Why Are My Children Tiny?

The title of this is post makes sense to me and maybe one other person. It is the result of late evening, summer musings on a cramped balcony; the warm night accented by the harsh smoke of bad cigars and that eerie, haunting, flickering light that only a candle flame, distressed by the wind, can create.

The talks were of life, where we were and where we might end up.  In the thick of it, I was told that there would be no surprise to see me living in the suburbs, with the condo, a wife and some 'tiny children'. The accuracy of this prediction aside, I couldn't help but ask: why are my children tiny? In a wine induced fit of laughter, I then set out to find why I had been blessed with a bunch of abnormally small children, and if there was any specific factor influencing my Thumbelina-esque offspring.

Now, joking aside, I suppose that it is a pretty standard expectation for a lot of people to hit the 'burbs when they get to the 20 somethings; add the spouse and the two and a half kids, call it a life. To be perfectly honest, that is where I always kind of saw myself going. Of course not recently, and yet, not really too long ago either.

I was never a driven kid, and I will say sadly that I never had high expectations for myself. There are people that manage to muddle their way through life; that was me. Do everything adequately, do what you need to do to survive, but never really self-improve outside of the set boundaries. Having a family with children is an accomplishment. That ability to procreate and provide is in every way an impressive feat, the ultimate commitment and sacrifice of self to create and raise new life. As a result, it is in many ways very commendable to make it to the point where marriage and kids are your sphere of reality. Yet, I think that the reason it was always one of those inevitable results to me growing up was that due to the unmotivated way in which I lived, it would probably have been the best I could have done. The absolute maximum of my potential, the top expectations of what I could picture myself accomplishing was the very baseline of normal society.

It is funny to reflect on your life and remember how much time you wasted worrying about really silly things. I can clearly remember that as I met new women, right up to the end of University, there was always this nagging voice in my head asking if she was the one. There was this really sad, omnipresent feel that if I didn't meet 'her' in school, I would be alone forever. How pathetic is that? What a really stupid way to live your life. School provided this really structured way in which to learn new things and create opportunities and of course meet women, that it felt like without that stable safety net to lean on and push off from, graduation spelt the end of excitement, and the beginning of the long haul to retirement.

However, this is a happy story. Due to a few factors, including my own, self-proclaimed intellectual renaissance that can be followed throughout this blog and an absolutely comical lack of an ability to have or maintain any sort of relationship, I find myself with the opportunity to push myself beyond the minimum, and do something that I think I wouldn't even dreamed of doing five years ago. My thirteen-year-old self's prophetic vision of me in the suburbs has been indefinitely delayed, as in the near future I am moving to:

More specifically, to the city of:

Where I will live a block from the largest non-airport transit hub in the country, the Nagoya Train Station, in a tiny apartment that looks like this:

and get to sleep on one of these...

(Woo?)


The apartment was finalized last Thursday, and with its confirmation, I ran out of preparations. I can honestly say that I really haven't spent even a fraction of the time worrying for this trip, compared to when I left for Africa. Yet, the preparations for this trip were far more in-depth, and as I jumped through the hoops, I was able to kind of keep the realization of moving half a world away at arm's length.

So with the end of prep comes the start of the waiting; and waiting for the unknown can be positively correlated with my ability to be nervous, over think, and second guess. There is no regret, and admittedly the nervousness is in truth a nervous excitement. It took me several years, a lot of patience and a good amount of money to get to where I am now, and I think I can truly say I'm ready to go. However, it does not mean that I won't continue to get hit with profound moments of realization while driving, the ones that cause me to shout "I'm moving to fucking Japan!" really loudly, and then sort of laugh hysterically for awhile until I calm down and resume singing alone to the radio. I guess this is happening.

 Thanks for reading,

 Much Love,

Sean


Quickly, I would like to add my thanks to all those who have read my blogs to this point, as I recently reached 10,000 hits. I do take this with a grain of salt, as many of them were probably me swinging through. Moreover, thanks to the stats tracker on blogger, I am aware that a big amount of the traffic I get are people using google image search to look for Haida tattoos, and you will notice that 'Ink'd' leads the list of the popular posts on the bar to the right.

That aside, the feedback for this blog has been inspiringly positive, and I would like to thank everyone that has lent me a kind word after reading a post.   I have never needed to be very creative to write most of my posts, but it has required this ability to remove my filter and attempt to be truly honest. It is that filter that stops most people from saying what they really feel.


Not so coincidently, I wrote this whole post while listening to the album 'The Suburbs' by the Arcade Fire.


 

Marty Stouffer's Delicious Narrative

When I was a kid I loved nature documentaries. They weren't just something that I watched on television, or programs that I simply enjoyed more than others, but instead an obsession. In the days before we got satellite, when the antennae was in place and cable didn't reach the remote side roads of our township; when internet was a thing done over the phone and I got about as much normal mail as email, we got one really specific nature documentary on our limited array of channels: Wild America with Marty Stouffer.

The show cultured a very homegrown backyard feel that focused on wildlife specific to North America, and although it contained a few healthy dollops of the old 'Ra! Ra!' pro-American sentiment, the propaganda was lost on a youth that simply didn't care beyond the mountain goats. Sure there were no lions, elephants or sharks, but the exclusion of everything that didn't exist on my continent made every animal seem that much more attainable. These things could be in my back yard. Wild America could be my world. To top it all off it was narrated by Marty, who's voice seemed thick and rich enough to be served as a meal. Now you can understand my real sense of wonder with this show, as it was done before I could go on the web and have everything at my fingertips. Marty Stouffer's thick tongued narration of the wildlife of my conceivable world was my greatest portal to nature.

The withholding of this show was actually a good way to motivate and punish me. I can recall several nights of no Wild America being used to set me straight. You didn't have to tell me no television, ground me or discipline me further. It was enough. I'm not trying to come across as someone that was a fiend for television, or that I spent too much time watching it in my youth. What I'm really trying to make clear is that there have been times in my life that I have really truly cared about something less tangible than an object or a person; but instead in a goal, future or ideal. The world of Wild America was the one I wanted to become a part of.

Fast forward to today and I have a hard time finding that feeling. I like some things and love some people, but that deep seeded passion that ever existed in me, fired in me, offering me any sort of great drive or motivation seems to flicker at best, and not be present at worst.

There are things I would like to do, things I will do, and perhaps things I think I'd like to do because I'm stalling for time. Yet I have a hard time finding anything in my life that I have ever truly thrown my all into. My schooling never saw it, and I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that most employers to date have not seen me properly motivated.

I'd like to say that the pure enthusiasm for nature is eventually what led me down the road to my biology degree, but I can say that it is no secret that my beginnings in biochem at Guelph University were a byproduct of my top two high school grades being Biology and Chemistry. So when did it go? What killed it and how?

Stepping back, I'd like to suggest that this is bigger than me. Perhaps more a sign of the times than any specific problem with myself. In this age of North American consumeristic excess, the media likes to play up the angle of do less for more. On the internet, television and radio, everything is gratification now for a fee to be delivered later. Instant reward for delayed or ultimately avoided work.

The discovery stories of hidden talents and the serendipitous tales of big lotto winners perforate the news, and help move along this idea that the universe owes us something, or that we're due for our break and we just need to wait it out. The entitlement of the current generation is staggering, and although I get urges of it, I feel like by acknowledging the absurdity of some universal debt to me here and now I have a better chance of moving down a better course. The fact remains though: I cringe at the thought of the work-a-day life.

In my opinion people can be roughly split into very clear categories, and they generally go something like this: 1) those who know what they want and how to get it, 2) those who have no clue what they want and settle at first sign of stability and, 3) those like me who have no idea what they want but refuse to settle for anything; and instead slot in one plan after another waiting for either something to click or a handout from the cosmos so that they can join the first group.

I guess to sum up, I am blaming the world for my problems. Cliche, a little. It's just that some days it seems strange to feel like the only person in Brownian motion while the rest of society appears to flow downstream. I sometimes wonder if this truly unrelenting need to always feel like I'm working towards something is an inherently North American attribute, or a human condition. For the record I am going to Japan, and that counts as a thing I am working towards. I am excited. I am motivated to do well, and to give it my all and try my best. But then what?

I like writing, maybe I'll work towards that too.

Thanks for reading,

Much Love,

Sean



Doesn't this just reek of American small town values and patriotism? Hahaha! I love it.