Chapter Four.

So I've been living in Winnipeg for awhile. I feel like I've been in some kind of rehab to immerse myself back into normal life. I've been all about this "work hard play hard" lifestyle for so long that I got stuck into this fast paced routine, and I didn't know how to slow down and enjoy simple things anymore. All in all, it was worth it. I pulled off about an 80 average in my first year of university and I have a direction I can go towards but now I'm ready to relax and learn how to be self sufficient again. I'm not a fan of university life in Saskatoon because I become so dependent on my parents. Eventually living with them wore me down until I was clinging onto the boney fingers of depression. I was living an amazing life of shooting photos, partying, schooling, and a good job that I enjoyed at West 49, but in the end it was becoming repetitive and I just had to leave. I was so busy I felt like I was losing the close bonds with all my friends. It's hard to become close to someone when you want to be friends and spend time with everyone. I've been in Winnipeg for almost a month now and I'm ashamed to say that I don't miss home much. I love home to death but I just wore myself down until I was sick of it. I lived and partied the shit out of that city. It's nice to be somewhere where I don't know anybody. Yesterday I went to the forks market and bought some local food, visited my friend Eden at the smoothie bar, and today I watched Jersey Shore. I used to not care for the show but it cleared out my head. I have a habit of thinking too much, so watching it helped me learn to wind down and stop thinking fast paced for a bit. It helped me to forget my high tension past at home and help me realize "okay I'm here. I can live differently now, and how I choose to live here is my choice." I'm constantly changing my lifestyle but that's just part of developing who you are. Now I'm just trying to sort out my next steps and directions.

Chapter Three

Oh hello friends! It's been awhile. I guess I could just skip to today because there's just way too much to talk about in between. I went to my first art show today that you could tell was filled with mainly art students. It was a collage of outfits I have never seen all grouped together at such multitude, the crowd itself was like a painting that I could stand and stare at in awe for hours. But I was so scared! People always put me under the impression that the artistic crowd is pretentious and one that looks you up and down if they don't know who you are. But I found that it was actually the complete opposite. People would approach me and extend a hand and we'd proceed to engage in rather long conversations. It could be that I have grown a lot mentally since the beginning of school and have much more to discuss now. English class has forced me to take my own stance on politics, when before I could care less about them. I still could give two shits but I am beginning to define my beliefs of what they should be. It was such an eye-opening experience and I need to go to them more. That atmosphere is so addicting! It made me yearn for a larger city, but also opened my eyes to what I didn't know this city had and how great it is. All I could think was "Where did all these amazing people come from?" Where the hell have they been hiding? In a way similar to my views of Winnipeg of which I'm now dying to explore and experience from different eyes. I shot a series of Holga photographs, black and white, of Winnipeg's downtown and when they first appeared before my eyes they were nothing that I expected them to be. They were better! I was in awe and it almost felt like I didn't even take them. It was like looking at somebody else's work. But lo and behold it was my work, and I was proud. In fact I think it was the first time that I've been genuinely proud of my work before receiving external feedback. I coupled the series with The Weakerthan's "One Great City!" which fit the series so well because they describe how a "darker grey breaks through a lighter one" which embodied the theme of my photos. I had an image of the Golden Boy against a grey sky, double exposed over a faded and drab looking parkade, but the amalgamation of the two created an effect that captured exactly how I currently view Winnipeg through my eyes; My new perception of its beauty, overlaying my past memories of it's grey ,dirty, concrete ugliness. All of the photos were black, white, and grey...depressing, but beautiful, so much that you feel some kind of warmth inside. Anyways I think this is all I have to say for now. I could ramble about anything and everything for days so it is best to end it here. Bon voyages friends.

Chapter two

Today I went to McNally Robinson's with my mom. I wanted to buy a book that would motivate me in printmaking and what better printmaker to motivate me than the master himself, Andy Warhol. I love his prints. I can't wait to run my shitty Aoki drawing through the press. Okay, it's not that shitty. It's not brilliant, it's not Warhol, but 6 hours of squinting and trying to replicate my photoshopped Aoki portrait off my laptop, I can say I'm vaguely proud of my work. Well I scoured through a shelf that contained more than an abundance of cellophane wrapped Warhol books, and picked out a few that interested me; most of them ranged in the 60-70$ range, and after ogling the biggest, most expensive looking one, I ripped the cellophane off. If I'm going to blow [my mother's] cash on a book, I better be satisfied with the contents. Well turns out it was cheaper than the one I had originally looked at [60 vs 70 $] and definately looked like it contained the whole collection of his work, in big, bright, vivid color accompanied by black and white lifestyle shots checkered all over numerious pages. It was perfect. I rifled through a few more books for photography and found none that interested me enough to consider buying, so my mom and I headed to the till, rang it up and... "30$". Yup. It was marked down half price. Mother was stoked, and so was I.

I also learned tidbits and pieces about my Hasselblad camera. I learned that I actually need to charge the battery to get it working, I learned that if I ever felt like purchasing 10,000$ or more, I could buy a digital back for it, which I could switch back to film at the press of a couple buttons...I learned what it sounds like when you press the shutter: Amazing. I also learned a bunch of technical stuff that isn't worth continuing on about because it wouldn't "WOW" you as much as it "WOWED" me, because I am a nerd.

Speaking of Aoki I went to his show earlier this week. Whiskey got poured down my nose, bitches were stepping on my toes with high heels, he screamed out of the speakers as my ear got pressed against a speaker, I made him cringe when I hugged him after because I was dripping in more sweat than he was. It was amazing.

I also had an amazing skate sesh with my co-worker from West the other day. We learned to rock to fakie. It was radical. It could have easily been one of those days where I'd be there skating all day and time would have streaked by. And I mean skating; not sitting on a bench and talking about the latest skate gossip over a cigarette, and about how old and weak my limbs are becoming each year. Thank you Keegan. That was awesome. Kid :)

Hi David. It's 12:33 AM and I haven't talked to you since supper time. I miss you! Much love.

Chapter One

Today I had my first day of classes. I arrived at school 2 minutes before class so I ran down the tunnel, cried a little bit as I watched Timmy Hoes blur by- coffee is essential for triggering my attention span-and strolled into class right as my prof called my name. I gave him a big grin, waved, and he smiled back. Good. He doesn't hate me. Yet.

Once class was done I headed down the tunnel, watched everyone speedwalk to their next class, sans wheelie back packs thank god- apparently that's the new hyphy in Manitoba- then realized "Hey, I'm done for the day!" I experienced two seconds of momentary excitement until I realized that it was only 9:30 in the morning and I had nothing better to do with myself for the rest of the day. I had nothing to do until thursday morning for that matter. Nothing to do for the next two days, but party. Damn.

Well luckily for me, after a wild goose chase for a classroom meeting that didn't exist, and a solid hunt for binder dividers that were apparently sold out across the city, I logged onto paws and the classes that I'd wanted to get into more than anything, and solely just the two classes I wanted, had opened up and were beckoning me to pounce them. My class schedule for term one was no longer a virgin to the arts. My mom's credit card may take a bit of a raping but hey, that's why university exists. To take our parent's hard earned cash and give us degrees that are hopefully not useless in the work force by the time we graduate. Also so that we can make hard earned cash one day, and spend it on awesome things like travelling and booze- and possibly settling down one day, so that we can raise kids and get robbed by the university for their schooling. It's a beautiful and vicious cycle. Yup. That's my day.

Alpha.

So today I'm engaging in my Fourth blog. I decided to start this blog because I need an outlet to express exactly how I feel. Some days I just want to whine- and some days I just want to brag about how awesome my life is. I wouldn't want to put anybody through that torture so I figure this is the perfect place to vent out my thoughts unfiltered and unedited. And I like to keep a true document about my day.