I feel awful about not updating this thing more regularly, so I'm forcing myself to come up with a new post every day for the next month (thanks for the inspiration, Daisy).
I have a pile of photos to edit but I never get around to working on them; part of the issue is that I have a desktop computer, and time spent editing is time that I have to commit myself to staying in the apartment. I'm still working on my post about New York three months after the trip, but I've already touched on that in my last post. I don't want to repeat myself. Maybe that will be one of my 30 in 30 posts, although part of me feels like that would be cheating since I've been working on the draft for ages.
Canada's currently in the middle of a federal election campaign; the big issue isn't so much who will be our next prime minister so much as whether enough people in the country want to get rid of Stephen Harper and the Conservatives on October 19. I definitely intend to vote, but I'm just as ready for the campaign to end. I can't really say I'm overly impressed by either of the three front-runners, but at this point I know what I believe in, and have a good idea where my vote will go in a little more than three weeks time. Four years ago, I was more inclined to get confrontational every time I saw something I didn't agree with politically online, but I now tend to keep my mouth shut. I don't know if this is more a sign of maturity or a growing cynicism. Maybe I'm just self-censoring.
Summer's over. I did manage to go to New York, I went to a few events here in Halifax, and I even went to the beach once, but a lot of it seemed to blend together. I still don't feel like I force myself to go out enough; part of it is because I live on the outskirts of Fairview and Clayton Park in Halifax: it's not a particularly walkable area, and the bus rides are pretty long and convoluted if I want to head downtown or to the North End (usually about 35-45 minutes). There's also the issue of the bus service ending around midnight, and I generally don't want to spend an extra $15-20 in cab fare on top of the cost of cover and drinks.
Next week will be my three year anniversary of living in Halifax; the last two years I've gone out, but I don't really want to spend that much money for food and drinks with a couple of friends, but I'm thinking of doing something lower-key this year. I'm debating whether to just have people over at my place, but that involves cleaning and a conscious effort to entertain. I did have a friend over on Wednesday, but I'm hesitant to try to bring a larger and more disparate group into my space. That feels more like something you do when you've bought a house rather than just rent an apartment.
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.