Maybe I should start drinking at work...

I really don't do very much during my two 12.5 hour marathon shifts every weekend. Drinking seems like it would make the whole experience seem like more of an adventure than a way for me to catch up on sleep and comic books. Mind you, I really enjoy reading comics and I've been downloading them at a furious rate for the last couple of months. I highly recommend 100 Bullets. It's an quality series published by Image Comics.

But I digress...

Life has been good to me in the last few months. School is done for the regular semester, and I'm approaching the middle of my summer session. I'm hoping I'll be able to do really well in this class, which shouldn't be a problem as the prof is aiming to make it as stress-free as possible. I agree completely with this approach. The hot yoga has also been going really well, with me averaging around three classes a week. I really feel great because of it. I still get a bit stiff now and then, but it's mainly because I'm starting to open up and stretch muscles that I never made use of before.

On a related note, I'm dating one of my instructors. I'm pretty pleased about the whole thing. We'd been hanging in the same group of friends for a while, but she was dating a guy for a few months when I first met her. Luckily, he's long out of the picture, and I'm very much in it. I haven't felt so content and relaxed in years. It's like I've become a different person in the last few months. I'm much more confident in almost everything I do, and I really seem to worry less about how other people see me. I mean, if I'm dating a girl who could have her pick of some ripped-up yoga dudes I must be doing something right. I guess nice guys don't always finish last. (That's not to say I finish first. I'm sure the ladyfriend would agree with me on that.)

Now, on an unrelated note, I got myself another bike last month. It's fixed gear, and it's bad-ass. If you don't know what a fixed-gear bike is, I suggest you google it. Wikipedia will likely be your first hit, and it's probably the best description. The frame is in pretty good shape, so my plan is to strip off the old paint and then carefully and lovingly re-paint it myself. I figure I'll put on a can of primer, a can of base color (not sure what one yet) and then I'm going to have a good friend of mine design a graphic of some sort for it. After that it'll be a couple coats of clear-coat to protect the paint and she'll be good to go. Next year I'll see about getting a set of color matched Deep-V's, but for now I'll stick with the Alexrims that came setup on it.

As for how it rides, it's definitely a lot different from a your standard freewheel. A lot of old-school cyclists will remember when a fixed gear was the norm, but things have changed a lot over the last 20 or 30 years, obviously. Fixies have somewhat of a cult status in urban cities, and there quite a few websites for to like-minded fixers to congregate. I wouldn't say I'm part of the culture or anything, as I just got started, but I really love the feel of riding a bike that's so in sync with the road. I'm slowly getting used to never putting a foot down. I either very slowly do tight circles (unbelievably tight turns on these things) or just try to do a track stand. As my balance improves I'm going to practice biking backwards and doing skids and stuff. It's a whole different kind of riding and I've fallen for it almost as hard as my aforementioned yoga instructor.


So, long story short, things are good, and looking better every day. Who knows when I'll post again, but I'm sure I'll be back.

Here we go again...

Oh, Happy New Year. I guess I haven't been here in a while, but as my last post suggests, the volume of traffic doesn't really necessitate regular updates. You understand...

So what's new with me, you ask? Well a few things. First of all, we're one year closer to Armageddon. I'm not pretending to know when that will be, but I'm sure we're closer to it now than we were at this time last year.

Chew on that for a minute.

Life is going to be pretty busy for the next few months. I'm working full-time and taking four courses at university. I did that last semester as well, but I've started taking yoga lately, and starting this Friday, I'll be volunteering at the studio as well. It's going to be weird being so busy, but no one activity actually requires a lot of effort from me (except for yoga, which is a bit different,) so I should be alright.

As far as the yoga goes, I was a bit skeptical at first, and teased one of my friends who had started a couple of months before me. She offered me a free pass one day, and I said "what the hell, I might as well" and I haven't looked back since. It's Bikram Yoga, which basically means you sweat your balls (or ovaries) off for 90 minutes in a room heated to 105 degrees F, with 60-70% humidity. It's supposed to be that hot to help ease blood flow and to help open up your joints and muscles, which prevents injury. I guess the term "hot as balls" applies here pretty well. I have to tell you, I'm in the best shape of my life. I haven't been so light since 9th grade. I was fairly soft around the ole' mid-section from Jr. high to earlier this year, but the yoga has melted it off me. I've never been so flexible, and I know for a fact that there is lots of room for improvement. A few of the instructors made that very clear in a couple of demonstrations. At this rate, I'm going to be ripped by the time the summer comes around.

I think my own self-image has had a lot to do with my self confidence. I wrote before this that I always viewed myself as "the loser from grade 9." Well, I'm definitely looking a lot better than that kid now. I still find myself self-consciously breaking eye contact with girls now, but I'm also finding more of them looking my way. There is actually eye-contact to break, now, and I've talked to two random girls lately where I would have avoided it before. I bet this is all in my head. Maybe I was always just staring at the ground, or avoiding eye contact before. At this point, I couldn't care less. I'm proud of what I've been able to accomplish in my yoga class so far. I'm excited about how much further I still have to go, and what I'll be able to accomplish. I'm going to try to update this page a little more often. Progress reports, and that sort of thing.

In fact, I'm going to set myself a goal. By the next time I post (let's say within one month from today) I'll have gone on at least one date. I've got my eye on a Latin girl from one of my classes.

Until then...

No, I didn't think so.

I'd apologize for the lack of updates and all that, but I'm not kidding anybody. I don't even know if anyone has ever looked at my blog. Maybe I'll have to find some sort of hit-tracker so I can stroke my ego with the massive amounts of people reading my blog. At this point, I can only assume the numbers are off the charts.

I'm great, thanks. How are you?

It's tough to stay optimistic all the time. It's easy enough to keep up the illusion of happiness in front of other people, but it's not so easy to trick yourself. We all have our good days, and our bad days, but eventually the good days just don't seem quite so nice anymore. It's like a painting that's starting to run because the paint's still wet. There may be lots of bright colours, and a few dark colours, but as they blend, you'll notice that it doesn't seem so much like the dark colours get brighter, as the bright colours just get darker. Maybe it's just a point of view, a sort of "glass is half full" type deal.

I'd like to say maybe it's just me, but that's being pretty naive. I know that some of my friends feel the same way, even if they don't talk about it. Some of them have turned gradually to alcohol as a way to deal with their problems, or, more likely, to avoid them completely. A couple others have been medicated, but that never seems to fix anything. I know exactly where I'd tell the doctor to shove his Prozac if he told me those little pills would help me . Screw that noise.

So what options are left for those of us who don't feel depressed enough to get treatment, but at the same time feel like things are gradually going downhill? One good friend of mine is a firm believer in therapists, and thinks everyone should try going to one at least once. Personally, I'm rather skeptical about that. I mean, sure it helps to talk things over, but is a therapist really going to help me accomplish something, or are they just going to suggest bullshit Psych101 answers that really don't get me any further ahead.

I suppose blogging is one way the masses have started to self-therapize(I can make up words if I want to.) The comfort of being able to type away at a keyboard while staying completely anonymous is the perfect solution for those people who may be socially inept, or who just don't know where else to turn. I just wish I could stop worrying so much and deal with my problems. If I could do that, I wouldn't be sitting at this computer right now and writing this.

A large part of why I feel so down all the time is a complete lack of love-life that's been on-going for several years now. Is it me? Of course it is. I've been told by a lot of my close female friends that I'm a good-looking guy, and how lucky I'll make some girl one day. Great, that's exactly what I needed to hear. It was a big help, thanks. It really doesn't help that I almost all of them were girls I was really interested in, only to have them start dating somebody else, all the while acting like I'm their loving older brother or something. I just don't know what to do when I'm interested in a girl. That's the biggest problem in my life right now, and it has been since right after high school. I had a couple of girlfriends in high school, but they were both girls that I knew were interested in me before I asked them out. The problem is, unless I'm almost positive that there won't be a rejection, I don't make a move. Why risk it, right? Fuck, I have to get over this shit.

I'm a fucking Vigilante

It was her birthday yesterday. The birthday party held in her honour over the weekend was a disaster, caused by non other than the "generous" friend who had offered to throw said party in the first place. Not really the best way to celebrate. Then, to really stir things up, her bike was stolen yesterday. Not cool at all...

Now, here's where the story gets interesting. I also had my bike stolen recently, so I sympathized with her, and offered what seemed at the time to be nothing more than hollow condolences. Bike stolen in Montreal? Fat chance you'll see that baby again, right? Well, apparently not.

Here I am, walking outside on my break at around midnight the night after the aforementioned bike theft. My initial path would have led me far away from the scene of the recovery, but for some reason I took a right hand turn at the last second. It was the kind of last-second turn that makes people think "I wonder what that was about?" (To tell you the truth, I was looking for a depanneur to buy myself a Prime Time, one of those cigarette/cigar hybrids they sell in individual packages. You know the ones I'm talking about.) As I get about a block down the street, I look across to the other sidewalk, and see some kid bike up to a couple of guys in trenchcoats. He's obviously trying to strike some sort of deal with them, but I the bike looks very familiar, so I walk up to him and grab the handlebars before he realizes I'm coming.

'Where did you get this bike, man?" I asked. Now, I'm not a violent person, but at 6'5' and over 200lbs, I'm sure I look like I could be rather violent.

"uh, I found this bike" cam the little shit's lame reply.

I was having no part of this punks attitude. While still firmly holding the handlebars, I kept giving the kid shit and threatening him with calling the cops. None of this seemed to phase him, but as I got more and more agitated I could tell the kid was getting nervous. Finally I demanded to know what he thought he was going to do with the bike.

"Nothing," he said.

"Good, "said I. "Now give it to me"

At this point the little prick decided it wasn't worth a potential stomping from a guy twice his size, so he started asking if he could at least get, and I quote "3 bucks to buy a beer or something." Needless to say, he didn't get shit, and I don't know where he ran off to after that.

What I do know is one girl who's going to get a nice late birthday present from a good friend who just happened to have neglected to buy her something.

That's some heavy shit...

I saw a quote the other day, and at first I thought "Man, that's some heavy shit."

The quote is this: 'I cried because I had no shoes, 'till I met a man who had no feet.'

I've done a few google searches, trying to find where that quote came from, but no one really seems to know. Most often, it seems to be used by someone wanting someone else to look at their post/blog and think, much as I did, "Man, that's some heavy shit." I guess it makes them feel like they're on a deeper level than the rest of us.

My question is this: Why does everyone automatically assume this person with no feet is in such a sorry state, that we can use them as a way to reassure ourselve that we havent fallen that far yet. That's a pretty ignorant way of looking at the world. There are people out there that have had a really rough deal in life, and they're probably much happier and more content with their lives than I am with my own. I like to think I'm a pretty normal guy. I'm in my mid-twenties, going to university, living in a beautiful city, and working a decent job. Not too much to worry about when you get right down to it.

Well...surprise. I worry about stupid, pointless shit all the time. I don't know why, obviously my priorities are a bit fucked up, considering the sorry state of the world today. Do you want to know what my number one priority is? Me. I'm always looking out for myself, but probably not in the way you'd think. See, I'm always doing my best to portray a certain image of myself. A way I want everybody else to see me. Unfortunately, I just don't see myself in the positive way I want everybody else to see me. I'm constantly questioning myself, unsure of how other people perceive me. I just hate that feeling of...I hesitate to say rejection...it's more of a dismissal. Even walking down the street, I feel like nobody sees me most of the time. I convince myself that they've looked long enough to realize I'm not worth a second glance, and I'm forgotten. It's almost instantaneous. Most of the time I don't even feel like I get the glance. I'm just not worth the time it takes to look up, maybe?

Let's not jump to any conclusions. I don't think I'm falling into a deep depression, or anything like that. I've just been so self-conscious for so long now that it's like it's second-nature. We've all heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy, well maybe that's what this is. I convinced myself long ago that people only see me as a big loser. Sure, I have some good friends that I know care about me, but I just can't shake the feeling that if I say something wrong at some point, they'll slam the door on our friendship, leaving me out on the front step wondering what the hell just happened. With girls I get even worse. My mind races ahead to the point where I think I might fuck something up, and automatically shuts down. I convince myself not to risk hitting on a girl just so I don't hit that wall of disappointment later on down the road.

Do you think the footless guy has that problem? Can we immediately look at him and say "Shit, this guy leads one sorry life. He can't even walk right. How can he live a normal life?" Well, maybe you should stop and ask him. Maybe he'd appreciate that someone took a second to talk with him about it. For all we know, this guy is a hero who lost both of his feet to frostbite after walking 10 miles through a blizzard dragging a sled full of orphans to safety. Or maybe he was just born without feet and learned to cope with it. We don't have to look very far to find the people in our lives that need a few reassuring words from a friend. It could make their day, and maybe help them get things straightened just a bit. If there's somebody to listen, most people are willing to talk, and just being able to express your fears and concerns out loud is sometimes enough to put things back in a positive light. A second opinion is always preferred to that one opinion that keeps rattling around inside your head, building on itself until you can't get around it.

Feet aren't as important as you'd think. But that's my opinion

seriously

Just take a taste of all that sunlight. Delicious, no?

Trust me, you love it. Your body is agreeing with me. It's good for you.


While you're at it, maybe grab yourself a nice glass of water. Isn't that refreshing?


And away we go...