am doing something wrong and i know i'm doing it wrong and can see a way to improve it, but it's so hard to figure something out when i can't tell the difference between doing it right and doing it wrong. Usually what i do at times like this is go and read a million websites trying to find someone who describes the technique perfectly, in a way my brain can understand it, but this week i am in hibernation. I'm deliberately not reading any websites (including my LiveJournal friends page) so that i can focus on figuring things out through experience and observation - i want to spend some time not relying on that reading crutch that usually just ends up being a procrastination tool anyway. So, i'm going it alone, ticking and tocking and leaning, counterpunching thin air, concentrating on my core, hoping somehow it clicks.

I need a full-length mirror in the house. I used to hate seeing myself in mirrors, but having to stare at myself in the gym and in the dance studio (where i drum) i am learning to appreciate how much it can help in figuring out how your body moves. It's still important for me to practice "blind" because it helps me focus more on the essence, on the raw sensations, but to see myself... That's something that has really helped me smooth the flow of all kinds of movement in the last six months, both boxing and drumming. Mirrors don't strip away my confidence any more, they help give it back to me.

Thinking back, i used to love going to this incredibly tacky nightclub that - because it's in Brisbane - manages to continue pulling crowds despite its 80s-licious decor. It never really occurred to me that aside from all the pastel and neon, another reason i might have enjoyed going was the mirror along the dance floor. It seems so vain to admit you want to look at yourself when you're out, though perhaps it's not so unusual in gay nightclubs. Although i dance with my eyes closed most of the time, it's nice to open up and catch a glimpse of where your body is actually going. A long, long time ago i used to dance with a man in my head who was two-dimensional, a pitch-black shadow, he bounced off what i did and lead me... I was dancing in the living room the other day and saw him again.

Some day i will go to a class and try learn more seriously how to dance, perhaps jazz or house. It's such a wonderful feeling for me... But outside of a club environment it's still something i am completely terrified of doing seriously. I'm terrified my body will betray me, that even feeling the music so intimately in my head i won't be able to translate it to where i'm moving and i'll look uncoordinated or like i don't have any sense of rhythm. And they won't stop laughing at me, all those little voices inside...

When i have nowhere to be in the morning, i go to sleep after 2. When i have a 9:30 in the morning, i still go to sleep after 2. When i have to wake up before 7 several days in a row, evenings start getting a little strange. I feel like a possessed doll - something is animating me, but my mind is lost in the shell. I tend to confuse people with nonsensical chatter and get myself caught in looped thought, or a web of distraction. Music sounds different. It's probably worse when i am home alone because without someone to tell me to go to bed it's like the spirit wants to see all it can before returning to wherever it came from.

Ironically i love sleeping. But there are things to do, damnit. I want to go to the gym again tomorrow morning because today i spent the whole class teaching instead of working out for myself. Today i have a basketball game and lots of jobs to apply for and school options to consider and emails to write and movies to watch and books to read and a special dinner to make. I should clean too. Ahaha, okay here we go. Whee!

This week has been crazy. I've been to two job interviews and one headhunter meet-and-greet. I've received an insidious telemarketing call after answering an apparently fake job ad. I've whacked my head and narrowly avoided giving myself a black eye, only to succeed the next day. I've forgotten - then remembered - various important pieces of information, including the name of the person interviewing me. Yesterday i applied make-up for the first time since my December drum performance, and our group got together to practice again for the first time since then too. I've trained some newbies at the gym and tomorrow i'll be opening up and running the class. Monday i start Spanish again. Yup busy.

In a week i could be working a part-time admin job barely breaking minimum wage, or i could be earning over twice as much per hour in a full-time IT contract. I felt such positive vibes interviewing for the admin position this afternoon - the work isn't demanding and the building is gorgeous, in a park, out in the suburbs... It was right the other way earlier in the morning when i was taking a challenging skills test and trying to feel out the right buzzwords to drop for my future manager in condo city. I did my best at both - i can't do any more than that. I'll spend this weekend applying for any more interesting positions i come across, and we'll see who calls me in the upcoming days.

I keep going back and forth on what kind of job i want. At the end of the day, the most important thing is that i'm working by February so i can pay rent that month. I can't afford to wait around hoping the ideal job i'm visualizing suddenly appears. (That's the magic time/money balance of $20+ per hour, 20-30 hours per week, by the way.) I need to remember that nothing is forever and just because i get hired somewhere doesn't mean i have to sign my life away. If i'm not earning enough or i'm overworked, i can always look for another job. I need to learn how to not feel like a failure or experience guilt over these things. I know i'm doing the best i can do right now, so whatever happens i just gotta roll with it.

It is extremely fucking scary to suddenly go blank on a number you have been typing in every week or so for over 10 years. This morning i forgot my client number for online banking and i just froze up in shock. I still haven't remembered it. This evening it took me a few tries to remember my client number for immigration. I am terrified i am losing my mind, somehow.

I wonder if it's caused by anxiety related to starting to get calls back about jobs. I don't have any interviews scheduled yet, but so far this month is looking a lot better than last month. Maybe by the time i do get called for an interview i will have gotten over that fear of picking up the phone that leaves me babbling so incoherently.

When i was 16 i wrote a track called "Life is a Sinewave". I liked the poetry of the title, given the track's up and down progressions and use of a sine wave sub-bass patch. It was about my first love and those last few months of high school. I think at the time i figured everyone's moods - and fortunes - rose and fell as violently and predictably as mine. Because all teenagers are fucked up, right?

I tend to forget about it. Yesterday, though, i was at the gym and chatting to a kid who suddenly came out with how she hadn't slept in days because she was on a high and the meds weren't working and yep i'm gonna sleep tonight though because i'm gonna work out so hard you know holy crap i fucking love this song don't you love this song? It's simultaneously chilling and seductive every time. I tried to help her out, get her focused on hitting the bags. I told her i wish i'd had bags to hit 10 years ago, that she needed to breathe and be patient and keep working with her doctor to get the dosage right and that life really is much better when you're stable. You know, all the stuff you don't want to hear when you're manic.

Of course then coming home i felt like a bit of a fraud given over the last ten days i've forgotten to take my meds twice. And the whole hardware store saga the other day where i decided i was not only going to build a desk but buy all the tools i needed to do it too. I managed to pull myself out of that one when i realized i was so weak with hunger i could barely carry all the shit i'd picked up. Which isn't to say i don't have a bunch of other dumbass projects going right now that i haven't mentioned here yet. Yup so all these years on it's still there, just doing a better job of keeping my ship on course. Yarrr.

I think i am going to get serious about going back to college. Because when you're broke what could be a smarter move than going into debt to work on an arts degree? I think i might want to teach.

There were a lot of things i left behind when i decided to change my sex. One of them was the dream of becoming a musician. Or perhaps that happened in reverse - as i tried to run as far from the rave scene i had become so disillusioned with i not only dropped my dreams but also felt like i had to take personal reinvention to the limit. I lost my spirituality and intuition then too, and the vast majority of friends and people i trusted. It's ironic that to become a woman i fled to my most stereotypically masculine traits - workaholism, pragmatism, skepticism, emotional isolation... I never really recovered.

Today most people are headed back into work and i have to start applying for jobs in earnest. I am nearly broke and need a job as soon as possible. I could just blitz the software engineer classifieds and given i have a work permit, a degree and 8 years experience i have no doubt i could net some interviews. But i just don't want to. I hate coming home feeling so mentally drained each day, i hate letting problems consume me and haunt my evenings and weekends, i hate staring at a screen all day, and to a certain extent i hate the people i work with. I haven't really gone into the latter too much before because it's a bit of a sweeping statement, but this is my journal so let's take out the broad brush for a moment.

Nerds are fucking annoying people to be around. They see the world as constructed of a very narrow set of rules they build up in their heads and will argue their view is right till they're blue in the face. There's no middle-ground, no stepping back to live and let live - when it comes to an intellectual disagreement they have to win. Sound familiar? Yes, i can be a terrific nerd too. But in an industry where meetings and peer reviews are a daily occurrence, it makes for a lot of heated arguments over things that really shouldn't be that big of a deal. For me being in the industry is a downward spiral - i really don't like the nerdy aspects of my personality and would like to let the rest of me come forward a little more, but because i'm surrounded by people who operate that way 24/7 i keep falling back into that mode as a sort of defense mechanism.

I don't even know if i should start on the über-nerds who are completely socially inept outside of their little world of open source or video games or science fiction or whatever their "thing" is. These are the people who toss out obscure quotes in response to normal questions and smirk at their in-jokes, apparently oblivious to what constitutes effective workplace communication. Water cooler chat can get particularly inappropriate. In some companies the whole software engineering department lives in that wacky über-nerd land and it puts people like me very much on the fringe. I understand their references because i've been exposed to that culture all my adult life, but i don't think they're funny, or clever, or relevant. It's like an upside-down high school where if you're NOT the quirky weirdo you're the odd one out.

One thing that scares me a lot about going back to university - especially to a Masters program - is that i'll end up surrounded by as many nerds as i would if i remained in software development. I don't fit in to that culture and it brings out some of my worst traits. The Masters programs i'm interested in are real ivory tower academic subjects - philosophy, political science, theology, ancient history, literature etc - and not exactly known for hatching social butterflies. At community college the vibe is completely different - there is a very broad cross-section of people who are all there simply to learn, not to prove to everyone else how smart they are. I think i am drawn to the down-to-earth programs at community college more because of the people and real-life utility than because the subjects particularly interest me per se. It's something i really need to be honest with myself about and figure out.

Of course the struggle in me right now is do i fall back on what i know or do i hold out for something different? It's a question of faith, really. Do i trust that someone out there will read my cover letter and not toss my application out as soon as they see that i am completely mis- or over-qualified? Having faith in being able to change careers surely isn't that different from having faith in being able to find any job in this economy after 10 months out of work. I have it - i do - i just don't know if anyone else does. I guess it doesn't matter.

It's amazing how quickly the pendulum can swing back. I got the obligatory midnight call from J, and she told me she was bringing a friend back to crash on the couch. It wasn't a surprise - we'd talked about the possibility already a couple weeks ago - but i still hoped. All my built-up peace, my calm, my happiness got torn down in just one phone call. Happy fucking New Year.

I migrated into the bedroom with all the things that make me feel good - my computer, the books i'm reading at the moment, my paper journal, Vogue, iPod, Diet Coke... I spent the next couple hours reading and then went to sleep shortly after they arrived. Or i tried. Something i didn't write about yesterday because it felt like whining is that i started getting really bad cramps in the morning. Everything i ate tied my stomach up tighter, and in the end i spent most of the day sipping water and nibbling at grated apple and Graham crackers. That continued into the night, so i wore pajamas to bed in case i needed to do an emergency run to the bathroom in front of our guest. I fucking hate sleeping with clothes on, so that just made it even harder to relax.

Waking up this morning i wrote some very cranky pages in my morning journal and then curled into a fetal position to ease the pain in my abdomen. When J woke up she told me i should just go to the bathroom, make some coffee, do my usual routine, but she doesn't get it. I just can't fucking deal with having people in my house. Especially not overnight and when i don't know how long they are going to stay. I want my privacy, my solitude, my space... The aura of a safe home is something i need to keep myself stable, sane. When another person is thrown into that everything just swirls and i start losing it. I know this, i know it and i've spent most of my adult life trying to "fix" it and i'm no closer now than ever so perhaps this is just one of those deep-seated anxieties i have to live with.

I told J when we met that this was probably my biggest issue, i've never hidden it from her or made her expect it'd be any different, but it still frustrates her. Although December was my best month of the year in general, J and i had probably our worst fights of the year too because of four fucking social events - Christmas/Hanukkah at her uncles' (19th), dinner at her grandmother's (21st), birthday at her parents' (30th) and New Year's Eve. I hate going over to people's houses almost as much as i hate having people at my house. It's the same issues in reverse - i don't want to be messing up anyone else's space. And with her family there's also being stuck in the suburbs, feeling obliged to accept lifts as if we're fucking schoolchildren, having to socialize with large groups... It's always about feeling trapped, forced behind a mask, forced into a situation where i can't get out. Fuck it, fuck it all.

Meeting in the middle is one of my biggest problems in relationships. I can do it for stuff like food, music, TV, home decor - even cleaning - but i struggle trying to compromise when it comes to my emotional and mental issues. I have a very hard time ignoring or conquering my anxieties when it's for someone else. I mean, obviously. It's not like i haven't already spent years trying to work on them for me. I forget most people don't see mental health issues as being "real" problems. It's just hey pull yourself together, cheer up, get over it. And it's never that easy or there wouldn't be a problem in the first place. I know sometimes i can be very fucking difficult to live with but goddamnit... sometimes i just can't help that.

Haw. So tonight i had this grand plan of digging up some old writing of mine where i described what i was feeling on New Year's 1999/2000, but it seems that's another hole in my brain. I was sure i had written something and posted it on my website, but it doesn't exist anywhere in my backups or on archive.org either, so perhaps it was all in my head. It probably sucked anyway. On the upside, i did find a bunch of my old music while combing the backups, so i have something to both inspire me and depress me. Somehow i spent 10 years writing no new music at all. Awesome.

Earlier today i had some fun, though, visiting the beach in the rain. It was icy cold and i froze my butt off sitting on a rock waiting for sunset, but the wind and the solitude helped clear my mind. When sunset came, it didn't. The sky was so overcast the world turned to slate. A lot of people here hate the winter and early spring because from the sky to the streets everything is the same dirty shade, but to me it has its own beauty. It's like a million tiny mirrors - when you don't look for the edges you just see your own psyche reflected back. I look for the edges. I love the breaks, the lines.

Ten years ago i was alone too, alone in my apartment with a bottle of champagne and a well of regret and self-loathing. I've spent the decade emptying that well of darkness and letting the sun shine in, though the odd bucket still comes up black. Back then i hoped the new millennium would bring bliss as i finally stepped into the new me - a charmed life surrounded by beautiful things and beautiful people. That's what dreams are made of when you read too much Vogue. Of course i didn't get the happiness i hoped for from my new life; i didn't get the glamor, i didn't get the girl. Tonight i still have my regrets, i still have my dreams, and i'm once again about to step into a new life. In my current emotional swing that symmetry is oddly pleasing.

Yesterday J and i went on our Christmas date. A few weeks back we found a great deal on a nice hotel downtown and decided to spoil ourselves for a night. It's so refreshing to get out of the house for a while. Every time we book a hotel somewhere we come home feeling renewed, just one night with a different view and a different bed can change the world.

What J didn't know because it was my Christmas gift to her was that we'd also be visiting the King Tut exhibition at the local art gallery. I think it's one the biggest displays of ancient Egyptian artifacts outside of Egypt at the moment, so it really is a "once in a lifetime" thing. On a whim earlier this year we looked into traveling to Egypt. That's one thing we are alike in and love doing together - planning random dream vacations... This was a way to bring a tiny bit of dream vacation to us.

I have never in my life seen a museum so busy. People were separated into groups for entry, divided by half hour blocks. We spent half an hour waiting in line before we even entered the gallery, and that was with prepaid tickets. But wow, so fucking worth it. I've never seen artifacts so old up close. I know millions of people have seen them before me, that the blood and sweat of the ancient artisans is long gone, but the spirit was there! Some of the pieces were over 3500 years old, yet still intact and so majestic they took my breath away. My favorite was just a large, crumbling block covered in hieroglyphs... Such a mystery to me but a striking remnant of a literate civilization long lost. The jewelry, also, was spectacular. Some of the work was so detailed... It's humbling knowing such fine necklaces and trinkets were made so many thousands of years ago, objects that i still find terribly beautiful and can picture around the neck or in the boudoir of a woman today. Of course the men back then were pretty too... Truly amazing.

Coming out of the show, though, i became faint. The world started fading away a bit and i couldn't string a sentence together any more. I knew i had to eat but when J tried to give me money to buy something i looked at her blankly - i just couldn't process it. I think i started getting cranky so she dragged me to Quizno's, which was the closest place. When they said they didn't have chicken for my sandwich i just fell deeper into confusion and it was all sort of a blur after that until i was sitting at a table eating McDonald's fries and a sandwich. It was horrible and scary and it's been happening a lot lately.

I feel like it has to be low blood sugar. I don't know if it's because i have very little body fat now, or if it's the icy cold weather making my metabolism go faster, or what, but sometimes even when i think i've eaten okay i just get overwhelmed. My mom had severe anemia several years ago, so i guess it could be something like that, but she's a vegetarian and i eat plenty of meat, plus i don't shy away from big meals when it's something i like so what the fuck? I'm supposed to be healthier now than i've ever been so these episodes are fucking frustrating.

I guess i should see a doctor, but my insurance doesn't kick in till February, and i can't afford a full suite of blood tests without a job. But if i am anemic or have some other deficiency i'd rather catch it now than possibly end up in hospital, or find myself unable to train, or something. Blar. See? My body likes to fuck with me when things are going well. I want to blame it on some psychosomatic self-sabotage bullshit, but fuck. I guess i am nearly 30, not young and invincible, my mom and sister both have had similar problems that hospitalized them, bla bla bla, be responsible... Okay. I just want to fly.

And i want to go see the pyramids before i die. Yup that too.

I have a weird fascination with Alice in Wonderland. I'm not sure when it started, exactly - perhaps with reading the abridged fairy tales as a child, or seeing the Disney animated feature, or later when my own flight into fantasy led me to flirt with choosing the name "Alice" for myself. I had a friend, once, who would call me that all the time. It seemed particularly fitting as he was a drug buddy and we delighted in our absurd conversations, my words often edging into insanity even when i wasn't high. I always liked to conjure a strange sort of logic to contain my aimless babble, or at least i liked to believe that my nonsense was internally sensible.

I'm not obsessive about it, but when i come across an adaption i haven't seen before i go out of my way to try see it. You can imagine my excitement the first time i saw the trailer for Tim Burton's upcoming Alice, even though pretty much all his other movies annoy me. But i was even more excited when i stumbled upon Sy Fy's miniseries that aired earlier this month. I downloaded it and saved it for Boxing Day when i knew J would be working and i could watch uninterrupted. It was a delightfully bizarre and oddly enjoyable pastiche. All the references made to the original story and other books and movies were fabulously quirky. The Cheshire Cat made me laugh, and those flamingos!

I really miss having a cat. J hates them, so i guess that's one of those experiences i have to have vicariously now, by way of the stories and photos of my friends. Lately we have both been struck by how different we are. Everything seems opposite, from our taste in music and movies and pets, to our sense of spirituality and beauty and wonder, to the way we look at family and friendships... I guess the important thing is we look at our relationship the same way, we support each other as we are and aren't under any illusions things will ever be "perfect". It's actually kind of reassuring. We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day together and everything kinda flowed, we laughed a lot and it just felt good. Somehow she deals with my madness, and that's the best gift she could give. Even if i don't get to have a cat. Or get to watch freakin Alice in Wonderland with my partner.

This... i guess more and more joys i experience in me, alone. I try to capture the essence when i write here, just sharing with the ether it feels like sometimes, but that's okay. I might not be doing it all with someone but the people around me get to share the smiles and creations that come from it. I can at least hold on, harness the inspiration. The spark will fall somewhere, sometime.

T posted a picture the other day of sunset over the ocean, and it reminded me of a thought i once had about the west coast - how i always felt it more romantic to watch the sun set over the ocean than to watch it rise. That odd little fragment of a memory lit me up with a smile, i love when whims flit back from the blue.

I didn't see a sunset tonight - it's overcast and we are finally getting dusted with snow that's sticking. We may wake up to a white Christmas yet. Sunsets here are wholly different again to the west coast of the US or the east coast of Australia. It's very flat around Toronto; there's such a big sky. At twilight it turns coral then cinnamon, scratched by jet contrails and wispy clouds. Driving on the freeway sometimes i can think the city away and imagine riding across the plains, before the land was settled.

It's odd, being so far from the ocean. This is the furthest inland i've ever lived. I never particularly cared for the sea - even when i lived close i'd rarely visit - but somehow in the sky i can feel a difference. It seems cleaner; more calm and less wild. Perhaps that's good for my soul right now. I still have the lake - vast and blue. Now, just after the solstice, the sun must be setting over it to the south... i will wrap myself in a bundle and go watch one evening. There is a spot where my mind can breathe.

Tonight i am home with J and we will eat Chinese and watch Die Hard. Tomorrow we will make latkes and schnitzel for her and serve dates and prosciutto and mandarins and brie for me. Hopefully Santa will bring me chocolate in my stocking. If i get to make a snowman i will squee. But mostly i just want peace for Christmas, a break from the chatter, to have my mind rest and my heart glow. It's been so long.

It really chaps my ass when friends comment on my Facebook or reply to my monthly update emails saying how we totally need to get together for drinks again, completely ignoring everything else in my life. It makes it even worse when they talk about how night such-and-such was one of their best nights ever and they really miss partying with me. Knowing that trashy me could be sociable, entertaining and entirely hilarious kinda pisses sober me off, because i know i have so much more to offer now. I'm as much a dork as ever, i can still be charming and funny, but i also have passions and goals and stories and it frustrates me that a lot of my friends don't seem interested. I know the people i've made the effort to stay in touch with aren't the shallow ones, so it scares me when their fondest memories of me are when i was fucked up and that that's the only way they can connect now. That's what happened with M and i after we broke up too, and it's like... wtf. Did anyone ever really know me?

I like to play my keyboard but i never record any of it. Going to drumming classes this year has improved my "finger rhythm" a lot and it's actually pretty fun to bash out melodies now. There are all these little riffs in me that could turn into songs if i just recorded them and built on them. I used to get scared that if i didn't record my noodlings i'd lose them, like there was a finite number of tunes in my head, so i tried to notate everything. As i got older i learned music goes on forever, you can use the same patches, the same keys, the same chord progressions, but something is always going to make each song unique... I think that knowledge made me lazy. Now i jam and jam and never play with direction. As usual i have too many concepts in my head and i don't want to settle on just one thing, but if i never settle then nothing will ever finish and every time i pick up an instrument i'll swirl and rush and put it down unsatisfied. I think what made my drum performance so cathartic was actually focusing on this single piece. I should bring that into my other music.

Why is it still so hard to keep my shit together when my brain is frantic and screaming non-stop and i have to look after a sick partner and a million other things?

I just got a text message from DJ Pierre and got thoroughly excited for all of 5 seconds. Then i realized all my Facebook and MySpace messages get texted to me and he was just spamming his new single to all his fans. I was curious because back in the darker days of the internet i got an unsolicited email from him due to my site coming up high in AltaVista searches for acid house. He and Bob Moog remain probably the only two semi-famous people i've exchanged email with. I'm not much of a groupie and actually feel kind of awkward when i'm put in that situation. I'm not sure if i mentioned that when i saw Miles Maeda in 2007 the promoter grabbed me at the beginning of the party and dragged me over to say hi and i said some stupid shit like "i have this online friend who always talks about how good your mixtapes are and deerrrr"... I think i still have severe social phobia issues when i'm forced into interactions i'm not prepared for.

I've been very patiently waiting for a job before i go clubbing in Toronto because with cover charge, water and taxis i could be looking at $50. I never used to care about a $50 or even a $100 night, but now that's a quarter or half a term of school blown in one night. I miss dancing so, so, so much, but i've had enough other things going on it didn't seem too bad - or not until i got the text message that Ron Trent was coming to town. I'm not much of a DJ nut, but he is definitely on my top 10 list and i would love to make that my first night out here. Unfortunately he's coming worst night of the year - New Year's Eve.

I hate New Year's Eve. Hate it so much it actually makes me mad just to think about. Everything is busy, everything is expensive, and every suburban tool decides to go places they never go and take substances they never take and fuck everything that's good about clubbing in the process. Going out is always shit. But when i haven't gone out, way too often i have stayed home and gotten trashed in ways that start entirely entertaining and end pitifully depressing. This year i'll be happy to hide from the bitter cold outside and just watch the ball drop in sobriety. J originally wanted to take me out to some straightedge top 40 party hits gig, but that would've made me physically ill.

Sometimes i wonder how i ended up with someone whose taste in music and idea of a good night out is so far from my own. Music and dancing are two of the most important things in my life but J and i always end up struggling to find a middle ground. We usually settle on some generic pop - she can totally keep her pub scene and karaoke and local bands. Oddly the exact same thing used to happen with M too, even though we met in the rave scene. It's become a bit of a running joke with J and i that we are destined to never go to each other's gigs. I don't mind having my own thing, actually. I'm not exactly the most sociable person when i'm clubbing anyway because i just stay on the dancefloor and only leave to refill my water bottle. It's a wonder i ever met anyone when i was out.

So, no Ron Trent for now. No Osunlade either. This weekend instead of going to Derrick Carter on Friday or Miss Honey Dijon on Saturday, i will go to J's uncles' Christmas/Hanukkah party. How do i contain my excitement? And just two days later we will get to prepare another huge ass kosher dinner with her mother and sister. Color me merry. It's almost enough to make me want to start drinking again. You see, this is why they say holidays are the peak time of year for suicides, relapses, violent crime... Or in my case perhaps just anxiety attacks. And dreams. Wait, that happens all year round. Whatever. I have work to do.