The Now

I am full of personal turmoil.

I very rarely feel comfortable. In fact, 99% of the time I feel like the odd one out in the room, and I feel like other people can sense that I feel that way. I feel like a stranger. I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb. My paranoia of how people view me keeps me from living a complete life.

This last month or so has been a roller coaster. No. That's silly. Roller coasters are fun, and have ups, as well as downs. Frankly, this last month has been mostly downs.

Lets start with graduation. That barely happened. That was barely accomplished because of one person, one professor's lack of professionalism and favouritism towards other students. I almost didn't graduate because of another person's decision, not my own.

I'll admit, I made mistakes this year. I'm not the best in the class - not even close. And I didn't make as big of an effort to make nice with professors as I did in Broadcast Journalism. But there was always an additional struggle for grades with a certain professor that nearly held me back. So my first week after finishing school was struggling with email after email, trying to get myself passed. The weight of worrying if I had to redo another semester made it impossible to enjoy actually being done school.

Around the same time, I burned a bridge. A special bridge. My favourite bridge. I suck at doing what's right for me at a time when it's appropriate. I suck at communicating my feelings before it's too late, and as usual, it got too late. I lost my cool, and I didn't handle something the way I should have. I had months to, and I didn't, and I lost something. I lost someone.

Then I went away to Quebec for a week. God, what a lovely week, in hindsight. While there, I spent a decent bit of it stressed out, as most 20-something's would on a family vacation. But it was generally great. Really. I love Quebec City, and I fell in love with Ottawa, and I finally broke out my camera. Camera, crepes, and travel during the day, and Rye and gingers at night kept me going.

After a week, we returned home, and the next day we found a tick on my dogs ear. To be safe, we took her to the vets that night, where they noticed her weight was down. This was Sunday. The next day they did blood, and the next day we found out her white blood cell count was high. A day later they did an ultrasound and found a tumour in her spleen, and the next day she was having major surgery to remove it. In summary, in five short days, we returned from getting home from a vacation, to my dog having her spleen removed for a tumour.

It would be a week after surgery until we found out that the tumour was the most aggressive form of cancer. The C word. That fucking word. And man, that week without knowing was great. That week without knowing we just focused on nursing her back to health, and had little-to-no thoughts on what the biopsy may or may not say.

But now we know. Now we know, and we've been given a timeline on how long chemo therapy may keep our little baby alive. I don't believe it though. I don't want to submit to the idea that I was just given a timeline for how long I have with my dog. She's young, and in great health, and is doing amazing and will beat this. She'll beat this.

I had been mulling around the idea of getting a tattoo in her honour for a while, at this point, but this news sealed the deal, and the day after getting the news, I found myself in a tattoo parlour, getting a tattoo with her name Clover, and a 4-leaf colour on my foot, and a 4-leaf Clover and a paw print behind my ear. She does this thing where she gets her ear in her mouth to impress us; so I wanted her to always have my ear.

In the midst of all this, I found I've been doing something that I haven't done, ever, and needed to start doing. I'm living in the moment. The today. There's no tomorrow now. There's no concern about what'll happen months from now, and definitely not years from now. I always feared getting a tattoo because I was worried how I'd feel about it when I'm 30, or 50, or 70. But I also realize now that none of those ages are guaranteed. They aren't. They're just hypotheticals.

If you live in the future, you miss what's happening in the present. You neglect your current needs for something that isn't even promised. Getting these tattoos is what I need and want now, and I couldn't be happier. I also couldn't be happier to see that sweet puppy every day. I don't know how long we have left together, but seeing her today, in the now, feeling good, feeling frisky and happy, that's all that matters. We came within days of losing her if we hadn't found out about her tumour. So seeing her now, looking and feeling good, compared to seeing her in that cage after her surgery - that is all that matters.

I've dedicated so much of myself to worrying about how I'll feel weeks, months, years and decades from now, and I've so severely neglected my feelings and my being now, and this is where that changes. This is where I do things from 23 year old Chris. Not 30 year old Chris. Not future dad or grandfather Chris. Not 70 something Chris. But this one. Me. In the here and the now.

This is all that matters. Right here, right now.

Good & Bad

I've been thinking a lot lately about if I'm a good person or not, and what it means to be good or bad.

I've come to the conclusion; neither really exist.

Sure, there are definitely people who are solely bad people. Rapists, murderers, racists, guys named Donald Trump, just to name a few. These people are bad people, there's really no arguing that. But when it comes to the general population - when it comes to most of us - I don't think it's so black & white.

Part of that is because good and bad is subjective. Your idea of whether or not I'm good or bad really depends on your relationship with me, which of course, is subject to change over time. You can consider me good for years, you can even consider me the best, but once something goes wrong, I'm suddenly a bad person to you.

I always get a kick out of people who trash their ex. Sometimes, it's fairly warranted. Sometimes you realize you were caught up with a bad person, but it's important to remember, you once *thought* they were good. There was a time, whether it was a couple weeks, a few months, or even years; where you liked them, where they weren't all the bad things you're saying about them. This becomes even more funny when the person trashes their ex and and ends up getting back together with them, just another example of how subjective good & bad can be.

This has been something I've struggled with lately. It's a lot easier to ignore someone telling you you're the best, when later on they're calling you a bad person. Negativity, of course, seems to hold more weight with us when it's coming from other people, so we really take it to heart.

Another reason why I think good & bad isn't so black & white is because we have motives. Sometimes, we do good intentionally, because we really want to because we really care about someone or something. But sometimes, we do good because we expect something in return, or because we have an ulterior motive behind it. We also do bad; sometimes intentionally, and sometimes not. Sometimes we really set out to hurt a person, and sometimes we do bad accidentally, because we're so caught up in trying to do good for us, we don't see the harm we may be causing someone else.

Ultimately, I think it's important to not read too deeply into our actions, into if we're good or bad. Self-examination is important. It really is. It's good to look at yourself and ask yourself if you can do better. But, I don't think we should try and view others, or ourselves, as good or bad. We're all just people, and we're trying to live this life and figure things out and do our best.

That's really all we can do, is just do our best.