Argh! I can't sleep!

Now that the excess water has drained from my head, I can't get the rush of thoughts to clear out long enough to catch some sleep. It was fine the other night when my thoughts revolved around my comic storyline. I managed to etch out some rather awesome plot twists to deceive and astound readers and an ending that makes me smile with sheer satisfaction. But tonight it's not so much with the literary thought process. It's more along the lines of my life and how to be satisfied with my surroundings.

It's no mystery that my move to Vancouver has proved unsatisfactory. I've been here a year and four months and I've yet to find reason to like this city. Sure, it's got great proximity to other places that are great. But I don't have a car or the money that's necessary to get to these awesome places. Add on the rain and I'm finding few reasons to venture outside of my neighbourhood. Downtown Vancouver seems to be full of trend obsessed clones talking on cell phones with their ugly Gucci bags on their arm. Granville Street's full of hooligans and hipsters. It's as though every drunken idiot with something to holler is out on Granville after dark. It's quite a phenomenon. Not only is everybody drunk, they're also obnoxious. I guess that's free entertainment.

People talk about Main and Broadway like it's the shit but besides two bookstores and the Foundation restaurant...it looks like an industrial zone. West 4th and Kits is ok for a stroll but I've been there, seen it, don't need to go back unless I'm going to the Comic Shop or the Naam. It's also a little too shi shi poo poo for my tastes. Then you have the Downtown Eastside. It's sadness compressed into one little area. I ride the bus through there all the time and it never fails to affect me. It reminds me of hopelessness and what's wrong with our world. I can't avoid it and it can't be ignored. I imagine what the Olympics will bring for those people. More heartache would be my guess.

There are a few pockets of the city I can enjoy. Chinatown is always good for an afternoon. Gastown has some good live music happening and tolerable crowds in attendance. Summer will bring Stanley Park and a few other busable outdoor activities. Commercial Drive is clearly the best area of the city. It has a great blend of awesome little shops and bookstores, cafes and coffee houses, clubs and patios, parks and people. It's where I spend my time. Everywhere else just feel like places to shop, the Drive is more a place to 'be'.

I know my perspective is tainted from my lack of a social circle. I'm sure I would enjoy the city more if I had the money and the friends to enjoy it with. And I suppose I'm working on that but I'm not so sure I'm going to find the friends I'm looking for here. For me friends feel like home. When I feel at home with friends I'm the most confident me I can be. When I'm at home with friends I'm amazing and they amaze me right back. We fall in love with each other and become family. So I guess what I'm saying is that home is where your friends are, so I should go there.

Vancouver is not my home. I wanted to move here for 5 years and I finally did. I'm not done here yet but I don't think I'll be sticking around much longer. I wasted all the nice days last summer working long hours at a shitty film job so I'd like to stick around and enjoy a proper summer in Vancouver. Who knows, maybe everything will be different by then and I'll be loving it here. Toronto definitely wasn't my favourite place to be when I first moved there and I ended up loving it. If not, I'm going back to Manitoba to be with the ones who know me best, to the people who give me strength.

My Mom keeps telling me I'm a small town girl who keeps moving to the big city. I suppose she's right in some sense. It's not the size of the places that matter, it's the lack of community. I rather enjoyed being invisible for a while but it starts to wear on a person. You become more singular, more self centered, less thoughtful. I manage to get lost in my thoughts when I move about the city because nobody's paying any attention to me so I don't have to pay any attention to them. I've become a solitary person who's not so shiny anymore.

I won't ever move back to my hometown but Winnipeg is home enough. I have many friends there and a brother with a baby on the way. Enough of my hometown is there to not be a stranger in the street 24/7. And I have high hopes for my creativity. All of my friends are artists or musicians. I get a creative buzz whenever I visit. So many of them are in line with my ideals, beliefs and lifestyle. The only thing stopping me from living there before was the slow film climate and I'm not doing that anymore. And since I didn't quit the industry because I needed to go home, I feel relief that it's finally ok to go home.

10 years gone and I finally am truly homesick.