And suddenly it hits you...

I feel a bit sad today. A friend is moving away to Toronto to pursue a better life that she had here. Normally I would be 100% happy for anyone who was moving away from me because my life revolved around Fort St. John for quite a while (and I imagine for a few years at least will continue to do so in some shape or form). To move away was to escape or at least try to escape from the blackhole that is that town. I'm still happy for her, she is a wonderful friend even though we've only hung out 2 times ever since I moved back to Vancouver. I blame work entirely because that is the very nature of being a cook, to be working while others are playing. To be the very infrastructure of entertainment and fun while people are spending their time with us.

I've always thought of myself of being a child, both in responsibility and nature. It keeps me healthy and optimistic to a fault but is refreshing to a LOT of people who have been so cynical to reality and such. What tethers me to this is my association with FSJ so much, especially friends hailing from the town which only reminds me of my childhood and history. Even though I had made older friends who are Jeremy and Carla; it's also through an extension of another childhood friend that we know each other. Socially speaking I can act like such a child or at least feel young because of this hometown connection.

However in talking with my friend last night, we talked about how we were getting older. Perhaps a bit wiser, perhaps not but the conclusion that we are growing up was a point. I said that growing up creeps up on you, it never hits you but now I have to admit that I was wrong in that part. It does creep up on you but it hits you like sledgehammer when you realize it. I felt I grown up faster in one night than I have in the past few years. I've come to realize that I'm going to miss my friend a lot not because she is such a wonderful person, a fellow artist of which I can talk to on such a pretentious and bullshitty level of art dialogue; but because she is the first person of non FSJ-origin moving away from me.

Essentially she's a part of my history that is no where related to FSJ at all and it feels like a missed opportunity to know something or someone that isn't part of that social network in the remotest sense. Plainly speaking, it's like the first adult emotion related to expected adult time in my life. I don't have many regrets, many of them petty and only one real one that I've buried under denial and distance. However my heart doesn't hurt, but just feels heavy. Just seeing her again and talking about school, Vancouver related ideas and even art in general just brought up a surge of old memories of a confused kid in an art program; finding his way only to get further lost in the whole mess of it all. I can feel my muscles remembering walking around the SFU campus
, knowing every grey slab of concrete.

However sad I am to see her leave, the prospects sounds so exciting for her. She needs a change much like how I needed to leave FSJ. In end we'll both probably grow up far better if we get away from our origins that keep us chained in semi-permanent childhood. Here's to you Christina, you are a great friend as all my friends are and I wish you the best of all things as I do for all my friends.

March, the month that will never end.

I don't know about the most of you, but in my limited experience march has been the month that has never ended. It's not the weather although to many I imagine that it could be; however the way I see March is that it's the month that is not fucking ending AT ALL. Perhaps it is because I have my first full-time job at a restaurant in the Lower Mainland. Perhaps instead of the thrill of learning something new, honing my skills and forever being in a state of rookieness being over; I currently have a almost machine like quality of going to work each day. This does make the days feel shorter by some extent but also very similar where time doesn't seem to pass...just a groundhog day for the all of us.

I don't know. Bookended for the month of March is my venture into the culinary arts. 1 year of 7am-1pm weekdays which are probably going to be the easiest classes ever since art class. I'm not nervous by any extent, but the lack of anticipation certainly makes the month of march feel longer because I am NOT counting the days to the beginning of my courses. Instead I'm feel like I'm switching one work for another.

We'll see. March 08' is officially the longest march in my recent experience. A March where it felt miserable and bloated, useless and hardly the transition into spring that we need. It's a fucking block that with every day seemed like a mere chip to sending it away from us. I can't wait for March to be over but for all I know it might be starting over again. Groundhog Month, what a way to be cursed.