The 4 Most Important Things About Me

Yesterday, I posted about my childhood and about how it was an actual a childhood instead the cheap imitation “childhood” that many children today experience (Let your children go outside and don’t give them an iAnything. They don’t need it and it takes a away their creativity and attention span. Also, it puts children at risk for becoming the worst half of Tumblr users). 

I also posted about being Canadian (I love being Canadian and I do my best to avoid American culture for several reasons), as well as having grandparents (They’ve given me a perspective on life that most other twentysomethings won’t have until the become sixtysomethings).
The fourth but really first most important thing about me is my belief in Jesus. I was babtized before I turned one, was confirmed at fourteen, and I am currently looking for a new church. This is difficult, but I know it’s worthwhile. I’m non-denominational and those church seem to be in short supply.

I mention the above because my faith is the most important part of my life and it guides everything else I do. I realize some people will make assumptions about me, but I knew I should mention something anyway. I shouldn’t hide things about myself out of fear that people will make incorrect assumptions.

Another benefit to sharing the four most important things about myself I that now my blog has a foundation…almost. I might write about the fifth most important thing about myself if I can figure out how to write about it in detail.

10 Life Lessons from My Grandparents

Generations go back and forth. A lot of kids today have older parents. My guess is that they’ll have kids younger because they’ll find that there are some disadvantages to having older parents. One generation later, their kids will have kids when they’re older because they’ll find that there are some disadvantages to having younger parents. And so on and so forth.
My parents were 20 and 21 when I was born. I had six great-grandparents and the three that passed away when I was young died fairly young themselves. They were only in their 70s. Now I only have one great-grandparent. She’s 100. She’s the only elderly relative I have.

All four of my grandparents are living. My grandma and grandpa (paternal) are 75 and 77. My nana and grandad (maternal) are 73 and 71. My maternal grandparents live in Vancouver but I talk to them a lot and they come to Calgary constantly. My paternal grandparents live in Calgary. I talk to them every day and visit them at least once a week.

Knowing people from age zero to age 100 has given me a more realistic perspective than I would have had otherwise.

Here are some lessons my grandparents and great-grandparents have taught me. How do you know it’s good advice? Because it’s probably going to annoy some of my fellow millennials!

1. Marriage takes work and compromise. I’m sorry to do that to you. Here’s your participation trophy for showing up to this blog post. Well done!

2. Everything you do online should benefit you offline.

3. You’re not elderly until you’re 100.

4. The ability to keep one’s mouth shut, whether online or offline, is priceless.

5. Social justice activists are hilarious, but that’s all they offer.

6. If you’re entire life is #InstagramWorthy, it’s not worth living.

7. “Follow your passion” is terrible advice . . . 

8. . . . as is “put yourself first.”

9. In fact, the path to mental wellness lies is sacrificing your time and energy to help other people.

10. Sorry, Colbie Caillat. Looking good on the outside can contribute to you feeling good on the inside.

I Am Canadian.

I was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I love being Calgarian, I love being Albertan, and I love being Canadian. Calgary is the best city, Alberta is the best province, and Canada is the best country. 
The thing about Canada, though, is that we’re a mosaic, not a melting pot. This is great, but it means that as a Canadian, my culture is a combination of three things:

1. Accurate Canadian stereotypes like being polite.

2. Not being American.

3. My ancestor’s culture.

My background is 3/4 English, 1/8 Irish, and 1/8 Ukrainian. My mum was born in England, my paternal grandmother’s realities came from Ireland, and my paternal grandfather’s grandparents emigrated from the Ukraine. I want to learn as much as I can about English, Irish, and Ukrainian culture. I’ve only been to England. I’d love to go again, and also love to visit Ireland. Visiting the Ukraine isn’t something I can do, at least not for several decades, but maybe I’ll get to visit one day. Apparently, I still have family out there.

I love visiting America, but I’m a lot happier when I avoid American media. (Thank you, POTUS Race 2016!). The CRTC tries to help Canadians with this by encouraging Canadian TV and film and limiting American TV and film, but I don’t view creative works as American (For example, Disney is American; it’s the brainchild of Walt Disney who happened to be American). 

What’s actually American are most trending topics online, such as current events and celebrity news. I’m learning to not pay attention to those.

Also, some American English has unfortunately snuck into Canadian English, but I try to substitute British words, spelling, and sometimes pronunciation whenever I can.

Now, American English, American current events, and American pop culture are just minor inconveniences that are easily avoidable, but some of America’s other problems are just awful. Four words: Lack of gun control. I can’t talk about this better than Jim Jefferies so I’ll just leave this here. That Trump has gotten so far in his campaign makes it clear why America’s gun laws will never change.

I have friends who actually live in America. They’re braver than I am! I’d never be able to live there. I love Canada too much, particularly the Rocky Mountains, our skill hills, our healthcare system, our rational approach to gun violence, and our political system. I’m not writing about how awesome Canada is to encourage post-POTUS Election migration, by the way. If you’re an American and you’re thinking about doing that, please click here.

I Had a Childhood

I was born in 1989. After the Internet was invented but before the Berlin Wall came down. 
I remember when cassettes became CDs (“Mum! You can switch to a different song without fast forwarding!”) and VHS became DVDs (“Mum! You don’t have to rewind these before you bring them back to Blockbuster!” R.I.P. Blockbuster. And Rogers video). 
My parents let me ride my bike to the gas station to buy Pokemon cards when I was seven. 

My cousins, my sister, and I were eight, five, and three when, with no supervision, we climbed a mountain in Drumheller. We named a part of the mountain “Suicide Rock” because we knew if we fell off of it, we’d be dead. 

My uncle kept his gun in the basement where my cousins and I played. At ages five and two, we knew better than to touch it. 

When I was seven, I flew in a plane for the first time and I got to visit the pilot in the cockpit. War was something that happened a long time before I was born. 

My school’s playground gave me splinters .Teachers didn’t “facilitate my learning”, they taught me. I learned there were moments to sit down and shut up. 

My parents read to me every night. 

When we took a family picture, we had to wait for the film to be developed before we could see how the picture turned out. 

I sat through commercials but my screen time was limited. When I was bored, my parents gave me a cardboard box and some markers, or told me to play outside. 

I had a childhood.

How Jason Isaacs Convinced Me to Quit Twitter

I met Jason Isaacs at the Calgary Expo yesterday. It turns out that Lucius Malfoy is a pretty nice guy. Included with the autograph fee is the picture that the celebrity signs, so I chose a promotional image from Awake. When Jason saw the picture I chose, he said, “Oh, thank you for choosing this one!”

According to Jason, the second season of Awake would have introduced a third reality in which Michael is dreaming. Jason told me to watch the Awake series finale with “through that prism.”

I tweeted Jason a couple of weeks ago. I told him that his bio wasn’t linking to his instagram and I explained how to change it. Then he did. I think that’s my one good “Twitter deed.” Now I can quit-or, go on hiatus for a while.

I just don’t know what people get out of Twitter. Maybe I’m using it incorrectly; I know it’s great for promotional purposes, but right now I want to focus on writing.

After all, most well known Twitter users aren’t well known because of Twitter. They’re well known because they actually accomplished something. I need to spend more time writing and less time on social media.

F*** It, I’m Writing

There are a lot of rules in life. Some are worth following and some are not. Some people make the rules, benefit from the rules, and then tell other people that they shouldn’t even bother trying because they’ve changed the rules.

The Gluten-Free Girl, an apparently popular blog that I’d never heard of before yesterday, recently gave an interview in which she offered this pearl of wisdom:

“Blogs don’t really matter anymore.”

Apparently, people can get attention online through Instagram and other social media. The internet will eventually be 75% video and obviously video recipes are preferable to written recipes.

You have to love people who benefit from something, then turn around and tell everyone that something is dead and they should give up.

I was depressed about the gluten something’s interview until I realised, “Wait a minute. I’m not blogging because I want to make money. I’m blogging because I want to write.” Whether or not whats-her-face is right about blogging is irrelevant. I’m blogging because I love writing.

This is the millionth blog I’ve started and unlike previous first posts, I can’t promise I won’t abandon this. I don’t think I will. After spending months trying to come up with a name better than For the Sake of the Cheesecake, I couldn’t. So, I’ve gone from self-hosted to WordPress.com and I’m letting go of any blogging rules put forth by those who now claim blogging is dead.

Before today, I thought I couldn’t blog until my life was perfect, but my world isn’t always #INSTAGRAMWORTHY. That’s fine. I want to publish a memoir and I think a perfect life would make for a pretty rubbish memoir. “And then her life was perfect. The end.” Obviously, life isn’t perfect, but I’m writing anyway.