VII: I Won't Be

I can remember many snow days. I remember one from Grade 8 when I took the day to get Polaroids of the closed-down Wal-Mart (they had closed it after building a new location years earlier) which was by then a Flea Market on weekends. I needed it for a presentation in French Class where we were supposed to pitch a restaurant, and needed a location because I guess it was so cool hands on whoop-de-doo. I created an off-brand Planet Hollywood called "Filmy's" which just sounds gross. I also used the day to reorganize the website I was running at the time. I remember the first song I heard when I woke up that day was U2's "Beautiful Day," for obvious ironic reasons. It actually was a nice day, there was just a prohibitive amount of snow on the ground.

I can remember a snow day from when I was in Grade 10. It was my friend Ana's birthday, which seemed too late in the year to have so much snow, but there we were. I had made her a Mix CD, and actually went around town listening it to myself since I couldn't give it to her. It's kind of amazing what a clueless yutz I was back then, because as bad as I am now, I was utterly hopeless at 15. There was one when I was at Sheridan, too, and Amanda and I were the only people who showed up.

I remember a few days that should have been snow days but weren't. One from late in high school when I went for a car ride with Emma and we didn't brush the snow off her hood so if kept flying up and we almost died. But I remember that one specifically because I trudged all the way out to U of T just to be there. I honestly don't know why I did that, I must have figured it would pay off, although it's entirely possible I was too much of a goody-goody to skip. That era isn't well-represented on the blog so I can't remember. Maybe it's because I had a thing for one of the girls in the class.

Today was one of those days... when I went to bed last night there was just a dusting on the ground. I had heard it was supposed to be a massive storm so I was sure to check. I had one of the best sleeps in a long time, especially on a work night, then woke up and, after debating whether to grab an extra half hour because my start time was 10 not 9:30, decided to be industrious for once.

It was a pretty amazing day. The mall was a ghost town. There were a few die hard lookie loos with nothing better to do, and parents who needed to entertain their kids; I don't think we broke $1000 though. Bev was even saying they might end up closing early, so I wonder if they did. We spent most of the day clearing out some tasks, price changes/rollovers. housekeeping. There was some discussion of our recently departed co-worker. It's kind of fascinating how these things play out.

Maybe someday in the far off future I'll re-read that sentence and remember what I was referring to. Maybe it will have slipped my mind and I'll never get it back. But I find that usually, when re-reading those old posts, I am good at getting the subtle clues to myself, probably more often than not remembering the exact incident and why it seemed so significant at the time. Then there are maybe some times when I think I remember it correctly, but am not... and maybe I'll never know which instances those are. Huh.

The other night, I invited some Anons on Tumblr, and the one I got back said "You're great, don't let anyone tell you different," and as cheesy as this is, I said this was probably the first time in my life when I could just accept someone telling me that and not try to deflect it or play it down. I'm okay. I've grown up a lot and I'm feeling better about who I am and where I am going, if anywhere. The routine has done my good, even if it's sometimes trying. I say this because prior to this paragraph I thought about doing some whining about getting motivated and breaking free of routine but honestly, I don't feel bad. I'm writing, fairly consistently, and I'm fairly happy with what's coming out. I've hit my mid-twenties with gusto.

I think the key was, last night, I realized I still have flaws... but absolutely none of those flaws keep me from living my life and enjoying what I have. There are bad things, there are things I would like to change, but it doesn't kill me that they exist. It still feels like I should undercut myself somehow, but I'm good.

Eerily good.

Maybe it's just the clam before the storm.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

VI: Life and How to Live It

One thing about those old entries is that I was telling all these stories as they happened, with no sense of what would become relevant later on. Sometimes I see stories develop, sometimes I have to catch myself up, and most often I see frayed threads of stories, and I have to remember if I can what it was about. But it was all present-minded, here and now.

Nowadays, when I do tell stories, I find myself holding back, waiting to see how they turn out. As a result there are so many stories I will probably never end up telling because they don't have ends or at least not ends that make me seem good.

Like, there have been instances with women in the last few months, including the girl I was seeing through the fall and even right up to now, and I would have told those stories excitedly because it looks like what I did then was point out every positive interaction I had with a girl... in varying levels of detail, but always knowing it was for my own benefit, to get it down on paper "Hey... that happened." Hard to believe two years ago I thought I was done meeting people and here I am now still proving that wrong.

As I go on, less things stick out - not shocking. I had one really rough interaction with a customer that proves that sometimes I'm still a jabroni. I lost control of the situation and didn't think things through, which looks like it's going to be a trait that sticks with me through life. Some traits you can outgrow, but that one still trips me up, this feeling of helplessness under pressure. When my charm and tact and patience and skill has failed me and I just want to explode and take everything nearby with me but I know I can't. But my co-workers they can see me simmering with rage inside and they feel me. I'm too old and frankly have too high of expectations of myself to carry on doing that. But it does happen less and less... but it does still happen.

I also used to remember my dreams a lot. Nowadays I can remember dreaming but rarely with dreams that stick with me through the day. The other day I had one about a romantic encounter at a hockey game (??) and then today I had one about sorting through old unlabeled VHS tapes (considerably less exciting.)

I'm trying not to force it but at the same time I'm also making a point to write here more often, to keep this story alive and well, limping along at a fair pace. Maybe someday I will get back to sharing every scrap of it. Maybe it will become a story again and not just this.... filler stuff.

Temporal marker: This past week everything with Kyle has come to a head and it looks like he will be gone from the store. Everything that happened with him isn't really my story to tell... even though I've found myself having to tell it over and over the past few weeks. And it's not for me to say whether he deserves what's happened. I had some issues with him for a while, I don't know whether he felt the same way but I always wanted to put on my friendly face and make good with him because I knew I had to. I had to get through. It was my lesson in living with others. Everyone needs one. Hopefully only one. All I do know is that with Kyle going it's the end of something.

Keep on rockin'
-Scott

V: Toxic Ticktock and the Brand New Reruns

For a little while ago now, I've been reading old posts. At first I was skipping around indiscriminately, but then I realized I was missing out by not picking a time in my life and studying from there. So I started reading posts from the "end" of the blog - that period in late 2010 through 2011, that last year when the posts slowed to a trickle and nearly every one of them was half about how I never post anymore (like this one is.)

There were good times then. There were also bad ones, and they're a lot more prevalent because I only turned to this blog when I was desperate for an outlet, a complaint department. The good times passed without comment. But it was the end of four exhausting years of University education... lots of essays to write, by-then familiar places and routines, constantly surrounded by strangers I couldn't quite reach... a constant cycle of meeting people and letting them leave my life. Frustration. Stagnation. Growth, actually, but too slowly for me to recognize it when it was happening.

The word depression comes up a lot on those old posts and a lot of the time I catch myself and try to correct myself and clarify that I'm not using it in the clinical sense. I don't think I ever was depressed and eventually I started softening the discourse by using the phrase "bummed" a lot which makes sense. It's sad that the tone of the blog then was so negative but when I was in a good mood I really had little to say for myself. Same as now, maybe. There are things that have happened in the last 4 or 6 months that, years earlier, I would have written lengthy, lengthy posts about. Some good, some really not, and some just needed perspective.

Working has made me different. Tamed me some, compared to then. I almost don't like thinking about it, because part of me is just like "Yeah, shut up kid," and part of me thinks "Well he knows he's being annoying but that's his situation. He knows that's it." I was very aware of the world I had set myself up in. And my life is different now so I'm not like that.

So I flipped back a few years to the beginning of my University life, September 2007. That was a section of the blog I don't know that I ever re-read much... it felt very fresh, and of course when I read it all it came back to me, the events, the observations and what I felt about them. That far back, the posts are vividly detailed, if rambling. The kid writing them is so fascinated by every new thing, and yet he at least does a decent job filtering them (after all, he's been at it for three years or so by that point.) But there's a lot new going on so he's overwhelmed and excited and scared but he doesn't want to let it show. And his writing style is maybe a bit too self-satisfied and stylized, but I know that's exactly how I thought back then. It's such a time machine. Years later - and I'm only 25, my memory shouldn't be that bad, but it is because I spend much of my life zoned out - but years later, this blog is a wonderful gift I left for myself, to remember it all. If I wasn't doing this, it would be gone. All these stupid observations and experience would flicker out the day after they happened. Instead, it's all there. Most of it. More than one could expect. And I took great care to include a lot of irrelevant nonsense, too.

I'll tell you a story from back then which I didn't see anywhere on the blog so maybe I kept it to myself. It was either my first day at U of T or not long after. My first class of the day was Philosophy, it was dense and hard to wrap my head around and definitely a very intimidating way to start a possible 4 years of education. So I ducked out to the washroom and set myself up at the urinal and looked down at the little rubber urinal cake holder. It had the word "AROMEX" on it. And I thought "Huh. So even if I don't learn anything - literally anything at all - in this class, then at least I learned that the urinals in Alumni Hall (the building where the class was held) have urinal cake holders from a company called Aromex." And that's dumb and a pointless thing to remember, but hey, here we are all the years later and I still remember that. It was my way of reminding myself that I wasn't just there to study and learn facts, I was there to see the city, to see people and learn the world outside my little suburban bubble.

Now I embody that bubble. I am the bubble. I used to remark about every single person that I interacted with in a day (it wasn't that hard.) Now I have entire swaths of people that come and gone, have come and gone, unremarked, and will be unremembered because of it. We'll meet again someday and I'll have a hard time remembering exactly when we worked together.

If I was more attentive, I'd keep better track of all the people that come into the store, the questionable ones. Someone came in looking for "Something mafia something," which turned out to be Swedish House Mafia. She asked if it was any good. I told her I didn't know, I don't listen to any electronica.

"Electronica?" she said, "What's that?"

"Um... like electronic music. Dance music. Club stuff."

"Oh. So what's it like?"

"Um, I don't know. I just told you I haven't listened to it. I can let you sample it."

"Well... I just like that one song. Is the rest of it like that song? Is the rest of it good?"

You wouldn't write this in fiction because it doesn't even halfway make sense. I'm even abbreviating it somewhat for ease of reading.

So I say "Yeah, I had a former co-worker who was a DJ and he used to get it a lot, so it must be good." She bought it and I sent her on her way.

I turned to Oral, who overheard this entire interaction and said "So... when I said I didn't know anything about it... wasn't that her cue to stop asking me fucking questions?"

He laughed. "Trophy wife."

"Yeah," I said. "Third place."

Participant, even.

And that's it. Keep on rockin'
-Scotto