I’m on the bus. It’s too early to be human and I haven’t had my coffee yet so I don’t really want to do much; maybe read or listen to music, things that help tune out the other people or the monotony of the commute. When I leave the suburbs, it's usually dark. I sometimes look out the windows, but more to see how far I’ve traveled than at anything interesting. By the time I arrive downtown, I can see the sun coming up over the harbour.
Read MoreIt’s my Wednesday to post again; there are a few more cohesive posts I would like to make later on, but for now, here’s what’s going on in my life.
Read MoreMy energy has been off for the past little while, and most of my free time usually involves me sleeping or wanting to be back home to sleep. I don’t know whether this is a side effect of my medication, some other underlying medical reason, or just another depressive spell. A lot of the time I don't want to do anything enough to endure the slightest bits of effort they take.
Read MoreI don't know if it's too soon for another life update; to be honest, I haven't been doing a whole lot since my birthday gathering and starting my new job at the beginning of April. If you don't really go on too many adventures or you stay inside your own head too much, it doesn't really make for interesting blog posts.
Read MoreI wrote this about two years ago. Relationships were on my mind at the time as a few of my friends had gone through breakups the previous fall; as much as I was trying to keep things vague in the post, I was also trying to work through some of my own feelings by writing about them, still blindsided and conflicted over the automatic neurochemical reactions I kept experiencing with a specific person a while back (part of the equation: for the first time in at least 10 years, it was a woman). As far as I know, nothing was going to come of it, but I still try to keep the number of real-world interactions to a minimum because I don't want any involuntary emotions leaking out.
Read MoreI keep thinking back to a conversation I had a few years ago. I was visiting a friend in Moncton, and we both wistfully reminisced about some of the people from our university days; special relationships that just eventually faded, like our lives were individual orbits that came together at a specific time to provide something each needed, only to diverge again. I wish the detail and emotion of that whole night weren't as fuzzy as they are now, but I'm always going to remember how intimate and piercing that whole discussion was, and how fortunate I am to have had it.
The people who take me to that point are the ones I want to keep in my life.
I'm still trying to make sense of why I didn't bother checking out more of Nocturne last night, instead opting to go home almost immediately after leaving Lot Six. I checked even less out than I did last year, which also was a little bit of a bust. Was it just the rain that actually let up fairly early on but dampened my interest to the point where I went home? Was I really in a rush to get home for Saturday Night Live? Do I actually give a fuck about the arts, or do I only try to convince myself that I do?
I haven't really felt that I've been able to take full advantage of living in the city, largely due to financial constraints. Live music, art shows, theatre...I can never really bring myself to go out to any of these. Maybe it's just a side effect of the precarious work I was doing for the last 11 months. It's funny, when I lived in Miramichi, I longed to be in a place with a decent amount of cultural life, but now that I'm in Halifax and close to all this art, I don't normally bother, not even when it's free and involves people I know. Ever since the provincial government gutted the film tax credit in April, I'm afraid that one ripple effect is that the cultural life of Halifax is going to dry up.
How long will I stay in Halifax? I don't know. I'm not especially settled here; I do have a good circle of friends, but I don't have a stable career or family tying me to this place, and I'm very reluctant to be in a relationship or follow through on an attraction until I feel a little more stable on the career front. Life tends to go on even while I'm trying to figure out who I am and what I want: I have to eat, pay rent, try to socialize, and sleep anyway, regardless of whether I write or take pictures. I'm not sure whether either is what I should be or want to be doing with my life.
Then again, as Carolyn Mark sang, "everything happens either not at all or at the same time."
Personal website of photographer and writer Bronwyn Douwsma.
I’m on the bus. It’s too early to be human and I haven’t had my coffee yet so I don’t really want to do much; maybe read or listen to music, things that help tune out the other people or the monotony of the commute. When I leave the suburbs, it's usually dark. I sometimes look out the windows, but more to see how far I’ve traveled than at anything interesting. By the time I arrive downtown, I can see the sun coming up over the harbour.
The year is winding down. I’m preparing to go to New Brunswick for my regular Christmas visit with the family; my travel arrangements up there have all been taken care of. I haven’t bothered with Christmas shopping yet; my cash flow was a little tight until my last paycheque came in, and my tolerance for the malls has dropped over the years. Everything costs too much money now.
“Midnight Express Special” sketches include “Sunrise Semester: Basic Photography”, “Mamorex Video Tape”, “Kanadian Korner”, “Promo: Tomorrow, Today, Tonight”, “Bill Needle’s Mailbag”, “Message From Guy: Midnight Express Special”, and “Midnight Express Special”.
“Cookery Crock” sketches include “Sunrise Semester: Disasters In The Home”, “Nasex Nasal Deodorant”, “Bill Needle’s Mailbag”, “Kanadian Korner”, “Promo: The Freddie De Cordova Show”, “Cookery Crock” and “Quincy: Cartoon Coroner”.
“Two-Way TV” sketches include “Sunrise Semester: Astrology”, “Promo: Monster Chiller Horror Theatre”, “Kanadian Korner”, “SCTV News”, “Comment with David Brinkley”, “Promo: Cruisin’ Gourmet”, “Two-Way TV”, “Bill Needle’s Mailbag”, “Promo: Crazy Crafts”, and “Sermonette: Rabbi Karlov”.
“Alpha Channel” sketches include “Gordon Lightfoot Sings Every Song Ever Written”, “Cooking With Marcello”, “Kanadian Korner”, “Crazy Crafts”, “Message From Guy: Alpha Channel”, “Promo: Alpha Channel”, “Bill Needle’s Mailbag”, and “Dialing For Dollars”.
“The Irwin Allen Show” sketches include “Men On Women”, “Message From Guy: Men On Women”, “Kanadian Korner”, “Cooking With Marcello”, “Promo: Taxi Driver”, “Bill Needle’s Mailbag”, “Message From Guy: The Irwin Allen Show”, and “The Irwin Allen Show”.
“Big Brother” sketches include “Got A Minute?”, “Kanadian Korner”, “Promo: Taxi Driver”, “Message From Guy: The New Year”, “Message From Prickley: The New Year”, “SCTV New Year’s Eve Party 1983”, “Komrade Kangaroo”, “Comrade Allen”, “Promo: Doublethink”, and “The Praise Big Brother Show”.
“Star Wars” sketches include “Sunrise Semester: Do-It-Yourself Advertising”, “Promo: Chick Monk: Roadie For The Defense”, “Kanadian Korner”, “SCTV News”, “Joni Mitchell’s For Dogs Only”, “Bill Needle’s Mailbag”, “SCTV Premiere: Star Wars”, and “Dialing For Dollars”.
“Hollywood Salutes Its Extras” sketches include “Message From Prickley: Extras”, “Mamorex Cassette Tape”, “Bill Needle’s Mailbag”, “Promo: Taxi Driver”, “Kanadian Korner”, “Howard’s Bristol Cream”, “Sneak Previews”, “Promo: Hawaii Five-Ho”, “Hollywood Salutes Its Extras”, and “Promo: White Man, Black Girl”.
There’s a podcast called The Loudest Girl In The World, hosted by Lauren Ober. The show concerns Ober’s autism diagnosis at 42, as well as her experience dealing with this information and opening up to others about it. When I listened to it last summer, I related pretty heavily to what she was talking about. I’ve also started to make peace with how my own brain works in the last few years. It’s been a rough road, though.