I’m trying to do my dogs training homework with her. It literally would only take 5-10 minutes, during which she would be fed a whole bunch of hot dog pieces. But she saw me put on the treat bag and got terrified and hid. So now I’m sitting on my couch wearing a pouch of hot dogs and writing in my blog. And Posey is under the couch.

Little Mister wanted to do Posey’s homework for her, but I told him no. Even tho I know he’s so smart and obedient that I could probably teach him to juggle three balls in the air at once for hot dogs. BUT THAT’S WHY! Posey needs assistance, and he is fine. I did give him some hotdogs tho.

SO some things have happened. One is that I got my personals ad posted! And I’ve gotten some attention, which is really sweet, and who knows what will happen! The interesting thing is I am not just getting attention on Instagram, I’ve also seen women checking me out at other events in real life, which is very strange for me but also flattering. I’m not very good at flirting back, I’m used to kind of feeling like I am chasing women and feeling pathetic about it. So having interested women approach me is really unusual. Also it is springtime, which is really nice, and I think a bit of spring fever is in the air. I think the problem is part of me really wishes I was with a sort of unrequited love, and it’s just not happening, and it bums me out but also I need to keep myself open to people who can actually give me love and attention. And I just wish it was playing out differently than it is. And I also know I can’t wait around forever and just stay unloved and undesired and feeling shitty about it. And there are some interesting women who want to get to know me, and I really can’t turn down people when I don’t know who they are yet. I mean obviously I could, BUT I think it is good for me to remain open to people, ESPECIALLY when I am finally entering a period in my life where I am getting some flirty attention.

Dating is weird. I’m not actually going on any dates yet, just messaging people. BUT being monogamous now (or potentially monogamous maybe since I’m still single) makes things weird cause I don’t want to offend people being like “I don’t know and I am talking to people but things can always change,” BUT ALSO I really haven’t committed to anyone and that doesn’t mean I never will commit to one person. But it feels lowkey shitty to flirt with a bunch of people. I think I feel shitty about it just because I know as a person who accepted polyamory just because I didn’t think I could do better, how awful it feels to see someone you like chatting someone else up. And I hate making people feel shitty the way I have felt shitty.

And the other part obviously is wanting to be available for this person who doesn’t even want to spend time alone with me anymore. BUT Therapy is on Friday so that’s a plus. Gah! Why is life so weird?

Anyway! The shitty thing that happened this last weekend was my friend nuked our relationship. Like threw multiple grenades into our friendship and even gave a parting shot when I had to tell her we couldn’t be friends anymore. I don’t even feel like saying all the terrible things she said, but I was in a boxing class and she suddenly flipped out and sent multiple angry emails ripping into me about all my gaping faults and how I was gonna be a terrible parent and was a horrible filmmaker and couldn’t tell a story and she said shitty things about me flirting with people on Instagram too. Like it was so crazy and fucked up. And I wasn’t even done reading the first paragraph of her emails to me after boxing class when I knew we couldn’t be friends anymore. And this is a 15 year friendship, the same one I had problems with in January.

In hindsight I wish I had ended this friendship last year, when she started getting aggressive and negative and tearing me down and making me doubt my experiences and my relationships with other people. I now see she was trying to bring me down because she was threatened by me. And I held on so long because we had years of good friendship times, and I thought if I waited long enough she would go back to the way she used to be. But instead she just got worse and worse. OH and she got angry at me for not responding to her fast enough through emails. And last week I had a deadline I was working to, and a lot of other work and social events to be involved in. So really I couldn’t spend the emotional energy to respond to her. And I was going to, but then she started ranting about how horrible assisted reproduction was and how the government shouldn’t pay for it. KNOWING fully that I have a referral to a fertility clinic to freeze my eggs and eventually do IVF with a surrogate. And I think I was making spaghetti sauce, and I was like oh man I had better answer this, so I sent a one sentence email kind of telling her it wasn’t okay, especially when talking to an Indigenous person who comes from a city where they were nonconsensually sterilizing Cree women as recently as a couple of years ago. And then she got madder and double downed, and then I was doing something else and could only answer on my phone so I sent another one sentence email. ANYWAY that’s when she flipped out the next day. Yep.

SO it’s my birthday in three days. And I’m looking forward to it, even tho my ex-friend did her damnedest to make me feel as shitty about myself as possible. The thing was she was working hard to make me feel shitty for a whole year, and it was an entire campaign. And I’m just like, so done with it. She can fuck off back to loserville. It was the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen, like a two year old having a tantrum in my inbox calling me a poopyhead. Only with adult language and years of intimate knowledge of my life. It was fucked. And the other thing too is that I was coming to realize I would need to end our friendship anyway when I got into a serious relationship, because she’s made it clear that she HATED anyone I liked, like just loathed, for no good reason and without ever meeting these women. And part of me knew if I got a girlfriend she would actively try to break us up. And I just didn’t want that kind of negative energy in my life anymore. SO going into my 40’s without this friendship is a blessing really. And I don’t think I’m gonna let anyone treat me that badly again. It’s over, my boundaries are clear, and I’m way better than that.

So today I got myself some kind of flowering plant to kill this season (I am bad with flowering plants) and I went to my favourite Thai restaurant for basil beef and fried bananas. I washed the floor to get this bad energy out of my house. And I got some lottery tickets on the off chance some magical karma is coming my way.

Today 10 people died on Yonge Street. And I talked about it a lot on my Facebook. And it’s becoming clear to some people (and I don’t know how true this is) that the driver of the van that plowed into all those people considered himself an Incel. That’s kind of a dark underbelly I am still shocked by. I haven’t had sex with another person in a really long time, but I’m still not gonna try and start some kind of toxic masculinity “revolution” over it just because I’m bad at getting laid. I was telling Mom how ridiculous it was, this whole Incel thing, and she was like “Oh but you’re not a man! You don’t have those urges!” (She’s totally joking she knows it’s a bunch of bullshit) and I was like “OH god, you can solve those urges with a hand and a piece of kleenex!” I mean sure it sucks not having an intimate relationship, but I think there’s probably some good reasons some people aren’t getting women’s attention the way they want. Like being a misogynist pig who thinks it’s legit to kill people because no one touched your penis recently. It’s been a fucking long time for me, but I have access to toys, porn, and my imagination, and until I find someone I can have a mutually loving relationship with, I’m just gonna have to live with that and the love of my friends. And that’s okay!

UGH some people! To ruin and destroy so many peoples lives just because of something petty like that.

Posey still doesn’t want my hotdogs. And I’m not gonna make her eat hot dogs if she doesn’t want them. I guess I’ll put them away and see if she wants to do her homework tomorrow.

I did my laundry, made chicken wings, went to an appointment, had a phone meeting, and wrote today. It seems like a lot. I had a look at my week this week and it’s like, oh man, soooooo many things to do. Like I don’t even have time to go get my hair cut, unless I go super early one morning. And my hair is getting plenty shaggy. I don’t feel like talking about work, even tho that’s basically my whole week and weekend coming up (yes! Both Saturday and Sunday!)!! What do I want to talk about?

I’ve been mostly writing about feelings this last year and some. Okay, so probably longer than that. I have a lot of feelings! All the time! I’m not crying everyday anymore though, so obviously things are changing for me, which is probably a good thing. It was getting ridiculous. Just start writing about something and then cry cry cry.

I think that’s what happens when you spend a decade thinking your life is gonna REALLY start when you finally get into a serious relationship. And meanwhile things are happening, like life is still going on and things are majorly changing and it’s still like “Someday I will have a girlfriend and everything will be perfect and I can do all those things I always wanted to” like have way more adventurous next level sex, and have a family with human children instead of just dog children, and live with someone, blah blah blah. BUT waiting around for that to happen kinda sucks. Like it’s just boring, even if there are cute people to flirt with it doesn’t mean much if they don’t want to really be with you. Like maybe things are meant to happen without this unknown partner.

At the same time, I spent a long time crafting the ultimate Herstory Personals ad to submit tomorrow, and it’s probably not gonna get me any dates, but maybe? Maybe it will at least pique some interest.

Someone not very long ago told me they thought I was too cool for them and that’s why they didn’t date me. It’s kind of bothered me ever since. I mean, she went on to get married and have a happy life or whatever. But I’m left wondering if I am some kind of horribly cursed TOO COOL person who people are afraid to date. Oh man! And the thing is I see myself as quite a nerd really. I like all kinds of weird things which probably aren’t cool, I do thinky things like write all the time, I make experimental videos a lot, I would rather spend an evening in with my dogs than go to a club. I’m not cool! It was hammered into me through elementary school that I was SO NOT COOL and therefore so not respected. And my teachers would always write “Thirza is well respected in class” and then some kid would be calling me ugly on the playground and I’m like seriously? You really think this, that these white kids respect me? Some NDN nerdy tomboy?

Anyway ha ha let’s save that for therapy at the end of the month.

But anyway, I don’t really know how people see me, I mean potential dates. Yesterday while I was walking to Kink Toronto to pick up a cane and another hurty thing, my friend was texting me being like “I didn’t know you were famous. Did you know you are famous?” and I was like “Ha ha yeah.” But it’s still kind of ridiculous, like I’m not TMZ famous (thank god!), but I’m famous enough people write about me in university classes.

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I abandoned this post, finally came back to it. It’s been a busy week, only halfway over. I’m tired, I worked on my writing really really hard yesterday, then was immediately unhappy with it and today ended up getting my haircut and thinking a lot. Also went to an AGM. And had a teen burger. I’ve been doing some good stuff this week, mostly not wrapped up in my feelings the way I was at the beginning of the week. I did get my Herstory personals ad in, so I am hoping it gets posted. YAY! It better, I gave them a donation.

I’m so tired. I’m so tired. I wish I had weekends back. I mean, honestly I am mostly making my own schedule these days. I just wish I had more veg out time.

My laptop was supposed to be finished today, but I didn’t get a call back. I’m hoping they call me tomorrow. I really want it already, I want to go back to my real life laptop.

I’m thinking of reworking how I operate on social media. Not so much NOT being on social media, more being judicious about how I relate to each one, in particular Facebook. I need to figure out what I am getting out of Facebook, and what I am NOT getting out of it, and what I want them to know about me and be able to sell to people. Because I have no hope that they will ever not be selling my data. That might look like me unliking a bunch of pages that are more commercial, changing my settings and profile info, reducing my use of check ins. I’m not totally sure and I gotta think about it a lot. Also people have been using it for networking with me, and in many ways I see my profile as more of a personal place for real life friends. I may delete a bunch of people who just lurk, because I feel like I don’t want people seeing my profile when I don’t get anything out of them. I also know I’m not gonna leave because it’s become the place to find out about events and publicize things. It’s very frustrating, this dependence on that ONE site. The other thing is that I am going to try and spread myself around a little bit more, use Twitter a little more, use Tumblr, I like Instagram because it’s a more chipper positive place. But FB owns it too, so it’s not really such a separate place. I usually post things from Instagram onto my fb, but only because my Mom doesn’t have an Instagram. I might change that too tho, and not share as frequently from Insta to FB. Ha ha fuck. I’m also really happy that Open Diary opened up again, because I got a lot more emotional validation there than any other social media network I’ve been on. It’s going to be a subscription service. But to be honest, I would pay for that kind of honest anonymous way of relating to strangers again.

Ha ha yeah and obviously I have this overshare blog, but this is my artist page project, and not really part of a social media network. I have way more control over this page. Anyway, those are my thoughts.

I seem to be attracting more and more work opportunities these days, which has been really nice. I’ve talked before about feeling really career oriented pretty much my whole adult life, and some of my teen years also. But it’s been interesting, because often I had to rely on other bizarre jobs to get by, or welfare or disability. And it’s starting to get to the point where I don’t need to do unrelated work or welfare/disability. And it’s pretty awesome. I just got offered a job directing a doc episode as part of a series, and this morning someone offered a writing job to me. And I have a lot of other work this year I have to do besides that. Like two short videos and this feature script (which is getting worked on today!). If I stop and think about the work I have to do this year I get super overwhelmed, which was kind of a feeling I was getting last year too. BUT ALSO I think I am doing okay with it. And I think it’s gonna be a fun year. And there are ways to get through this heavy workload if I am careful and do a lot of preplanning.

This afternoon is my writing time. I’m on a deadline again for the script, so I’m trying to devote a few hours every afternoon to working on it. It’s been going…. interestingly. Like it stalled for a couple weeks while I sweated out my thoughts about it. Then the other day it just started coming and was flowing really well. Then my laptop broke because of a dumb thing I did trying to get dirt out from under a key. Now it’s in the shop, and I have a week with my OLD laptop. Oddly enough it’s easier to use the old laptop, because I was trying to make do with my external keyboard on the new broken Macbook and the surface area is smaller and the keyboard was touching the touchbar and either way I couldn’t just rest it overtop the internal keyboard. So I had the screen FAR away and squinted my way through writing. Ugh pain. I’m gonna get my Macbook back on Tuesday or Wednesday. So in the meantime it’s gonna be limping along with this. I’m looking forward to having the new one back. This one has some laggy issues, the beachball shows up a lot, I did a software update but sometimes it’s just so slow and unhappy. I also deleted some stuff off here that I don’t need because it’s on another hard drive.

Ha ha boring work talk.

But really it makes me think I might actually be able to carve out the kind of life I want for myself. I’ve poured over two decades into my practice, and two degrees, and I sometimes felt really frustrated and held back by forces I didn’t understand. And my health issues in my 20’s kind of kicked me back down the ladder for a while. I took years to come back from my first hospitalization. I think it’s also though, just a question of being in the right place. For whatever reason Toronto seems to be the right place for me. I feel pretty involved in the community, I’m doing a lot of volunteer work with some media orgs on boards and in collectives. Which is nice, I always liked feeling involved in my community. I did some of that in Vancouver, not so much in Saskatoon, but here it seems like a good place to get involved. I’m also kind of lucky that I have done such a variety of work in my field, because I know stuff about docs and about narratives and have an experimental aesthetic and also write all the time. Like even my days off I am writing something. Maybe it’s just a diary entry about my feelings, but I feel like I’ve written thousands of pages even just in the last few years and although volume doesn’t equal quality, it is also way easier to write the more you do it.

Anyway ha ha omg I should probably go do my writing job right now and work on my script. Maybe someday I will start being able to write love letters to someone again. That would be nice.

It’s April Fools day! And Easter! I didn’t do a whole hell of a lot today, walked Posey, we went by the farm and it was open, so I dropped her off at home and went to see the new lamb. It was small and sleeping and super cute. I also saw some piglets which were also very cute, and some goats. Then I did weights for a half an hour and managed to do three sets of 10 different exercises with them, so that was good. Now my shoulder hurts though and I think I might have fucked it up or strained it or something.

I had an Easter dinner with my friends on Friday. My friend Erin told me that the dismal stats for IVF rates are skewed because the majority of them are based on cishet couples already facing fertility problems. And queer people making babies have way better chances. So I feel a bit more hopeful about that. Queer bonuses!

I’m finally in the last stretch of my 30’s! I’m turning 40 on the 26th of April, and I am super excited about it. I’m ready! I’M READY! I mean, I can’t say my 30’s were shitty, I did a lot of crucial personal growth in my 30’s, like health wise in terms of kicking my addictions, and career wise, and education wise. And moving to Toronto was a good event. But for some reason I feel better about my 40’s coming up. I feel like I might be more myself. I am not sure what I mean by that. I guess, that I feel I might be able to learn to love myself as I am and not feel like I need to push myself to be someone else. That probably sounds funny when I just started doing boxing this year and my body is changing. But I feel like I am more able to start asserting my needs more frequently, especially in relationships. Like things I want to explore in sexual relationships, and the level of commitment I am ready for, and the future I see for myself. Because I feel like I spent a lot of my 30’s being so wishy washy and a pushover when it came to romantic relationships where I would just take what I could get, and what I could get was usually so very little. And now I don’t want those kind of shallow non-relationships anymore. I want someone who’s brave enough to state what they want and make a commitment to me and be just as into the idea of a family. Like, I’ve never lived with anyone before. I like living alone, but also it would be nice to know someone is coming home to me, or that when I go home someone is waiting. Like just things like that. But at the same time I don’t want to spend the rest of my adult life feeling like I need to make someone love me if it isn’t happening. Yeah.

And I think I’m going to start taking less shit from people. Like I think I’m just gonna be way more assertive. It would be nice, to feel like I’m making myself heard. Like when I’m in a concert and someone is talking loud and being a jackass, I wanna be able to tell them to shut up! That kind of thing.

But also I think a lot of good things are gonna happen in my 40’s. Like I do think I’m gonna have a family, and I think my career is gonna go well. I would like to be financially stable. I’m not real sure how that is going to happen, but I know there must be a way to do what I love and have a steady income. I want to stay in this co-op. I really want to be able to get into a three bedroom when I have kids, but I’m not sure about it because it’s hard to get into three bedrooms here. But that would be nice. I want to train Posey to be a more secure dog so she can have some people-friends she trusts, and it would be a bonus if those people she trusted were also my friends and future lovers. I would like to have a credit card, and not because I feel like I want to go on shopping sprees, but more because I want to be able to check into a hotel and not have to worry about getting denied because I have no credit card. It’s hard cause I’ve never had a an actual job for a long enough period of time to have a credit card.

I would like to feel like I am getting somewhere in therapy and resolve some old shit that has been hanging around my life for too long. I would like to let go of things that have made me angry for years that won’t ever be resolved, without feeling like I have to forgive the people who hurt me. I would like to meditate again. I would like to feel like I have a spiritual practice that makes sense to me. I would like to find the right person to give me my spirit name that isn’t gendered and is also Plains Cree. I would like to learn more Plains Cree, enough to have a conversation, even if it’s just a ridiculous conversation. I would like to know the Cree word for my particular gender and orientation. I would like to know more ASL and be able to have and understand a dialogue with another ASL signer. I would like to keep learning boxing and feeling like I am familiar with my body. I’d like to be more sexually adventurous even on my own. Maybe especially on my own, I kind of landed in a rut with my vibrator and I have about $1800 worth of sex toys that AREN’T getting used when they could be. I remember when I was younger and lived alone for the first time I was doing so many things on my own and finding out so much stuff about myself like how much I liked hot wax. Now I don’t even remember the last time I used hot wax in play. I want to find an adventurous partner who also really loves kissing as much as I do and would be happy just sitting around making out and that would be like a solid date activity. I want to be able to tell my friends they are assholes when they insult me instead of weakly smiling like I don’t give a shit. I would like to have enough money that I can do the big things I want to do without freaking out and worrying all the time. I would like to feel secure enough that I don’t always have to check my bank account. I would like to be able to go on more holidays without needing to time them to a convenient screening that happens to be in that location.

Yeah, I feel like all of those things are doable. One other thing is I would like to take more emotional risks, even if I fall on my face and make things awkward. I feel like there are things worth taking risks over. I feel like there are some people in my life who I’m talking with but really know there is a whole other conversation we should be having but we aren’t, and we need to have those conversations, and I need to be brave enough to take a risk and bring it up. I feel like I want to tell people I love them more often, especially when I feel it so strongly I don’t know what else to say and I get all flustered and miss the moment. And I want to hug more friends. And see more people. And go out into the world more often and stuff.

Yeah it’s a lot. There’s a whole lot of career stuff I want to do too, but that’s something else.

I think being 40 might feel really liberating. It would be nice to step out of my 30’s and feel like there’s a line between some really self destructive patterns I was in, and my future, which could be all of these great things.