A View from the Stacks: a 2021 Retrospective

How to even begin summing up the year that was 2021. What a whirlwind, what a shitshow, what a year. 

If 2021 was anything, it was a year that defined what was really important to me. Whether it was a reminder of what doesn’t work or rediscovering that taking a leap of faith isn’t as scary as it seems, this year pushed my boundaries so far out of my comfort zone that I’m not sure we want to (or can) go back. 

Things that resonated with me this year:

I read a lot this year (even if I didn’t meet my reading goal), but the book that’s still on my mind is T.J. Klune’s From Under the Whispering Door. Contemplating death, love, and finding a new lease on life (yes, in that order), its themes have definite 2021 vibes. We can blame my Scorpio moon placement, but books about death are a sharp (and much needed) reminder that I often need to keep redefining life as I go along. 

My soundtrack for the year alternated between my Scorpio Season and Summer Vibes playlists (regardless of the season), but the track that seemed to be on an infinite loop more often than not was Sum 41’s “Fat Lip.” What can I say; being a punk was never a phase, but sometimes I need the reminder that “I’ll never fall in line, and become another victim of your conformity.” I may work an office job, but the “A” in Archivist also stands for Anarchist.  

Weekly episode drops for shows are the new bane of my existence, but to be honest I’m kind of loving the ritual of mixing a cosmopolitan and sitting down to watch the latest episode of “... And Just Like That” on Thursday evenings. Thursdays have always had good vibes for me, but seeing the continued adventures of Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte are a perfect blend of new nostalgia that hits just right. My prediction (and hope) for the show: Samantha will be back eventually, because it’s just not quite the same without her sparky sense of humour and sexuality. 

The big leap:

Besides spending a lot of time reinvesting in myself and setting boundaries in my relationships with the world at large, the big event of the year was getting on a waitlist and following through on a surgery. Those of you who have known me for years know that having children has never been part of my life plan (and to the rest of you, FYI! haha), and I figured that now was as good a time as any to get this out of the way. So I scheduled the appointments, talked to the doctors, and booked a date to get my tubes tied at the end of July. Weird coincidental timing with the guy I was dating at the time, general fear of medical procedures, and extended recovery period aside, I’m glad that I finally made this happen. When I got the go ahead from my surgeon back in February a friend asked me: “How do you imagine you’ll feel [...] afterwards?” and I finally have the answer: fucking amazing. Fullstop. 

Vibes that we’re bringing forward into 2022:

Being more of a Carrie, and less of a Charlotte. Don’t worry, we’ll always be a Miranda at heart, but a bit more sparkle and a bit less domesticity is a lot more fun. 

Choosing sunlight when we can (and moonlight when we can’t), since we never know when it’s going to disappear under a cloud of smoke again. 

From the media we ingest to the stores we choose to shop at; from our social media etiquette to our interactions with the world at large: more quality, less quantity. 

Howling more at the moon. Maybe it’ll be out loud, or maybe we’ll keep it to ourselves, but being silent was never really our vibe in the first place. 

The summary: 2021 was obviously so much more than these brief glimpses, but it’s funny how things kind of crystalize in retrospect and the big things become smaller while the small things become bigger. Tomorrow we might be looking back on different moments with different thoughts, but regardless we’ll still be moving forward. So here’s to whatever 2022 brings.

Could It Be Anybody

Anytime anyone says “friends” my mind immediately pictures the guys from the Inbetweeners mocking Jay  - “Ooh friends” paired with a sarcastic thumbs up - to the point where he turns the tables on them and starts jumping on the guy’s car (screaming “friends” again) just to prove that he’s not friends with the guy. Now, this kind of behaviour has less to do with obvious friendship than overt jealousy, but it completely sums up how weird relationships with friends are. And how territorial we can sometimes get when someone tries to steal our place as bestie!

Think about it for a minute. We meet someone, and somehow we decide that we want to be friends with them. Sometimes this happens by random happenstance (you get paired up to do a project together and find out you like each other), sometimes mutual friends introduce you (Liz this is Jaimie, Jaimie this is Liz, you’re friends now), sometimes they’re holdovers from our childhood (Star Wars club 4eva), or you meet over the internet because of mutual interests (Tumblr is a weird place, full of weird and awesome people). Whatever the cause, you keep talking to each other, you keep hanging out together, and even when they’re annoying you keep coming back for more. 

Lately there’s been a lot of talk about how as we get older it becomes more difficult to make new friends, and while I won’t disagree with that, I find the fact that we self-select more and are less willing to put up with poor behaviour to be an interesting phenomenon. I don’t mean becoming more bitter and jaded (we’re already that), but that we’re more able to recognize when people are genuinely good friends, even past their inevitable foibles. 

For me, this comes down to simple behavioural patterns. 

The friend who consistently makes plans, but cancels them equally as consistently; the friend who complains about their partner to your face, and then sends you the “you look hot” text after leaving your company; the friend who ditches you when they start dating someone; the friend who only stays in contact when you live in the same place, even with the advantages of social media - those aren’t particularly good friends. Sometimes they’re downright bad friends, when the behaviour becomes systematic.

The friend who remembers your best friend’s name (and asks how it’s pronounced) even though they’ve never met; the friend who plots world domination with you, even though you’re both too lazy to follow through; the weird friend, who owns their weirdness and encourages yours; the friend who you don’t talk to often, but who makes a point of being supportive when you do; the friend who tells you all their horror stories, knowing that you won’t judge them - those are the best kind of friends. They’re the kind of friends who make you more than the person you think you are, and who will inevitably be the ones who play important roles in your life. 

Of course, there are all kinds of mitigating circumstances. People have lives and they get busy, but when we’re adults it becomes stunningly obvious who’s willing to make time (even if it’s just an emoji-filled text message) in their lives and who’s there only when it’s convenient for them. We’re no longer thrown together by circumstance, so actions speak louder than words. I’m lucky I guess, in that the silence of many of my friendships reads well - it acts as the calm before the storm, and once it breaks we become the thunder and lightening that shakes the world. We might look like manic children (or teenaged Valley Girls) to some, but I guess that's just our version of jumping on cars!

images from Tumblr; video from YouTube

In Defence of Pokémon Go

The other day I was treated to a lunch hour filled with one of my esteemed (no longer) coworkers waxing eloquent about the absurdity of the latest video game trend. Obviously she was harshing on Pokémon Go. Now, I’m not a very adept player of video game in general, but it was all I could do not to reach across the table and slap her. Not so much because she was being critical of a game which I find rather enjoyable, but because she was doing what so many others are also doing in relation to this specific game - criticizing it and its players ceaselessly and without due cause. 

This seems to be such a trend - the dismissal and criticism of Pokémon trainers - that even the 7-ring circus of the coming American election has fallen in popularity as a ridicule-filled conversation topic. But why are so many so quick to put down this specific game and its players? It’s just a game, so why are the opposition taking it as so much more than that?

Oscar & Felix made friends
with a Growlith!

So what if some avid trainers are taking the games’ mantra a bit too seriously (it’s “Gotta catch ‘em all!” for those of you not in the know)? Is that any more addicting than any one else’s collection? Be it shoes, cars, or rare bottles of Scotch, we all spend our time and money on things that others deem to be a waste. 

So what if there’s packs of teenagers (or millennial grown-ups haha) roaming the neighbourhoods? They’re actually getting outside and exploring their city - which is more than many people would do voluntarily these days. 

So what if they’re busy discussing how many 10km eggs they hatched this weekend? Is that really any different than the people who obsess about cross-fit, marathons, or how many steps their pedometer has logged? That 10km egg hatch means they got their asses off the couch and walked 10km - and that 10km leads to another 10km, and another, and another once people get into the swing of it. 

Really people, it’s just a hobby, so maybe it’s time to take off your judge-y pants and take a long hard think about why your criticizing something that makes someone else happy and isn’t causing them any harm* (*though certain people need to learn to look both ways before crossing the street before they go galavanting across the city in search of their next catch). Let people enjoy themselves - especially in this case, since Winter is coming and I doubt that many are still going to want to cruise the parks for that elusive Pikachu in -40°C. And if you can’t take my advice and shut up, then expect those of us who don’t put up with people criticizing the things we like to take you down a peg - my inner-bitch was a Master long before I became a Pokémon Trainer! 

Go Team Instinct! 

(Not that I really know what that means haha)

Some apt advice from a trash bin in the neighbourhood

Insides

Let me tell you a story. A story of long ago, and a tale as old as time. A story of girl meets boy. 

Just kidding - though there is a girl and there is a boy, and surely do they meet. 

So. Once upon a time a girl met a boy. A boy who her best friend said was waaaaay too much of a punk for her (sorry for the Avril Lavigne reference, but it’s true high school trope). So the girl told her best friend that she would become a punk rock girl, so that the boy would notice her. 

If you haven't figured it out already, the girl in the story was me, circa age 15. Now, me at age 15 was kind of a loner and definitely a weird kid, and as with most high school kids I generally tried to fit in. The trend in my high school was very influenced by the early 2000s emergence of gangster rap, led in large part by Eminem, Swollen Members, and pot, and I will absolutely admit to liking Swollen Members and buying their album (they had some catchy beats, so sue me), but besides hearing it on the radio I never bought into this white-kid adoption of black culture. On the surface I mostly conformed to the remnants of 90s pop culture - it may not have been popular with the "cool kids," but it was socially acceptable within my small group of friends. Little did they know that the alternative lifestyle was already deeply embedded into my soul. 

I'll never forget seeing the music video for Green Day's “Basket Case” for the first time; I laughed so hard I cried at their shenanigans, and promptly went in search of their music at our local library. I couldn't have been more than 11 or 12 at the time, so I can't believe that my parents let me come home with (and subsequently make a bootleg copy of) Nimrod, what with songs like “Hitchin’ a Ride” and lyrics like “Nice guys finish last… your sympathy will get you left behind”… I subsequently spent the next few years covertly watching Much Music's Friday punk show, searching out obscure metal albums like Closet Monster on trips to Vancouver’s Virgin Records store, and being immediately obsessed with Yellowcard's breakout single “Ocean Avenue” when it hit the Internet radio airwaves. 

So it really wasn’t much of an intellectual leap for me to want to translate what I had been listening to and feeling inside to my external appearance. The cute punk rock guy in my class was just a handy excuse that my boy-obsessed best friend could get behind (she of the ever-changing personality  to suit the needs of whatever current boy she was crushing on). So a plan was hatched, band shirts & a pink plaid skirt were bought, and I debuted the new look at the first school dance of the year. 

The whole stunt was totally lame in retrospect (except for the shock factor, since that never ceases to amuse), since I didn’t get the guy, but the change in out style was more symbolic for the shy high school girl I was. From that point on I felt like I had more of a voice, a voice which could be one of dissent within a very controlled social situation and one which gave me my own individuality outside of the herd mentality that dominates any group of friends when we’re young. 

My dressing like a rebel phase lasted for the majority of high school, and since then it’s come and gone depending on my mood. The look is one of my favourites, but I’m not really the kind of person who can be defined by a single “style” (which is awesome for expanding my wardrobe exponentially, but terrible when it comes to choosing how to dress) - which over time has led a lot of people questioning exactly who I am. The smart ones figure out that I’m not definable, but the rest of the population that only perceives a narrow part of my personality throws out the accusation “fake” faster than you can say “punk’s not dead.” 

Which of course, brings me to the thesis of this entire expose: it’s not how you look, how you sound, or a single instance in your life that defines you. Like the punk movement itself, we are each a swirling vortex of contradictions that seeks to find freedom among the banal and incredible experiences that are life. We are the riptide and the tidepools, eyes lined in sooty black with a welcoming grin on our lips, being swayed by people that surround us as we stand still as a stone and alone in the crowd. We can be defined for a second, but then we change to suit ourselves in the next moment and become a new being entirely. Through rebellion we find the freedom and understanding to make our own way in this world.

So to all the haters (and that’s what you’ve always been) - bring it on. I know who I am, and while I may not wear the uniform of your suicide girls during my 9 to 5, I’m still a punk rock girl deep in my soul. And a million other selves as well. 

*image from Tumblr