An Ode to HEA

May 17th, 2017. 

I've been a cast member at Walt Disney World for two weeks. A new fireworks show called Happily Ever After has just premiered in the Magic Kingdom, replacing the long-running and widely beloved Wishes. I park myself in front of the train station overlooking Main Street for two hours to get the perfect view.

I fall in love with this show the first time I watch it, and by the time it ends, I'm crying.

(This is the first time, but it won't be the last.)

August 2nd, 2017.

I finished my last shift yesterday, and I'm moving out of my apartment tomorrow. Without realizing, my entire summer has suddenly been reduced to three days. I'm not ready to say goodbye.

I slip onto Main Street minutes before the show starts, angling myself between toddler-stacked shoulders to get a decent view. Towards the end of the show, right before the iconic Tinker Bell fly-over, the build-up to the big finale, the narrator says his usual line: And now, our journey comes to an end. 

I've never given much thought to the phrasing before, but in this moment, reality hits, and I start crying.

(I frantically wipe my tears as I make a beeline for Tomorrowland down the guest overflow path.)

August 5th, 2017.

Tomorrow morning, a flight will leave Orlando at 8am, and I'll be on it. Even still, I stay at the parks straight past closing--one last hurrah before the magic comes to an end.

The show is delayed because of lightning. For a moment, I'm terrified I won't get to see it one last time. But the show goes on.

I cry, and then I hug my friends and I cry some more.

(I'll cry so many times tonight that I'll lose count.)

September 15th, 2019.

I'm no longer a cast member, but just a regular guest on a regular vacation. It's my second last day here, and a ticketed event has forced me to watch the show a day earlier than planned. I always cry during the show, but tonight I cry a little harder, for seemingly no reason at all.

I don't know it yet, but this will be my last trip before a global pandemic shutters the gates on my favourite place and strands me some 3,000 km away.

(I don't know it yet, but this will be my last time watching my favourite show.)

September 29th, 2021.

Today, Happily Ever After will go on one last time, making way for a brand-new, 50th anniversary spectacular. After tonight, my favourite show will close permanently, and I will not get a chance to say goodbye.

I know it's silly. It's just a pyrotechnics show, one I've seen so many times that I can recite the track by heart, can cue the fireworks as they appear. I've seen it a million times from a million different angles. But this show and I, we have history together, and I know I'm not the only one.

I've always been acutely aware of endings. When I know one is coming, I always turn back for one last look, try to memorize everything and the way it all feels. If this were any other year, I'd have already gotten on a plane. I'd have already crammed myself onto a crowded Main Street, would've already cried my eyes out, and that would've been my ending.

But as we all know, this is not any other year.

So, as silly as it is, I'm sad. I'm sad to see my favourite show go, sad that I didn't know the last time I watched it would be The Last Time, sad that I won't get to see it again and soak in every minute, to be in the moment and memorize it all. I'm sad I won't get to say goodbye the way I want to, the way I always thought I might.

So tonight, at 9pm eastern, I'll hit play on a YouTube video that I've already seen a hundred times. I'll wear my Minnie ears, and I'll say goodbye whatever way I can.

(And yes, I'll most certainly cry.)

August 5th, 2017. Me, post-fireworks.

And so, our journey comes to an end,

But yours continues on.

Grab hold of your dreams and make them come true,

For you are the key to unlocking your own magic.

Now go. Let your dreams guide you.

Reach out and find your...Happily Ever After.

Don't Write Every Day

I’m going to give you what I suspect is the most controversial piece of writing advice I will ever give:

Don’t write every day. (Or, perhaps more appropriately, you don’t have to write every day.) 

This goes against the vast majority of popular writing advice, which often advocates for schedules, discipline, and seeking out inspiration rather than waiting for it to come to you. Already I can hear the throngs of writers in their outrage: “You won’t finish anything if you don’t write every day!”  they cry. “If I only sat down to write when I was in the mood, I’d never get anything done!” 

But of course, these writers are missing two key points: 

1) The point of advice is to take what you need and leave the rest. (Ie: nobody is forcing you to take this advice if you don’t like it.)
2) Productivity is not the sole purpose of writing. 

So I maintain my stance: you don’t have to write every day. You don’t need a schedule. You don’t need a daily or weekly or monthly progress goal to meet. You are allowed to simply write whenever you feel like it, or jump from project to project, whether you’ve finished it or not.  

The key thing to remember is that writing is a choice, not a chore. And if it starts feeling like a chore, you need to pull back and let yourself choose when to start up again. You aren’t doing yourself any favours by forcing yourself to do it—just let it be fun. 

I get that this advice sits on top of a very slippery slope. Consistency is key to improvement and progress. And considering that many writers (myself included) dream of turning their craft into a career, a part of that will eventually mean incorporating a certain level of discipline into your writing routine.  

The problem is, at least when it comes to fiction, there is no secret job board, no 9-to-5 position we can just go out and apply for. Our writing starts on the side, during lunch breaks and on weekends. It doesn’t pay the bills, so in the meantime, we need to keep a day job. And a day job will inevitably decrease the amount of free time we have to spend on anything, including writing. 

Writing is not my day job. I have a different job—a full-time, 40-hour-a-week job. I want writing to be my job, but I don’t want writing to be my second job. I don’t want a second job at all. I put in my hours, I get my cheque. I don’t want to spend all my free time stressing about another chore, I want to spend time doing whatever I want. Sometimes, that may be writing. I may spend all evening writing. Other times, I may spend all evening playing video games, watching movies, or reading a book. Some people live for The Hustle; I am not one of those people. 

“Hobby” isn’t a bad word. You can let writing be a hobby, something you do when you’re in the mood. It doesn’t have to be a career that you’re actively pursuing all of the time. It can also be both—as your goals or life circumstances change, so too should your approach to writing. You should be changing your writing habits to fit your lifestyle, not the other way around. 

The fact that “write every day” is so prevalent as advice is the very reason I feel the need to advocate for the opposite. My goal is to be your validation, the voice to reaffirm that the way you’re doing things—so long as it works for you—is good enough. 

I don’t stress about writing every day. I set an alarm for a reminder, but if I’m busy, or tired, or just not in the mood, I’m not gonna worry about it. Will it take me longer to reach my ultimate goal? Yeah, obviously. But I’d rather take the extra time and enjoy myself than put myself under undue stress during the process. And if I can enjoy the process, isn’t that the better option? 

Say it with me, kids: writing is a choice, not a chore. Let yourself have some fun. 

Until later,

-Justyne

North Carolina

I was next. I was next, and my heart was in a million places at once, and my mind was struggling to run through the hundred million things I wanted to say. How do you summarize a lifetime of admiration and respect into a single, three-minute interaction?

*Record scratching*

Yep, that’s me. I bet you’re wondering how I got myself into this situation.

Our story begins somewhere in the mid-2000s. Without a bookstore to sustain her, Yours Truly was scavenging the library shelves, reading anything and everything she could possibly get her hands on. Moving on from the Junior Fiction section to Young Adult felt like a rite of passage, and it was there that I found Sarah Dessen.

I latched onto her books in a way that I still can’t quite understand. Even now, as a Grown-Up reader drifting farther and farther from the core YA demographic, I find myself growing the Dessen collection on my shelf with every book she releases. Every time I think I’ve moved on from the young adult section of the bookstore, she drags me back, and I find myself once again invested in a teen summer love story. She shaped my adolescent reading habits and set the standard for the contemporary styles I still enjoy to this day. Her books have been a solid constant for more than half of my life.

More than that, though, she came to be a role model of sorts. She was so honest about the writing process and how hard it was. I would grow to appreciate this more than I initially realized; when I struggled with my writing, when it became so hard and scary that I doubted whether I had it in me to keep going, I would see photos of her own abandoned projects, see her tweets about her doubts and frustrations, and I would sink in relief. I wasn’t alone—the struggles and doubts were a normal part of the process. Sarah showed me that writing was allowed to be hard.

Fast forward to summer 2017. I packed my entire life—or at least, all that would fit—into a suitcase and flew down to Orlando in May. I got to live my dream of living in Disney World, making magic, meeting amazing people, and going to the parks on almost every day off I had. In fact, there were only three instances in which I didn’t spend my day off in the park: 

1) When I went to the beach and got horrendously sunburnt, even though I put on sunscreen. Twice.

2) When I flew home to surprise my sister for her high school grad, immediately after getting horrendously sunburnt. (Even though I put on sunscreen.) (Twice.)

3) When I took an overnight train to travel through four states to Raleigh, North Carolina, for what amounted to a 12-hour day trip.

Here’s the thing about living in Canada: nobody comes here. Sure, select cities may see a few tour stops from popular bands, but anyone living outside the GTA knows the pain of being skipped over by their favourite artists, musical or otherwise. This is most prevalent in places like southern Manitoba, a location which Taylor Swift has skipped during her last TWO (2) tours. The closest any of the authors on my shelf have ever gotten to Manitoba is Toronto—which is to say, not very close at all.

But as luck would have it, my Disney internship wasn’t the only thing that was happening that summer. In June 2017, Sarah Dessen would be releasing her then-newest novel, Once and For All, followed up by a book tour in select cities across the United States. For the first time, I felt like I had a real chance to actually meet her. Then in May, the dates dropped: 11 stops across six states, and guess which city didn’t make the cut?

So I did what any sane person would do—I looked up every city on the map, found the closest stop to Orlando, and booked a nine-hour train ticket to Raleigh, North Carolina.

The plan was simple: stuff a backpack full of essentials, save money on accommodations by sleeping on the train, successfully meet one of my biggest creative inspirations, and arrive back in Florida in time for work the following evening. All I had to do was get one of my shifts covered, and I was good to go.

I made it to the train station in downtown Orlando with little excitement and fanfare. The station was busier than I expected, filled with families carrying armloads of plastic Disney park bags—a hallmark of the ending vacation. I had travelled by train only one other time in my life. The car then had been barren, but this time the train was packed. “I’m visiting family in Raleigh for the week,” the man sitting beside me said. “What about yourself?”

I told him that I was only going up for a day, for a book signing.

“You wrote a book?” he asked, and he sounded so impressed that I almost didn’t want to correct him. The truth was far less exciting.

Even I had to admit that the whole adventure seemed rather crazy—coming all this way for such a short interaction. But I also knew that I couldn’t miss this opportunity. There was this weird sense of urgency attached to the trip; it may not be my only chance to meet Sarah, but it would definitely be my first real chance, and it would almost certainly be my best chance. Because even when Sarah did make the trek to Canada, she was always farther from me there than she was now, this faithful summer.

Which brings us back here—to me, standing in a bookstore in a city that I hadn’t known existed until a few weeks prior. I could never hope to express to Sarah just how important her writing has been to me, and I certainly couldn’t do it in such a brief encounter. I’m not even sure I remember what I said in the end. Something about being from Canada, but also somehow Orlando, about the long and complex journey I had taken to find myself standing in front of her—the journey I had hardly expected to take at all. 

And then, it was over. I was ushered along, dazed and jittery, to make room for the next reader.

The sun was already setting by the time I boarded the train back to Florida. The lights in the car were dimmed, other passengers more tired and wary than I hunkering down to get some sleep. I knew that I should probably be doing the same—I had to work the next day, after all, and who knew how much time I’d have for sleep by the time I got back home. But when I curled up in my seat, I instead pulled my new book out of my bulging backpack, tracing over the signature on the first page, revelling in my proof that this whole thing had happened. 

Plus, the whole trip counted as my monthly “cultural activity,” as required under my J-1 work visa. So y’know. Two birds, one stone, etc.

Until later,

- Justyne

Magic

I am not a Harry Potter fan. I tried—I read the first book, I’ve seen many of the movies. I gave it every chance I could. It’s not even that I dislike it, really. It was just...never my thing. And when I announced such a confession on Kilimanjaro Safaris in Animal Kingdom, the woman in front of me whipped around so fast that I thought she was going to throw me straight into the lion pit. Forgive me, book community, for I have sinned.

But despite what any Buzzfeed article may lead you to believe, not every avid reader was born a Potterhead. While Harry Potter may have been the gateway to the Magical World of Reading™ for many people, for me, that gateway was the Baby-sitters Little Sister series by Ann M. Martin. I’m not sure why. All I know is my mom gave little seven-year-old me secondhand books from a garage sale, and next thing I knew, I was getting my first library card and powering through six books a week like I was getting paid.

Reading is more than a source of distraction; it’s experience-sharing, an “act of empathy,” as John Green puts it: “an imagining of what it’s like to be someone else.” I read for the opportunity to discover new places and new people, to see new worlds through new perspectives. As I started venturing into telling my own stories, I became fascinated by the mechanics of it all—the narrative, the structure, the very words themselves. For me, it was never just about reading at all, but about the magic of storytelling itself.

I wholeheartedly believe that books are magic—or at least, the closest to thing we have. Let's break it down. All books are a collection of lines marked on slices of dead tree, bound together with glue. They’re all made the same, they all look the same. But those lines form letters, and words, and sentences, and paragraphs, all arranged in such a way that anyone who understands the language can share an understanding of the text.

Intertextuality is the relationship between texts, the way the content of one book interacts with the content of another. Language forms the basis of intertextuality, a common thread of what would otherwise be an unfamiliar collection of symbols. When the alphabet is rearranged in a careful, deliberate way, it can transport a reader somewhere beyond reality. That’s beyond just art or linguistics. That is straight up magic.

Go to your nearest bookshelf and grab two books. Read or unread, long or short, it doesn’t matter. Open one to any page and start reading. Now open the other and do the same. You can jump between them, one page at a time, and travel across continents and universes to find yourself surrounded by completely new people, without ever leaving your couch. It’s like a movie in your head. If that ain’t magic, I don’t know what is.

Books contain whole other worlds. By learning the art of writing, I was learning to transport people beyond the ink printed on the page to a place that is as real as it is fictional. The point of fiction is to make things up, yes, but to do so in a way that speaks to readers on a deeper level, in a special way.  Anyone who has ever gotten lost in a good book knows how magical stories can be. By learning the art of writing, I was learning how to make magic. 

There will never be anything more thrilling to me than flipping through an old journal. Looking at pages and pages filled with my thoughts and my words and my ideas fills me with a sense of unending pride and glee. Even if it’s all awful, every word, they are entirely mine, made by me alone. And isn’t that magical—the fact that I took a blank page and made it mean something, if only for a little while?

Some people needed that belief that a letter would arrive on their doorstep, or that a magic wand would select them out of so many others as worthy of its companionship. But I never needed a boy wizard to show me that magic exists. I suspect I never needed a Baby-sitters Little Sister, either. Discovering the magic of words and falling in love with it was inevitable. 

And now, I can make all the magic I could ever need.

Until later,

- Justyne

The Literary Canon is BALONEY

In my final year of university, one of my biggest assignments (we're talking, like, 50% of my grade) was to make a documentary. In my frantic search for B-roll material at 2am, I discovered a video criticizing the lack of required courses for the "literary greats." As an example, they referred to UCLA, whose English Literature program requires a selection of literary courses around topics like gender, race, critical theory, etc....but "not a single course in Shakeseare."

I had two problems with this:

1) I studied a different Shakespeare play in every year of high school, plus his sonnetts in my Intro English 1 class at university—there is definitely no lack of mandatory Shakespearean studies in the academic world.

2) Putting all issues of racism, sexism, and politics aside: who decides the literary canon? And who the hell decided it was so important?

(It's also worth noting that UCLA does require one course in each of four different historical periods, one of which will almost certainly cover Shakespeare, so the reliability of this creator is....questionable, at best. But I digress.)

In case you've forgotten: I was an English major. I didn't like English at first; we read Beowulf, sonnets, Shakespeare, and all the other old and stuffy material that is consistently considered part of some overarching and universal "Literary Canon." I hated the literary canon. It was boring, it was hard to understand, and—no matter what my high school English teacher said—I just couldn't see how studying stuff written over a hundred years ago could possibly help my writing skills in the present day.

But in the latter half of my studies, I started taking courses studying things like fairy tales, graphic novels, Disney movies. Almost immediately, I started enjoying my studies more. I was also frequently met with incredulous expressions and questions of amazement whenever I detailed my academic escapades. And I'll admit—writing a research paper analyzing themes of romance and sacrifice in Tangled and The Little Mermaid hardly felt like "real" school.

One of my absolute favourite courses in my degree was called "Popular Literature and Film." My professor emphasized, over and over, that you can do a close reading analysis on anything—anything. We started with Inside Out and The Marvelous Land of Oz, and worked our way to Carrie and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The point of the class was to see that there is meaning in everything, not just in "literary" media.

Really, all you have to do is take a step into any fandom community to realize the true magnitude of this lesson. Fans notice everything—every pause, every miniscule action, the implications of every editing choice or cinematographic element. Have you seen those Taylor Swift easter egg articles? This one opens with an analysis of a music video release date. Fans dig deep.

But they dig deep because they care. They're motivated, they're interested, so they huddle over media over and over and over again, looking for any scrap of meaning they can find.

I think sometimes people are hesitant to extend media and literature studies beyond the accepted literary canon because there's this ongoing perception that entertainment is incompatible with artistic integrity. Or that there's a departure in quality between "good" (ie: "conventionally literary") books and stuff designed to entertain the masses—like the difference between an indie, avant-garde film and a blockbuster action flick.

But you can read something BOTH for its critical, thought-provoking content AND still read it as simply enjoyable. I learned more about how to think critically when I was thinking about media that I enjoyed, rather than media that came with a Spark Notes study guide. In fact, I'd argue that learning to think critically about media you enjoy at face value can be far more beneficial than looking for the same Great Gatsby symbolism that everyone else has already found.

I think it's increasingly important that we don't start with the stuffy, the hard, and the boring; we should be focusing on the light, the fun, and the interesting. All throughout high school, I think I studied maybe one book that I liked. And don't get me wrong, university had more than its fair share of bad books—but I also had the priviledge of both finding and studying books that I genuinely enjoyed, which ultimately resulted in papers that (now, outside of the bleary, nocturnal habits of a procrastinating student) I'm actually kind of proud of.

ENGLISH CLASS CAN BE FUN! It doesn't have to be about interpreting character emotions through curtain colours. It can be about interpreting new symbolism from your favourite movie, or discussing performative ghostlore in a Shane Dawson video and a 4chan thread. (I would know; I wrote that paper.) How am I supposed to know if a program is a good fit when the first thing we study is a text so old that it has to be translated to English...from English.

This is, of course, not to dismiss or diminish the actual important of the older works that make up "the literary canon." The stuff we write today is influenced, however subconsciously, by all that stuff written 200 years ago. And the canon hasn't stuck around for no reason, either; the stories and themes continue to be relevant and relateable. They speak to us and appeal to us, and thus continue to be important. But, if anything, this makes it all the more valuable to study the canon alongside the more "popular," the more "modern," or any other works that we often exclude form the literary canon. Studying both allow us to notice the similarities and trends and to more fully understand why the older texts are important in the first place.

But to assume that the literary canon is the only source of valuable and critical interpretation is...well, ignorant. And boring. Not to mention kind of gatekeeper-ish. I promise, there is just as much academic benefit in studying recent Canadian graphic novels as there is in any Charles Dickens book you throw at me.

Until later,

- Justyne

MFM: Shadows Among Smoke

A fog settles between the ground and the sky, like a cloud that has sunk too low. The fog is thick and heavy, creeping into every inch of space and squeezing the oxygen out of my lungs. But people continue to march on through, as if the air is clear and the sky is blue and the clouds are out of reach as they should be.

Among those people, solid and real, are figures as pale as the fog, fading in and out of vision like a shadow among smoke. They lean in close, to the business suits and the dark-eyed students and the elderly alone on benches. Their mouths move in blurs, whispering secrets and spells. The reactions are subtle, but undeniable—shoulders sag, backs quiver, chests exhale in longing.

I hear it: a voice that doesn’t form words but sends chills down my spine and into my toes. It makes my heart twist and ache, makes my fingers reach for someone who isn’t there. I flinch as a figure floats past me, through me. He moves on, to new victims of the same whispers, unnoticed by all—except, evidently, me.

I stare as he turns unexpectedly, catching my eye and matching my gaze. He freezes, brow furrowed. Then he smirks, wiggles his fingers adieu, and dissolves away into nothing.

And yet I know, somehow, that he’ll be back.

The Truth About Your Dream Job

I first started getting into reading around the age of seven. A love of books grew to a fascination of stories, eventually leading to the first story I ever wrote at age nine. (It was really bad; we won’t talk about it.) From the moment I started writing, I got the idea in my head that I wanted to be a full-time author. The things that attracted me to this profession were as follows:

1. It was fun.
2. Everyone told me I was good at it.
3. I wanted to live a mythical lifestyle in which I could sit at home in my pyjamas all day.

But very quickly, it became more than that; I wanted to write because I loved it. Writing became My Thing™. If I wasn't doing it, I was thinking about it--puzzling plot together in my head, and secretly scrawling details in the margins of my notes when the teacher wasn't looking. It was fun, and exciting, and some deep force inside of me was burning a passion for it in my gut. It was my safe space, my comfort zone, my everything. I fell head over heels in love with writing. And make no mistake, I still love writing.

But I don't always love writing.

I love writing in bursts and in phases, like a sparkler that burns my hand rather than an ember that'll keep me warm at night. I plow forward, inevitably lose momentum, and finally fizzle out to an abrupt halt. It's my fatal flaw. As much as I may try to find the ~perfect project~ that'll magically sustain my productivity, it just never happens.

I grew up believing that if I had a job I loved, it would never feel like work. But there’s an integral problem with pursuing a creative career: you start as a hobby, when the only motivation is fun and personal fullfillment. Once you add pressure--the pressure to succeed, the pressure to improve, the pressure to make money--it starts to lose its fun. And once you start trying to calculate project marketability, and even outright avoiding projects you deem to be unmarketable...well, there goes most of the fulfillment, too.

For a long time, I thought that the solution to my fatal flaw was to treat writing like a real job. If I gave myself deadlines, and approached my projects with discipline, maybe I'd be able to power thorugh to the other side--even if there was no paycheque waiting for me. But in doing so, I began to ignore my strongest medium for self-expression and creative freedom, instead seeing the craft exclusively as a skill set to be monetized. I started worrying that I wasn't being productive enough, or making the amount of progress I thought I should have achieved. I stopped allowing myself the chance to step back when it stopped being fun; instead, I pushed myself harder. This isn't even REAL work, I told myself. You love this, after all.

All the while, there was a tiny voice inside my head asking--if I can't even muster the motivation to do this now, when all expectations are my own and every creative decision is entirely mine, how could I possibly do this for the rest of my life? Is this what my dream job is supposed to look like?

Suddenly, writing was the scariest and hardest thing to do. I've wanted to be a writer since I was nine. For the majority of my life, I've had one goal: to get published. It's been my motivation, my driving force, the focus of every tattered journal and every daydream for over half of my life. I've dedicated my life to building these skills from the ground up. So when that driving force is questioned, when I start to wonder if this is really for me or really what I want to do--it's scary as hell.

So I stopped. I avoided it. It was easier to hide than to face the reality that I might not be the writer I thought I was. But y'know what?

I came back. I may have taken a little longer, maybe eased back in a little hesitantly. But I always come back. I can never stay away for very long.

The idea that you'll "never work a day in your life" is bullshit. Writing is work. Creativity is work. At the end of the day, it's still a job, and like any job, there will be as many good days as there are bad days. (If you're lucky, you'll get more of the good ones.) It’s the good days that remind me why I want to do this, why I keep showing up. It’s the satisfaction of stringing together that perfect sentence, the thrill of expressing my thoughts in ~JUST~ the right way. Just because I get tired, fed up, frustrated by the anarchic writing process, doesn’t mean I'm any less of a writer. Waking up and deciding that I’m not in the mood to write doesn’t make me any less of a writer. The bad days aren’t going to make me stop showing up.

I still want to be an author. I want to be an author because I believe in the power of stories and shared experiences; because I express myself better through words on paper than I ever could out loud; because I love the chaotic calm that comes with working alone in a coffee shop, surrounded by strangers doing their own things. I want to be an author because, for me, the good days are well worth all of the bad ones.

Some people like to say that “true” artists are entirely dedicated, perhaps borderline obsessed with their craft. Some people say that "true" writers wake up thinking about writing. Sometimes I fall into that category—sometimes. When the planets align during a full harvest moon on the equinox, yes, I wake up thinking about writing. But sometimes, I don't even think about being a writer. I wake up wishing that I didn’t have to get out of bed. I wake up eager to play Sims from sunup to sundown, or eager to watch whatever TV episode has dropped overnight. I wake up thinking about everything BUT writing, because starting a writing session is one of the hardest things in the world.

But still, I wake up knowing that I am a writer, regardless of how often I get to do it or how often I even want to do it. I wake up knowing that once I get started, more often than not, it'll get easier. I know I'm the same writer if I write one word or one thousand words or no words at all. 

And more importantly, I wake up knowing that writing is not my defining characteristic--it's just one tiny piece of the whole.


Until later,

- Justyne

MFM: Polaris

I cross my yard in the early morning air, pausing to wiggle my toes amidst sharp blades of grass and grainy clumps of dirt. I look up—instinctively, reflexively—searching or stories and magic twinkling against their dark backdrop, just barely out of reach. Polaris shines brighter than them all: the night’s lighthouse, guiding people home for eons.

The moon shines down in spotlights, tracking me as I spin in the grass below. I nearly slip from the dew on my makeshift dancefloor. Still, I spin faster, until the stars are streaks of silver above. Faster, until the swirling air feels like it could lift me off the ground. Faster, until I’m stumbling over my giggles and laughter and can’t spin any longer.

I close my eyes and imagine the big dipper tipping and showering me with stardust. I dance with fragments of the universe until they fade in the glowing embers of the sun. The warmth of dawn melts the cosmos to my skin, and I am one with the universe.

MFM: Sticks n Stones

I’ve fallen from bikes, from rollerblades, from ice skates, from shoes. I’ve been scraped and sprained and battered and bruised. I fear the sensation of falling, and crashing, and tumbling, and the aching that will inevitably follow.

But while I may fear the sticks and stones and broken bones, I don’t remember them. I don’t remember the pain of a tattoo needle until I’m already in the chair. I don’t remember the sting of pavement carving off skin until I’m already on the ground. I don’t remember the force of a lego piece until it is already underfoot. I forget these things, diminish these things, wince once at the pain and move on.

But someone called me annoying once, and I have believed it ever since.

And someone criticized my excitement once, and I have subdued myself ever since.

And someone listed all my flaws once, and I've had them branded in my brain ever since.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words are easier to memorize.

A Graduate FAQ

Let me paint you a picture: it's my final day of my undergrad career. My sleep-deprived ass is in the school library, running purely on the caffeine pumping through my bloodstream and the adrenaline of powering through 1200 words in four hours. I wrote an exam this morning, I have one more tiny assignment to do this afternoon, and I've just (miracously, with thirty minutes to spare), finished my take home exam. I save the document, close the program, and open up the web browser to submit the exam.

The file is gone.

I open every folder (every. folder.). I search the entire PC. I reopen Word to check the “Recently Opened” tab. Nothing.

Naturally, I ambush the circulation desk in a frenzy, limbs flying as I explain to the blinking clerks why my life is currently exploding before my very eyes. After ten harrowing minutes, the tech guy was called, and it was then I learned that Firefox has a top secret “temporary download folder” that is only accessible through the browser itself. (Firefox, please.) The document was submitted, I finished my last assignment, and then proceeded to go home and pass out for a little while.

But that was five weeks ago, and now it’s over. I’m officially* a University Graduate™. And as with any graduation, I’ve already fallen into the routine of answering the same sequence of questions over and over (and over) again. So in the interest of efficiency (and saving my sanity), I have compiled some of these questions into one location for everyone to peruse at their convenience.

(*pending my actual convocation on June 13th.)

How does it feel to be done?

In all honesty, I don't think it's entirely sunk in yet that I'm done, and it probably won't until fall rolls around and I'm not stuck in a classroom somewhere. (Or when November hits and the government starts taking its money back by force.)

What are you graduating with?

My five years of torture have earned me a Bachelor of Arts in English (with emphasis on Creative Writing) and a minor in Human Geography.

And what can you do with that?

• Editor
• Copywriter (ie: advertising)
• Technical writer
• Some kind of library job, although most require a whole other degree that I don't want to pay for.

What’s the minor good for?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Will you ever get a masters degree?

I'd be lying if I said I hadn't considered it. I learned a lot in my creative writing classes, and didn’t really get to dedicate as many credits to the craft as I would have liked. But let's cool our jets for like thirty seconds--I need a breather before I even THINK about jumping head first into another two years of mental breakdowns.

Student debt is also disgusting and I’m not really in the mood to double it.

Are you going to work for Disney again?

....maybe.

Are you published yet?

Hush.

So what's next?

I just...want a job. So somebody hire me. Please. P l e a s e.

In the meantime, I'll be here! Blogging away for anyone who cares to listen.


Until later,

- Justyne

Every Book I Read in 2018 (aka The Most Subjective Ranking Ever, with No Explanation)

I stopped doing book reviews for several reasons, but the biggest reason was time: I lacked the time both for the reviews themselves, and the time to actually read the number of books necessary to maintain any form of consistency.

So instead, for 2018, I kept an ongoing document of every book I read throughout the year and rated them in order from my most favourite to my least favourite. For the most part I rated them as I finished them, but I also went back and reordered them after reflecting on them further. I didn't really have any sort of system for rating these books--they're based mostly on how much I enjoyed them, because I find that my subjective enjoyment is the only real way to compare a poetry collection to a historical fiction to a microfiction collection to a YA rom-com to a--well, you get the idea.

For added fun, I also decided to colour code them! Purple is for pure leisure reading, green is for mandatory uni reading, and blue is for books that weren't assigned for uni, but that I read to fulfill some sort of class assignment.

We're starting from the bottom-up, with #23 being my least favourite and #1 being my absolute favourite. A poor ranking does not necessarily mean it was bad, but that other books were better.

(I mean, some of them were bad, but I'm not here to spill tea.)


23. Fox by Margaret Sweatman (1991)

22. All That She Can See by Carrie Hope Fletcher (2017)

21. Rosie Dunne (also published under the name Love, Rosie) by Cecilia Ahern (2005)

20. Girls Like Us by Gail Giles (2014)

19. How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon (2014)

18. Seen Reading by Julie Wilson (2012)

17. He Said, She Said by Kwame Alexander (2013)

16. Fly on the Wall by E. Lockhart (2006)

15. Waking in Time by Angie Stanton (2017)

14. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon (1991)

13. That Inevitable Victorian Thing by E.K. Johnston (2017)

12. The Wars by Timothy Findley (1977)

11. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (2007)

10. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee (1997)

9. The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter (1979)

8. A Million Worlds with You by Claudia Gray (2016)

7. Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E.K. Johnston (2016)

6. Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes (2015)

5. Hamilton: The Revoltion by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter (2016)

4. Fan Art by Sarah Tregay (2014)

3. Ash by Malinda Lo (2009)

2. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (1908)

1. The Princess Saves Herselve in This One by Amanda Lovelace (2016)


Book reviews were fun for a while, but going forward I hope to focus on improving my Friday and Monday content. (Y'know, when school isn't beating me over the head with a flaming stick.)

Until later,

- Justyne




(I'm sorry I meant to post this a whole lot earlier.)

MFM: Connection

How many times had he taken this for granted? The always constant signal, the instant nature of knowledge and conversation—a world and lifestyle he had been born into. His whole life, he had used it without question, never noticing how much he needed it until it wasn’t there.

He called her over and over and over:

Voicemail.

Voicemail.

Try again later.

(But without words now, there wouldn’t be a later.)

Layers of cement separated them, strangling the connection in more ways than one. They had said goodbye before dusk, she had left before dawn. It was easier. But too late, he had changed his mind. So now he ran, phone glued to his ear.

Voicemail.

Voicemail.

Try again.

(And again, and again.)

He reached the platform as the train picked up speed. He could see her clearly, focused on her own screen, looking up just in time for eye contact before vanishing into the shrouded tunnel.

Maps are only useful if you know your destination; they had never discussed where she was going, only that she was leaving. Still he stumbled, breathless, to the routes plastered on the wall. He didn’t know what he needed; a sign, a clue, a hint.

What he needed, in the end, is what he got—a stop, circled crudely on the glass with marker, accompanied by her handwriting:

FIND ME.

So he did.

Pet Peeves (BEDS 415)

OKAY GUYS LET'S COMPLAIN ABOUT STUFF.

1. Books whose covers have little / nothing to do with the actual content itself. 

I mean just...why? Why you gotta have some random chick on the cover? What does this bracelet even mean? WHAT IS GOING ON?!?

Additonally...

2. Books with random girls / guys / faces in general on the cover.

Do these people get recognized? Like, on the street? Like, "Oh, hey, weren't you the girl on the cover of The Selection?" This is something I wonder about daily.

But actually, it kinda weirds me out.

3. People who crap on other people for their interests.

JUST LIKE?? DON'T??? Like you're welcome to disagree with me, that's chill, that's whatever. But if you're not even watching / experiencing / taking part in whatever it is that I'm currenlty obsessed with...you don't have to crap all over it. I mean, really. You're not even discussing the actual content, you're just taking it at face value and throwing it in the trash, along with all my respect for you.

4. Grocery store patrons who DON'T. PUT. THE. DIVIDER. BETWEEN. THEIR. GROCERIES.

I don't care how obvious you think the separation between your order and the next is. As a cashier, I also don't care who puts the divider down--but for the love of God, those plastic sticks exist for a reason.

(I could probably write a novel detailing all of the grocery store / retail scenarios that anger me, if I'm being honest...)

5. People who crowd the gate at an airport before their zone has been called.

I JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND. This does not speed up the process. It will not get you to your destination faster. Last time I was in Orlando, people were crowding the gate so bad that people exiting other planes couldn't get to freaking baggage claim because of the utter mob that was lingering outside the gate--and boarding hadn't even started yet.

An airplane is not rushed seating, guys. I promise, you'll get the same seat either way. All you're doing is likely causing the airport staff a hell of a lot of unnecessary stress.

There are almost definitely more things that tick me off, but we'll just leave it there for now.

Until later,

- Justyne

Okay But Where Did I Actually Go All Summer (BEDS 414)

So I think we can all figure out why I stopped blogging last year. School is stressful (meaning: torture), it got the best of me (meaning: chewed me up and spit me right into the trash can), et cetera. University ain't easy, folks. It happens.

But then summer hit. I finished my last exam, slept for 11 hours, and I was free! But I still didn't post anything.

Is this not what the summer is for? To use your sudden freedom to do all of the things you didn't have time for during the other three seasons? Shouldn't all of my free time been dedicated solely to my craft?

Well...no. Not this time. Because I have better, and more exciting things to do. And, as I returned to the blog this month, I realized that I never recorded (meaning: bragged about) what those things were here on the blog. So...here we go. Mental drumroll, please.

I worked....in Disney World.

Once again, for the people in the back: I worked in mother freaking Disney World.

It was an absolutely incredible summer (albeit spent working in an ugly costume), and between my shifts and my days off spent in the park, blogging kind of fell to the wayside. I still wrote, of course, both in my journal and otherwise. But I never quite gained the momentum or motivation to get this dusty old thing up and running again.

But now, we're back at it again--if only to provide me a distraction from the new university term. Will it last?

Well, we can only hope.

Until later,

- Justyne

Review: Red: A Haida Manga by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas (BEDS 413)

Of all the comics I read for my Canadian Comics class last year, this one was the most unique--and also the most confusing, and the hardest to follow.

I remember very little about the actual story. Red's sister gets kidnapped, and he becomes obsessed with getting revenge. The details are blurry, but that's the basic gist of it. If you want a better understanding, this book needs to be read twice. At least.

I can appreciate what the cartoonist was trying to do. He was pulling from traditional Haida art styles to create the comic, using thick borders that, when you pull the pages apart and rearrange them together, form a larger piece of traditional art. But not only did the swirling borders make it harder to follow the linear narrative, but the art style within the borders made the events confusing to understand. Half the time, I had no idea what was going on. I was mostly making sense of what was happened based on the dialogue and other texts in the book.

Tone: lol what just happened

Enjoyment rating: 2.7

Shelf life: The only reason I haven't sold it yet is because I keep forgetting to bring it back to the uni bookstore for buyback.

TL;DR: Hard to follow, wouldn't recommend.

Until later,

- Justyne

The FIrst Day (Or: How I Spent 12+ Hours at School) (BEDS 412)

I'm oblivious to a lot of things. I forget small details, somehow manage to miss the glaringly obvious, and just in general tend to not notice a lot of what's going on around me. It's a fatal flaw; especially when I noticed--a mere week before school started--that my Tuesday class schedule contained four of my five classes, keeping me at school from 8:30 am to 8:30 pm...a miserable twelve hours.

And guess what the first day of school was? A Tuesday. 

So, for your enjoyment, I recorded my adventures on the first day of school. (This was actually supposed to go up last week, on the first day of school, but me being...well, me...that didn't happen.)

Hour 1: 8:30-9:30am

I have already been up for three hours. (I am not happy about this.) 

My first class is okay; the prof is really chill, being one of those call-me-by-my-first-name, everything-in-the-syllabus-is-a-suggestion-rather-than-a-rule kind of dude. (Aka, my favourite kind of dude.) 

There is no required textbook, becuase my prof feels guilty assigning a $100+ book. My wallet weeps in joy.

The class ends early; I weep in joy.

Hour 2: 9:30-10:30am

I somehow manage to beat the textbook rush and wait no more than ten minutes in line, which will probably never happen again.

I also only spend $60 on textbooks, which will also probably never happen again.

Hour 3: 10:30-11:30 am

I'm already eating lucnh, because I'm hungry and time is a social construct. I watch Grey's Anatomy on my iPad and relish the lack of guilt that comes with not yet having homework. (This will not last long.) (As I am now writing this in the future, I can assure you that it did not last long at all.)

Hour 4: 11:30am-12:30pm

I'm still watching Grey's. Don't judge me.

Hour 5: 12:30-1:30pm

Cue second class. I've had this prof before. She remembers my name, which is shocking. I recognize someone who has been in two of my classes in the past--but I don't know her name, so that's awkward.

Hour 6: 1:30-2:30 pm

My second class ends early, and I am in dire need of caffeine. I go to Starbucks with a birthday gift card. They still have s'mores frappuccinos, and I am pleasantly surprised.

I try to visit the info booth to fix my U-pass, but the line basically stretches from one end of the building to the other. I give up on that idea fairly quickly.

Hour 7: 2:30-3:30pm

I spend my time watching YouTube videos and doodling. Being at school for 12 hours with no homework to do is surprisingly boring. (Coming from the future, I already miss those days.)

Hour 8: 3:30-4:30pm

My third class starts. There aren't enough chairs in the classroom, which is super awkward, considering the class only has 15 students in it.

Participation is required, which sucks, because I don't talk much. (People who actually know me well won't believe me, but this remains a true fact.)

Hour 9: 4:30-5:30pm

I don't have time between my final two classes to grab food. I know this will bite me in the ass in future weeks.

I could really use a nap, but the lecture hall is too small to nap unnoticed. (Not that I would....maybe.)

Hour 10: 5:30-6:30pm

I've had this prof before, too. I think I know what to expect, until she says that we're going on a field trip, and that she doesn't use powerpoints. (

She says she will only spend 15 minutes on the syllabus, which somehow turns into an hour, during which I don't pay attention because I didn't think she would talk for so long. (Oops?)

Hour 11: 6:30-7:30pm

We leave the classroom and go for a walk around the neigbourhood. I shamelessly play Pokemon Go the entire time.

Hour 12: 7:30-8:30pm

Class ends a blissful thirty minutes early, so I can go home and s l e e p.

Tuesdays are very quickly going to become my least favourite days.

Until later,

- Justyne

Micro Fiction Monday: Life (BEDS 411)

I’m used to emptiness. You know—dirt roads, single street-light towns, skies that stretch on forever just to remind you of how far you have to go just to find a shopping mall. I’m used to knowing everyone, and having the entire town’s history imprinted on the back of my hand. I’m used to feeling stuck, in this tiny corner of the world, where insignificance runs rampant. It’s incredible how suffocating fresh air can be.

But here….there’s life here. I see more people flash by in a minute than I see in a day back home. People are walking and talking and laughing and doing. Noises fill the silence, and skyscrapers fill the sky—evidence that there is more in this world than just me. Here, I can stare out my window and see more than just a tractor driving by. Here, I can see different people from different backgrounds, doing a hundred different things at the same time—instead of just the same old farmers in the same old dirty overalls.

A small town has the space to stretch your wings, with nowhere to fly. Here, where buildings stretch higher than I could ever imagine…anything is possible.

Micro Fiction Monday - Freedom (BEDS 404)

I keep my eye on the horizon. It stretches forever; I’m not used to it. I’m used to concrete towers, buildings stretching high into the sky, people visible from every corner and every coordinate. Business and busyness, cramped and crazy, where the closest thing to freedom is stepping on a balcony as high as you can get. Where you try to see everything, but can only ever get a fraction of all the uninterrupted movement. Flatness is foreign to me.

But here, flat is everywhere—where the tallest building is a storey and a half, and I can see the end of every street I turn onto. Where the greens outnumber the greys, and the sky is so blue that it seems more like a cartoon backdrop than reality. The air smells different, tastes different, feels different. Here, freedom is seeing the world open up around you, its limits beyond your line of sight, if there are even any limits at all. Freedom is reaching up towards the clouds, because they’re so close that touching them is somehow closer to a reality than a mere possibility. Freedom is reaching out on either side, and never touching another soul.

Freedom is feeling like, at any moment, you can jump and never come down.

The True Meaning of BEDS (BEDS 401)

My first blog post of 2017, and it's a mere four months before 2018 begins. Ain't that awkward.

A lot has gone on in the last eight months, and through it all, the blog kind of fell to the side. It became that eternal item on my to-do list that never seems to get done, along with, "clean your room" and "start working out someday, maybe".

But as another September rolls around, and thoughts of my annual blogging challenge begin to resurface, I am reminded of the true meaning of the season: to blog every damn day, no matter the length or quality. What better way to get back into the swing of things than half-assing a bunch of posts at the last second to gain some momentum?

So now, we're going to conveniently ignore the fact that it's technically September 2nd, and take the plunge together, in the hopes that the act of blogging every day will prompt a new wave of regularly-scheduled updates.

Until tomorrow,

- Justyne

Review: What Light by Jay Asher

"People think what they want. That's what I've had to accept. I can fight it, but that's exhausting. I can feel hurt about it, but that's torture. Or I can decide it's their loss." - Jay Asher, What Light

My initial intention was to read several Christmas-themed books, and schedule them for upload throughout December. Obviously...that didn't happen. So instead, I come sliding in on the last Wednesday of the month to bring you the only Christmas-themed book I actually got a round to reading!

What Light follows Sierra, whose family has owned a Christmas tree farm since before she was born. For eleven months of the year, she lives in Oregon, helping her parents grow and chop down endless rows of trees. But come Thanksgiving, they pack up and migrate down to California for the holiday season, where they open a tree lot to help families find the perfect tree. Although having two lives always means missing one, Sierra can't imagine living her life any differently.

This Christmas, though, there's also Caleb--a boy with a past and an affinity for Christmas trees, who won't get off Sierra's radar. Any relationship possibilities are already complicated by an expiration date--but the future is uncertain, and it may be Sierra's final Christmas in California. Is any relationship worth saying goodbye?

This book. Was. Adorable. It was an adorable ball of cheese, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially after having to go three+ months reading nothing but the texts required for my university courses. (I mean, some of those were also very good. But still.)

I'm going to re-state this, because it's worth emphasizing: this book is so cheesy. Sometimes unbearably so. But when you've been buried under school-induced stress for 13 weeks, unbearable cheese is pretty much exactly what you need. I also found that there was no real overarching conflict through the story--it was more comprised of several smaller issues that resolved themselves quickly, which meant that the climax was...well, not very climactic. It was more of a calm story, with less tension than other similar romantic comedies.

That being said, it was still very well written--pulled me in, and I couldn't get enough of Caleb and Sierra. (Because, again, they are adorable.) There was potential for it to do more, but what it did, it did well.

Final rating: 3.8.

Until later,

- Justyne