30 in 30: Day 30

This exercise winds down with one last entry. It's a relief to not have to worry about my daily posting quota or feel guilt over marking the day with a one-sentence post, and there's some bit of satisfaction to take in posting every day for 30 days, but the thing I worry about is that I'm going to squander this momentum. Maybe it will channel itself into my renewed focus on the SNL reviews, but what I really want is to regularly update the two streams of my blog. I aspire to the level of writing I see regularly on The Belle Jar and Trans Canada (My Way), and want to have something more to say than what I thought of a 30-year-old episode of a television show. For someone who's been trying to write for years, I'm still searching for my voice. 

I started a new job last week; it's in Dartmouth, so the commute is a bit longer than it was to my old job. This means I have to wake up earlier, which technically means I should be getting to bed earlier than I have been. Old habits die hard. Wil Wheaton just posted an entry on his blog about seven things he did to reboot his life that gave me pause, but do I need a reboot of my life, or do I need to figure out what I want before I can do that?

I'm giving myself two weeks until my friends' party to pare down the growing backlog of photos I still need to edit from this summer (going back to June). I don't know what the penalty will be aside from feeling like I can't stay on top of things, but it has to be done or it will either grow bigger with every event I shoot, or hold me back from wanting to take more pictures.

That's 30.

30 in 30: Day 13

Another late night submission. I'm going to try to make up for the last two days with this post; I supposed it was bound to happen that I would have a few "off" days where the energy or will to write wasn't there.  Then I have days like this one where the will's there but the time isn't: between my bus getting caught in traffic (which also made me regret trying to go straight home after work instead of dawdling at Scotia Square for dinner), a post-dinner nap, and some other things I needed to get done tonight, I didn't get around to writing this until well after midnight.

A few entries back, someone asked me what I thought of last weekend's SNL premiere with Miley Cyrus. I know this is subject matter more fitting for the other blog on the site, but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. It was easily stronger than the last two years' premieres, and the overall vibe of the show reminded me of the 2011 season premiere with Alec Baldwin and Radiohead: not a flawless show, but the atmosphere was relaxed without coming across as too lazy. Taran Killam's Donald Trump was OK, although the writing for the cold opening came across as a little perfunctory; the Hillary Clinton cameo sketch I found to be executed much better. I was actually surprised by Miley's performances though: I knew she collaborated with the Flaming Lips on her new album and guessed they may appear with her tonight, but "Karen Don't Be Sad" actually sounds like a bit of a return to form for them as opposed to just being a pleasant-on-the ears Miley Cyrus song (The Lips kind of lost me after Embryonic). "Twinkle Song" was a little more polarizing, with the repetition of "I had a dream" and "What does it mean", the odd piano dressing, the screaming and the crying, but I thought as a whole it worked.

One of my favorite blogs is AJ Ripley's Trans Canada (My Way). They update weekly (with new posts every Wednesday): it's an unflinchingly honest account of their transition in the one province in Canada that doesn't fund transgender procedures, and it's amazingly written. They participated in a documentary for Vice Canada called On Hold: Investigating Transgender Health Access in Canada, and I urge you to all watch it. I lived in New Brunswick for 13 years; it can be a wonderful place, but it can also feel like a bizarre disconnected alternate universe.

But that's another post.