alive in toronto
I really don't feel like writing about what happened in the last 6 months or so. It mostly isn't worth mentioning and its becoming something of a cliché for me to abandon this journal for a few months, then write in it again and have to go through all the bother of telling people what happened to me in a long-winded entry that people probably won't read anyways. Ah, fuckit. Let's connect the dots in haste.
Ottawa: toxic
Staffing agencies: lies
Employment in Ottawa: awful
Social life: moribund
Living in Orleans: bad idea
Living in Elmvale: also bad idea
Time: wasted
Overnight data entry: erosion/quiet implosion.
Anyhow, if you haven't heard already, I left Ottawa again. This time telling fewer people with even less notice than ever. Like I said last year-ish, its not that I have anything against anyone (or at least personal grudges aren't the reason why I left), its just that Ottawa has this certain kind of psychosocial toxicity to me. Its hard to explain completely (maybe its negative energy put out by the swine on parliament hill, maybe its that I only just squeak by in financial terms when living on my own there or maybe its the sad, concrete boxes they house the civil servants in), but Ottawa just tends to make me fat, stoned and depressed.
Living at my parent's house for the last month or so didn't help except for to give me the opportunity to save up some money to move out here to Toronto. It was a snap decision to come here. I had a temp job offer, something real that wasn't underemployment, so I jumped on that shit. A last minute ride on the night bus, bobbing back and forth, in and out of consciousness all the way until I got to Toronto.
I set myself up for the first few nights in a hostel until I got myself setup to crash at my friend Will's place down off Lansdowne in the west side. It was while I was at the hostel that I fell in love with my new home, the west side of downtown. Kensington, Chinatown, Little Italy, the Annex. A densely packed-in place where people scarcely pay you any mind if you drive a car, where you can find nearly anything you want/need (in terms of groceries/bars/coffeeshops/restraunts/headshops, anything really and its almost always a locally owned business) within a ten minute walk of your place and there's always a 24 hour streetcar to cart your drunk ass home.
I suppose Ottawa has pretty some pretty walkable neighbourhoods too, like the Glebe and Hintonburg and Westboro and Centretown. But these places tend to be either too elitist or too cracked out for my liking. And none of them have nearly this much character or life on the streets anyways.
But that's not to say that living here isn't without its downsides, though. Sometimes I get pretty lonely because I have only a couple of friends in Toronto (and a handful in 905). Lauren, one of my roommates, is pretty cool, though. We hang out a lot around the house or the market. I'm supposed to go drinking with her and her friends this Friday at this raucous, dive-y looking place on Augusta called The Boat. Should be good times.
The second major difficulty is employment. My temp job is done now. I'm waiting on something like $700 to come in the mail (this was freelance, though, so I gots to save like $150-$200 for The Man), which could be good for living expenses for at least a month if I manage a modicum of financial restraint (a definite challenge when you're surrounded by awesome yet not-overpriced bars and restraunts). I got to talking with a random shopkeeper in Kensington the other day and she said that she was a location manager in a past worklife and that the industry is the worst its ever been. First 9/11, then SARS totally fucked shit up, then the Canadian dollar rose to be at par with the American dollar (which bodes ill for many other people in this province as well). Now we got this Bill C-10 shit on our plates.
Bill C-10 is a sprawling piece of legislation going through the House of Commons right now. It's what they call an omnibus bill, a great many budget-related measures that contains a section that would deny federal funding to anything the government of the day might construe as controversial. Canada's domestic film/television industry is highly dependant on federal funding and, should this bill come to pass, it would almost certainly have a chilling effect on the production industry. Fewer scripts would see their way to production, lots of people would lose their jobs (or at least be underemployed more often) and our broadcasters would be airing less Canadian content than ever, whilst plugging their CanCon quotas in with more mindless pap than ever. The sad thing is that this piece of legislation (considered a confidence vote) will in all likelihood pass because Stephane Dion is a spineless rat who doesn't want to face another election where his party will probably hemorrhage more seats than ever (and in case you forgot the maths on the House, the NDP and Bloc can't defeat this bill without the Liberals' support). Thanks for welding the coffin shut, Steve!
I'm not gonna lie, I sometimes feel a lot of anxiety over my job situation. I always worry that my current job (on the odd occasion they come up) will be my last. That after that's all done, I'll be stuck flipping burgers or data or whatever bullshit jobs will continue to be my present and future until I finally crack and go back to school to retrain for IT or nursing or a skilled trade or whatever it takes to Get Paid these days. My time at Algonquin College effectively shattered what little faith I had in public schools/colleges (and, while I was there, had a bad habit of undermining my will to live), but maybe if I tread real careful I could find a course of learning where the teachers aren't total fuckups who are completely detached from their field and actually like teaching. Who knows. There are a lot of schools here, after all.
Anyhow, things aren't really that bad. I'm pretty happy here, actually. Far more so than I ever was in Ottawa. I suppose I just got to get my hustle on harder is all.
Ottawa: toxic
Staffing agencies: lies
Employment in Ottawa: awful
Social life: moribund
Living in Orleans: bad idea
Living in Elmvale: also bad idea
Time: wasted
Overnight data entry: erosion/quiet implosion.
Anyhow, if you haven't heard already, I left Ottawa again. This time telling fewer people with even less notice than ever. Like I said last year-ish, its not that I have anything against anyone (or at least personal grudges aren't the reason why I left), its just that Ottawa has this certain kind of psychosocial toxicity to me. Its hard to explain completely (maybe its negative energy put out by the swine on parliament hill, maybe its that I only just squeak by in financial terms when living on my own there or maybe its the sad, concrete boxes they house the civil servants in), but Ottawa just tends to make me fat, stoned and depressed.
Living at my parent's house for the last month or so didn't help except for to give me the opportunity to save up some money to move out here to Toronto. It was a snap decision to come here. I had a temp job offer, something real that wasn't underemployment, so I jumped on that shit. A last minute ride on the night bus, bobbing back and forth, in and out of consciousness all the way until I got to Toronto.
I set myself up for the first few nights in a hostel until I got myself setup to crash at my friend Will's place down off Lansdowne in the west side. It was while I was at the hostel that I fell in love with my new home, the west side of downtown. Kensington, Chinatown, Little Italy, the Annex. A densely packed-in place where people scarcely pay you any mind if you drive a car, where you can find nearly anything you want/need (in terms of groceries/bars/coffeeshops/restraunts/headshops, anything really and its almost always a locally owned business) within a ten minute walk of your place and there's always a 24 hour streetcar to cart your drunk ass home.
I suppose Ottawa has pretty some pretty walkable neighbourhoods too, like the Glebe and Hintonburg and Westboro and Centretown. But these places tend to be either too elitist or too cracked out for my liking. And none of them have nearly this much character or life on the streets anyways.
But that's not to say that living here isn't without its downsides, though. Sometimes I get pretty lonely because I have only a couple of friends in Toronto (and a handful in 905). Lauren, one of my roommates, is pretty cool, though. We hang out a lot around the house or the market. I'm supposed to go drinking with her and her friends this Friday at this raucous, dive-y looking place on Augusta called The Boat. Should be good times.
The second major difficulty is employment. My temp job is done now. I'm waiting on something like $700 to come in the mail (this was freelance, though, so I gots to save like $150-$200 for The Man), which could be good for living expenses for at least a month if I manage a modicum of financial restraint (a definite challenge when you're surrounded by awesome yet not-overpriced bars and restraunts). I got to talking with a random shopkeeper in Kensington the other day and she said that she was a location manager in a past worklife and that the industry is the worst its ever been. First 9/11, then SARS totally fucked shit up, then the Canadian dollar rose to be at par with the American dollar (which bodes ill for many other people in this province as well). Now we got this Bill C-10 shit on our plates.
Bill C-10 is a sprawling piece of legislation going through the House of Commons right now. It's what they call an omnibus bill, a great many budget-related measures that contains a section that would deny federal funding to anything the government of the day might construe as controversial. Canada's domestic film/television industry is highly dependant on federal funding and, should this bill come to pass, it would almost certainly have a chilling effect on the production industry. Fewer scripts would see their way to production, lots of people would lose their jobs (or at least be underemployed more often) and our broadcasters would be airing less Canadian content than ever, whilst plugging their CanCon quotas in with more mindless pap than ever. The sad thing is that this piece of legislation (considered a confidence vote) will in all likelihood pass because Stephane Dion is a spineless rat who doesn't want to face another election where his party will probably hemorrhage more seats than ever (and in case you forgot the maths on the House, the NDP and Bloc can't defeat this bill without the Liberals' support). Thanks for welding the coffin shut, Steve!
I'm not gonna lie, I sometimes feel a lot of anxiety over my job situation. I always worry that my current job (on the odd occasion they come up) will be my last. That after that's all done, I'll be stuck flipping burgers or data or whatever bullshit jobs will continue to be my present and future until I finally crack and go back to school to retrain for IT or nursing or a skilled trade or whatever it takes to Get Paid these days. My time at Algonquin College effectively shattered what little faith I had in public schools/colleges (and, while I was there, had a bad habit of undermining my will to live), but maybe if I tread real careful I could find a course of learning where the teachers aren't total fuckups who are completely detached from their field and actually like teaching. Who knows. There are a lot of schools here, after all.
Anyhow, things aren't really that bad. I'm pretty happy here, actually. Far more so than I ever was in Ottawa. I suppose I just got to get my hustle on harder is all.