Bittersweet Memories

My dad had this really lovely piece published in The Chronicle Herald this weekend. It’s about my grandparents, the navy, the legion, and Remembrance Day – super touching, sweet, and has a really great message.

I am super proud of him and hope, if you read it, you vote for and share it this Remembrance Day!

Girls Who Love Boys Who Love Girls

After a recent fascinating discussion on Hitched! about gender issues, someone posted this. Fascinating!

When I was a kid, I didn’t play with boys. My sister was the type of girl who had boy friends – and I don’t mean boyfriends (I was indeed the type of girl who had plenty of those, hah) but boy friends, the kind that help you get to know how the other sex operates. I was always a little nervous around boys. I didn’t know much about them. I had no idea how they worked. They didn’t seem terribly fun. They never seemed to make magazines or radio stations or write stories. They were always pushing and fighting and playing sports. I wasn’t particularly interested in them and, as I got older, I mostly just wanted to make out with them. I didn’t have any real understanding of the whole male experience.

This year, however, I did a bunch of work with the White Ribbon Campaign and that, coupled with the fact that we’ve got a small boy on the way, got me thinking pretty extensively about the whole thing. Admittedly, I’ve always simply assumed being of the male variety was pretty easy and without any major challenges. But I’ve learned that it’s not – and in order to push forward equality, it’s just as important to think about what needs to change in the male experience as in the female one. After all, how can we raise a generation of young women who innately understand that they are as deserving of respect as their male counterparts if their male counterparts don’t equivalently learn not only that they are a part of this respect-giving culture, but why it needs to work the way that it does in order for all people to share in a more equal society?

Interesting stuff.

An Issue of Integrity

For the love of pete. I am seriously frustrated by the idea that we are all so very free to say whatever our wee hearts desire, but when someone does and it’s offensive to another, the big public apology comes out.

First off: I enjoy Heather Mallick. I think she’s a smart cookie and her writing generally appeals to me greatly. I may not always fully agree with her, but I really dig her style. She’s opinionated, she’s strong, and she doesn’t mince words. These are among the most admirable characteristics that I can imagine a person having.

So did you see this? It’s in response to Mallick’s September 5 column, posted on CBC’s site.

Well, the CBC has now issued this apology for allowing it to be posted, despite originally standing behind Mallick and supporting its editorial policy, which accepts that its writers will hold varying positions and diversity in opinion.

Blagh. This kind of thing just frustrates the living daylights out of me. How on earth do we, as a culture, think it’s okay to check our values at the door when we are publicly challenged? How do we not politicize basic freedoms upon which we claim our foundation lays? What the living hell are we teaching ourselves and our growing generations of thinkers and leaders about integrity and standing up for what we believe when we lose the former due to an incapacity to undertake the latter?

Again: blagh.

I Am Ridiculous

Honestly, I have been so crazy happy for so long now, I’m beginning to feel like I’m in a freaking television show. Everything is going right times about a thousand. It’s weird. It’s fantastic. I love it.

Thirty

I know, I have completely and utterly sucked at keeping the blog updated since relaunching Hitched! It turns out it’s a fair amount of work trying to keep that baby updated, and my writing time is limited. With that said, I am going to try for a weekly update again. So I shall return with a disgustingly uber-sincere post.

It’s a few days ’til my thirtieth birthday, and I’m pretty excited about the whole thing. The last decade has been interesting and challenging, and I’m certain that the thirties will bring all kinds of new fun. I’ve always imagined this age series to be likely the best of one’s life – old enough to feel a pretty solid sense of stability (no more quarterlife crises, no financial meltdowns, no state of complete confusion as to what one is doing with her life) but young enough to have lots of fun (minor obligations, easy disposable income to invest in silly things, dream vacations to pursue, classes to take just for fun).

I entered my twenties with a pretty solid list of things I wanted to accomplish: complete a graduate degree, achieve a certain level of career success, do some travelling, find a reasonable and sustainable level of health, and purchase an abode in some urban area or another. While I have a semester left ’til I’m done grad school, I can safely say I’ve completed all the objectives that I set out for myself. They didn’t necessarily come as I’d anticipated nor did things really go according to plan while getting here, that matters not a bit. The point is that I set up the goals and achieved them. This feels darn good. This is also one of the reasons I suspect I have little to no regrets in my life thus far – I’ve been taking on challenges like a mofo and even the hideously poor choices have assisted in getting me where I needed to be.

Now that I’m entering my thirties, I feel like I need a new agenda. But what does that agenda entail? Here’s the thing: I’m not sure. Sure, I’d like to achieve more in my work life, I’d like to travel to new places, I’d like to stay fit and active, I’d like to get a house downtown. And maybe someday I’ll get an opportunity to do further studies as the dilettante that I am. But those are kind of just extensions of the twenties list. Is there anything unique I need to set out for myself in this round? Is there anything for me to pursue that is entirely novel and challenging? What will it take for me at forty to feel that my thirties have been a success? I am at a bit of a loss here. History has taught me that, being intensely goal-driven, I respond well to such things. But I don’t really know what those goals are.

Pipe dreams? Easy. I’d like to be a consultant. I’d like to write a book. I’d like to work for myself. I’d like to see the world. There are a gazillion items to list here, but these are more fodder for my fantasy life than concrete objectives for which to aim. Sure, it would be great if any came to fruition, but I won’t feel that I’ve let myself down if they don’t in the next decade.

So perhaps rather than setting new and specific goals, the thirties objective needs to be as follows: keep moving positively along the very clear path I spent my twenties building and enjoy the ride. Accept that the hardcore goal-setting era of my life – while a certain necessity at the time, given my personality – has been successful and is now complete.

If you have a better plan, just let me know. I’m open.

I’m It Again

Treava tagged me!

If I’ve tagged you, here is the deal: (1) Link to your tagger and post these rules. (2) Share 7 facts about YOU: some random, some weird… all devastatingly interesting. (3) Tag 7 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them). (4) Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

1. My weirdest phobia is people putting ham on their faces. I think it reminds me of bizarro nightmares I used to have of people without facial features. AGH!
2. I’m a closet introvert. In small groups, I’m highly outgoing, but in large groups I’m terribly unhappy. And I love, love, love being by myself.
3. I have fantasies about being a spy ’til I think about the scary parts, thus am simply obsessed with spy-related movies and television.
4. I prefer being an acquaintance to being a close friend with most people.
5. I am a huge dilettante.
6. I want to do a doctorate after my MBA, if at all possible, not to become a professor as I’d like to continue working, but simply to challenge the living daylights out of myself.
7. Given my natural energy level, most people are surprised by the fact that I very rarely drink coffee or other caffeinated beverages.

I’ll tag the following folks:

1. Jen But Never Jenn
2. Smarties
3. It’s a Monkey
4. Letters to Sofie
5. Mukodu
6. Three Seven
7. Paige Six

I Have Lots of Bad Habits

I may be vain, but I am also all kinds of imperfect. It’s okay, though, because I like to work on it.

(1) Not attributing actions/situations to people. It’s a very, very bad and distressing habit and I need to get out of it, stat.

(2) Self-regulation. I used to be really good at this one, but in the last few years I have developed a tendency to VERY MUCH react to external factors. I need to chill the eff out, or at least keep it on the inside and process there before reacting. Ick.

(3) Tuning out. I am kind of impatient by nature and I notice that sometimes, when people start talking for a long time, rather than simply telling them that I’m busy, I instead tune out. I am trying to put my hands on my seat when people come into my office so this tactic isn’t made all the easier by just stealthily staring at emails or documents I’m working on. So bad.

(4) And, as always — I swear I’ve been working on it for a few months and am getting better at it, but still — not interrupting people. It’s again connected to the impatience.

Age of Love

I just saw a commercial for a show called Age of Love. This is the tagline.

“It’s the cougars versus the kittens. Can you say catfight?”

I am not kidding. This is a kind of Bachelor-esque-looking show starring women in their 40s versus women in their 20s. They want to see who wins the man. They literally called it “the ultimate social experiment“.

I am so skeeved, I don’t even know where to begin. Not only is this grossly offensive, it totally objectifies women, and it manages to point out the icky superficiality of our culture — all at once.

Yay television.

Addicted to Crazy

So it occurred to me on the weekend as I was reading a gossipy magazine at the hairdresser (yes, while getting that cut and colour discussed in my last post): Exactly what, pray tell, was Britney Spears in rehab for?

The article was some delightful fluff piece, detailing how poor Brit had exploded to a (*gasp*) size 6, and was hoping to have $130K in plastic surgery getting back to a size 2. Before getting into how she was so damnably desperate to be a 2 again because she wanted K-Fed to see what he was missing, and because she so very much wants charming JT — whom she’s been split from longer than she dated by now, no doubt — back, the author pointed out that plastic surgery couldn’t happen immediately. You see, dear readers, after being in rehab, surgery requiring painkillers isn’t allowed for a certain period of time.

Issue.

What was Britney addicted to, y’all?

Yeah, sure, we all saw her wee breakdown slash head-shaving episode. And we saw the lost panties, boozy nights out with girlfriends, and the fact that her kids seem to have all but disappeared. And I have no doubt she was messing around with way too much alcohol and a mixed bag of drugs.

Is that actually addiction? Because it sure looked like a mental breakdown of some sort. In either case, nobody actually did say what Britney was addicted to.

Unless it was Crazy?

I Have a Huge Mouth

Not physically. You know what I mean.

Nothing particular happened to make me acknowledge this, it just suddenly occurred to me that I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve kept my mouth shut when I should’ve.