Rebecca Jones-Howe's Blog, page 18

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

I was in Golden for my friend’s wedding at the end of August. The weather was cool and gloomy and wonderful, the perfect atmospheric fodder for getting back into a legitimate writing routine. Often I forget that it’s been about two years since I stopped writing on the regular. Sometimes I look at my kid and think to myself that time really hasn’t passed all that fast. Despite what people have told me, I find time passing for myself quicker than I find it passing with my daughter. I’m sure that’s mostly because she’s so petite. She still fits in her 12 month clothes. All the shoes I buy her are WAY TOO BIG and I keep thinking that I want her to just grow and grow and grow so she can fit into her cute black cat flats, dammit.

On the way back from my Golden cabin retreat, I wrote a horror story. I wouldn’t call it scary, but it did have the regular horror elements that I like to write about. Ghosts. Possession. Rural environments. It had a that touch of eroticism that normally bleeds into my fiction, whether I want it to or not. Sitting in the back of the van we rented fro the tip, I cranked the first short story that I’d passionate about in a long time.

I thought it was good.

Then I shared it with a few writer friends and got some feedback that opposed with my thoughts.

Now, if you’re a writer and share your work with people you trust, you know that constructive feedback can sting. You trust your friends to to be honest, because they’re people who have fallen in love with your work and your characters and the subjects you choose to write about, those pieces of you that don’t come out personally but only through text. So when I got the feedback on my horror story from friends telling me that there some of those elements in my fiction were missing, well, I really had to sit back and think about exactly what it was I was trying to do.

Ever since publishing Vile Men I’ve been struggling with wanted to do next (apart from the novel I’ll be writing in November). Considering that a handful of horror blogs gave the collection such great fanfare, I figured that taking a detour down some horror avenues might be a re-inventive direction. I don’t know if I felt too confined by the genre, but horror really hit me for a loop.

The piece I wrote in Golden was simply that. Just a horror story. I suppose I could write more. I suppose I could get better at it. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to write “dirty stories that can still be considered literary” forever, but there’s also that tormented part of me that always will.

So I’m not entirely sure what to do with the horror story I wrote. I’ve added more to it, more character, more tension, a little politics to give it meaning. I’ll share it with more people. I don’t know what they’ll think.

What I’ve learned from these past few months is that I’m still in the heap of my writer crisis. It’s a perpetual sophomore slump of awfulness, only this time I’ve got a billion new stories in my head all with a slight horror bent and I keep downplaying myself, thinking that they’re not worth writing or that I can’t pull them off or that I don’t have the chops, or or or or or…

Mostly, I’m just paranoid. That’s what horror is.

November and Nanowrimo and the novel I’ve been thinking about for a year are still a month away. I’ll keep being stubborn and writing write more horror. Because it’s October. Because Halloween is coming. Because at least I’m writing something, and that’s more than I’ve done in two years.

Sharon Morris: My Spirit Mom

I’m just gonna get straight to this: Being a new mom was rough goings for me.

I don’t know if I had any legit symptoms of PPD. I thought about it sometimes, but was convinced that things weren’t “that bad”. Of course the late nights and the aching tits and numb wrists and the horrible feeling of being tethered to the sound of that newborn gremlin cry and whatever else were hard, but the literal worst part was comparing myself to other moms, because I don’t think I’ve ever once felt like other moms do.

It took me a while to really “bond” with Maggie, but I know that’s normal.

I never got separation anxiety, particularly because I knew that she was safe with whoever I left her with. Honestly, whenever I’d get some time away from her in the beginning, it was just nice to not feel the pressure to have to be this specific person that everybody wanted to see. When you’re a woman holding a newborn baby, people have general assumptions about the caring, nurturing, happy woman you’re supposed to be. But whenever I went anywhere with Maggie, I felt like I was Kate Middleton walking out of the hospital in that blue polka-dot dress and everyone was looking at me because I was “NEW MOM KATE MIDDLETON” and everybody in the entire universe was looking at me making judgments about my fairy tale happy ending life and my picture was everywhere and everyone was wondering when I’d lose all the baby weight and all I could think of was that I DIDN’T ASK TO BE KATE MIDDLETON IN THE FIRST PLACE.

While I lot of women dream of becoming mothers and have the ability to slip easily into that role, I found that none of that came natural to me. I felt like a bunch of other women did a better job being a mom to Maggie than I ever could be. Even just writing that last sentence hurts because I know that I thought it at one point. Every so often I get that feeling that I’m just not parenting material. I feel sometimes like I’ve got this loving parent vs. child-hater dichotomy going on, and that I switch from one personality to the other depending on whom I’m with. The real issue is that when I’m with other parents (specifically other moms), my anxiety levels start fluctuating and I feel this immense pressure to be a “mom” and talk about breastfeeding and proper naptimes and ugh…playdates, and I stop feeling like myself and just talk about MAGGIE MAGGIE MAGGIE until I feel like a zombie. Then I go home and usually have a meltdown because I have no idea why I can’t be a “mom” and act like everyone else at the playground.

During that first year after Maggie was born, I often told people that I pretty much felt like I was in high school all over again. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t seem to fit in with everyone else.

And, like with most problems, I found my epiphany through television.

Enter the British sitcom, Catastrophe, about two middle-aged singles, Rob and Sharon, who have a one-night hookup while the Rob is on a business trip in London, and Sharon calls him a few weeks later to tell him that she’s pregnant. I watched the first season while I was pregnant with Maggie, and luckily the second season (which – SPOILERS – takes place a couple years later after the couple have their second child) aired just before those first few miserable months I was to have as a new mom.

The issue with most sitcoms where the main characters become parents is that they never really become parents There’s always the cliche-ridden birth episode and then the “at home with baby” episode when everything gets royally fucked and nobody gets any sleep. And then after that, the baby basically just shows up whenever it’s convenient and romantic for the couple to have a baby around. I remember being happy with The Office after Pam and Jim have their first child, and Pam struggled in the hospital trying to breastfeed her daughter, but even she overcame that hurdle just before they left the hospital, and then everything was all peachy-keen, save for the fact that they were tired all the time. I mean, I get that it’s a sitcom, but even that parenting plot was basically just a chicken wing of meat compared to the ENTIRE CHICKEN FULL OF STUFF THAT MAKES YOU SUPER INSECURE WHEN YOU BECOME A PARENT.

That’s why Catastrophe had such an impact on me. Okay, sure, the kids aren’t around for most of the show either, but some of the postpartum stuff that the wife character, Sharon (played by the amazing and hilarious Sharon Horgan) deals with are told in such a dark, yet hilarious way. Sharon’s character, like me, is also a bit of a sarcastic pessimist, and watching her deal with parenthood was the only solace I had when during my time as a new mom. I’d watch and and laugh and think, “Oh thank God, other people understand.”

In one scene, she brings her newborn baby to her work, and while all of her co-workers ask question after question about how things are with her and how the baby is, Sharon looks at the new printer in the office and asks about it with excitement, but none of her co-workers pay any attention to her words.

In a scene at home, Rob and Sharon debating checking on their infant daughter because she’s been silent for so long. They wonder if she’s dead, and ultimately decide in that one moment that it probably would be better that she was dead than risk the chance of waking her up. I’m sure most parents would swear they’d never think that way, but I mean, come on. I’m sure like 75% of all parents have thought that at some point.

In one of the scenes that touches on how being parents can affect the relationship between spouses, Rob and Sharon attempt to have sex, but then Sharon can’t help but get distracted by the baby:

One of my favourite episodes is in season two, when Sharon faces her postpartum depression. She gets some medication, and then attempts to befriend another mother in a local mom group. Later she is distraught when her new mom-friend returns to work turns Sharon away, claiming that she doesn’t have time for “people who need things”. Sharon takes a stress-walk home, and then makes eye contact with her infant daughter in her stroller. The baby smiles, and Sharon finally has that bonding moment with her child.

That scene reflected exactly how I felt when Maggie was about three months old, and I woke up one morning and took her downstairs to the changing table, forcing myself to face another grueling day of motherhood. But then Maggie looked at me and smiled, and in that moment I thought, “Oh God, she actually appreciates me.” Of course, that day was also agonizing, but the point is that those tiny moments of real interaction do end up having a significant impact.

Motherhood can be really isolating at times. It’s hard to connect with people because all women deal with becoming a mother in a myriad of different ways, really. Of course it’s nice to talk it through with other people, and I probably should have sought some kind of help when I was in the peak of my doom and gloom. It’s hard not to pretend like you have a handle on everything. It’s hard to talk about the rough stuff when you feel like people won’t understand how you’re feeling. Even now, I will sometimes go through awful patches and want to crawl under my blankets and pretend like nothing is happening. What I really try to do is have a dark sense of humour about it, because life is sometimes just way easier when you don’t take things so seriously.

What I struggle with most these days is relating to other mothers whose “motherly instincts” came to them naturally. I never feel mom enough for other parents. I get insecure about the kind of parent that I am. I don’t make scrapbook pages and I forget to take photos of my kid on particular holidays and sometimes I find it frustrating having to take her out to kid-oriented events because I’m horrible at interacting at a kid-level. I know I’m not a bad mom by any means, but I feel like I’ll never not have a hard time trying to engage outside of my own mindset. And whenever I take Maggie to the playground and there are other parents there and I know that any conversation I have is solely going to be about parenting and kids and vaccinations and childbirth and sleep training, basically just want to take Maggie and run.

Probably my all-time favourite Catastrophe scene is when Sharon takes her kids to the park, and then attempts to bond with the other moms that go there on a regular basis. Unfortunately I couldn’t find an extended clip of this scene, but this is pretty much how I feel when I try to be myself as a mom in public on a regular basis:

Week of Wardrobe: July 25th – July 31st, 2016

This is late, but Iv’e got my posts here. Recently I painted my nails a Canadian $10 bill shade of purple, and I was obviously trying to cater my outfits to that polish this week. Everything just has to match, IMO.

This week was a bit daunting with the writing, because on Wednesday I went out and got printer ink for the printer that I USED to own, and didn’t end up going back to Best Buy until Sunday. I’ve recently finished the draft for the horror short story I’ve been working on for the last month or so. Part of me is sad that it’s taken me so long to write it, but another part of me is happy that I’ve at least forced myself to commit to something for once, because I’ve really been crap at committing to a lot of my writing endeavors as of late. Nevertheless, I exchanged the ink for the right ink on Sunday and I’ve printed my story out and it’s not as bad as I thought it was, and THANK GOD I’m finally back on some kind of track, because writing since becoming a parent has become a literal teenage chore for me.

So when it comes to my dressing this week, I’ve been trying to rotate my summer-appropriate pieces in order to keep my ensembles fresh (because I’ve been documenting them). Summer is also horrible because I’m always bloated because it’s always so damn hot that Jon and I usually just get take & bake pizzas instead of committing to making a real dinner and my fingers are always swollen and everything is always awful but I’ve been trying to make the best of things and I can admit that I’ve honestly been happy with what I’ve achieved thus far.

I’ve really gotta say that all the likes and comments I’ve received on Instagram so far have been really wonderful and that in the last month since I’ve started posting pictures of my ensembles that I’ve felt a lot better about my body than I ever have, so thanks to everyone who has liked or commented on my posts. Keep the positivism going.

Friday Night Track: “Everyday Is Halloween” – Ministry

So it’s technically Saturday but I stayed awake trying to write during the last couple hours of my Friday and I stayed awake through Friday night so it’s still technically Friday in my POV.

This song came out three years before I was born, in 1984. I know I need to listen to more Ministry, but when I listen to this song I just get so overwhelmed by how good it is that I just put it on repeat and I don’t stop, never stop, won’t ever stop listening.

80’s synth has always had a special place in my heart, ever since it was the very early 90’s and I used go on class field trips in elementary school to the McArthur Park skating rink and for whatever reason they were ALWAYS playing the same 80’s playlist of great songs that consisted of Tears for Fears and The Cure and maybe Depeche Mode but I can’t specifically remember all the songs. It wasn’t the radio, just a bunch of songs, so I have no idea what was really playing, if some person has compiled a playlist that would forever loop that skating rink or what. All I know is that that playlist what was a kindergarten girl loved most about going to the skating rink every winter.

Nevertheless, that was where my love of dark brooding synths started. Over the years I picked some of those bands into a semi-regular rotation, but it wasn’t until December of 2014 when I was super pregnant with my daughter and about ready to have her that I discovered all that nostalgia over again with Songza’s “Dark Side of the Synth” playlist. I made all of my Christmas shortbread cookies to that playlist and it was the greatest thing ever.

My favourite song from that playlist was “Everyday is Halloween”. Every so often I’ll listen to it and wish that I’d been a teenager in the 80’s, despite the fact that being goth in the 80’s probably wasn’t all it was banged up to be, what with all that satanic paranoia about cults and D&D going on. I dunno. I was never the rebellious sort. Were I an 80’s teen I’d probably still listen to this song on repeat but I’d probably keep the album hidden under my bed or something, the same way that I used to keep my copy of Eminem’s “The Marshall Mathers LP” hidden under my bed when I was a teen in the early 00’s.

Yeah, definitely not as cool.

What A Lie, What A Life

One of the things that’s deterred me from “lifestyle blogging” is that need for perfection. Whenever I do make posts from my house or of my things, I typically shove all the clutter into one corner and fake myself a house that looks like the houses all the bloggers have. Since we’ve done renos and continued to live life between the renos, there have been fewer and fewer spots wherein I can fake that perfection.

I often wonder how many bloggers live that way.

I don’t know any millennials in my day to day life who own perfection. Some of them have good jobs, nice houses, pretty things. Part of it is about effort. Part of it is money. Part of it is the lifestyle they were raised in. Growing up, my parents were not well-off. They were, however, incredibly frugal, and buying a house was a lot easier back when they bought the house I grew up in in the early 90’s. They paid it off in 10 years. That being said, my mom bought most of the decor from thrift stores, and we definitely had a lot of clutter. There was rarely a bare spot of wall with nothing against it, and I’m sure that’s a feature of homes that many people have.

It’s always been my dream to have my own house with bare patches of all. But with life is clutter, and unless you’re the kind of person (and I do know a tiny handful of them) who is constantly purging items and keeping them organized, then your clutter will end up tucked into a box against a bare wall in your house. When Jon and I first bought our place, our mass selection of clutter ended up in the unfinished basement, which was nice because it was out of the way. Then we started renovating the basement into a full suite for my sister and her husband to move in, and we condensed said clutter and moved it all into our two spare bedrooms. Then Jon’s brother stayed with us for a couple of months for an internship he was doing for pharmacy school, and we condensed the mess even further into our one spare room. Then we had Maggie and we moved the clutter back into the guest room. Now whenever we have guests over we try to put the clutter as tightly into the guest room closet as we possibly can, and then whenever I try to do crafts or have to decorate for Halloween or Christmas or whatever, I have to dig through that clutter to get what I need, and the guestroom turns into a total Shit Room and it stays like that until it gets bad enough and I throw a total housewife tantrum about WHY MY HOUSE IS A DISASTER AND DOESN’T LOOK LIKE ALL THE HOUSES ON THE INTERNET AND I’M ALMOST THIRTY AND IT’S LITERALLY INSANE THAT I CAN’T KEEP A NICE HOUSE.

It’s nice to have something to strive for, but every so often, when I browse the internet for pretty living rooms, and I find out that a living room is owned by some 28 year-old woman with perfect hair and three kids who left her body all Carls Jr. poster girl perfect, it’s hard not to feel disheartened. Because the Internet is full of real people who most likely live better lives than you. And you can’t Snopes bloggers to see if they’re being fake with their Lououtin shoe collection and their Eames chairs and their marble kitchen counters.

Not that it matters, right?

There’s a bunch of other bloggers who tell you that, but they also have really pretty houses and somehow have the time to learn how to use their $800 Canon DSLR camera with which they use to take that happy “content mom” photo of her and their kids on their stupidly-nice patio that overlooks a well-manicured backyard with pretty garden statues and roses that stay blooming all summer long.

So yeah.

Back in my teens I blogged everyday, back that was in the early 2000’s when blogging was more about words than it was about pictures of pretty things. Now, every blog is a magazine of one person’s life. I’ve always Macgyvered my content on Instagram to take a box of the nice parts…but the rest, well, it’s pretty normal. It’s cluttered and it’s lethargic and tiring, and lately I’ve been thinking that I need to be more honest about that. Since becoming a mother and releasing a book of stories that people praise for being raw and honest, I’ve realized that being raw and honest is really all I want to be.

Often times I’ll take photos of Maggie and I cringe a little before sharing it on Facebook because there will be a stack of laundry in the corner or a bunch of papers falling off the coffee table or dishes on the kitchen counter that have been there for a couple of days. There are times that I think about Photoshopping them out before posting them, but that’s just getting a bit crazy. Today I took the photos of my living room that are scattered throughout this post, and sharing them here is a bit unnerving, but I’m doing it because it’s honest. If this were still the 50’s and other housewives would come into my house, they’d see it all, and I’m sure even back then women were under the same pressure that they are now. They just gave into it, because the judgment meant that they were failures in every retrospect.

These days, you can either hide the clutter behind your cell phone camera and pretend it doesn’t exist. Most women (specifically parents) interact via the Internet, where judgment is everywhere, but it’s also incredibly easy to hide the flaws. Nevertheless, with the whole body positive movement that’s flooding the internet, I figure that we might as well expand that to “house and home positivity” as well.

So this is pretty much my starting point. Please don’t judge me. You can consider this my low. We’ll see how much better I can be.

Week of Wardrobe: July 18th – July 24th, 2016

Started out a nice 23 degrees this week, so I managed to wear my tights for what will probably be the last time before the end of the summer. We’re now at around 33 degrees and higher so I’m pretty sure that I’ll be posting fewer outfit pictures because SUMMER IS COMING and Imma gonna look like trash.

I don’t wear tank tops (because I don’t like my arms) and I’m not much of a shorts person (because my thighs like to eat ’em up). Summers usually consists of whatever knee-length skirts and dresses I own, and also probably capris and t-shirts when I gets so unbearably hot that I just wanna die instead of venturing anywhere where air conditioning or a swimming pool doesn’t exist. There’s a point where I don’t care what I look like, and that point is once I enter the confines of my house, as well as when the thermometer hits about 36 degrees (which is supposed to happen this week!)

Hopefully over the next couple days I can crank down and really get some writing done. I’ve currently got a writer outfit on, so perhaps next week will feature a few of those, which will for once be a good thing, right?

WEDNESDAY

Top: Joe Fresh

Skirt: Zellers

Necklace: Vintage

Bracelet: Cath Kidston

Belt: Winners

Tights: We Love Colors

Shoes: Winners



THURSDAY

Top: Winners

Skirt: Winners

Necklace: Vintage

Bracelet: Gift

Shoes: Winners



FRIDAY

Top: FluffyCo

Skirt: Winners

Necklace: Vintage

Shoes: Winners



SUNDAY

Dress: Vintage

Belt: Winners

Necklace: Winners

Bracelets: ASOS

Shoes: Winners

A Week of Wardrobe: July 11th – July 17th, 2016

Let’s talk about pattern mixing a bit, because I’ve been getting obsessed with it as of late. There are rules all over about pattern mixing, but the real trick is having an eye for it, as well as training your eye to see patterns that mix well. It used to be I’d only pattern mix with something geometric (like stripes or polka-dots) with something a bit more wild (florals or whatever the hell else). Every so often though, I’ll be folding my clothes and I’ll notice patterns that look half-decent. I’ll try them on. I’ll make a new outfit. It’ll look good.

So here are some of the general things I’ve noticed about the pattern-mixes that I get comments on:

Use simple geometic patterns: If you’re new to pattern mixing, stripes are pretty much your go-to option. Polka-dots also work really well. I usually stick with the geometric rule when mixing. Plaids and checkers also work well if they’re simple plaids, too.

Use of colour: Like my luggage tag skirt/floral shirt combo, the colours are similar and balance each other. You can also pull contrasting colours between the top and bottom pieces. My gramophone top/floral skirt combo, the white of the gramophones contrast with the white of the skirt.

Use a belt: To break up more complex patterns, use a wide belt. It also cinches the waist, so hurrah.

SHOP THE LOOKS



MONDAY: Top: Sugarhill Boutique // Skirt: Winners // Necklace: Etsy // Bracelet: Louche

THURSDAY: Top: Winners // Skirt: Winners // Watch: La Mer

FRIDAY: Top: Sugarhill Boutique // Jeans: Winners // Bracelet: Cath Kidston

SUNDAY: Top: Winners // Skirt: Winners // Necklace: Kate Spade // Shoes: Aldo // Belt: Winners // Bracelet: Cath Kidston

WIP Moodboard: “The Wheel”

Since I’ve started complaining about my self-proclaimed “writer crisis”, I can freely admit that I haven’t done much to get out of my funk. I go through patches where I think that I could easily just stop writing. I’ve published a book. Readers have emailed me to tell me that my writing helped them feel less like garbage. Book blogs write nice reviews. I’ve achieved what I’ve wanted but I want to achieve more. Yet, now I’m perpetually stressed about not being able to write. It’s creative stress, which is awful because it’s the kind of stress you could easily rid yourself of, if only you just stopped being creative. Which should be easy.

More people ask me how my kid is than how my writing is going, so I could easily just stop writing and focus more on my kid and do the whole mom blog thing and devote more time to my Pinterest pages and fake my way to nostalgic 50’s housewife madness. I could pop out the second kid people keep harassing me to do. I could start drinking TAB. I could put all my effort making sure that my kid(z) don’t grow up with the same insecurities I did. Except I can’t do that, because I just spent some serious time explaining all my hate for modern day parenting in a creative paragraph, and you just can’t shake it out of me, man.

That’s a moment that every writer will go through at some point. That slack thought that you could just quit and go on with your life. But then what? At the end of the night, when you put your kid to sleep and your husband goes to bed because he has to work at 4AM, and you either pour a glass of booze or coffee or tea (depending on how the night is going), then what do you do?

Exactly.

I’ve spent the last few months attempting to start new stories, falling into a funk, dropping said new stories to start new new stories that aren’t as terrible as the new stories. Since I’ve had my kid, it’s been a lot of trial and error trying to slot my writer mentality back into my routine of parenting, part-time retail work, and 2016 presidential election coverage. It’s been hard. I’ve delved deep into YouTube. I’ve done enough online shopping. Nothing can tame those little thoughts that plague my head all day long. They are insecurities. They are voices that need characters. They are issues that need metaphors. They are ghosts that live in the left side of my brain.

My head needs a creative exorcism.

Lately I’ve been attempting to write horror. I’ve delved into a few of the horror tropes before, particularly with zombies in “Better Places” and metaphorical ghosts with “Ghost Story” (both of which are in Vile Men), but I wouldn’t say that any of my “horror stories” were intentionally scary. I don’t watch a lot of horror, as I enjoy being able to sleep at night. I love me some slasher flicks, but when it comes to real horror, I pretty much always choose sleep over scares. Every so often, though, I’ll come across a film that sounds intriguing enough that I dare myself to watch alone. A while back I finally watched It Follows, which was not only the ideal horror for a baby like me, but also the inspiration I needed to write something amazing.

The thing about horror is that it’s not so much about creating monsters as it is taking something you’re afraid of and making a monster out of that. For example, It Follows is about college-aged people facing the consequences of getting older and becoming adults. That fear takes shape in the form of an entity that can change into different people who follow the “carrier” of a sexually-transmitted curse. The carrier can pass the curse on, but the curse traces its away back to previous carriers if the current carrier is killed by the entity. It’s a bit of a mind-jarring concept, because as a young adult, you do what you can to avoid having to face “adult consequences”, and having to face them is the worst possible thing. At least for me it was. That’s why I didn’t go to the dentist for ten years after a horrifying root canal, but now I’ve found me a great new dentist (where the hygienist actually let me hash out all my dental fears and was honest and comforting about all of it before she even did anything to my face) and now I’m getting my teeth fixed and will eventually have to deal with the massive amounts of money I’m gonna eventually have to pay for it all. That’s some scary shit.

Enter the moodboard. Normally I find these kinds of things cheesy and extraneous, but I’ve always been a visual person, and I do enjoy making graphics to evoke the feeling of my stories, both in the title graphics and in my “sexy hipster graphics”. I’m really just putting what limited graphic skills I have to use. “Moodboards” are mostly used by designers to convey an idea to a client of some sort, be it for a website or a room or a party or whatever, really. But they’re also pretty trendy on Pinterest, and a lot of people use them to get some creative energy flowing with whatever sort of creative endeavor they’re striving to complete. So I figured I’d take a stab at it and see what new ideas it would inspire for my horror story.

After stumbling through a few pictures on Pixabay, and combing through my draft for whatever redeemable passages I could draw inspiration from, I ended up with a moodboard that I was happy with. I even found some elements that I’d quickly added to my story in its early draft phase (sheets, roses, and a garden statue) that I overlooked during my “I’m a terrible writer who can’t write for shit” phase this past week. After throwing some photos of those elements into my moodboard, however, I was inspired to fit them cohesively into the story. The board took my about an hour to put together — with the help of these free templates from Stuck with Pins. The process was engaging. Writing can be isolating, staring at a blank white page for so long. Having a chance to get my hands dirty with visual aspects aided me with grounding some ideas that I couldn’t draw inspiration from using words alone.

And now, when I retire to bed at 2AM, I can see my monster in my sleep.

A Week of Wardrobe: July 4th – July 10th, 2016

So this is the first week I’ve spent actually taking pictures of my outfits. One of these days I won’t be lazy and I’ll set up my camera instead of resorting to the low-quality selfie camera on my phone, but all style bloggers start somewhere and this is pretty much my somewhere.

I worked all week and thus, had a full selection of outfits to share. I probably won’t be doing posts like this every week, because I share all these selfies on Instagram and I don’t really wanna be cross-posting a whole bunch of stuff. Nevertheless, seeing that all this fashion blog crap is new to me, we’ll just leave this post as is and I can start making “real” tidbit posts this week. Good? Good!

 

Friday Night Track: Wild Beasts – “Get My Bang”

Since 2009, I’ve considered the Wild Beasts my favourite band. I recommend them to friends who like indie music more often than not. They’re also one of the only bands that Jon and I both really, really, really like enough that we can get drunk together and talk about how amazing they are. I dunno how you can really properly “rate” a band — and I know that rating is kind of subjective depending on the person — but I remember seeing the Wild Beasts in 2011 after the release of their third album, Smother, and we were sitting at a table with this drunk guy at the Vancouver bar venue, talking about the real complexities about how amazing the band was. When you can bond with complete strangers on that kind of level, I’d say the band has some special meaning.

I’m also just spewing meaning over my keyboard after two drinks, so maybe I’m just an idiot. Whatever.

Nevertheless, the Wild Beasts are coming out with a new album, Boy King, on August 5th, and the first released single, titled “Get My Bang” isn’t exactly getting the greatest response from devoted fans. Yes, the band has a different sound with every album. Smother is my personal fave, with its deep sexuality yet very subtle and somber vibe. For whatever reason, Present Tense didn’t really grip me all that well, despite the fact that it’s still a solid album.

Many a people have called me a “hipster”, and I have fallen out of love with a lot of bands for going mainstream or putting out boring music or whatever. (Case in point, Metric seriously sucks now. I really tried with Pagans in Vegas but Emily Haines sounds so flat it’s like listening to music in 2D.)  Nevertheless, the more mainstream electronic sound of the Wild Beasts in the upcoming Boy King is fine with me. The music is still good. The lyrics are still sexy yet craftily-written. They recently released a second song from the album, “Big Cat”, and I quite like it. A lot. And honestly, one of the things about the Wild Beasts that’s always bugged me is that they’re music is so good but I’ve never been able to add any of their songs to my super dance-y POWWWERRRRRR!MIX playlist. AND NOW I CAN. I don’t think that every band’s shift toward a more “mainstream” sound is necessarily bad. Goldfrapp shifts back and forth between pop and ambient all the time and nobody seems to complain about it.

The way I see it, music is the same as writing. There are trends. There are things that, as an artist, you want to try out specifically because they’re trends, just for the sake of seeing what kind of spin you can put on it. Like erotic novels. Or gory horror. Or writing a book that has a crafty use of the word “girl” in the title.

Sidenote: I’ve always found lead singer, Hayden Thorpe to be super sexy AF, and his attractiveness only improves with every album, and watching him dance in an alley with a chick who can flip her hair like nobody’s business is nice. It’s trashy, but it’s still nice.