Posts Tagged ‘Life’

There’s no breakup worse than the one with your best friend.

It seems no amount of time or distance can help heal the wounds caused from it. And the Internet only makes it worse — especially the Facebooks, Twitters and blogs of the universe.

Even if you’re not Facebook friends anymore, the rollout of Timeline has caused you to relive past wall posts filled with making plans. It’s also shown you pictures from long ago of the two of you laughing. Giggling for no reason. Cleaning out closets. Facials, pedicures, coffees.

You ask mutual friends and acquantiances how she is. You’re saddened when she decides not to show to friends’ parties.

You saw her once at a public party. You went to wave and smile, she turned her back on you. You were left alone.

Others understand. “I recently broke up with my best friend, too,” a friend confides. Her sad smile lets you know you’re not alone.

You hear of milestones you’re missing in her life, just as she is missing milestones in yours. This time when you move, she won’t help you pack, she won’t help you clean out your closet, she won’t help decorate.

You want to reach out to her. Try to make things right. Try to be best friends again. Do you text? Email? But something stops you from writing that email: Has too much time gone by? Does she feel the same? What if she is happy we’re not friends anymore?

I just miss my best friend.

(Photo courtesy of P.J.M. on Flickr.)

Everyone has their 9/11 stories. Where they were, what they were doing when they heard or saw those images.

Mine are no different than everyone else’s. I remember seeing it on Regis and Kelly before I left for school. Hearing about the second plane on the way to school. Watching after the Pentagon was hit with j-school students.

And then what came after: My father’s fear of me living in Ottawa, in case Canada was next, falling asleep at night to the sound of the helicopters keeping watch over the city and the beginning of the end for me in Ottawa.

Ten years is a long time. And while many stop and reflect about Sunday’s anniversary, for me it’s not just about 9/11. It’s about the days before and after it. The weeks and months of despair that were about to make me a shadow of my former self.

Ten years ago, I was living in Ottawa. I can almost see myself waiting for the 87 Carling bus across the street from a McDonald’s on a corner. My portable CD player in my hand, my headphones around my head. The soundtrack to Moulin Rouge! blasting in my ears (yes, I have always had bad taste in music).

That was the last time I can remember being truly happy in Ottawa. That was around this time of year. 9/11 hadn’t happened yet. Terrorists, al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden, these were all words that meant nothing to me. I couldn’t even tell you where Afghanistan was on a map.

I was in a long distance relationship, attending my dream school (Carleton), and making plans on how I could get into the journalism program in my second year (I was a mass communications student for my first year). I was writing for the Charlatan, Carleton’s school paper, and the Ottawa Citizen was going to come calling on Sept. 10 to give me my first assignment for their paper.

I was on top of the world.

But in the weeks after 9/11, something in me changed. Like the rest of the world, things got darker for me. I couldn’t see straight, couldn’t seem to come up for air.

Ottawa was no longer an amazing place for me, it was a lonely place. My memories in October and November are of riding the Transitway at night all by myself. No one around. I lost interest in most of my classes. I was a horrible girlfriend.

It’s hard to atone for the sins of your past, I know, but there are times I wish I could. While I know I may not have been able to stop the depression that hit me so desperately, sometimes I wonder if I was hit by it because I had done some bad things in my past.

And while it’s hard to believe the events of Sept. 11, 2001 happened 10 years ago, it’s hard to believe how far I’ve come in 10 years. How different me and my life are now from who I was then. How much I would have missed if I had jumped or followed through on other plans I had.

It’s kind of strange how the events of 9/11 are tied to events in my life that I can never forget, no matter how hard I try. While I remember where I was when the towers fell, I also remember who I was when the towers fell. For better or for worse, I was never that girl again.

It’s odd to look at people like my 10-year-old sister, who was born in May of 2001. She lived in a world before the attacks, but the only world she’ll know is the post-9/11 world. A world full of terrorism attacks, full body scanners and no liquid gels on planes.

I’ll try to tell her about the world before; the ignorant bliss we all seemed to live in, but I don’t know that it matters. I don’t know that she’ll care. This is her reality now, it’s all she’s ever known.

Change is never an easy thing.

Whether you change jobs, change houses or change life partners; change is hard.

This was my baby for almost two years.

Today I sold my car. I didn’t buy another. I am car-less.

And while I feel so free, I feel quite bittersweet about the whole thing.

Logically, it made sense to sell. I use my car about once or twice a month, if that. I pay for parking. It’s hard to justify paying around $600 a month for a thing that really just sits in my garage.

But emotionally, I feel a little mixed. I bought the car when I got my last job. I needed it because the job was about an hour’s commute away, while my life was in this city.

Almost 11 months ago, I quit that job (in fact my last day was almost exactly 10 months ago), I quit that job. I no longer really needed the car, but held on to it. Now, I feel like I’ve totally cleansed myself of everything to do with my last job. Not that I’m trying to erase it, because I’m not, but the experience wasn’t the most positive and now I have nothing to remind me of it, except for a couple license plates that will be buried under my stairs with the other car remnants.

While financially it made sense to sell, it was also due to me and the kind of person I am. I’m just not a car person. Never have been. I didn’t get my driver’s license until I was almost 18, didn’t really care to drive my mother’s car everywhere. Even when I lived in a small town, I loved living right downtown and walking everywhere. I don’t really know car names or makes or models. Instead I like that purple car, or the blue one, etc.

And while you can debate the reliability of public transit in the city, or the affordability of a car-sharing program, both of those better suite my lifestyle than an automobile parked in a parking space.

I’ll miss the freedom my car allowed, but I won’t miss what the car represented.

That being said, it was quite cool to walk into the bank today and go up to the teller and say, “I’d like to pay off my loan, please.”

As I walked out this was going through my head:

Journalism is a hard industry.

If you want to succeed in it, you have to be driven, focused and tough. There used to be hundreds of others you were competing against for jobs — now with blogs and citizen journalism there are thousands. You need to stand out from the crowd.

This month marks 11 years since the first time I walked into a newsroom. I remember the feeling vividly. As a 17-year-old, the cubicles seemed to go on forever, the lighting was too harsh, the people were unknown. Within weeks, there weren’t that many desks to get through to mine, the lighting was fine, and the people all had names (well in my corner of the newsroom, but I’d know everyone soon enough).

It was in that newsroom I fell in love with the craft of being a newspaper journalist (yes, it really is a craft), and I’ve never looked back.

No matter how many times I hear the industry is dying, I can’t walk away. This is more than a job or a career to me, it is who I am in my bones.

Undoubtedly, the Internet has eaten away at the profitability of the old newspaper model, but it has also opened so many doors in ways reporters never could have imagined. With a quick Google, Facebook or Twitter search, sources can be readily at hand. Stories can be written faster because research is easier to obtain than ever before. I still subscribe to the old street reporting style, but love to use the Internet, too.

Twitter, Facebook and blogs connect you with your readers like never before. There’s so much possibility online, and that excites me. This past spring, I took an online course at the Toronto Star to beef up my web skills not because anyone told me to, but because I knew it would be a great thing to learn.

As far as I’m concerned, the web isn’t to be feared; it’s to be explored. And there’s so much out there to explore.

In a couple weeks, I’ll be feeling the way I did when I was 17. I’ll be starting a new job as a web editor at the Toronto Star. No doubt, the newsroom will seem to have hundreds of desks, the lighting will be harsh and the people will be unknown.

And I can’t wait.

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the Internet and how different my life would be without it.

For one, I wouldn’t be writing this blog (obviously). My job would be different (obviously). I would still have a land-line phone (as it is the Internet that has kept me in touch for cheap with my family that’s long-distance).

But there are other things my life would be missing without this thing we call the world wide web — community.

Sure, Facebook makes it easy to stay in touch with people you went to school with, or worked with, or whatever-ed with, but it has also given me a community of people online I have never met, but with whom my life would not be the same had I not come across their net presence.

Sure, Twitter’s a big part of that — I tend to follow/be followed by more people I don’t know, and I really like that on Twitter. I like that aspect of it. Through these people, their tweets and their blogs, I feel like I have a whole community of friends — and it doesn’t bother me that we’ve never met.

A few examples:

@spydergrrl and I found each other because our blog entries complaining about Margaret Wente calling all bloggers male were featured on thestar.com. We’ve read each other’s blogs ever since, she’s been on Spark proclaiming her geek girl status to the world, and I just wanted to bring her chicken soup when she was sick last week. I’ve never met Tanya, but that doesn’t matter to me at all, we converse on Twitter as if we’ve known each other forever.

@opinionatedlizz started following me when I echoed a complaint of hers that she had made on Twitter, and pointed out (sadly) her complaint would never be heard by the company because their Twitter feed is automated. We both buzzed around each other’s blogs (hers is great!), and have been conversing ever since (Happy early birthday by the way!).

@saragiguere is a Toronto-based musician, who was kind enough to let me interview her for my blog (look for that feature to come later this month!). Again, it was a matter of two like-minded individuals just happening to connect on Twitter.

I’ve been lurking on @nachosatmidnite‘s blog for awhile (see they’re not all women!) and left my first comment when he went to a restaurant I had a horrible experience with. He found my blog, we started following each other on Twitter and conversing ever since. Even when I don’t agree with him, Chris is willing to publish my comments and respond to them. Not everyone is that open-minded.

@neatebuzzthenet has two great blogs everyone should follow: His Yahoo Junior Hockey one, Buzzing the Net, and Out of Left Field. Neate has been a big inspiration for me as a blogger, and a great supporter of my little blog here. He was one of the first people to start leaving comments (you know, that wasn’t my mother). He’s so smart and well-versed in every kind of sport, I feel honoured when I have an opinion to share with him that he agrees with. As a blogger, he has my respect.

@laurenonizzle half counts, since I did “officially” meet her at a workshop in May. She is a blogger extraordinaire — the kind of blogger I most definitely could never be. But I respect her immensely for building herself an online persona and brand. Especially for a kid her age. Kudos, Lauren.

Finally, all the people that do @journchat on Twitter every Monday night — they make me think critically about my craft and challenge me to do better. Thank you to all I’ve ever conversed with in that, you have no idea how much I take away from Journchat every single week.

So yes, the Interwebz can be full of crazies. You don’t know what you’re reaching into when you “meet” someone online, but when you’re really lucky, you find amazing stuff!

Thanks to those who inspire me online now, and I can’t wait to see who else is out there!