Two Monday ago, I was pretty glum – the day had not been a good one, and I felt in a rut. I came here – to the library at the University of Guelph – and churned out eleven hundred words that may or may not have some basis in reality and felt better. Then I walked to a music club in order to check out an open stage night, got on stage to play two songs, and, by doing so, met a couple from my home town of South Elmsall. The population there is about three or four thousand. They lived on the street next to mine. They knew my dad. So that was pretty thrilling.
Stuart and Marie, it turns out, have been over here for some twenty-five years. That said, their Yorkshire accents and English ways were still pretty much intact, and it was a real joy to interact with them. I felt like I could be myself in a way I rarely can over here. It was so nice to be able to make jokes, and talk naturally, and reminisce about certain walls or bus shelters and laugh about the odd place we grew up in. It felt very different to the vast majority of my conversations thus far. And there was more…
Stuart had himself a recording studio. Stuart said, come on over, I won’t charge – in fact, I’ll come and pick you up and you can stay the weekend. And so that’s what I did. Now I have a nice CD with five songs on it, and some great memories and thoughts to take away with me. If only I could sing in tune.
Beyond all that, I feel like I got to learn a lot about myself, about who I am, and about where I’m going. See, they’d done so much – made successes of themselves – and had so much get up and go. I feel like I don’t have any. I feel like I’m not really making the most of what I do have and that it’s probably about time I started. I feel like a baby, in this regard.
I’ve started reading a book. It’s one of those self-help type things that I love/hate so much, all about gifted and talented people who don’t really fulfill their potential, for one reason or another. I feel like I’m one of those. I feel like I’ve had it pretty easy, and done some pretty cool things but, when it comes down to it, I’ve never really pushed myself, never really taken on anything that was proper hard, and I’m wondering if I might start paying the price for all this ‘coasting’ if I don’t do something about it. For sure, I’ve got gifts – the writing, the music, and the healing, for example – but I don’t really do anything with them, and seem to consistently move away from what they are calling me to do when the time comes to get serious. I’m starting to wonder what that’s all about. I’m starting to wonder if this charmed and seemingly blessed existence hasn’t made me just a tad lazy, and led me up a dead-end street. Gifted or not, the reality is that I spend my days working in a job I don’t really care about it, filing endless pieces of paper, and earning the princely sum of ten dollars an hour – my lowest wage in over a decade. I know it’s not forever – I know it’s just what needs to be done for now, to pay the rent, to support the life I live, but…I still think there’s something telling about all this. Still, it’s not all bad news.
A week ago I got an email from a place I must have submitted a short story to some time in the last year. They said unfortunately they weren’t going to be publishing my story as they could only choose twenty from three and hundred and fifty, but would be glad to offer some feedback if I so desired. I wrote and said I did, and the next day I got an email saying, whoops, you got the wrong email, your story is in the book and we’ve been trying to track you down, the book is out this week and, where would you like your payment sending? So that was good news! Good, and thrilling news, actually, and, coupled with the meeting with my fellow Elmsall-ites the week before, things seemed to be looking up. Life’s been pretty rosy then – all wonderful on the home front, a nice new co-worker fresh from eighteen months in England with home I can share jokes and kinda be myself without weirding everyone out, and a good feeling inside, nothing much to complain about (which isn’t necessarily a good thing). I feel hopeful for the future – hopeful that I can start to work on whatever it is that’s keeping me back from living my life to somewhere approaching my full potential. I really don’t think I can settle for second best. I’m really not in the mood for mediocrity.
So I’ve been having more fun letting Canada make it’s impression on me, and testing my theories on the whys and wherefores of this great nation’s collective psyche. Lately I’ve been hearing from others who somewhat share my beliefs that there isn’t much in the way of humour here, and that people are, by and large, putting on a façade – indeed, several people have told me that Canadians are really quite two-faced. Another made the point that people here seem quite easily satisfied – it’s that child-like innocence I felt in America – and you certainly don’t get the sense of depth and heaviness you find in the ‘old world’, all that existential torment and gloom, etc. That this is missing isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s what I’m used to. I like my people to feel a bit more than, “everything’s kinda neat”.
Canadian’s like to see themselves as the peace-keepers of the world. I think that’s true – but I’d also say that they’re afraid of conflict, whether on a national or individual scale. One thing I’ve really noticed is that people here don’t seem to have much in the way of opinion – or, if they do, they do a pretty good job of keeping it to themselves. Dinner discussions are pretty dull, and generally revolve around what other people are doing, rarely touching on what anyone at the table actually thinks or feels. Conversations don’t tend to go beyond two or three sentences – that would involve depth. To me, it’s like skating on the surface, or viewing only half the picture. To me, it doesn’t really work, neither for myself – except that I find it all fascinating, and, as I let go of my need for what I like, more and more amusing – nor, from my observations, for the people at the table. It really is quite a shallow existence, and I wonder if it’s because no-one wants to be the one to rock the boat, to voice the outlandish thing, or to stand up and say, this is what I think, and run the risk of having someone disagree with them.
Still, I do like it here. My girlfriend’s nice…
Writing. When I think about what I really want to do, that’s what it always comes down to. But I’m incredibly lazy, unmotivated, and unwilling to put the work in. I still haven’t given up on the idea that I’ll one day write a book about/based on my travels and hitch-hiking adventures around America and Mexico. I’m not sure why I don’t do it – except for some arguments/excuses/possible good reasons regarding timing. At the minute, though, it simply remains one of those things I dream about, and talk about, but don’t actually do. I think that’s one of the symptoms of the underachieving adult. I think I’d like to learn how to get past that, if that’s what I’m supposed to do. Maybe one day I will…
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