So Much In Such Little Time

A week begins on Sunday, right? Well, this week has been full of so many things (mind you, I realise how utterly impossible it would be to be full of nothingness (or maybe it's not impossible... but I disgress)). Let's have a little review (with extra days before the beginning of the current week)

Friday: A fairly normal day at work, doing split shifts. In the morning, I happen to meet a former employer of mine. We chat, she tells me that they were looking for someone to help with their site (the job is to work on updating a website. It's work from home, around 10 hours a week). I mention that I'd love to help until the end of December but I can't since the job has to be done on the weekend. Surprise! Now, with the new version, the updating has to be done on the beginning of the week, the days I actually have off! Lovely! I tell her (they are two employers, that detail will come in handy later) that I'd really be interested. She seems happy and tells me that the other employer (the one I talked to the most) would be enchanted to have me back, as I'm good. Excellent. I tell her I'll contact them sometime in the weekend. Come home and find my course registration documents in the mailbox. Date and time of the opening of registration: Monday, november the 15th, at 6:45 in the morn. Rest of the day: uneventful.

Saturday: As usual, a really busy day at work. Barely noticed the day flying by. Around noon, I get a call at work from the other employer (see above) about the gig, telling me that she'd be happy to take me back until the end of December and giving me the details and technicalities. Lovely. After work, I go and get the documents needed.

Sunday (beginning of the current week): I go for breakfast with my best friend and her boyfriend. Completely Lovely. We laughed, we talked about everything. Things were really good. I love those people so much. Then went to work, day was fine (bearable, which is uncommon for Sundays). After that come home, have dinner and then get ready for beginning my second job. Online comes G and I chat with him for little bits at a time, all the while working. I mention how the mall Santa had arrived and how I would go see him to tell him that, for Christmas, I want G under the Christmas Tree. G tells me that he'll be under his own tree at Christmas and then the conversation shifts. He calls me and breaks up with me. Whole routine of "it's-not-you-it's-me" and etc, ending by telling me that, of course, once I'm in Montreal he'd love to see me often, as often as possible. Bang. It hurts. After the call I have to go back to work, which I do. Finally go to bed at close to 1am, knowing fully well that I have to be up at 6:30, not to miss my chance at getting the classes I want.

Monday: Alarm clock rings at 6:30. I snooze it and unvonlutarily hit the total alarm stop button. I wake up at 8. Try to register online, the website doesn't respond. So I dial the automated phone registering system. Get the line, register. Try for the german language course I wanted (The 6 credit course encompassing beginner german 1 and 2). I get a message saying that the course had been cancelled. Grr. So then I try for beginner german 1, it's open, I get the class. Cool. Then second class, German language and culture. Get it. Cool. Then I try for photo class. Already full, no other groups available. Damn. Then I try for history of jazz. Already full. DAMMIT! Then I go for photography and the art object. I get the class. I have to register for another course but I'm out of ideas. Basically, the fact that the 6 credit course was cancelled really screwed up my whole plan. In order to be registered full time, one needs a minimum of 12 credits (4 normal courses, as one standard course is 3 credits). After hunting desperately through the 8 pages of choices for extra courses, I find one that interests me: Cinematographic language. I call the service, get the line, register my class, accepted. Excellent. That's done. Then I go to cégep and to the photo lab to bring films for processing. I come back, my mother calls from downstairs asking me to come down because she had something to ask me. I get downstairs. She's crying. My uncle and aunt all have this stern look on their faces. I ask what's wrong, nobody answers. So I begin to be really frightened. Has something happened to my sister? Is someone ill? What's wrong?! Turns out my mother hurt her back (she has a history of bad back) and she's crying out of exhaustion, which is completely understandable. Go the the drugstore for her prescription, bring it to her. I'm really tired and it's mid afternoon, it all seems dark and gloomy and bleak, but I decide to go running. I really give tons to running and come back feeling quite a bit better. Then I do some work in the evening and go to bed at 9:30 (pm, obviously)

Tuesday: Wake up at 9:30, fresh as a rose. 12 hour sleep is the best sugarfree candy one could have. I work a bit during the day, I don't remember all that much about it. Then, in the afternoon I go running again. See a friend in the evening, come back home at midnight only to have another friend ask me to go watch a movie with him. I do. Come back here at 3:30 in the morn. Go to bed.

Wednesday: Up at 8. I really do not deal well with little sleep anymore. Spend most of the day feeling tired and rather miserable. Accomplish very little apart from tiny things for myself. Get, through the mail, the response from the student loans: I got my loan. Happy Happy and such great news. I go to meet my employers and bring the work early evening. Then come back here, have dinner. Sister arrives out of the blue, has dinner with us, then we play PS2. I had called a friend of mine in the morning, because I wanted to ask him about flats in Montreal and neighbourhoods and the like. Got the answerphone and purposefully left a vague message saying I had a question to ask. He calls back when I'm off to my employers, very intrigued, asking me what it was. Then he says that if I'm still looking for a place to live in Montreal he'd have a phone number to give me. I call him back, we chat and arrange for lunch next monday and he gives me the phone number. I call the people, they seem rather cool and I agree to meet them early december, when the flat will be available. Go to bed at 8.

Thursday (today!): Wake up at 7. Again, totally delighted at so much sleep. Split shifts for me once again so I leave for work. Excellent morning, ultra busy. Then, after morning shift I go hunting for a winter jacket. Go to one place, am not sure. Go to a second place, find an item I really like. Ask for advice from one of the sales people, she's ultra helpful (really) and I'm close to sure I want the jacket, but still need a bit of opinion. In walks a coworker of mine, I motion him over, he loves the jacket too, checks for the fabric and etc, all fine. I buy the jacket. The first time I ever buy myself a winter jacket. I feel so responsible. Come home, have a bite and go running again. Come back from running feeling so zen. I am getting addicted to running. Then work again tonight.

Avoiding The One Who Makes Me Weak At The Knees

The sunday following the post about the guy I'd like to get to know, I arrived at the mall a bit early because my only ride to work was early. I went to get coffee and guess who also arrived at that moment. The guy. We greeted and that was mostly it. It all seemed a bit bizarre. He left to go to his store. Fine. When I went across the mall to get to the bookstore I saw him standing before the doorway to his store. I took the chance to thank him about lending me the magazines. It was a bit cold and I didn't feel an opening for chatting more about it or about other stuff. Said goodday and went my way.

The next evening I took the decision to try and avoid seeing him as much as possible (took that decision after seeing him walk across the street and feeling my heart skip a beat). I figure I have enough confusion in matters of the heart not to add to it by forcing myself to see the guy who makes me weak at the knees (and who obviously doesn't give a damn about me). It all seemed to work very well and I had pretty much forgot about the whole thing. Even passing in front of his store didn't do anything to me. Cured, I was!

But of course, things never end just like that. Today, I had not brought a lunch to work (I made one this morning, but then felt really hungry and ate it :D). During my supper-hour I made my way to the grocery store, all the way across the mall, in order to get some food. On my way there I stopped at the newly opened videogame store to check if they had Katamari Damacy. They did. It was cheap. I bought it. (HAPPY!) So, grocery store. I was listening to I Am X on my MP3 player and making my way to the prepared food aisle. Guess who I ran across? The guy, of course. We greeted and exchanged pleasantries about food and lunches. Then I paid and left.

Of course my knees went weak when I saw him. I really wonder why I have to keep bumping into him randomly. It all seems like a cruel joke. Random chats with one who doesn't see me.

Am I still gonna try to avoid him? You bet.

Admitted!

Hello World! I was admitted at UQAM!

This is so completely great news. What's best is that I was admitted in all three of my program choices. Upon thinking them through, I will go with what was my last choice. I will do a certificate in German. It has been a while since I studied a language and I miss it. Also, I think I need to distance myself from creation for a bit, to reflect on where I want to go next.

Wind is turning, roll on winter! :D

Focus

Something rather primordial has hit me sometime ago. It's really important yet seems and appears so simple, much like the key one's searching for all through the house, only to realise it was in their pocket all along.

I don't exactly know how or why, but for so long I've been trying to be something else, to do something else, all the time. Trying to be good at everything, to make my life into something it's not. Trying to study things that I have never really done before, thinking I would rock at it. Constantly.

I was having another period of questionning and one morning I woke up, having realised something. I need to focus. Plain and simple. Focus my energy, my efforts into matters I know, matters that aliment me. What has been plaguing me for a long time was the need to overextend myself, to be everything. Of course, I can't be that. I can't be good at everything (and I really am not). It's certain that I am good at certain things though, it's on those things I need to focus.

Found that key last week, feeling much calmer since then.

I Would Like To Get To Know You

There's this boy who works in the same mall as me. He seems really nice, smart and all. Since I returned to the bookstore in early spring, I have been bumping into him randomly. Then once he came to the bookstore looking for this very cool, artsy-deep comic book. After that, we started chatting smalltalk while we were both getting coffees at the coffeeshop in the mall. It would happen every now and again. It then culminated when he came to the bookstore again looking for Andreas Bitesnich's latest book, On Form. We didn't have the book, because it is not distributed through french canadian distribution channels. So he left the bookstore.

A month and a half, if not two, went by without bumping into him. I would see him on the street, from afar, but that would be it.

Last thursday, my mother was having her day off and wanted to go shopping with me. What was supposed to be one little store finally ended up being a couple of stores and then going to the mall. It was early in the day and I was nearly straight out of bed so I just grabbed whatever pants were available and went shopping like that, unshaven and really not looking hot. Reaching the end of my mother's shopping intention we left the mall and passed in front of the store where the guy works. He was standing in the entrance to his store. I waved to him, he waved back.

Went back home, shaved and did everything I could to look decent for work. I arrived earlier to the mall that evening, wanting to get a coffee and fill out my second application form in order to mail it before heading towards the bookstore. As I was completing the form someone waved their hand in front of my face. It was him. Asked me what I was doing, I replied. Then invited him to sit down. We talked for about 5-10 minutes, about school and our lifesituations in general. Time to go to work arrived. We left but before leaving I mentioned having made a bit of googling on the photographer whose book he came to buy the time prior. Having mentionned that I liked his work, he said: "I'll bring you magazines featuring his work then". Yeah, alright, whatever I'm sure he meant.

Next day, I go to get a coffee before work (I have mentionned being a bit of a coffee junkie before, no?) and head to work, haven't seen the guy. There were quite a lot of people in the bookstore that evening. Out of the blue, the guy walks in the bookstore, carrying a plastic bag and having a grin on his face. After I'm done with my customer I go to see him. He hands me the bag, saying those were the magazines. Tells me to give him my opinion on the stuff. I say thanks and introduce myself (I didn't know his name before and neither did he mine). After that he leaves.

Being a rather fast reader I went through the sections of the magazines on Andreas Bitesnich that same evening and so I was ready to bring back the magazines to him the next day. During my lunch time, at noon, a Saturday, I head out of the bookstore to bring him his belongings. I had three scenarios planned out. If he was working at that moment and felt there was an opening for more conversation and seeing each other outside of the mall, I would give him my phone number so we could have a chat. If he was working but I felt there was no opening, I would just hand him the bag, thank him and walk away. If it turned out he wasn't working I would slip a little note in the bag, saying: "Thanks a lot! -Oli P.S. How about a chat?". So I go to the bookstore and he's not working. As he had said to do in case he wasn't there, I went to a coworker of his and hand her the bag, saying I was bringing it back to him. Subtlely slipped the note inside the bag and gave it to her, then left.

So that's it. That's where I stand at the moment. Haven't seen him since then. The thing is, he is really the kind of person I'd like to get to know. I would definitely like having a new guy friend in this town.

Plan B

Here's the plan of action. I will not take the patience route and wait until September 2005 to go back to school. I will not just wait out for Université de Montréal to reevaluate my file (if they actually do). I will take action.

Went to the Cégep today to get an admission brochure for UQAM. I will apply there in history of arts, since I still have two weeks left before admission closing. It's a very sensible choice for many reasons. If I still want to do film, then I'll have new university grades to up my current score, thus helping in having me accepted without having to go through the minor first. If I decide to apply in visual arts at UQAM, then I'll already be a student there which should help the process (of course I will have to present a killer portfolio, but I can work on that). Also, it means I will not go through another bout of stagnancy.

That's my plan B.

The Intangible Hand Playing The Drum Machine

I have no bloody idea how I am going to make sense of that one.

With the letters I received from the university yesterday, my current plan of action appears rather brittle. As esoteric as it sounds, it feels like all of this was pre-sequenced and the tune is playing just the way it should be. The intangible hand of the forces above playing the drum machine.

On one hand, I could always wait for the university to re-evaluate my file (which "might or might not have been put on hold") all the while organising everything to move to Montreal for this coming january. If university craps out on me, then I'm in the city with no real goal and probably no real means either.
Upside: Leaving home, taking off.
Downside: I could easily mess up with so little safety margin and have to come back home (again).

On the other hand, I could follow what was the original plan, that one being going back to school in september 2005. I would apply in visual arts (you know, a real program, where i'll be able to work in sculpting and installation and medias and all that stuff) and film again, probably. I would take the time between now and march to create a killer portfolio, one that will make the evaluators go "DAMN! We have to have that kid". Paralel to that, I would start looking for a new job, a full time one, and save money. Also, I would work on my music and my guitar learning.
Upside: If well orchestrated, an excellent springboard and safetynet.
Downside: Staying home until next summer.

Understandably, there is no clear answer to this problem. No obvious way out. Yet another thing I have to figure out. Of course I want to leave here and experience a new life as soon as possible. At the same time, I really don't want to have to crawl back home, wings burned again. I want to have it so that when I leave, I will have left. No coming back (not coming back to live, I mean).

I am allowing myself a couple of days to decide which way to go. There'll be casualties whichever road I take. Damn.

Oh, I almost forgot. The datestamp on the letters from the university coincides with the day I woke up feeling my admission had been denied.