Lets Get Honest

I'm gonna talk honestly about a few things here that I haven't talked about before, or at least not in a while (I blog like, what, twice a year? I guess it's always been a while).

Lets just dive right in.

Art

Art is A LOT of different things. You can classify the creation of anything, really, as art. And I love it. I love creating, it's one of those things that kind of shortly validates me inside. But I had something happen the other day that kind of has me feeling out of place. 

I created a photo that I feel might be my best yet, especially from an artistic "this is different" standpoint. It's a black and white night photo of a glowing ball in someone's hand, and it's surrounding by blackness. Before this photo, I'd classify some stuff I did in Grand Haven as my best, but that didn't make me feel anything.

This time, I feel kind of lost because I feel like I NEED people to see this. I NEED to get this out there. Maybe because I'm a bit of an asshole and think highly of my work, but it's hard when you post something on Instagram, on your website, and print it out and that's it. It's done. Now you have to do better. Now you have to one-up yourself. You have to create BETTER art, and while that can be good inspiration to push yourself to create more, it also weighs on you, because you're scared you peaked. I know it's silly, I know I haven't, but that's what I fear. I *always* fear that I'll never do or find better, in anything.

Feeling drowned out

I feel like I'm sort of ignored, or at least pushed aside. My ideas, my thoughts, etc. I'm not the loudest, and I'm not the pushiest, so I feel like a lot of what I say or do is shrugged off, and I'm not given the credit I deserve.

I learned quickly that the loudest, whether or not they're better than you, will always get more recognition. That's just the way it is, because they pull in more attention. But this weighs on my self-perception. This weighs on my belief in myself that I'm legitimate. That I am good at what I do. That I create good work and have good ideas and actually know what I'm doing when it comes to Advertising & Marketing. 

I have to remind myself, every time I sit down to create something new that I deserve to be here. That my ideas will get me somewhere, and that certain other circumstances will not hold me back.

Women

This is one I don't think I've ever talked about on my blog, and I don't talk about this with many people. 

Must of us have this hole; this void that we feel we need to fill, and we all try to fill it with different things. The opposite sex, alcohol, art, drugs, athletics, etc.

When I was younger and awkward and overweight, I had this idea that one day being able to pick up attractive women would make everything okay. It would fill any sense of that void I had at an early age. It was all I wanted, and all I thought I needed. 

Fast-forward to being 22. Fast-forward to 2016 where there's been a lot of women, a lot of attempts at love, and a lot of emptiness in return. It's been a hard reality to face that no matter how many cute girls I talk to, no matter how many numbers I get or people I go out with, it does not make me feel like a validated person. It doesn't fill any hole, at all. And I continue to live in this weird circle where I feel like the *next* one will. "Oh, the last (however many) haven't? The next cute girl that likes me will definitely make me feel whole." I even used to think that even if things didn't work out with a cute girl, I'd STILL be happy because hey, a cute girl finally liked me.

This isn't the case and this is a huge part of my emptiness. There's nothing more draining than thinking something will fill the void, only to get it, and find out that it does nothing.

The Future

We're gonna end this on a positive. 

2016, while being terribly sad in many, many ways, has also brought me MANY opportunities. From all of the road trips, to getting back into photography, to now hosting photography galleries through local businesses, there has been SO much happening, and it's been absolutely amazing.

I've already met so many amazing people through these galleries I'm setting up, and we're only gonna grow and get bigger and get more photographers. My photography is getting better, and there will be more (hopefully paid) opportunities in the future. 

I also went into 2016 telling myself I was going to do stand-up comedy, and I've gone onstage about 7-8 times this year, most of those have been in the latter half of the year too. 

Next up is to begin podcasting. That'll be the goal for 2017. I've always loved interviewing. I love listening to these podcast of people just talking about life, and I want nothing more than to get that started. 

I also got to see so much in 2016. Road-tripping to Florida, going to Nashville & Cleveland, covering most of Michigan. For a kid who had never left the country before April, I've covered a lot of ground and I know I'll cover much more in 2017.

Thank you to everyone who supports this. Who supports the art, the crazy ideas, my regular need for attention, and everything associated with me. Thank you for being behind this. There aren't *that* many regular supports (don't get ahead of yourself if you occasionally like my IG photos), but to the people that TRULY push me forward and inspire me and believe in the occasional craziness, thank you so much.

Guilty Conscience

When I was 12, I took a bus ride with a friend to the mall without telling my mom. As far as she knew, I was just hanging out at his house for the day. We had just moved from Brampton to Cambridge, a much, much smaller city, where I guess it was fairly common practice for younger kids to do these types of things on their own. I knew she would be mad, so a few days later I caved and told her what had happened.

Fastforward to now, 10 years later. That guilty conscience that we joked about - that guilty conscience that made me come clean for years any time I'd do something wrong, has turned into existentialism. That once harmless feeling of needing to clear my head has turned into an inability to relieve myself of anything on my mind. There's a constant need to strive for perfect mental health, for a perfect peace of mind through balancing my life to such a degree that I spend the perfect amount of time with everyone, that I have the perfect relationship, the perfect job, and just genuine comfort.

It's unrealistic. It's impossible.

It strikes at random. I could be sitting in a coffee shop, when suddenly I see someone who reminds me of my grandparents, or my mom, and I instantly think about how I don't spend enough time with them. Maybe I'll drive by a dog, and I'll get sad thinking about my own dog. Sometimes I'll be driving and a certain song will come on and I'll think about that girl. Maybe I'll see a Facebook post from someone really successful in my field, and be reminded of just how close to the starting line I'm at.

What I'm saying is, there are reminders everywhere. Reminders of my imperfection and my struggle to live with a clean conscience. My conscience doesn't even revolve around right & wrong anymore, it just revolves around perfection. 

It's become mathematical. My day is now an equation. Wake up at x time. Shower and eat by x time. Sit outside in the sun for 30ish minutes. Take pictures for an hour, and edit them for two, etc. My day is just broken down into time slots, and I struggle every day to try and perfect how long I should dedicate to something. Sometimes I feel like I'm way off base with my priorities. For example, I seem to either go for multiple runs & bike rides in a week, or I don't at all.

2016 has just been this weird concoction of amazing things and terrible things and there seems to be no in-between. There's death and there's heartbreak, but there's traveling and concerts. There's increased existentialism and deeper depression, but there's new friendships & photography. 

I just feel very burdened right now. I get handed one thing and stripped of another. Everything I do from my freelancing to my love life feels like some high school attempt to throw shit together. Sketchy clients who end up not paying, clients who bail, businesses who I get as clients, but then never send me anything. A job which i'm on the brink of quitting because my anxiety has decided it makes me anxious. An inability to keep something going with a girl for more than a couple weeks.

Everything just feels like it's on repeat, year after year. I'm just repeating my life, but the problems and consequences are getting bigger, as well as the rewards.

I just want to get there. I want to get to that metaphorical happy place which may not even exist, because I'll find something to struggle over. But I just want to be near it, i want to see that light without having it turned off a week later. It's all just so tiring. 

The Road To Self-Empowerment

Have you ever been walking past someone, and you just feel as though they're completely comfortable with themselves? Every little bit of them seems to be working cohesively, from their shoes, to their outfit, to the way their earphones are somehow not annoying them. They walk with such enviable swagger. They look like they are completely, 100% immersed in their world, and unlike you, they're happy about it.

I think we've probably all felt this way many times, if not daily. I don't think a day has passed where I haven't walked past someone in the hall and thought to myself "Wow, I really wish I had their level of individuality and confidence." They appear to feel good, which in turn makes them look good. I continue walking, and I start analyzing myself. "My left shoe is a little bit tighter than the right." "Does this shirt look stupid on me?" "I wonder what my face looks like to people right now." "Did my eye just twitch while looking at that person?"

The looks are just scratching the surface though. What I really want to know, what I think most of us want to know, is what's going on in their brain?

Personally, I really wonder how people view me. What do I look like to people? Do I look confident and comfortable? Do I look like an empowered individual? Or are my insecurities oozing behind me.

I wish I knew what people were thinking. I think, in a way, it would help us as humans be a bit more understanding of each other. It would help us feel less alone, knowing that everyone, in some way, feels really alone. I wonder to myself, what is that person thinking right now? Are they really feeling comfortable? Are they walking wherever they're going with purpose, or do they feel like they're stumbling to their next checkpoint in life just like me. Are they okay with the fact that they're walking alone right now? And if they're with people, are they happy that they're with them, or do their relationships sometimes feel just as empty as mine can?

These are all questions that, unless we find a way to read people's minds, we'll never actually know. And we should probably learn to be more comfortable with not knowing the answer, because in reality, does it really matter? Realistically, we should only worry about ourselves, right?

So that's what I'm working towards doing. That is my new goal. And while I know that it's completely unrealistic to ever think that I'll feel 100% confidence, 100% of the time, it's worth at least slowly working on it. Minor improvements are still improvements, and can go a long way in enhancing the quality of one's day.

I face two roadblocks though:

First, I am very bad at enjoying the process. Very, very bad at it. I spoke about this in my last blog, but being a millennial, I sort of want what I want, and I want it now, and I struggle when I don't begin to see results almost instantaneously. So it makes it very hard to set goals, because I have a tendency to just not follow through, or get caught up in something else. So I am also working on appreciating the minor details of growth in life as well.

Secondly, I have anxiety, and while the attacks and the severity of the attacks come and go, the lingering affects do not. They are always there, that part of your brain that tells you that you're not normal, and that you'll always feel weird? It's always talking. Anxiety likes to rip down every fibre of the confidence you've built up; it likes to tantalizingly tear it to shreds while you watch, slowly seeing everything you've been building towards ripped to shreds. Anxiety is much more than panic attacks and a nervous stomach, it's a demon on your shoulder that tells you that you're wrong, and stupid, and ugly, and that everyone else has their life figured out more than you do.

So you have to fight harder. You have to ignore those demons as much as possible, and try to accept and appreciate the small parts of your day. Enjoy driving down your street. Enjoy that walk to your classroom. Take an extra minute to enjoy the hot water in your shower (not very green of me I know). Appreciate that coffee that you grab with a friend. Just appreciate it all and take it all in stride. You're gonna have your good days, and you're definitely going to have your bad days, but don't discount the work that you've put in just because of those bad days. They, too, are part of the process.

This Ol' Millennial Brain

I read an article recently talking about how we barely have any control over our brains. That our brains are nearly their own entities in a way, because we have such little control over them. This makes sense, because mine seems to really enjoy toying with me.

I'm a millennial, that means I'm from Generation Y. This means I was born somewhere between the early 1980s and the early 2000s. Being born in 1994, I'm actually right smack in the middle.

I don't know how much this truly means to me and the way my brain works. I don't know if it's the reason that I can barely get any reprieve from my thoughts. Maybe that's just the way my brain works. But I have a feeling that it has at least a bit to do with it.

Millennials are raised to believe that we should chase our passion and can achieve anything we want. We're raised to believe that we're destined for greatness, and that a simple, well-paying 9-5 job isn't enough unless we're 100% happy, 100% of the time. This, I believe, is why we're never happy.

I'm never happy, nor am I ever satisfied. I'm never happy, because my brain is always trying to figure out what's missing. It's always telling me lies; it's always telling me I'm not doing good enough.

My brain likes to tease me. It likes to give me a few days, or even weeks of control, of comfort. Then, just as quickly as I gained that control, it snatches it away from me, sending me into emotional tailspins that may last a night, or may last days. These tailspins are frightening because they turn me into someone else. They turn me into an existential mess. They turn me into an emotionally cold person who wants to separate himself from everyone but also run to everyone for comfort at the same time. They send me for long drives and long runs. They make me tired after being up for 2 hours. They make me question every thing and everyone around me.

I'm going through one of them right now.

Whenever one of these tailspins strikes, it feels like it's the worst one I've ever experienced. It's like catching feelings. You're convinced that this time, it's real. This time, it's permanent and will never go away. It's overwhelming, and it drowns you.

I'm a fairly existential person at the best of times, which I again believe goes back to being a millennial. I'm always in my thoughts, and it kind of feels like I'm having an asthma attack, but in my mind. Everything is rushing around, thoughts flying down the highway that is my head. I can't think without thinking about what I'm thinking. I can't experience without dissecting my thoughts. I can't enjoy because I fear for the moment the enjoyment ends.

I question everything. I can't remember the last time I made a decision that I was happy with, because I'm convinced everything I do is wrong.

- I turn left...shit, I should have turned right.

- That girl in the grocery store just smiled at me, maybe she's the one...crap, she's gone. I guess I'll never know.

- Should I text this person back, or should I end it here? *sends text* fuck, I definitely shouldn't have responded. Now I feel stupid, desperate and needy.

I don't really enjoy writing as much as I used to. Maybe because I don't lay it all on the line like I did before. Writing also forces me to be in my feelings, which makes everything a bit less genuine. While  I truly am feeling the way I feel, the most candid writing would be done right when I'm in the middle of a breakdown, but that just can't happen.

I feel very lost and empty, which is another product of my generation. I feel lost, mostly because I feel empty. From the outside, I'm doing really well. I went from high school drop out to college graduate, and now I'm doing another program, one which I'm enjoying much more for many reasons, and it's actually fulfilling in some emotional senses. But none of it is quite enough. I've felt empty for a long time, and I've successfully accomplished many of the things which I've set out to do, which I thought would make me feel a better sense of self. I've graduated, I've lost weight, I've been successful at many sports which I enjoy, and I experience cool things, but none of this has quite filled that void. This scares me, because as much as I think I know what'll fill that void, I also know that I'm a bit of a wanderer. I know that I'm scared that this is it, and I'm always chasing, and I'm scared that that'll continue no matter what I do.

I'm also tired of questioning my relationships and everyone's motives. I go from "damn I'm surrounded by the best people ever" to "please never contact me again" real quick. And the problem is, I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's me, and my inability to be accepting and happy, or if it's the people, maybe the people make me feel empty, or maybe it's both? Either way, it weighs on me day and night, because I want to just enjoy my relationships and feel like I'm part of something, but questioning everything stops me from doing that.

Finally, I'm very overwhelmed by changes in my life. In the last year, my friendships have changed drastically. People have come and gone from my life so quickly; some of those good, some of those bad. I've had fights, and I've had heartbreak, and for the first time, I had death. Everything feels so temporary and out of my control. Everything feels so surreal.

I long for the days of doing and being. I long for a time when I didn't compare myself to everyone, where I didn't beat myself up over every little thing. I wish I had more confidence, and believed in myself and my choices. I wish I could right everything. I wish I didn't fight with certain people, or took more time with others. I wish my timing in some situations was better. I wish some people saw things the way I see them.

I wish things weren't like this.

2k15

I grew a bit, in 2015. Not physically, I've done a pretty good job of doing the opposite of that since my major weight loss a few winters ago. But I grew as a person, maybe even just slightly, but one that I find to be a noticeable change; a change which makes my day-to-day life just a little easier.

I suffer from FOMO. FOMO is short for "fear of missing out," a disease many, many of us in our teens and 20's share. Even adults suffer from FOMO to some degree, but it's said to be most prevalent at this age.

I've suffered from it for a while. It first started when I dropped out of high school, because you know what you do when you drop out of high school? Nothing. You do nothing. Aside from my well documented (via old blogs) attempts to do my schooling online, I failed miserably and gave up after less than a month. By that point, I was doing nothing every day. My routine consisted of sitting in front of my computer tweeting until about noon, when I'd eat lunch and then just play video games.

My FOMO continued to be horrendous for about a year and a half, until I started playing tennis half the week in Brampton in the winter. That got rid of a lot of my anxiety from FOMO, because I felt I was really doing something neat. A couple of hours of tennis 3-4 times a week in another city, and then when I'd come back home I'd take advantage and be able to see the few friends I had. It was really nice. Not only was I keeping busy, but I ended up losing all that weight I was talking about.

So I did that for a couple of years, and then I started college. This is when FOMO started to kick in hard again. People were partying, and I wasn't really into that scene. Friends were making new friends, so was I but it wasn't quite the same. I was really feeling the affects of dropping out, because a lot of people had these core groups of friends they'd get together with, and I couldn't really do that.

In second year of college my FOMO went away for the most part. I was kept extremely busy and I was doing some neat things for our college TV show, along with interning at Magic FM in Guelph (which was a great, great experience. I miss the amazing people there on a near-daily basis).

Anyways, fast forward to now. To the start of 2016. In 2015, I graduated, worked an amazing internship, and met so many amazing people who are huge parts of my life now, but what I really did was learn to ditch a decent amount of my FOMO. Do I still suffer from it many nights? Yes. But does it drive me insane on an almost nightly basis? No.

This year, especially recently, I've become much more comfortable with who I am, and just simply being. I've learned there's nothing wrong with staying home and reading a book, or playing some playstation while loudly playing Childish Gambino (he's great, you should listen to him. Start with Telegraph Ave). And I know these things sound insignificant, but they're not, at least to me. I always used to feel like I had to be out doing, and I sort of forgot about being. I'm trying harder now to enjoy the smaller things, like quiet nights in, surrounding myself with things I enjoy, maybe making myself appreciate the time I get to spend with people I enjoy that much more.

Of course, this is just a minor stepping stone, but it's an important one in helping myself feel more human. It's important in helping me feel like I don't need to do everything and see everyone in order to justify my existence. And there are still many things in which I need to improve upon. I still lack a considerable amount of confidence. I give up on things and believe they're over before they actually are. I push people away because I think they're eventually gonna leave me anyways, so I'd rather be the one to end it. I often feel like I'm living in a cycle of mistakes, and it gets tiring, but hopefully these "mistakes" will lead to growth.

So thank you to everyone who was a part of my life in 2015. It was a weird year that I can't quite put into words. I experienced losing a few close people, but I greatly made up for those lost in those whom I gained. I graduated, and then I immediately returned back to school, and I'm loving it and my classmates. They're amazing. I discovered new music of many different genres, I attempted to play soccer in a league, I finally found a gym that doesn't make me hate myself. I biked 1'100 kilometres in four months, and played baseball on 2 different teams. My best friend came home after being away for 2 years, and I discovered Kanye's 808s & Heartbreak, which is honestly the greatest album ever.

So here's to 2016, and the the things I know it'll bring, such as my first trip to Florida, running my first half marathon (maybe even full if I'm lucky), or seeing the Sheepdogs; and here's to the many things which I don't know that it'll bring.

*Sidenote* I just wanted to quickly acknowledge my great great aunt Helen, who passed away early this morning. She was an incredibly strong and stubborn individual, whose life had a great ripple affect through my family, all the way down to myself today. I'll never forget when I visited her a few weeks ago, my grandpa joked to her about her view from her bed, saying that "all she needed was a few men outside her window now," to which she responded "I don't think I'd have any suitors in my current state." She never lost her wit or sense of humour, and neither should any of us, ever. RIP Aunt Helen, hopefully God has enough cats and chocolate for you up there.