Welcome, friend!

Hi. I’m Stephanie, formerly S. There’s a lot of “formerly” in my life right now… so let’s start some storytelling! Here are 4 fun facts.

1) I’m incredibly un-photogenic. Any time there’s a camera in my presence, I start to smile, and then it occurs to me how stupid it is that I’m smiling at an inanimate object and I start to make a face… inevitably *right* when the shutter clicks. So I avoid photos like the plague, but because I’m like a ghost, I do a self-portrait every year on my birthday so that I can watch myself age. This was my most recent:

hello, 34. I was overtired and I forgot to wear lipstick, but I’m smiling, dammit, and sometimes that’s all we can hope for. I’m actually sitting in my (former) bathroom because I’m prone to absurd paleness, and the natural light in the proper rooms of my (former) house was making me look like a ghost.

This is a fair representation of me. I wear those earrings, those glasses, and black… most of the time. However, I think I smile with my mouth open when I’m not in the process of torturing myself with a photograph… but I think it makes me look demonic when I pose like that. So there you have it. Me. Ish.

2) Until 30 June, I’m a prof. I have been teaching History for the last four years, which is what brought me to Prince George, BC. And I have had a love-hate with my job and my city for years. And now that I’ve packed up and left, I’m just sad. There was stuff I liked about my job, and stuff I was good at—but in the end, who needs to work *that* much?!? I bristle at all suggestions of the “Ivory Tower”, because it’s really a lot more about exploitation than anything.

What am I *after* June 30?

Good question.

Cue the crickets.

Well, one thing I won’t be is a resident of PG. Which is good but bad: good, because I had no social life. In fairness, I maybe could have tried working less and looking for connections more… but there were limitations. Like the fact that I spent 98% of my time in work and work-related things. While talking to my colleagues was often hilarious (I truly worked with some amazing people!), academics are still neurotic and I’m even *more* neurotic when I’m around them. We all often talk about how much work we have to do, and that shit’s just not relaxing. So… then there are the students. And some of them were *so* great! So fun! But still: SO YOUNG. And students. So—that’s not really socialising… they call me “Dr”. That shit is *also* not relaxing.

I used to not want to die single, which is likely when you’re an Historian in a blue collar town—so leaving PG sounded like a good plan. But: I turned a corner on that one and don’t really care about that anymore… but I still had to leave PG. Alas.

So those were the good reasons to go… but you know what I’ll miss? Living in a town that’s symbolised by this:

THAT is PG Man. They paint his face for different things—when I moved there he was blue because Blue Man Group came through town, and when I left he was decked out like Kiss, which rocked. Heh.

I’ll miss the friendliness. I used to say that the attitude in PG was like “we’re all in this together!” Because with an 8 hour drive to Edmonton, 7.5 to Calgary, and sometimes 10 to Vancouver, we were HELLA far away from everything. If we couldn’t all get along, what good would *that* be?

(source)

I’ll miss the trees! It *was* pretty, if you turned your back on the communist architecture and the festival of ugliness that was the “downtown”… and I worked at the nicest place in town:

(source)
This building, in fact, was so nice that, regularly, when I came in to work on the weekends, I’d have to navigate weddings. Taking place amongst offices. Romantique, non?

And then there was the skiing: winter mornings (not enough of them!), I would get up at the crack of early and meet my friend Holly for a quick tour in the likes of this:

In theory, there could be moose and cougars around. And sleeping bears. In fact, I only occasionally saw moose from my office, never saw a cougar (thank god), and lived on the wrong side of town to see bears—so I only saw them when I drove up on my move in, and then drove down on my move out.

So there are things that I will miss… and I was actually quite sad to go. But that might have more to do with being at loose ends now than anything—who knows?

3) I am actually homeless right now. I moved out of my beloved house (with the insanely ugly carpets), and all my belongings went one of two ways: either like this

bye bye, worldly goods! (And bye bye to the ugly child molester vans in my back alley… won’t miss those!)

Alternatively, there was this:

Behind that couch, space heater and end table in a little cabin on my friend’s property (lovingly called “the Unabomber” for obvious reasons)… there’s everything else. Lots of books. Lots. As my forearms can attest to.

And me? Well, I’m writing this from Calgary. And what now? Well, on Saturday, I’m driving to Vancouver, parking my car, and then… taking a little break.

4) Things are changing. Lots. It never crossed my mind that, by my mid-30s, I’d be anything but successful. Instead, the job I meant to go into has vanished, the job I had in the interim is even worse for prospects… and I didn’t put enough time and effort into my LSAT and am now paying the price for that. So what do I do, then? Dunno. Maybe I’ll do it again. But right now, I’ve taught 8 courses and two internships in 9 months. More than half of those were new, the rest required a lot of work to revamp. So I’m pretty tired, and unable to consider what else to do now.

So, I’m taking my act on the road.

And for that, I have another story. But it will wait for tomorrow.

Pleased to meet you, and thanks for being patient.