"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself..." (p. 33)

Sometimes, and only sometimes, it feels as if I am a walking joke finely crafted by the universe, perpetually caught in the punchline cycle. Quite frankly, I don't find the universe's joke all that funny, but that's when s/he smacks me upside the head and laughs even more about it.

That's when I scowl and run away to the bathroom.

I only mention this because I had one of those moments today at work, and all I could do was shyly thank everyone for their comments before retiring to the bathroom (where I legitimately had to pee) to shake my head in hilarious frustration.

As part of a project I have been very closely working on and quasi-managing, I was responsible for sending an email to all staff in the Canadian office once again reiterating some of the deeply important fundamentals of the new initiative, officially launching tomorrow. Not wanting to make this one of those boring, fuddy duddy, standard office emails, I flowered it up a little and added some creativity.

I asked my manager to peruse the email before I sent it, as I had told her I would, just to ensure I didn't forget any details - two hears are better than one! - and was only met by her warm, and fairly standard, "That is wonderful! Perfect!"

I always experience a strange hiccup before actually hitting the send button for staff wide emails. There's so much stress behind knowing that that many people will be receiving your email simultaneously. That's a whole other story and issue unto itself though.

Shortly after sending out the email, another one of the girl's in my department immediately commented on how much she enjoyed one of my added flair bits, and was once again welcomed with "I know! Isn't it great?" from my manager.

When I returned to my desk following lunch, one of the lady's who had been away in the morning was chatting with my boss, and interrupted herself to compliment me on my email, stating just how well written I was.

I smiled. I said thank you a number of times. I also cast my eyes downward and temporarily booked it out of that situation because it was as if my life long goals were smacking me in the face. They were wearing flashing Christmas lights and performing the Riverdance in front of me, posing the question, "Why?"

Quite honestly, it all broke my heart a little, because I know what I want to do, and I'm not doing it. Despite being good at my current job, it's not where my heart lies. But I suppose that's the common problem many people have - we all just eventually find ourselves stranded in a place we never thought we'd end up. We justify to ourselves that our jobs are okay, pay well, and come with benefits. It's not what we want to do, but it's not the worst thing in the world.

It may be the common condition, but how many of us common condition folk are honest to goodness, deep down happy?

How many of us are yielding to our temptations like Dorian Gray? How many of us are ignoring them, allowing them to consume our souls?

Our portraits are all deformed, but unlike Dorian's, they're deformed for the wrong reasons.

"Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear and vivid and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?" (p. 34)

Far too often I bemoan the fact that I am not reading as much lately. Of course, this is a judgement based on the amount of reading I was doing last year when I was unemployed and not attempting to lead four lifestyles at once.

Slowly, but surely, I am working my way through The Picture of Dorian Gray, and with every sit down, I am busy highlighting fragments of text that I either can't help but smile at for their truth, or frown at for their relativity.

"The only artists I have ever known, who are personally delightful, are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. the others write the poetry that they dare not realize." (p. 84)

Often, I wonder where ideas flow from - especially when there is such disconnect between the actual experience and the idea. Where do the emotions come from? Where does the knowledge? These grandiose images blend together to create occurrences that have never actually materialized and yet they feel so real on paper. They're ghosts of something that never was, but they're convincing.

I consider the stereotypical writer and his hermit characteristics. I ponder just how stereotypical that perceived stereotype really is. Perception, after all, is everything ...

And sometimes, I think I perceive and experience more right here, than I do anywhere else.

I was reading the latest edition of Quill & Quire whilst on the treadmill tonight, when I came across an article lamenting the death of Book Expo earlier this year.

The death of Book Expo.

I raised an eyebrow, perplexed, since I had heard nothing about Book Expo suffering until reading the article of its demise.

Then again, let's be honest here. I have never been to Book Expo, and I don't really think you can attend an event by association -- friends and acquaintances have gone in the past, and as such, I've lived vicariously through them. At the end of the day, I am slightly out of the loop.

I've yet to work in book publishing. I managed a stint in newspaper publishing, but then my contract ended and well, the paper downsized the role(s) I was in, moving it to another paper of the same family.

Despite that, I often dream of working in the industry at some point, disregarding any and all negative press that often discusses how much the industry is changing -- or, floundering, depending on who you ask.

I generally do a good job of ignoring such sentiments, but for whatever reason, reading about the death of Book Expo broke my heart. Perhaps it was the fact that it seemingly came out of nowhere (thank you disconnect!) or the fact that I had always dreamed of one day attending Book Expo for myself, whatever the reason, I read the article sadly, feeling for the first time as if I was watching the industry wash away.

Sure, it all ended on a high note. The conclusion of an event that really wasn't doing much for anyone anymore has instead spawned a sea of revival ideas and localized groups. Book Camp experienced a site meltdown because so many people logged on to register. Despite the death of a giant, the fiery passion of the small still burns beneath.

And yet, despite those flames, every now and again, when news like this manages to crack through my stubborn mind, I wonder, what if they're wrong? What if the industry is on the graveyard track? What if digital one day kills print? What if we're all just fooling ourselves because we're pathetically in love with ink stained paper?

What if?

Work is slowly killing me. It has been nothing but early mornings and overtime hours for the last little while and it's beginning to drive me insane quite rapidly.

Needless to say, I am eagerly counting down to April 2nd when all of this will be over and I will once again, hopefully, be able to return to a quasi-normal life. Fingers crossed. I'd rather not come out of this alive, only to discover that I have another equally time consuming and frustrating project to call my own.

That may be the day I go nuts.

After all, I'm not reading nearly as much as I used to. I have all but stopped writing save for a few outlets and it's only when that begins to happen that I begin to grow bitter and resentful. I'm supposed to be a president for the CAA, but you'd never know it considering how little time I have to focus on the things that need to be done.

I miss the days of last summer when most minutes were spent basking in sunlight and reading book after book, immersed in a world ages from here. I miss wrapping myself up in the comforting blanket of another character's life through the words pumping out of my fingers. I miss a lot of things lately, and I don't generally miss things.

I miss life, when life wasn't really stereotypical and mundane.

"Who wants to see life as it is, if they can help it?" (p. 130)

I first read Long Day's Journey Into Night in my high school drama class. During each class, we'd all sit in a circle and take turns reading character lines.

Somehow, I had entirely forgotten about this when I picked up the book at a University of Toronto book sale for a mere two dollars. The night I finally picked it up, my brow furrowed and I wondered to myself why the text seemed so familiar.

Then, it dawned on me.

I put the book down at that point, instead finding myself tantalized by other novels coaxing me to their pages. It wasn't until mid-February that I picked it up again to finally finish. Not only had I forgotten my original reading of the play, I had also forgotten how much I enjoyed it.

Let's face it, the characters are drop dead miserable. They spend much of the play wallowing in their misery, taking both sly and direct jabs at one another, and criticizing each other's lives. Essentially, it's any family behind closed doors, only, at an extreme.

However, dependent on your frame of mind and where you're coming from at the time of reading, the characters will either sound dreadful or they'll reach into your chest, pull out your heart, and stomp on it. I found myself empathizing with Mary and stopping dead in my tracks whilst reading her sad, rambling monologues.

"How could you believe me - when I can't believe myself? I've become such a liar. I never lied about anything once upon a time. Now I have to lie, especially to myself. But how can you understand, when I don't myself. I've never understood anything about it, except that one day long ago I found I could no longer call my soul my own." (p. 93)

Mary's delusion, if we want to call it that, has more or less been a consequence of her drug addiction, but her mentality is experienced by people everywhere regardless. Even I find myself often wondering if I am simply moving about my days in a hazy state of lies. Many times I question myself why I do the things I do - what benefit am I receiving from my work? Who am I helping? What need am I satisfying, if any at all? What? Why? How?

It's almost as if you get so caught up in living the routine, day to day lie that it becomes the truth, and finally, one day, you no longer know the difference between the false and the honest. What happens when you reach that point? What clears up the picture? What fogs it up even more?

Although the characters struggle with their own demons, O'Neill highlights the general struggles of waking each morning. They suffer as we suffer. They remember, feud and share laughs with one another. They live lives that they necessarily did not want to live.

Perhaps I'm thinking a bit too much lately. I'm drowning in a sea of nostalgia and as such, every emotion has been heightened, increasing in sensitivity to a degree I haven't felt in a long time. It's Mary's inner turmoil bubbling over, begging me to listen --

It's time to stop lying.

"I love it. It's like we're in a snow globe and God decided he wanted to see a blizzard so he shook us all the fug up." (p. 166)

I kind of have that nagging feeling that things need to change. I am perpetually moving on and trying new things because, well, I'm sure there's a very psychological reason that I'd have to pay someone to evaluate. Regardless, it's time to shake up the snow globe.

I swear, tomorrow, we move on from An Abundance of Katherines.

I'm not much of a dater. I suppose, to some degree, I never have been. I was born a fiercely independent only child, and a fiercely independent only child is how I remained. I preferred my own space and my own time to do as I pleased. I never liked having to answer to anyone, much to my mother's dismay.

It seems I grew bored of people quickly. It's a terrible thing to say, but judging by my track record of "best friends" through grade school, I averaged nearly one new attached-at-the-hip friend each year.

It wasn't anyone's fault. I tend to experience things quickly and then dismiss them as passe as equally fast. Much of the things we did in high school I backed away from because I grew bored after a month or two whereas everyone else carried on with the same activities for years. Been there. Done that. Out of here.

Needless to say, the speed at which I race through things doesn't always go over very well with people. My only child fickleness and stubborn attitude of wanting, nay needing, to be left alone for large periods of time, tends to get on a lot of people's nerves. It's happened quite frequently to my friends now that I've just disappeared for a few days without a trace. Only child invisibility - a girl's best friend.

This all tends to speak volumes about my lack of dating, or relationships, in general. Not only do we face the challenges of above, but I seem to exude asexual tendencies - I just don't find every other male to be bone jumping worthy. In fact, I find very few fall into a dating category at all.

What does this tend to mean in the end, when I do ultimately venture out and give the big wheel a spin?

"It rather goes without saying that Katherine drank her coffee black. Katherines do, generally. They like their coffee like they like their ex-boyfriends: bitter." (p.77)

I love black coffee.

"I was thinking about your mattering business. I feel like, like, how you matter is defined by the things that matter to you. You matter as much as the things that matter to you. And I got so backwards, trying to make myself matter to him. All this time, there were real things to care: real, good people who care about me, and this place. It's so easy to get stuck. You just get caught in being something, being special or cool or whatever, to the point where you don't even know why you need it; you just think you do." (p. 201)

Reading John Green's An Abundance of Katherines was, at first, like reading a light-hearted, fluffy book about quirky teens - a one-time child prodigy, his sidekick best friend and small town girl. As you make your way through it, however, you begin to realise that beneath all of the racist comments (sidekick best friend Hassan uses racial terms regularly), mathematical theorums, banter and sometimes distracting footnotes, Green has delved into your mind and, based on your existing perception of life, really made a mess of things.

Colin Singleton, our fearless (or perhaps, fearful is more appropriate) main character, is a child prodigy on the verge of growing up. Standing on the brink of the rest of his life, he obsesses over no longer being a prodigy, lamenting instead the fact that he wasn't a born a genius destined to change the world.

"The vast majority of child prodigies don't become adult geniuses. Colin was almost certain that he was among that unfortunate majority." (p.10)

I grew up during the time of quasi-prodigies. If you demonstrated even an ounce of promise in elementary school, you were immediately dumped into a special enrichment program, meant to help your brain blossom, and possibly, sprout a million weeds. I went through a fair number of these so-called enrichment programs, and, I won't lie, I sometimes wondered what I was even doing in them (the math ones, more or less, to be honest).

Teachers, program coordinators, parents, etc, would always boast about your abilites and encourage you to be all you can be. The world was your oyster and they'd drill into your head the fact that you can do anything you put your mind to.

Then, you grow up. The real world doesn't embrace or encourage individuals who show promise. The real world, generally, crushes them instead. You spend your childhood and awkward teen years believing that you are special, the world is waiting for you, and then you discover, painfully, that you've been lied to for years.

That's when you begin to obsess with mattering, because, frankly, mattering just takes you back to childhood where everyone would fawn over you and your intellect, making you matter by default in your small, secluded, elementary school world.

Unfortunately, we get trapped in this train of thought. For example, here I am today, twenty-four years of age, still married to the fact that I want to matter. I want to do something that matters to someone. I don't know what this something is, but it's certainly bigger than merely mattering to someone because I took their dog for a walk or bought them candy. No, it has to be much bigger than that.

There's no way out of this thought process; at least, there isn't one I've yet discovered. It becomes life as you know it and instead, you find yourself miserable all the time because no matter what you do, it doesn't matter enough because your sense of mattering is skewed. I am perpetually unhappy with every office job I have ever had, because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. My job does not matter. I have done nothing worthy of mattering.

"In another 2,400 years, even Socrates, the most well-known genius of that century, might be forgotten. The future will erase everything - there's no level of fame or genius that allows you to transcend oblivion. The infinite future makes that kind of mattering impossible." (p. 213)

The book smacks you in the face with realities we all know, but don't often think about. Sure, I know plenty of my quirks are irrational, but they're so normal to me, I think I need them. Life is illogical on so many levels and yet, we obsess over things like wanting to matter, when ultimately, in the end, it'll all just fade away. One day, no evidence will exist and it'll be like you never existed at all.

It begs to question: what's the point?

... I told you Green's book makes a mess of everything. So much for light and fluffy.

i let go, i fell in

Growing up, my mother enforced the rule of never damaging a book by writing, drawing or highlighting in it. Folding over page corners to mark your place was severely frowned upon also and resulted in my ridiculous collection and obsession with bookmarks; no one in their right mind needs handfuls upon handfuls of bookmarks when you only ever read a few books at a time. Besides, that's what ripped up pieces of paper, old movie stubs or useless receipts are for.

It wasn't until recently that I threw caution to the wind and stopped believing and following Mother's Rule. There was no particular defining moment, and if there was, I can't remember it and as such, my story is kind of falling flat. The point of the matter is, one day I must have decided that a certain passage was worthy of remembering and that encouraged the pink highlighter to the kiss the forbidden page - folded over corner included! Naughty, I know. If my mother saw me, she would have had a seizure.

Ever since that fateful day, I've been folding over corners like a mad woman, and following it up with a good dose of highlighter. The books, ultimately, appreciate it I think. After all, the paper creases and ink stained pages only mean the book is all the more loved, much like the Velveteen Rabbit. Unloved things don't look shiny and new. That probably also explains why my teddy bear looks half dead -- I have no shame. I sleep with a teddy bear. I admit it.

Regardless, the book(s) loves it. They all love attention; every single page soaks it up.

"But he always had books. Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they'll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back."
-- An Abundance of Katherines (p. 110)

I will forever be single - just me, my cats, and my books.