Wilson!

I've been feeling really isolated recently. Isolated, as in, completely cut off from my friends, family, anybody and everybody that I used to know in highschool or while at Guelph. Well, with one exceptional exception. And that's not Kris. His overall roommate fun rating: 9 on a good day, 2 on an almost every day...

It seems like Facebook and MSN have more or less lost their usefulness when it comes to staying connected. Sure, I could still see what everyone else is up to if I did a little digging on Facebook, but there's not really any interaction between me and them anymore. It's the same with MSN; given I don't really go on much anymore or instigate much of the conversations, but those things can be said for just about everybody else as well. Even this little blogging clique we sort of started seems to have waned in the past months...

**Sidenote: Skype seems to have filled the void that MSN left behind, although the void is a fair bit too large for Skype to be a snug fit. Still, some filled void is better than no filled void, so to all two/three of you guys who may:

     a) come across this post and read it

     b) not already have me on Skype

somehow give me your Skype info. I'm starved for human contact right now...

Instead of hanging out everyday at school or partying every weekend at somebody's residence, it seems like if you're not already in an area populated by people from your past you have to get up and go to them. Which is fine with me - actual face time is more or less better than talking through delayed emails any day. The only things getting in my way are pretty basic: my work/work ethic and my funds...

I hate writing this because of a fear that someone might read it and think me conceited (which I'm not), but most people in my class would agree I am the hardest worker. I am the only one in my class to always finish every project on time, and more recently it seems like my quality of work has stayed about where it was all year, while everyone else's has dropped severely. Of course, in order to do these things, I'm usually swamped every weekend (three day weekends for me) in projects due the following week. So if I'm not doing work, I usually should be; getting projects done the night before only really works when there's just one project due the following morning. Nowadays, there's usually two or three...

If, by some strange happenstance, I have no work for the weekend, there's the simple issue of being unable to afford jet-setting all across the province to see people. Or at least that's an issue if I want to continue eating and taking the TTC everyday (both rather large priorities). It's one thing when going to see someone means just a bus ticket both ways, but that's rarely the case. Between food and drink for the weekend (usually unhealthy and expensive) and food and drink for whatever celebration that usually caused me to come up in the first place (also unhealthy and expensive) and a little casual good-times spending here and there, I can usually have paid a month's rent and possibly transportation after three or four visits... And with no current source of income and the addition of monthly bills for electricity, internet, and cable (damn cable, hate hate hate), groceries, and school supplies, my funds are stretched dangerously thin as it is...

I find myself checking my email four - five times a day (or whenever I happen to look at my computer), but there's never anything new. There's nothing quite as disheartening as an unbolded "inbox" when you're this starved for human contact. I'd say I have hope for the summer, but we all know how likely it is that I'll be able to reconnect with people any more than I already do...

My birthday is in one day less than a month, with my reading week falling just before it. It is within this that hope must now rest...

Ernie Coombs

Something that I feel get's an unfair shake throughout the span of growing up: costumes.

When we're kids, you've got Halloween. One day of the year when you get to dress up in an awesome costume and parade around town pretending to be someone or something that makes you cooler then you were before. Of course the first few years your costumes may or may not be determined by your parents; leading to far less awesome looks, but most kids have at least four/five years of wicked costumes before they're told they're too old for Halloween.

If you're lucky you'll end up going to a cool grade school that has various events for various reasons (book fairs, student council nominations, pre-holiday celebrations, etc) that also act as another excuse to dress up. Unfortunately, your cool grade school is also attended by the too-cool-for-school kids or the bullies who make you feel like a loser for dressing up like Merlin from The Sword in the Stone or or because you drew a fake moustache on your lips for your Robin Hood costume. So you quickly give up dressing up for school as well as Halloween.

A few years pass, and you end up in high school, where there are once again special school-wide events (albeit far fewer) that call for dressing up as your favourite fictional character. But, of course, the same kids who ruined costumes for you before have managed to pass grade school in order to come to high school with the promise of renewed torment if you even think about throwing on something that isn't clearly blue jeans and a quicksilver t-shirt. But eventually you reach grade 12: the oldest in the school, no one is going to ridicule you anymore. And so you enjoy one sweet year of costumes and nostalgia for the days of your childhood before you are forced to graduate and move on in your life.

However, when you get to university/college/the work force you find out that Halloween is a completely legitimate and widely popular holiday again: anybody who is anybody is trying to come up with the most elaborately designed or culturally referenced costume to dress up in. Finally, after all those years, you're able to release your inner child for one night every year and not fear any sort of bullying; finally, you've found your people. But now you're back to just one day of the year on which you can cut loose and enjoy dressing up in elaborate costumes...

I love Halloween. And for the very little effort there is to participate (make a simple costume, and if you don't want to do that buy some candy and stay up till around 10-11 giving it out) I don't see why we can't have a couple more costume-days in the year.