A Cohort, Not A Competition

There's a type kind of music video that gets made sometimes, when folks don't have a lot of money, but they do have some really good-looking friends and maybe a cute baby to bounce on their knee. Everyone goes to the beach and gets silly and they shoot it on an iPhone, and the whole thing costs about a hundred dollars. These kinds of videos are often made by really tight guy friends who grew up being mind-blowingly cool and not aware of their coolness in any way.

These dudes seem to band together because they're all reasonably good-looking, and have weird, marketable-in-grade-school talents (drawing comic strips, constructing forts, or not looking stupid in sweatpants), and they have laissez-faire parents who will both give them video cameras and then throw them outside to play. The alchemy of all these things together creates hot artists who have no skills at all when it comes to girls.

Obviously, these dudes are hot commodities, so girls either get up on them, or they figure out that saying "hi" at house parties will likely lead to some heavy petting. But their primary and fundamental way of being isn't stereotypical artists' loneliness - it's surrounded by other creative dude types.

I, obviously and for a number of reasons, have not had this experience.

I wasn't ever really confident enough to let my freak flag fly at full-mast: I was the kind of weirdo who created elaborate stories about the fairies who lived in the front garden, and would spend hours acting out dialogue for all my imaginary playmates. This was helpful for my development as a writer, but it was cyanide for my social life.

Does creativity thrive in a vacuum? That group of guys churned out musicians, writers, and illustrators; on the other hand, they might be flukey freaks of nature who would've done fine even if they hadn't had each other to laugh at their silly cartoons and listen to their first attempts at the looping pedal. But part of the process of becoming an artist is growing your confidence: it took me until my late 20s to figure out I was supposed to do this. They put that issue to bed in elementary school. Their friendship probably helped.

There are plenty of famous creative male friendships. Think Gaugin and van Gogh. Think Hemingway and Dos Passos. Think Scorsese, Lucas, Coppola and Spielberg. These guys drank together, womanized together, and competed with each other for firsts and bests. They formed uniquely creative brotherhoods that left a lasting legacy on the arts community, one that isn't matched by a corollary sorority. Prominent girl-groups, like the Brontes, tend to be lumped together because of bloodlines, not because those ladies hung out and went shooting together. And they're far outnumbered by solitary female artists, like Sylvia Plath or Virginia Woolf, who loom large in the artistic unconscious.

These days, I feel strange reaching out to fellow creative types. I rely on those who have come before me: I grill them on writing best practice and business questions, but we don't often get together and jam, just to have fun. Did I miss something? I still have loads of fun doing my thing, but I wish I had the kind of experience those music-video-making guys had. I crave a cohort, not competition.

Part of the thrill of freelance writing is that you get to be first, and best, at what you do. You need to be tough, and independent, and cultivate your brand. I know it's naive of me to yearn for collaboration - the writerly equivalent of homemade beach videos with friends - but that doesn't make the feeling go away. I want a room of one's own, sure - but I want it full of compadres.

Call Me

I am a dinosaur. Not only do I not have a smartphone, I don't even have a cell phone. While my landline is cordless, on the days when the power goes out, I use a phone that plugs right into the wall. It's complete with a curly little cord that, while adorable, tethers me to a three-foot radius in my bedroom. Often, when I'm chatting on those calls, I realize as I dial the final number that I desperately need to pee. It's glamourous, my life.

There's no definitive reason for not having a cell phone, although the spectre of being constantly in touch was pretty gruesome. I like privacy. I like returning calls at my convenience. I've never left my landline in a cab, or dropped it in a bar toilet after too many whiskey sours. I feel zero pressure to upgrade to a fancier handset every year. Like renting movies and tap water, landlines are a call back to a slower and less technologically frenetic time. It's not nostalgia that drives my commitment to my home phone; it's the desire to commit my whole brain to my task - talking on the phone - instead of fragmenting my time into a thousand slivers of unusable connection. I'm young - 28 years old - and I realize that my multi-tabbed, multi-tasking lifestyle needs monotasking balance.

I'm one of the 30% of Canadians who don't have a cell phone - according to one research firm, we're not likely to get one, either - and we're not exactly a growth market. But just in case you're friends with a throwback like me, here are some helpful hints and tips for dealing with us stuck-in-the-past weirdos.

Leave a message. I have an answering machine, the kind that results in hijinks on sitcoms because some hapless character overhears something he shouldn't, thanks to a machine that broadcasts the message into the room. Many older home phones don't have caller ID, so if you have the option of leaving a message, please do.

Understand that we will get back to you. My friends kvetch when I'm not home, but I get their messages and call them back. It may not be instantaneous, but it will happen.

Don't text us. I mean, you can--we get your texts, and they are read to us by robots, which is one of my favourite things ever. (True story: depending on your cell phone provider, if you text "LOL" to a landline, the robot will either say "loll" expressionlessly, spell out L-O-L, or - my favourite - cackle maniacally.) However, once we listen to the text once, it's over. It's not in an inbox somewhere. We can't refer to it later. If you're making plans or conveying important detail, call us. We'll get another retro tool - the pen and paper! - and take notes.

Somewhat disingenuously, I've done my best to cultivate a wide network of people who have cell phones, and encourage my friends and family to call them if they need to get in touch with me. My boyfriend has 10+ entries in his phone that link him to my friends and family. "I'll be with Rachel, you can text her to meet up!" is a common refrain in my house. I carry quarters for the payphone, and I try to keep plans and be punctual. There have been moments when a cell phone would have been useful - massive subway delays, last-minute change of venue - but these are few and far between.

It's 100% possible to have a thriving personal and professional life without carrying a cell phone all the time. Even if you need one, understand that just because people can reach you 24/7 doesn't mean that they're your priority. One of my pet peeves is when someone pulls out their cell phone when we're mid-conversation and texts. It's a blatant middle finger to our conversation, a not-so-subtle signal that I'm easy to dismiss. Landlines have two options - talking or not talking - and it forces me to acknowledge that I either need to talk the person on the other end or I don't.

It's important to remember than constant communication doesn't always equal good communication. Smartphones, cell phones and landlines are all tools to be used to that end, and so it doesn't really matter what kind of phone you have. I may not be fancy, but I will totally call you back, and that's the whole point.

Swap Meat

"Where did you get this?" my friend or boyfriend will ask, pointing to a new bracelet, a swanky new sweater, or a hitherto-unseen pair of jeans. I'll hem and haw for a minute and then admit, with some reluctance, that I found the bracelet on the sidewalk. The jeans? Piled with other clothing discards in front of a sorority house. The sweater came from a clothing swap. My whole outfit has come from other people's leavings. This exchange happens all the time.

Look, I'm not going to lie - I'm basically a hobo, and nowhere is this more apparent than in my wardrobe. My clothes come not from a florescent-lit shelf at the Gap, or from a well-curated boutique in a swish part of town. They come from church basements and school auditoriums - the holy places of clothing swaps - and from second-hand emporia like the Salvation Army. A lot of it is lifted from literally the side of road, set out by folks who can't be arsed to walk it over to a donation box. My friends give me clothes. So does my mom: gently used additions to my wardrobe that gives me nostalgia pangs for the 1980s.

This is mostly an economic choice. Why pay for one pair of pants at the mall when I can get four at the thrift shop? There's also a deeper-seated issue with changerooms, sizing, and self-loathing that comes roaring out in new clothing stores; that's more muted in a second-hand situation. Shopping is annoying and full of strangers, and I am lazy and easily enraged.

Plus, there's the thrill of the hunt. Found clothes feel like a gift from the universe; finding a good-looking pair of pants in a swap meet feels like bagging a trophy. Knowing your personal look makes clothing swaps much easier to handle - if all you wear is black, then your eyes can skip right over all the blue-and-coral striped sweaters. Similarly, I have a major jones for mini-skirts and booty shorts; combined with the purchase of new tights (even I have my swap-meet limits), I can reinvigorate my wardrobe. You have to wade through piles of pearl-encrusted mohair sweaters and baggy office-drone khakis, but fortune favours the quirky: if you can make a white-and-gold tunic work for you, grab it. You end up with a wardrobe full of unusual and interesting clothes for a fraction of the price that you would pay new.

There's a game I sometimes play called What's New? I usually rock an even split of new, gifted, used and found. Today: swapped jeans, gifted socks, a tank top that my mom threw at me one day and said, "All you wear is black tank tops, ever, do you want this?" (cue vigorous nodding), a bra that was delivered in a similar fashion, and a pair of Blundstones that I actually bought new. I love playing this game. Each piece of clothing has a little story - I got the jeans at a swap with my sister, who scored a dress made by a company called Gold Digger (hilar!) - and taken all together, they make me feel confident, stylish, and hot. Good clothes, no matter where they come from, should do that.

One

I've been writing this blog for almost four years. When I first started, I was a grimy undergraduate student who could barely hold down a part-time job and once called the corner store to see if they would deliver me Coke Zero and soup because I had a sinus infection and it was snowing. Despite being 24 years old, I was basically a feral teenager. I lived in a apartment-cum-clubhouse, where my clothes were heaped in middens on my filthy carpet and I scrounged money out of the dryer to pay for dive-bar pints.

I was, in other words, a wreck.

In some ways, since it forced me to shape up, being a wreck was good for me. I did some heavy work and quit some bad habits. I slowly stopped staying in bed 17 hours a day, and started eating three meals a day. I graduated. I met a swell guy. For the first time in my life, my plants haven't died as soon as they crossed my threshold.

I leaned on my parents a lot in my financially lean times - unemployment is one of the scariest things going these days - and they provided with a generous bounty. I hated relying on my parents. I used to love getting an allowance when I was kid (two dollars a week, provided I had been diligent about not leaving my nightie on the bathroom floor for houseguests to chortle over when I got dressed in the morning), but when I was 27 and getting an allowance, I felt sick. So I shaped up even more. I got a job - a real, non-waitressing job, with benefits! Adulthood!

Something magical happened on the way: I kept writing. This blog is more than 300 entries deep now. Some entries are just insane: radioactive with self-loathing and working-out-the-emotions bilge. But most are decent little time capsules, and I'm immensely proud of myself for consistently putting out good writing, week after week, year after year.

Another magical thing happened, too. I started writing for other people. I now write for dandyhorse, and I blog for xoxoamore, and the Huffington Post's Canadian arm. And I work a full-time job. Plus, I have a boyfriend; we like to hang out. Oh, and friends, too. I have to water my plants, also. And while none of these are particularly well-paying jobs (except for my day job, which is actually totally well-paying), they're things that I need to maintain. They're the end result of a lot of hard work.

I'm not quitting this blog. I fucking love writing Hipsters Are Boring - it's some of the most me writing I've ever done. But I am going to bring it back to one post a week. I'll do my best to cross-post when I have other stuff going up in other places (something I should have been doing all this time), and I'll use this space for things that can't go other places. Rants about Rob Ford, a love letter to the movies, and a meditation on clothing swaps are some of the posts I have planned. I've put too much of myself into this goofy little project to quit it like some bad habit.

When I first started this blog, I needed to write to hear myself think. And four years later, I do.

Sick, In Bed, Dreaming

I am sick - sore throat, congestion, tired 'n' achy, all the usual suspects - and so I am feeling sorry for myself. I've had a successful writing month, and have started planning a trip abroad, and have kept my room relatively clean and remembered all my appointments....and I just ran myself down. It happens. I feel like a bicycle with a flat tire, or a battery with no juice in it.

In any case.

My sick days are usually spent in bed, eating weird things (peas and gyoza, anyone?), drinking tea and listening to music. And in celebration of my upcoming trip abroad, here's a sampling of Icelandic band Of Monsters and Men, who are playing in Toronto next week and who will probably folksily bring the house down.

I'm sure there will be several more Icelandic bands coming at y'all in the next few months, so get ready for some Bjork! I'm going to go contruct a swan dress now. Please excuse me.

Spring Break! I Mean, Summer Jobs!

Summer jobs are the best. When I was in high school and university, as soon as the buds were on the trees, I would be pounding the pavement with my meagre little resume in hand, knocking on doors. I wanted retail jobs, I wanted hostessing jobs, I wanted waitressing jobs and file-clerk jobs and any number of other gigs that would let me put a few thousand dollars in the bank towards school. That money would also finance new summer dresses, Slurpee runs to the 7-11, drinks on the patio, and piles of magazines to read on the beach.

Now that I'm older, the seasons are supposed to contain one long, unbroken string of employment: my summer job should be the same as my Christmas job. It's tough not to feel nostalgic, though. Summer jobs offer a fair amount of flexibility and freedom, and there's a light at the end of the tunnel: heading back to school in the fall is a deeply ingrained part of my psyche. Work four months, go to school for eight. Wash, rinse, repeat.

But if you're looking for work this summer, start early. Once you're back from spring break, start looking at job boards and calling old bosses. If you can't start right away, be open about the fact that you're in school - most bosses don't mind waiting a few weeks for the right candidate to come on board, especially if they can do the interviewing and hiring ahead of time. Don't wait until school lets out in April or May. By then, the super-premium jobs will have been snapped up.

Take risks. Apply for jobs that are outside your wheelhouse, especially if you're still in school. I strongly encourage folks to try getting in touch with their creative sides: so much emphasis is placed on making boatloads of money after graduation in order to repay student loans that some folks will otherwise never get a chance to, you know, play. Conversely, if you're studying something arts-'n'-lit related, try your hand at some office skill-building. Everyone should know how to write a great letter, make a spreadsheet, and take a comprehensible message. If there are holes in your academic background, now's your chance to fill them.

If you can afford it, try an internship. The non-profit sector might not pay; the corporate sector will, but neither makes you rich. However, internships often offer a much more enriching experience than a typical entry-level position. You are encouraged to network, to take on short-term projects, and an internship is a great resume-builder.

If you can't afford to be an intern, try volunteering a couple hours a week to build your resume - your school or local community centre will have suggestions on where you can help out. Avoid overextending yourself, though: I had plenty of friends who worked two, three, or four jobs during the summer to make as much money as possible. They all, somewhat unsurprisingly, burned out (if not during the summer, then during the school year, when it hurt more). Downtime is important. Use your summer break to take an actual, you know, break. I repeat: Downtime. Is. Important.

For something completely different: travel! Pick a city, any city - Vancouver, Dublin, Toronto, San Fransisco - and expand your worldview. You might not save as much money, but you can rest easy knowing that's only for a few months. Like your creative side, your worldly side can get a boost that might not be as available to you once things like "permanent positions" are on the horizon.

Take the long view. Employment opportunities aren't amazing for freshly graduated students, so if you can build a relationship with a company in your teens or early twenties, you might be able to turn that into more long-term employment later on. Talk with your supervisor about guaranteeing a position for the following summer. If your school schedule allows you to work into the fall, take advantage of the chance to both make more money and impress your supervisors.

No matter if you're just starting out or have settled comfortably into your career, remember to have fun: summer is stuffed full of long weekends, beach days, trips to the air-conditioned mall, and drinks on the patio. You might have to work those long weekend and give up some of those beach days in the name of making money, but enjoy the little things: a walk in the sun, a cool drink outside, and your well-earned paychecks.

Hi! Still here! And Everywhere!

You know that saying, "When it rains, it pours"? I've been hella busy these last couple weeks - good times - but that means I've missed writing for Hipsters Are Boring - bad times!

I enrolled in Edward Keenan's course Writing Is A Business at The Academy of the Impossible, picked up another writing gig (shhh - no details yet), pitched a blog idea to my office boss, and spent March madly writing for xoxoamore.com. It's been a wordy month. Keenan's advice to newbie writers was basically, "Take all the jobs you can afford to take - free, cheap, whatever - to build your network and your portfolio." Good advice, Keenan...but how do I write and hold down my bill-payin' job? And sleep?

Lots of balance. Or, more likely, attempts at lots of balance with a hefty side helping of "OMG Need Moar Time."

Unlike a few months ago, I'm now struggling a little with the idea of writing for free. Will writing for free or cheap now set a dangerous precedent that I'm not, you know, worth paying? So I'm treating these next few months like a crash course in getting out there: pitching, writing, building a brand and a voice, getting used to rejection and toughening up my skin. Most j-school graduates have this all squared away by the time they convocate, but for those of us who take a more circuitous route to the game, there are a lot of false starts, moments of unsureness, not-totally-perfect jobs, and all the other starting-up stumbling blocks that everyone faces. Keenan talked about his first three months as a writer: he sent a pitch to Harper's, another to the New Yorker, and then basically sat around fretting. I laughed, mostly out of sympathy and recognition. Like, been there, friend.

That I have a day job is a double-edged sword; I like my job a lot (and it's definitely paying my bills) but 40 hours a week in the office leaves little time to build that momentum. I anticipate spending a lot of this summer very tired. But, like I have for the last three years, I love blogging for Hipsters. In any case - apologies to my loyal readers (hi mom!) when I stumble for a couple weeks. My path is just under construction right now.