Dear Diary Feb 20

If I could say 25 years ago I was going to need a license to drive today, I probably would have paid more attention. Ca fait au moins 4 ans que je n'avait pas besoins de conduire un vehicle. It's been almost 5 years since I haven't had to drive a car, so I let my driver license slide.
I got used to limo services and taxis and skytrains since living in Vancouver, and in Montreal there are the same services. Los Angeles and New York had the same things, and Calgary is pretty much the same.
Depuis que je reste ici a Calgary, j'me suis pas mal restez sur le meme chemain - prend un autobus, appel un taxi ou appel mon chaffeur de limousine pour me deplacer d'un endroit ou autre...
Now I want to change jobs. I need a driver license, which turns into a drama - go a Registry, produce a faxed (people still fax?) history of previous license, pay twice, go through a driving program, then wait a week and then proceed.
Lame.
Faux avoir un fax preuve qu'on avait un dossier de conducteur, paye 2 fois pour deux sorte de license, et apres attendre un autre semaine.
I'm wasting money and I'm not a happy camper.
But at least it's getting done...
urgh.
And with all this wasted art I've done over the three years being here in Calgary, I apparently have to hire an Art Marketing company in order to "be known" otherwise art galleries here could give two hoots about what you've done because there are thousands in line trying to be noticed.
I've worked at 2 car dealerships in the past 3 years since leaving Montreal, and haven't had a driver license, though been certified to sell vehicles.
This weekend, I'm getting it done.

Art does not sell itself.

We Are all Silver Stars

I've been working in Customer Service for a Mercedes dealership in Montreal now for about 6 months. Most call centers I've been working in the past two years were in debt collection, but after so many years of doing it I was just burnt out, and management in those places could care less how you are - you are there to make money, or make way for someone else who will sit in your seat the next day.
Debt collection centers have really high turn over rates because the ones who are managing you get pressure from some head office who are seeing their own pocket money go lower if their centers aren't producing dollar figures every minute of the day...
So it was time to get off the hamster wheel. Unfortunately the day I got off the hamster wheel was one of the final paydays before Christmas, and noone hires over the holidays so ... I had a holiday.
January came in with a couple of good offers for some other popular call centers in the Montreal area, but when Mercedes called me, I had to interview to see what was being propositioned.
It is a little far for me to commute but 6 months later I'm still here bright and early and by 4o'clock I'm already downtown with plenty of spare time for other activities.
My latest activity does include studying towards my residential realtor's license. I was accepted for funding by my native community's Employment & Training department, so I now have classes 4 times a week from 6:00pm to 10:00pm Mondays thru Thursdays, and Fridays I head to a cottage about an hour east of Montreal to unwind, have some drinks with friends and breathe in all that fresh farmland air ;)
During the week I do sleep about 6 hours maximum per night - I get to my apartment around 11 at night and by the time sleep sets in its about midnight.
6:00am I awaken and after showering, putting my lunch together and walking out the door, it's 7:00am.
7:00am I'm on a metro heading northeast towards the Dorval airport to make it here to my desk by 7:30am (after stopping off at a local Tim Horton's for my morning coffee).
3:30pm I'm finishing up work, heading to a metro and then it's back to the apartment to change and then head to class after picking up my books.
10:30pm I'm finished classes and heading back to the metro to make it back to the apartment for 11:00pm.
An hour later after showering, eating a small snack and cleaning up around the apartment, I hit the bed and by around midnight I'm asleep until 6:00am and I do it all again... Mondays thru Thursdays...
I'll be doing this for the next 6 months. And some people think I don't have dedication... heh heh
So I don't really have a life right now, but hopefully it shakes up for next summer.

If someone had told me I was going to have a Mid-Life Crisis at 40 I would have scoffed at that...

I'm the last person who seems would end up freaking out halfway through life. I turned 40 just before the summer and sometime halfway during the fun and the sun I started freaking out. I got a little paranoid and the whole thought of death and dying and wondering if there was an afterlife or some other point to existence spiraled out of control and I ended up in an ambulance a few times with heart troubles.

It was when my heart stopped at one point that I thought I should start trying to ignore the whole thought of "what is the point of life, is there a Heaven or Hell, is there something to all this religion - are there other worlds in space that have more advanced civilizations than ours and why are they avoiding Earth, blah blah blah...

I ended up trying to spend more time socializing in bars but these days people my age have either already found someone to be with or look pretty hard up hitting on someone in a bar - or maybe it's just me.
I used to do the whole "Hey let's party! Here have a drink! What's your name?! Where are you from?! That's exciting - let's dance!"
Today I just have a drink, watch people and end up small talking with the bartenders - pretty much what I've done since I was 19. And eventually my panic attacks subsided and now I just take life a day at a time and just go to work, stop off at a pub or a lounge and have a drink by myself and then sleep, wake up and do it all over again. I'm not up to much else other than that - I mean, I'm less enthused about life and living than I was before because up until this summer I always thought I'd make it big somehow... and then reality sets in; eventually I will die and what have I left behind so far?
So my next project is to finish a zine - at least leave behind some stories, write another couple of songs and start putting together a journal of what I've done and where I went - some aliens might find it years down the road and wonder what it's like to view life as an experience and not as a series of 9 to 5 days...
Cheers from Montreal!

Being Nathan Paul Prince

Before becoming Alopecian, having lost my hair when I was 25 to an immune system overload, I thought by 40 I would have somewhat greying hair, thought I would be somewhat set in life with a somewhat professional job and thought I would have at least a couple of children by now.
I turned 40 a few days ago, I live in a one room studio apartment in downtown Montreal, I'm between jobs at the moment and have no savings, am still single and am far from being a success in any way, though I've written and published poems, stories, songs and have had a couple of art shows.
I've travelled from Vancouver to Montreal to New York, lived in West Hollywood a couple of times, I spend weekends at a cottage not far from Montreal but it's difficult trying to actually stop moving.
I've always pretty much done whatever came into my mind - whether I wanted to wake up in Las Vegas and go and see Egyptian chariots racing, or head to Bellingham for a week and write music in a hotel room... I've been lucky enough to have been able to do all that while in my twenties. At one point I remember waking up in New York in a hotel and trying to remember how I'd gotten there! I've been known to drink a lot of people under the table, but that was probably the point where I had to tone it down a little.
My teen years were spent more trying to be cool than actually paying attention to what was going on with my education... I was an excellent student in elementary, winning awards and getting perfect marks, but at one point a school Principle disappointed me and I just rebelled against the whole format. At one point I was so interested in learning, and the next I just didn't care about the whole grade system and started cutting classes, skipping tests and hiding in a library reading on my own. In one summer I skimmed through the entire Port Alberni Public Library's book collections...
I didn't bother finishing high school - I dropped out and ended up taking Psychology at the North Island College instead, and halfway through that decided it was time to head out and start working if I wanted to get ahead.
From working in Tofino at a resort hotel to Nanaimo and working at a collating warehouse, I pretty much applied to whatever was hiring, not paying attention to work history or what it would amount to on a resume.
By the time I hit Vancouver, I was dead set on becoming a clubkid and lucked out on some great jobs.
In the daytime I worked at the Vancouver International Airport, I worked in a call center with the Liberal Party, and was making a lot of money on the side to pay for my nightlife, and that was good enough til halfway through my twenties I had had enough of Vancouver and left for the French Province...
I'm fluently bilingual, so after spending the summer with relatives in the Bas St. Laurent, I headed to Montreal and started working in call centers. I made a good group of friends, I had a small apartment, a great girlfriend and at one point there was the big Ice freeze that shut down half the province. Elaine and I headed south to Hollywood as soon as the roads were open - there was no way we were going to stay in a city that had no power.
Hollywood was everything everyone thinks it is - seeing the odd celebrity, clubkids galore, strippers and glitter on the highway... I worked in a call center there for a while and Elaine and I even made it on the front page of the LA Weekly for being one of Hollywood`s starlets.
But eventually, like in all my relationships previous, I woke up one day and just had to move away, so I returned to Montreal for a few months and then got called to head to British Columbia to work in a First Nation community.
I`m half Irish and half Sekani Indian, so working in northern BC I got to meet family members I hadn`t ever really known. I also got to meet my birth father and his own daughters, their young ones as well. It was a great few years. I had a lot of great work experience but after all the drama started back there (what else comes from having family members working together) it was time to leave, so I came back to Montreal, went back into the call center industry and now I`m 40.
This year the only goals I have are to finish publishing a series of First Nation stories, and use the money to pay for my realtor`s license. For now I`m just happy to be able to pay rent!