When I was young, I wanted to be a singer more than anything, with guitar player as a close second. I had pictures in my mind of being on stage singing and performing songs I wrote. The first time I took lessons my hands were too small for a regular guitar, so my teacher tried to get me to learn on a Mandolin instead. I was excited at first, certain that I would some day be a music genius. At first I practiced religiously but as the lessons continued and I was only able to play “Hot Cross Buns” very slowly I gave up.
As a young teenager I got it in my mind to try again. I told myself that the reason for the first failure was because I was too young, it was the wrong instrument, and the instructor was more interested in flirting with my sister than teaching me. (she’s ten years older than me, and was close to the age of the instructor. He was socially awkward, but I don’t want you to think he was a creep) This time my father and I joined a group lesson. I put in minimal effort and when those that put in the work were doing better than me, I gave up again. Since then I tried a few times and gave up when it didn’t come easy.
I have done the same thing with various other things in my life. I would see people that sang better than me, acted, wrote, or edited better than me and I would tell myself that I didn’t have enough talent and that I just hadn’t found my voice yet. What I didn’t allow myself to see was that these people were more talented than me because they were willing to put a lot of hard work into their passion.
I’m not 100% sure what my passion is. I know that in the past when-ever I’ve given up on a form of creative expression it didn’t take long till I would experiment with something else. I knew that there was an artist inside me trying to get out, but until it figured out what shape to take, it was trapped. I allowed my self-doubt and laziness to keep it buried
So I made a decision. I’m a writer. Not because I’m talented or even because I know what I’m doing, I don’t. My spelling isn’t great, my grammar at times is atrocious, and I need to learn how to use punctuation better. To be completely honest, of all my creative endeavors, this is the one I struggle with the most, the one I have the least confidence in. I told myself that I had to focus on one (at least for now) and writing was the one I was least willing to give up.
I’ve set goals for myself to help me out with this. I need to write at least 3 times a week and at least 500 words each time. I purposely picked a goal that is not overwhelming but still takes a commitment on my part. At the moment I am more concerned with quantity over quality, it’s more about learning to stick to a commitment than it is about writing a masterpiece. (or even something blog worthy for that matter) The spelling, grammar, and punctuation is something I can learn later.
I do find it funny that when it comes to art and expression that we expect it to be something that comes natural with little to no work, a standard that we don’t hold for any other skills. Talent is the result of hard work, commitment and practice. Raw talent is rare, most professionals start off not being that good at their art and either because of passion, or pure stubbornness, do it anyway and perfect their craft over time.
I know this is a rather self-centered and narcissistic note, but I’ve been told that you write what you now, and since I’m new to this that list is pretty limited. Still I’ld like to end this on something other than myself, so I’ll say this. If you’ve ever had something you’ve wanted to do, but didn’t know where to start, I’ll give you a hint. You start by doing it. You will probably stumble around for awhile until you figure it out, but if you stick it out and are willing to put the work in, you WILL figure it out. Life is too short to limit yourself.
Why Conservatives Shouldn’t vote Conservative This Time
Now I’m not fooling myself into thinking that I’m going to change a lot of minds with this post. I am aware that the average person is not as open minded as we like to think we are, often myself included. We “educate” ourselves by reading and watching things that agree with our already formed opinion (fox news, daily show) and in the process cementing us further in our particular point of view. That being said what-ever your initial reaction may be I ask that you take some time to consider and think it over, and I will try to do the same with responses (if any) to this note.
Two Reasons
There are two reasons that I think should give you pause in voting for Stephen Harper. First is that, based on the conservative government so far and Harper’s plans for the future, what the conservative government says they stand for and what they actually stand for are two different things. Second, and this is the one that is most important to me, Mr. Harper does not have the best interest of all Canadian citizen’s in mind. He has allowed personal prejudice to affect his decisions in office.
Walk the walk
Tho I don’t believe in generalizations I think it’s safe to say if you ask the average conservative why they chose their political affiliation, the two most common answers would be small government and fiscal responsibility. Now I may not fully agree with how the conservatives think they should implement these ideals, but I can concede that these are at least respectable goals. It appears tho that despite these being two major platform issues, Harper pays them little more than lip service.
Since Harper has been Prime Minister. Government spending has increased and the government has actually increased in size by roughly 10%. Part of his current campaign is that he plans to get “tougher on crime.” A big part of this is by implementing harsher and longer sentences. As a campaign promise it makes sense, it is an old but effective way of gaining people’s favor, and after-all who isn’t anti-crime. But we have to ask ourselves, Is it necessary? Does it work? and is it worth the Costs? and that would be a big NO all the way around. The estimated Cost of these longer sentences would be roughly $250 million to $750 million of our taxes. The funny thing is that we’ve actually seen a decrease in crime over the last 10 years. On top of that studies show that not only will increased sentences have no affect on the crime rate, but it will cause undue strain on an already over populated prison population. So what’s happening is that Harper is manipulating people with fear about a non-existent problem and offering a solution that wouldn’t even work if the problem was real and if he succeeds he’ld be doing this at the cost of millions of our dollars and the ideals of his own party. All for the sake of tricking people into voting for him.
If I was conservative this would upset me. I would want to send a message that said “You are supposed to represent us, and until you do we’re giving you a time out”
Freedom and Equality
In the 90’s while with the reform party Harper said the top 3 issues were guns, gays, and government. In 2005 he ran on the promise that he would stop the legalization of gay marriage and when he lost that battle, he tried to have it overturned until he finally gave up. This time around he is promising not to bring up the topic and I’m actually inclined to believe him and I’ll tell you why. An interesting thing has been happening in Canada. People are being more open about who they are, and instead of seeing the LGBT community as the sexual and social deviants we were told they were, we’ve begun to see them as our friends, family, co-workers, church member, etc.. The last poll showed that roughly 75% of Canadians believed that marriage was a right regardless of sexual orientation. This means that if he ran against gay marriage again it would almost certainly lose him the race.
For me personally the fact that he would run against it if he thought he had a chance is enough for me to not want him in any place of power, but I realize that a number of my friends for whatever reasons are opposed to gay marriage or even homosexuality in general. Even tho this a topic I have very strong opinions about and could probably write a note 10 times this long on why I disagree with these friends, that is not the point of this particular post.
I think there are two things tho that most of us can agree on. 1.) someone should not be subject to harassment, physical or sexual assault, loss of employment, refusal of services, etc… simply because they’re gay. 2.) Not liking something doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, and claiming it didn’t happen doesn’t make it so.
I should note that when doing research on when sexual orientation was added to the charter of rights and freedoms it was hard to pin down dates because it was entered more than once on different dates and I read threw legal papers that were hard to understand. But from what I read I believe the updates were made between 1982 and 1996. Which is why in 2006 people were confused when Harper started insisting that sexual orientation was not protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, who then proceeded to confuse people even further by trying to pass a bill (rather unsuccessfully) to have those references which he insisted weren’t there removed. The reason that these changes were made to the Charter was because people were being harassed, bullied, fired, beaten, etc… This was added to the Charter by people that put some of their own prejudice aside because they knew it would save and improve lives and because they believed in the “life, liberty, and security” for all that the Charter talked about. Harper apparently does not.
So when Harper wasn’t able to stop gay marriage or have their basic rights taken away from them, in 2008 all references to gay marriage and the fact that homosexuals have rights were removed from the Canadian history lessons for new immigrants. Because if you can’t change the law, you can at least do your best to make people forget they exist. I should note that this was one of Harper’s MP’s and not him and tho I’ld be surprised if he wasn’t coached I have no way of knowing for sure, but what is known is that Harper has made no attempt to speak against or reverse this change.
In Conclusion
Harper follows the party platform with his words and spits in his parties face with his actions. He has shown that he is willing to sacrifice his ideals to try to win a few votes and insult his supporters and the rest of the countries intelligence in the process. Worse yet he has shown that he is unwilling to see past his own prejudice and fears, even it means risking the safety and freedom of a percentage of the Canadian population
The country will probably be fine no matter who wins, but this is a chance to say that this man does not represent us, your party, or our country. We deserve better.
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my brother already posted this video, but for those that haven’t seen it, and because I think it’s applicable. Here we go again
Lost The Plot
Apparently the link I had before didn’t work so hopefully this will. This is from a little concert we put together for a new years eve party, there was a video at one point of 4 different songs. I think this one mp3 is all that’s left. In case you missed my previous link it was Shawn Poelman on drums, Doug McKenzie on Bass, Ed Skelton on Guitar and Chad Poelman on Vocals.
I have quite a vivid imagination and I find it very easy to get lost in it, whether I’m reading a book, playing a video game, or just day-dreaming. This can be awesome, but it also very easily distracts me from reality, stuff I really should be paying attention too.
Peach
I found this poem using the StumbleUpon App. It was written by Gabriel Gadfly. As a nerd who has wasted many hours with Mario and as someone who hopes to someday find his princess peach, I fell in love with it. After getting Gabriel’s permission I put my own voice to it.
Breathes of Air
I think our words have more power than we realize. It amazes me how history and individual lives have been affected, for good or evil, by what someone chose to say
Arms of Love
Easily the most emotional draining poem I’ve ever done. My mother died of cancer roughly 10 years ago. She was a pretty amazing person. This was for her
Beautiful
this is another poem that wrote its self. I had originally meant for this poem to be about bullying. Oddly it became what I had intended my first poem to be about
Happiness
This is probably my least favorite poem. Not that I didn’t mean the things at the time I wrote it for the person I wrote it for, but it makes me uncomfortable. I’ve been told it seems like I’m hitting on the person who is watching it. I made the video and I still get creeped out by being hit on by the guy in it.
Hands in the Water
This is the first poem I wrote. I actually set out to write about something completely different, the poem had something else in mind
