Who needs presents on Christmas anyway?

How important are traditions anyway? This time of year seems like a time when tradition becomes a very important part of our lives. Almost everyone seems to have one or two for the last month of the year regardless of religious or ethnic background. December marks the end of an old year and the start of a new one. I like to think that this is the time to consider old courses of action, their implications, and ways to improve; (even if you don't hold your resolutions, it's the thought that counts!)

Take a moment to consider how many annual traditions you have in your life: your birthday, those of your family and friends, anniversaries, holidays; every day that you mark as an important part in a cycle. Not necessarily the beginning or the end, but rather a celebration of the fact that it still is. When a baby is born we celebrate its life; every year that it is alive we celebrate the fact that it is still alive; if the baby grew up and left a big enough impression on others, we may even celebrate it's life and contributions after it dies.

But are these traditions necessarily important? Is it actually important to wear a poppy on Remembrance Day? Is it necessary to give gifts on Christmas? Do we even have to have a cake on our birthday? When you think about it, these little details aren't really that big of a deal independantly. We perform them to show others that we consider the ideas they represent to be important. We wear a poppy to let others know that we consider the sacrifice of the soldiers in WWII to have been important; getting a present on Christmas tells you that the person who gave it to you is thinking of you and wants you to be happy; cake tastes great and you can't have cake for dessert any night of the week and hope to keep your teeth.

If we stopped celebrating traditions, we could very well forget the behind them. It would still be a new year without "Ol' Angsine" (or however you spell it,) and the Nazis would still have been defeated because of the soldiers of WWII without Remembrance Day; however, without these ceremonies, we might eventually forget to think about these little details.

I wish I could help

I really wish that I could help people.

I wish that I had answers to all their problems and that they could come to me, give me the scoop, and I would tell them what they need to do. I might use this power for personal gain if I had it but right now, all I want is to give people a hand. Some people's idea of help includes "quit whining" or "deal with it". They also want to give people solutions to their problems but they lack the verbal dexterity or the sensitivity to say it any other way.

Me on the other hand, I empathize with people (more than I should really) and I want them to feel better because when I meet someone who is having a right crappy day, I feel crappy too through osmosis. I will sometimes offer advice if I know enough about what is upsetting them and I try not to interfere if my meddling could cause more damage but it would seem that most people are very adept at keeping their problems from public display. I know that I don't want my dirty laundry hanging out for everyone to see, so to speak, so I want to make it clear that I understand.

I don't want it to sound as though I want to bear the burden of society like some superhero come from a comic book to end all war and strife. Each person has their own problems and I know from experience that people don't like it when you come in to their lives telling them that they should do what you did to get over it. I understand that the only time that you should give assistance is when someone comes to you for advice. This is also the reason that I hesitate from giving advice in the comments sections of people's blogs.

I suppose that the moral of this blog is that I need to stop feeling sorry for everyone and worry about my own life. I just have to be there for people who want help. It is not feasible for me to try to give advice to everybody so I shouldn't waste any more thought power on it. What I should do is get back to studying for my mid-term.

Well, thanks for listening (errr, reading anyway.)

When I grow up...

There are two types of job: those that require you only to perform well at the work site and then clock out, and those that require a bit more of your time.

I believe that teaching is one of these jobs that you don't leave at the office. As much as I dislike homework now, I realize that I am going to be doing a whole lot more when I finally get out of this school. I came to this understanding after I handed in my research paper for history. I had been so focused upon getting the paper finished while I was writing it that I thought that writing papers was the most difficult thing anyone could do. It wasn't until I handed it in to my professor that I thought about what he has to do now. He has to read every 8-page paper and grade them accordingly; all that on top of preparing the lectures and seminars for each week while facing a majority of students that openly display their lackadaisical attitude towards his subject of interest. I can't wait to be doing what he's doing!

I actually plan to teach at the upper-high school level which, though it is very different from university, is fundamentally similar. I won't even have the benefit of having students motivated by making sure their money is well spent. I do look forward to it because I had good experiences in high school and I believe that it can be a very fascinating time as long as there are teachers willing to make it interesting.

Feeling Lucky?

I wish to pose a question to my readers.

I have always found that I had trouble with luck as a whole. I found that no matter how much I wished for something, it wouldn't just fall out of the sky and be given to me. Later, I realized that effort on my part was actually required to make many of my wishes come true.

Having spent a large portion of my childhood playing dice games I am also fairly knowledgeable in the concept of chance and having recently given up my passive style of play, I have learned the ability to distinguish between chance and odds and am getting better at using them.

The question that I would pose is how much does luck influence your life? Having spent so long "not trying" to influence odds in my favour, I can say fairly positively that I have an even mix of good and bad luck. I can also say that due to the lessons learned from my recent experiences I am prepared to take control of the reins and affect the odds in my life more directly.

So, having read this, I hope that you will look back on your own life and recognize some of the factors that can be attributed to luck and those that are directly influenced by your efforts to tip the scales in your favour.

Excess Vs. Success

Before I left for Reading Week, my landlady told me to come back with some words of wisdom; it is apparently a tradition with her family to have some for each birthday. I went through the week not thinking on it too hard but on my last night with my parents we went out to dinner and I had a chat with my dad about success.

I was explaining the realization that I had come to while I was in Alberta working for the Brick. I had been working there for a year and I knew that I didn't want to work there. I had also appreciated the fact that there are people there who love what they do and wouldn't trade their job for the world and it helped me understand the nature of success a little better. Success is relative and my idea of success does not necessarily meet someone else's definition. I originally thought people who have been working in retail for most of their life should aim for something higher but now I see that they have merely chosen a different path than me and the fact that they are happy with what they do makes them more successful than me right now.

That still left me with my dissatisfaction towards my position. I wanted something more and I knew that I needed to do a lot more work to get it; I wanted to exceed where I was. This is where I currently stand and I can say that it is not necessarily very enjoyable. An analogy would be to say that I am on a mountain and I am not content with the view at my current height so I want to climb a bit higher. This doesn't mean that I will definitely like the view more when I get higher but I am unhappy enough with where I am that I am willing to put the work in to go higher.

So when I returned to my apartment from Reading Week, the words of wisdom I gave my landlady were "excess" and "success". To succeed means that you have found a post where you are happy and whereas to exceed means that you are unhappy and are looking for something greater. It should also be noted that achieving "higher" status does not always bring happiness but even if you do not find what you want at the higher-paying jobs or managerial positions you can always go back far more easily to something you enjoyed once before.

Enjoy Responsibly

Firstly, let me say thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday. I did find it rather enjoyable so all your wishing did not go to waste. I had a quiet day with the family watching a couple old movies and getting some reading done; I know most people would call that a boring birthday and all I can say is that they don't have to imitate me. I am a man of simple tastes and I prefer not to go overboard with my celebrations because when I do, I usually end up paying for it sooner or later.
Most people at this stage of life should know how to drink so I don't want to claim to be preaching to the choir but I believe this is one of the most valuable lessons of drinking; it's fun and it makes making friends a whole lot easier but taken too far drinking can cause you to say things you don't mean and make messes that reflect badly on yourself. Regardless of whether or not you remember the night before, the people you were drinking with will remember it. It takes a bit of practice but there is a safe zone between sociably intoxicated and bringing out "Mr. Hyde."

Right vs. Left: Can't we just get along?

I have an interesting idea concerning the definition of art. I was listening to a classmate in my English class talk about how he didn't like how the teacher told us we couldn't expect to get perfect in the class because the probability of us meeting all the requirements are pretty slim. He said that he was a math major and that in his courses you either got the equations right or you didn't and it was a lot easier to get perfect on an assignment.

This started bouncing around in my little mind for a while because I still like English regardless of whether or not I get perfect in the assignments. I've always liked art over science as a rule and even Astronomy, which I had to take as a science for my degree, I took because I really just like to sit out at night, look at the stars and dream. I have always been of the mind that there are two clearly distinguishable groups of intelligent people which I identify as right-brained and left-brained. For those who don't know, the right side of the brain is usually associated with creativity and the left side is associated with logic (not being a biology student, I don't claim to know the details but this is my idea.)

Getting back on topic, I believe that these two generalized groups of people can both look at the same piece of art and come up with completely different opinions. The left-brained person might look at the art as a magnificent piece of technical achievement in which the artist was able to use the brush, camera, chisel or whatever to create an artwork that mirrors efforts of past masters to a degree that is awe-inspiring. The right-brained person looks at the same piece and says that he can see the emotion radiating out of the art in an aura that makes him want to swoon and reminds him of past visits to art with similar emotional effects upon the viewer.

Very dramatic I know, but the point is that while a left-brained person thinks of the piece as being technically perfect, the right-brained person is more perceptive to the emotional side of art. He or she can look at a piece and appreciate the qualities that can't be measured with a ruler or any other scale. My classmate was upset by the fact that he was not likely to get a perfect and that is why he is in a math course. Similarly, I am not looking to get a perfect as much as I am interested in exposing myself to incredible literature and drama because it "takes me away"; that's why I'm in English.

As a final note I should mention that I do believe that people can be a mix of the two sides and so I don't mean to say that you are either one or the other. All I am saying is that depending on the ratio that your brain is divided by, you are going to look at the world through slightly different eyes than those of the people around you.

And now for something completely insensitive!

Political correctness be damned! I have a beef with unattractive people.

It's not the fact so much that they are unattractive which is not a shortcoming in and of itself. It has more to do with the fact that I believe they could be attractive if they wanted to. Also I should clarify that I am not necessarily talking about physically ugly people because alot of people who count as overweight, plain-looking, etc. are still happy and great people and I have no quarrel with you.

My beef is with the people who are unattractive in spirit. The ones who spend their lives going from one day to the next avoiding eye contact, being self-centered, walking with their heads down and other such anti-social behaviour. These people make me think of prisoners in the Gulag with the way they either hide away from society or despise it in it's entirety. You don't need a degree in anthropology to spot these people. You can usually spot them after only a few seconds of close examination. They are the people who go from class to class (or day to day in their job) without saying much to anyone and you would never have noticed they were there if you weren't looking for them.

Perhaps the main reason I am upset by their presence is because they remind me of my deep dark past. As I mentioned before, I spent a large part of my life as a bit of a social outcast and when I look at these people, I see myself as I used to be. It took me a lot of effort to climb out of that hole and I could never have done it without the support of good friends; but I had to take the first steps and actually try to make friends. I had to start washing my face, showering regularly, learn social cues, and many of the more subtle nuances that are involved in becoming a outgoing person. Anyone who says "it's easy for you to say" can think again; it took years to learn all the things I needed to know to become a socialite but as they say at AA, the first step is acknowledging that you have a problem.

Memo to Cupid...

Well if I plan to hold any interest in readers I suppose I should keep my topics interesting to my audience. I suppose that something that young adults would be interested in would be relationships with the opposite sex. Well since I'm going into some rather personal territory, I might as well open up with my own story.

I have known all my life that I am a hopeless romantic with particular emphasis on "hopeless". For the greater portion of my life, I remained rather ignorant of the subtle nuances of relationships as I was considered a bit of a social leper for quite a long time. When I got to high school it didn't get much easier but I was able to find a circle of friends who were able to educate me in the rough terrain of adolescence without guiding me by the hand as that was my responsibility. I remained single as I simply didn't see the point in complicating my life further than it was. From what I gathered watching budding relationships as they bloomed and either withered or struggled to survive, I figured that though I never experienced the heights of joy enjoyed by those around me, I was able to take time for myself to savour the little solitary joys as well as those I shared with my friends.

However, in the time that I spent in Alberta coming to grips with adulthood, I finally feel that I have the mature mentality needed to cope with the strains of a loving relationship though I am still not quite ready to support a family which is ultimately the point; in short, I am ready to date. Some may snicker as they read this (yeah I can hear you) but I don't give a fig because as far as I'm concerned, my ideas make sense and if you thought about them, they just might make sense to you too.

Well, for starters...

So this is the first in a series of blogs with the express purpose of enlightening you, the reader, with my opinions and experiences arising from the University life.
In order that you can understand my opinions, you should really learn a little about me and my reasons for coming here in the first place as I believe context is all important. I came here after a two year tour of Alberta trying to establish myself in a career with a two-year degree in Theater Production and wide-eyed innocence found only in those who have never paid for their living accommodations. At the beginning, I was eager, confident and believed that I would get a career for myself before I had a chance to unpack. Two years, three moves and five jobs later, I had a slightly more realistic outlook on my future. I have learned the value of appreciating how young I truly young I still am while acknowledging that I am not getting any younger and with this in mind, I took the money I saved in the high paying jobs of the western boom economy and applied for an English honours degree here with hopes of becoming a teacher.
However, I also realize the folly of over-structured plans and so I am not setting any ideas of a career in stone just yet. Already I have been talking with a professor in a psychology course about some of my ideas about childhood development and I am starting to develop an interest leaning toward counselling more than teaching; but as I am still in my first year, I still have plenty of time to decide on such things.