Monthly Archives: February 2018

Unfriending Spree and Mental Health Spiral

It’s a week after the verdict. It’s been a rough week for a lot of us I think. A lot of my friends got pissed at the silence and indifference of white settler Canadian friends and unfriended a bunch of people. In some regards I think I probably overdid it, even tho I only unfriended 34 people. But in another regard I was really fucking pissed off and needed to do it for myself. I didn’t want to be an indifferent white Canadian settler’s Indigenous friend. Like you know, “I’m not racist, I have an Indigenous friend.” Anyway, I will probably friend a few of those people again. But I was done. DONE.

I had a really hard time sleeping the first few days after the verdict, the weekend really. I felt my mind just going a million miles an hour feeling like the worst kind of angry mania. SO ANGRY. I was rehearsing fights with people and thinking of a lot of the shitty things people were saying online. It got to the point I was scaring myself and worried I would need to check into the hospital. I was out of town Sunday until Tuesday and it kind of calmed down then. I was going to come home and start taking my Ativan again. But it turns out I didn’t need it, because I was finally able to get some decent sleep.

I felt really non-sexual most of the week too, which is super unusual for me. Like it just all shut down. It’s coming back though, and I am feeling a bit more human.

I’m also really sad these days. That also started getting hard, and I was again worried I might have to check into the hospital.

I can’t imagine a worse place to be right now than a psych ward though. A bunch of unstable white people with no filters? No thank you. There’s enough of that in the comments section without having Racist Tiffany spitting on me while I try to eat mushy grey green beans. Racist Tiffany can stay somewhere else. I’m just gonna stay in my lil apartment doing my things.

Yesterday I finally had time to do laundry and clean. It’s a million times better in here. I smudged the house down and had a cry. I’ve been crying off and on really. BUT the funny thing is I have also just been crying off and on anyway before all this. I feel like I’m purging something. I was gonna buy corner store flowers yesterday for myself, but they were sold out cause it was after Valentines Day. They just had these really sad plants. Nope. None of those.

I am getting groceries today. I’ve been eating poorly. A lot of snacks.

I got a passport renewal application yesterday. Mine runs out next month, and I just have a feeling I am going to want to go somewhere soon.

Yeah, I don’t have a real good analysis today. It’s been a frustrating week, and my mental health is right now the main thing I am trying to focus on. I think a lot of us are recognizing we need to look after ourselves. I felt burnt out yesterday. Just soooooo sick of it all. And seeing how many white Canadians support Colten’s murder, that is fucking sick. It’s been hard. On some level I knew this was what Canada was about, killing Indians, getting rid of us so they can have the land and no more problems. It’s been going on for hundreds of years. In another sense, seeing people so proudly state that is their intent is chilling. Like do you hear yourselves? How can you look in a mirror and feel any kind of goodness about your immortal soul?????!

Anyway yeah. Sometimes I feel okay. I can look at funny memes and laugh, make jokes. Other times it’s soooooooo dark. Things are very polarized in Canada right now. And when I think about it, they always were. At least now we know who these people are. I’d be curious to see the statistics on Facebook of how many Canadians unfriended people this past week. It’s been a lot.

Silence is Violence

It must be nice to be white and unaffected by Colten Boushie’s death and his murderers acquittal. And I am not talking to all my white friends and allies. I know a lot of you, especially in Saskatchewan or who are from Saskatchewan, have stepped up and made it very clear that you know the verdict was unjust. And that makes me feel safer with you. But the inverse is also true. I feel LESS safe with people who haven’t said anything or taken a side publicly. And that’s sad.

It makes me wonder what they are protecting. If they really just don’t think it matters, if they don’t know their Indigenous friends are crying and grieving and raging right now, or worse, if they don’t care. OR even more worse, if I am one of their few or only Indigenous friends. I wonder about their friends and family, if they are staying silent because they know it’s going to expose someone on their friends list as a virulent racist, if they don’t want to rock the boat, if they just want this to pass by unnoticed and unmentioned.

A young man was shot in the back of the head at point blank range while he was sleeping, and even tho the murderers testimony was full of inconsistencies and blatant lies (who reaches for keys through a window with their left arm? Try it! Make a video of it. I want to see) an all white jury in front of a white judge declared him not guilty. At minimum he needed to get manslaughter. AT MINIMUM. There are people who have car accidents causing death who get convicted of manslaughter. But a man holding a gun that he has fired three times DOES NOT. That’s fucked.

AT MINIMUM you need to say something. At minimum you need to make at least one post denouncing this. That’s the baseline for being considered any kind of ally. Because we are noticing. My friends list is full of Indigenous people talking about this and feeling all kinds of really awful feelings right now. Like fear. People have overheard white people joking in Saskatchewan about being able to kill Natives now. We all know, no matter what we do, how well we play the game, we are always in danger of a bullet in the back of the head. And this isn’t the first time this has happened in Canada. And it won’t be the last.

Silence is violence. We are watching who on our friends list are commenting and stepping up and sharing anger and sorrow and grief and rage, and who is not. And it’s very telling. And what it’s saying isn’t good.

Money, Teeth, and Videos

A few things have happened recently.

Probably the most recent thing that happened was yesterday I lost my job. I was a month away from my probation period being up, and they didn’t think I was raising enough donations of the right type, something about my “stats” not being where they wanted them to be. They were very nice, my union rep didn’t feel it was fair. I had a mix of emotions. On one hand I felt like anyone getting fired feels kinda shitty about it. On the other hand, I got my major grant last week and so I was thinking seriously about whether I actually had time to do all the projects I am doing this year, AND this job. So I had wondered if I was gonna have to quit or take a leave of absence. So overall, I feel like the universe just wants me on a different path. I really like being a full time artist, I think it makes me happiest even when it’s super stressful and busy. I’m just suited to that kind of lifestyle and career. And things are picking up again this year, so I know I gotta go back to focusing on it.

And I also really like being domestic. After they sent me home I started a sourdough starter. And knitted. And puttered around. Today I am making a stew in my crockpot. Like I just like keeping my house clean and cooking now. I was joking with a friend about how I was my own housewife. Or just a mature effin’ adult. I think my ideal life would just be to be a full time artist and have time to keep my house the way I like it. And that is also a lifestyle that works really well with my disability. If I can make the money thing work out, it’s fine. And this year I am lucky and the money thing is gonna work out. I also got some other source of arty money which I can’t really talk about just yet. BUT rest assured things are going well for me.

Anyway, yes, so I got my major grant, $35,000 for a short dramatic period video set in the 1940’s on a reserve. It’s not based on anything real. But I worked hard on the script and I think it’s a good story and it’s challenging and super fucking dark. And doing a dramatic short is a good move if I want to direct this dramatic feature I have been writing. I need to demonstrate that I can do a good job, and a lot of my more recent work has been these weirdo comedic experimental narratives. So yeah, I need to show what I can do in a different genre. Hopefully people don’t laugh! Ha ha shit, sometimes people see my dramatic stuff and just start snickering and I’m like nooo iz serious no laugh~! Ha ha maybe the moody music will help.

So that’s exciting! I already have a probable location that a friend donated, so it seems really like it is coming together. I’m gonna have to do some research the next few months into clothing, music, laws, and household objects of that era. For instance, it’s set in the 1940’s, and there’s a scene of a dance at a band hall, and part of me wants it to be a powwow, but I actually don’t know if that was allowed at the time, and I might need to have some other kind of band, and then I have to figure out what was popular music on reserves at the time, etc etc. So yeah, it’s gonna be a while of researching, and looking up objects, and then seeing if I can make props and do the sets properly, etc. I had to revise the budget because I got $5000 shaved off of it. I ended up chopping my contingency fund, which might be a bad move. But I’m just gonna see if they accept the revised budget and release the funds, if not I’ll rewrite the budget again. MOSTLY I managed to keep all of my earmarked funds for the rest of my budget. Oh yeah and then I need to do casting. It’s a bunch of work even before I go and do the five day shoot.

I guess I’m lucky I know how to do so many things. I’m gonna hire a camera person tho. And a sound person. A bunch of people really. But most of the editing can be done by me, except I’m gonna need help with special effects. I have a friend who works for a VFX place tho so I’m gonna ask her for advice. So yeah, it looks like it’s gonna be a fun exciting year.

I’m glad I got these results last week, so I could get fired yesterday and not feel awful and anxious and hopeless!

Knitting is going well! I’m knitting this beautiful scarf for a future girlfriend made out of this hand dyed merino wool from these special sheep in Peru. It’s soft and warm and crazy long. Still not quite long enough. ALMOST! I am on the fourth ball of yarn, and each ball is $25 bucks. Not even counting labour it’s at least a $100 scarf ha ha. So it better be for a really good girlfriend! I am liking manifesting people in my life by knitting things for them though. I think when I’m ready for kids I’ll have to knit like, little sweaters or something. Mittens. On a string. To summon them into my life!

Yeah I’m doing okay. My friend I had the fight/incident/sadness with checked in on me yesterday. We had a nice brief text conversation. I still love and miss her, but I know we needed to take a break. We are supposed to talk at the end of this month. Hopefully that goes well, I’m trying to remember certain things in my life can’t be talked about with her. Which is hard, but yeah.

What else??? There’s other stuff I can’t talk about, not bad stuff or anything, just Yet To Be Revealed things. I’m really confused about a particular situation in my life involving a few people. Whenever I ask my tarot about it, the action it tells me to take is The Hanged Man which from my interpretation seems to be about waiting and surrendering. So yeah, I’m just trying to see if things sort themselves out. The trouble is I already know which way I would like things to go, and I am feeling they are not going to go that way, not for a while anyway. And there might be some twists and turns still, who knows.

The dogs are fine. I saw the dentist yesterday and she put this desensitizer on my tooth and says I have a slightly high bite that she can adjust. She’s different than the last dentist I saw who fucked my tooth up. The hygienist said that dentist doesn’t work there anymore. I almost cried with relief because he was so awful and did a filling of mine without freezing when I was trying to get my tooth fixed after he fucked up three times. Anyway, yeah. So I am gonna eat a corn chip today on that side and see if I need to go in for a bite adjustment. I think I probably will need to. But maybe not? Who knows. Either way I am hoping I can finally eat on both sides of my mouth again.