Maybe there’s a movement. Or maybe we should start one.

Maybe, what we all (the young, us, ‘young adults’ especially it seems) have to remember (constantly, everyday, around every corner and conversation and expectation) is that no body really knows what they’re doing.

Maybe we are all anxious, and OCD, and self conscious.

Maybe we’re all floundering for some kind of sensibility in the chaos that is our perception of the world and each other and everything. Each of us and our thoughts and the words that come out right and wrong and sideways and poetically, they all get tangled like a fly in the web of a very tricky spider called life. And we’re trapped here, stuck somewhere between can’t escape the hold and loving this sweet venum.

Maybe we both wish for happiness, and pretend we know how to find it (or keep it, or stay happy in one place for very long).

Maybe we want to be travellers, lovers, artists and bohemians because to us that means we’re finding our own way with a little bit more joie de vie than the average american teen and,

and and and, we want to beleive that something somewhere, well anything actually, will ever really make us happy at all.

And in the search of this idea, this utopia far away behind (what we’re told will be) a stable income and true (ever lasting, in Christ our lord amen) love, our lives are filled with so much beauty, so much laughter, and care, and chaos, and coincedences that we will never be able to hold it all. Never tell, or write, or take enough photographs to capture the true (cheesy quote worthy) happiness that comes in the everyday crazy; somewhere between sneezing with your mouthfull and that snarky glisten in your best friends eye.

And they, the opressers and the pessimists and the scientists, they say, that our brains aren’t done developing, and that our horemones drive our actions and that one day, when we’re 32, our motabolizims will have stabalized and then we can go on to live our “real” lives. And maybe they’re right, (or just for some; the boring, sensible, lazy, brainwashed, scared and ‘faux’ depressed) or maybe there’s a movement towards appreciating the unstable, unpredicatble nature of our brains and trusting what all those funny biological chemicals are telling us in the form of libidos and emotions and personal tastes.

Maybe there’s a movement towards appreciating the messy, and the scary (taking chances on people and places and dreams) and the not so simple complexities and intimacies in a whole spectrum of relationships.

Maybe there’s a movement towards realizing that we can cultivate lives worth sustaining. Making homes into recording studios and hosting the parties we’d like to go to in our own backyards.

Maybe, there’s a movement towards appreciating community;
to appreciate living in a world filled with people just as fucked up and depressed and confused as you are (probably, and if you’re not, get out of my house) and to realizing that often, people with the biggest hearts, with the most incredible minds and coolest portfolios have been around the self doubting, depressed for days, haunt at least a few times and that some are probably on it right now.

Maybe there’s a movement towards realizing that there’s no happily ever finish line decorated with suburban home floor plans and wedding bands dripping in white white (pure) white and comfortable retirement funds.

Maybe we’re on a parasol in a web of uncertainty and maybe there’s a movement towards accepting that that’s okay (and that ‘true happiness’ makes a better post it note quote than a life goal) (and that happiness is best homemade, self made, and probably different for everybody, and found in as many different ways as there are people).

Maybe there’s a  movement. Or maybe we should start one.

Before you remember how to be yourself and so instead are so much more.

I love when you meet for brunch and you haven’t been home yet.

I love that messy space between happiness and comfort.
That messy space before you’d had time to collect yoursel, to process your actions and experiences and all of the new people in your life as of last night.
Space before you’ve had the time or energy to put on good face, to remember who you’re supposed to be and what your insecurities are, when your groggy, hungover, giddy and greasy. Before you remember how to be yourself and so instead are so much more.

The possibilities streatch and expand you, the laughter tumbles like a nervous boy stutters when talking to a beautiful girl and connections are made deep, below the surface of expectations and reputations. You are weaker in manyways but vulnerability is a wise monster, and vulnerability is the key to making real friends, and vulnerability is essential to growth and change and discovery.

Lately – initiation, orientation and (emotional) heavy lifting.

I have been in Montreal now for almost exactly a week, and I haven’t taken as many photos as I may have otherwise wanted to because I’ve been so busy…

stealing internet, eating bagels at 5am, flirting at plateau parties, drinking wine while walking, carrying a double mattress through the neighborhood, trying to understand humidity, buying jewelry off a blanket, finding an apartment, getting lost, getting a sense of direction, running into everyone, ogling the party crowds outside my new bedroom window, trying to remember everyones names and what kind of art they make, falling down in doorways, stalking new friends on the internet, grocery shopping at 6am, craving empanadas, buying all the floral housewares, learning the metro, painting my nails and crying at my new haunt cafe (our apt doesn’t have wifi yet), climbing fire escapes, clinging to coffees, talking on the phone with delivery men, talking on the phone with missed friends, loving this city’s sense of humor and garbage day shopping (seriously unreal), ect. School starts tomorrow and I’ve never been to university before so I’m totally freaked! Super excited but also shaky nervous, stomach achy nervous, insomnia-y nervous! I went to orientation last week and it went pretty well, made a couple of friends and figured some basics out but it’s still this completely unknown open void right now. So crazy! fun! scary!

A run on rant about meeting boys at bars, taking chances and one night stands. | This is (not) Romance.

He seemed lovely and we had a lot of fun dancing and he’s a photo-journalist who’ll be interning at Vice. So these are all excellent qualities, and we smoked cigarettes outside and he was friends with everybody and… continued here.

Over Share.

what makes an image, or a comment, or person shocking? or too much? or an over share?

Sometimes, like right now, I’m skeptical and self conscious and scared that the art and the writing I’m interested in creating will be/are “too much”. That I’m “too much.” That my vocabulary will fail me in expressing the nature of my work. That in my effort to evoke honesty I’ll be perceived as the opposite. That I’ll falter in defending my opinions, my art and myself. That I wont have the courage to create the work I’d like to. Right now, I’m scared to post this nude-ish picture, but I’m doing it anyway.

I took this in the reflection of a public washroom stall wall at Amigos in Saskatoon,
right after taking this:

^Lady Bar, as a part of my Panties Project.

I don’t know how exactly but, I want to stretch the concept of “taboo”. To open up conversations about sexuality and sex and what it means to be vulnerable and how we (humans) can feel comfortable being what we are. I aim to be courageous in honesty and kind in understanding. Fuck the “shhhh’d” conversations of the insecurities and mishaps and tremendous joys that come with having a body and a brain, lately I’ve found myself always rolling my eyes at anyone saying “inappropriate”.

From what I’ve seen and heard and been told, I think that my Panties Project has accomplished this in a lot of ways. It’s also encouraged my conceptual development in areas which I had previously thought would be rejected all together. I’m interested in expanding these explorations of self perception, vulnerability and the fears that haunt the subconscious (example: my chronic washroom nightmares) through performance, self portraits and writing. I can’t do that in G-rated way, which increases the scared factor when remembering how small my home town is and that someday my grandma might see my highly personal and traditionally “inappropriate” art.

So call me an over-share, and I’ll thank you for it.