reading week shenanigans

aka not reading anything

Otters,

Sending this out on American Election Day eve—I didn’t wanna bother all my American Otters and distract them from going to the polls and voting!!! Please vote!!!!!!

The way y’all do elections is so crazy to me. Not that our system is any less wild. I remember being maybe nine years old the day after the 2012 election, watching CNN’s eternal recap of what went down. No matter how many times my parents were like, “Ottuś, he’s the president,” I had no idea who the hell Obama was or what he stood for. WTF was a Republican? Was I secretly an American and my parents just forgot to tell me?

(Oh my god, I was sooo jealous of dual citizens growing up. Y’all have the best of both worlds! I was supposed to be born in Buffalo, actually, so it almost happened.)

I vaguely remember Wolf Blitzer or somebody showing maps of the electoral college all lit up in red and blue, and I would just nod and pretend to understand what it all meant. I remember them showing excerpts of Obama giving that big famous victory speech somewhere in Chicago. (Still really want to visit Chicago.) I had no idea what he was talking about but I remember listening to him and thinking he was just so cool. It’s one of the earliest memories I have of realizing that language could do that to people. Inspire them and stuff. And to this day, every time I have to write some oral presentation thingymajingy, I go back and read some of his old speeches. But I digress!

Hope last week was swell for you. It happened to be my university’s reading week! For those of you too old to remember what that is, or too young to know what that is (bless your heart) you are supposed to spend reading week…you know…reading. Reading stuff for your classes, reading jargon-laden academic articles for the research papers you have due in those classes, whatever.

But if you’ve been here long enough you already know I did not read a thing. I am staying true to my form as ever.

Wait! No! This is not true!

Because according to GoodReads I actually read one whole entire book. One Secret Thing by Sharon Olds. Great book. Been on a real Sharon kick these days. I read Stag’s Leap when I was….god, I have no idea, fifteen? Because some famous writer poet person said to read it and so I was like ok but she is probably a larger influence on my work that I thought. Her poems are so uniquely her own. ANYWAYS.

Last week!

I moved. Again. That was annoying. But it’s all good now. Glad to have it over with.

The World Series happened, did you hear about that? John Mulaney crushed SNL for the sixth time. Jason Kelce smashed an a-hole’s phone and I commend him.

The feds say they’re gonna build some high-speed rail between Toronto and Quebec City, to which I say FIIIINALLLLLLY. The question is whether we can lower costs enough so that regular people like me can take advantage (unlike the ludicrous pricing of Via Rail, which is why I’ve never taken it, but I've always wanted to). Just set it to something fairly reasonable and we’re set. If they made it happen my ass would be in Quebec City every goddamned weekend.

I was supposed to see the Boss with my dad last night in Toronto but we couldn’t go. And now that we know what the setlist was, we wish we could’ve gone. “Meeting Across the River” AND “Jungleland”?????? I think I would’ve died right there on the spot.

The highlight of my week was hanging out with some homies downtown. Shoutout to A and M and also George, all of whom are wonderful. Squeezed all of them in on the same day and it was so worth it. George came all the way from Scarborough to see me—what a great guy. We got apple fritters and chatted it up. I ate 9 dollar avocado toast with A that was so great despite the outlandish price. Also went with her to this record store I love called Sonic Boom which is an Annex institution if you haven’t been, where I convinced her to add Elliott Smith’s Either/Or to her growing CD collection. It was $22 but that’s actually a bargain when you consider how much hearing it will change her life. Girl math!

I wrote a couple poems last week too. They're not bad. I’m getting good at this poetry thing. I had this deadline for a UofT award I had to make, and so that was eating at my brain a bit. I worked my tail off in high school entering all those awards and it’s clearly messed with my head to this day. It is strange how winning 2.3 awards is not enough to defeat that little voice in your head telling you you’re not good enough. I’ve been so disconnected from the literary world the last few years that trying to get new stuff published sounds exhausting most of the time. I just wanna write poems that mean something to me and that people like. I don’t wanna worry over what publications names are in my 50 word 3rd person bio anymore, you know? I hardly even know which places are the big ones these days. Is the New Yorker still a thing?

You might know that I took the last 2 years off from trying to publish stuff which was great for my mental health but these days I feel like I’m behind all my peers because they’re all getting big names in their own 50-word 3rd-person bios and winning Best Poet Ever awards and whatever WHICH I KNOW IS A DUMB WAY TO THINK BUT I’VE SPENT MY WHOLE LIFE TRYING TO PROVE MYSELF IN A NEUROTYPICAL MERITOCRACY OKAY.

This week!

Speaking of writing, what I really should’ve done last week was write the first draft of the 3,000 word short story I have due on Wednesday (and I’ve got no idea what it is going to be about, like, not even a single character or conflict or…*shudders* plot point). Or doing research for the 3,000 word research paper I have due on Thursday.

So I’ll have to do it all this week. 600 words a day on each. Can’t be thaaaaat bad, right? I figure if I bounce back and forth between the paper and the short story my brain won’t feel as mushy.

And then I also have to write my second post of the week to all of you! I will get on that when I get a chance. See ya Thursday or Friday… and in the meantime please comment below and tell me how you like to consume election night coverage. Every two years I never know whether CNN or ABC or NBC or MSNBC or CBS is the answer.