The Ninth Edition - Within Arms Reach of my Couch

People always say that inspiration is all around us. Sometimes I find that hard to believe. As I am in school now, sometimes I feel like the inspiration is just sucked right out of me. Whoop and it is gone. But in an attempts to save some of my own inspiration, these are the five most inspiring objects and things within arms reach of my couch.
1= A picture of my pops looking hungover. The picture was taken in 1976, when my dad was 24 years old. He looks like he just had on of the best/worst nights of his life, and his photographer friend highlighted his face bright green. I love this photo of my pops, it reminds me that sometimes it is OK to be hungover because that is just how you feel.
2= An old issue of Transworld Snowboarding. Snowboarding is something that I always will find inspirational. Once I am done reading (yes I actually read snowboard magazines) I take a magic marker to them, and write whatever I feel all over them. When I look back at some of these awesome pictures, with my random words all over them, I get inspired to take shots like that myself.
3= Let It Ride - The Craig Kelly Story The most inspirational movie. Ever. I watch this when things aren't feeling just right, and it has a permenant spot on my coffee table. Craig Kelly knew how to live life, and everyone can learn something from him, no matter what you do or where you go. A must see.
4= My cell phone, with my mother on speed dail. I am close with both of my parents, and my ma can tell me to deal with it better than anyone else. Sometimes that is the most inspirational thing to hear - just to suck it up and get on with your life. Ma is always good for that.
5= Sex Drugs and Coco Puffs by Chuck Klosterman. He is one funny writer. His words will usually make me laugh, and if they don't, they will make me think of something in a different way, and that is what a good writer should do. This book, especially the 23 Questions I ask Anyone before I decide to love them section will have you thinking about your life in an obscure way. That is a new way to find inspiration.
So the five most inspirational things within arms reach of my couch are all different and awesome in their own way. Look at what is around you in a small space. I bet you will be surprised at how much inspiration fills your house and you don't even notice it.

The Eighth One - Gym Dating Etiquette

The sweat drips down my face as I lift the barbell repeatedly into the air. I really wish it was my own sweat. A male lurker gawks down at me while I pump some iron. I don’t want to acknowledge his presence, but the sweat drips make it difficult.
“Feeling the burn?” he asks with a sly smile.
Gym conversations always seem to be weary and forced, so I don’t usually participate in them. Ignorance seems like my best option, so I pretend not to hear him.
“Feeling the burn?” he repeats, looking right down at me.
Ignorance is no longer an option, so I opt for the most primitive form of communication.
“Yeah,” I grunt.
I’m not feeling a tinkle of the burn yet, but I hope that a little white lie will stop all the chatter.
It fathoms me that my new friend is trying to win over the ladies at the gym. The gym is not a place where someone typically looks their best. For example, I’m sporting dirty cut off sweat pants that missed my laundry basket two weeks in a row. My black sports bra is visible through my white Calvin and Hobbes t-shirt that I slept in last night, and I’m plastered with dirt from mountain biking this morning. The Gawker is a large man with a perspiration problem. His orange Denver Bronco’s football jersey matches his homemade tan, and he is working out in acid-washed jeans. I’m in no mood to be romanced by a guy in acid-washed jeans.
I try a little gym feng shui: change location and change atmosphere. I spot an empty bench at the back of the room, and I swipe it but it isn’t long before I regret the move. To my left is a young woman with dyed-blonde hair, tight black pants and a little pink tank top. Because she’s doing sumo squats, her bottom stretches to twice the size of its regular width on two-second intervals, which makes me believe that her pants are going to rip at the seams. Facing me is another man in jeans (I never understood jeans at the gym) but his fly is down and his little man is trying to say hello. And the Gawker found room to my right for lunges. There’s no politically correct direction for me to look, so I put my head down and pretend to feel the burn. Half-way through the set, the Gawker attempts a second conversation.
“My name is Shane,” he offers, holding out his slippery hand.
I know this was something that I won’t be able to ignore or grunt my way through, so I grin and participate in the introduction.
“Come here often?” asks Shane with that same sly smile.
“A few times a week,” I reply, looking for the next opportunity to end the conversation.
“Hey, can you spot me while I bench this?” he says while pointing to a custom barbell that weighs twice as much as I do.
“Sure,” I pipe, and immediately wonder why I can never say no. I position myself behind Shane as he grunts out a number every time he exhales.
“One…two…four…”
I’m not going to question what happened to No. 3. When he gets to No. 11 he can’t lift the bar anymore, so my puny muscles lift that bar up to the safety stops, and that hurt my arms more than my entire workout.
“Hey,” he says as I puff after my feat, “did you know that the girl calf muscles are stronger than guy calf muscles?”
“No, Shane, I didn’t know that my girl calves are stronger,” I say, almost glaring at him.
“I just say that because you have really nice calves.”
Nice calves? I look down to see that my calves still have caked on mud and haven’t been shaved in ten days. I don’t know if it was a compliment I actually want to accept. A girl loves to hear about her dazzling blue eyes, a bright big smile, and her strong fit abs, but her muddy, hairy calf muscles, well that was a new one.
“Well, I’m done my workout,” I blurt abruptly, although I just arrived 20 minutes before, but my want to avoid more awkward conversations is stronger than my need to exercise.
I have to find a gym with better dating etiquette, but next time I need a date I know I can get one and a workout at the same time.

The Seventh Edition - 4 A.M.

I think that everyone should wake up at four a.m. at least once in their life, with nothing to do. That is what I did today. Actually it was 3:38, I remember because I cursed the clock as I rolled over. I had only been asleep for three hours, but I was wide awake, with more than a million things racing through my mind. So after twenty minuets of attempts to sleep, I got up, stuck my head out the window for a few seconds, then went and made myself and peanut butter and honey slice. I caught up on emails, finished some homework, and edited some photos all before the sun rose. I am thinking of switching my clocks so I wake up this early on a regular basis, but if I crash at 2 this afternoon, I will know that is a bad idea.

The Sixth One - The Imagined Writer.

Writing seems like an romantic thing to do. When I was a kid and I imagined a writer, I pictured a handsome person, in a cozy New York apartment. The writer would sit on a big loafer chair with arm rests, and opens a new silver MacBook Air, with a fresh glass of red wine. He would be comferably dressed in a large woolen grey sweater and have glasses to make him look studious. And when he wrote, its perfect - sparks fly, magic happens, and words come out beautifully.
And now that I am attemping to be a writer, I dont think it is anything like that. I am in my sweatpants from six years ago, that probably have more holes than a par 3 golf course. I have a mug with two-day old coffee, and a neighbour that keeps peeping into my window from across the alley. My desk is so cluttered I can barley find a spot big enough to support my computer, which has one of the dirtest screens I have ever seen. And when I try to write, the key that I press the most is the backspace key. There are no sparks, there is no magic. But I keep typing, in hopes that something will come, that I will barf out a bunch of words onto the screeen that I can re-arrange and make into something worthy.
For some reason, I can't stop writing. I said I would write, but I didn't say that it would be any good.

The Fifth One - No Excuses.

It seems like there is always a excuse. A reason to be late, a dog to eat some homework, the wrong light for a picture. When do the excuse take over? When do you realize that you are not actually doing what you want because there is always a reason not to, or a way out?
These words come out of a foggy head, so apologies if they are not very coherant. A running nose and annoying cold has condemmed me to my couch for the second night in a row. As I watch too many bad episodes of Top Model shows, I began to wonder if this is actually what I want to be doing. I always find an excuse to watch Top Model (and we're talking every spin off show, Britan's Next Top Model, Austrailia's Next Top Model...Damn Fashion Tevelvison.)
"I'm tired tonight, so I can watch Top Model..."
"It was a hard day at school, so I can watch Top Model..."
"I workout really hard today, so I can watch Top Model..."
you get the idea.
I can always find an excuse at the right time to justify what I want to do. But I have had enough. No more excuses. And I have this blog (or whoever reads it as witness)
I want to document with my camera and with writing. That is what I want to do, and now I must do it. I don't have a dog to eat any homework, and the light is always perfect.
'No Excuses' by Alice In Chains will be very inspirational to me for the next few weeks...

The Fourth Edition - Newspaper Romance

I am not a good student. I say that because writing this is just another form of procrastination as I am supposed to be reading 120 pages on the business of photography. School, well, school and I don't really get along. And right now, as the internet is changing the face of the media, jobs are rare, money is in the hands of few, and aspiring photo-journalists are feeling discouraged.
Once, I emailed on of my favorite snowboard photographers, Dano Peddygrass, for advice on how to make my life into that of a glamours snowboard photographer. He told me not to.
Blogs are the future newspapers. News will be opinon, and most of it avaliable at the touch of the fingertips. Maybe I'll stop trying non-fiction and write that romance novel that will turn me into an overnight success.
So please, if you are reading this blog, buy a newspaper tomorrow morning. Sit in your local coffee shop, sip a latte, eavsedrop on peoples conversations (you don't have to admit that you actually do) and read the comics, horoscopes, and sudkos. Newspapers are romantic. Fall in love with them all over again.

The Third Edition - My Bad Breakup with Wine

I am welcoming March as the sober month. February had many birthdays, random friends, harsh assignments that required some word lubricant (wine...) and wine seemed like it was my best friend at times. So today, I will suffer my last hangover until April. I made a bet with one of my random friends that came to visit, and somewhere between beer No. 2 and wine No. 4, we pinky swore on this bet of who could go the longest without drinking. The loser of the bet has to buy the first round of drinks at our next random meeting. DJ- you are on. I will win this one.
Today, as I cursed the wine and looked forward to the end of a month long binge relationship, I wondered if I was going to miss my love for wine. In a turbulant time of life, wine is a go-to, a constant friend in a city full of strangers, and my confidance when I felt at odds with my self. I spent my birthday on a white couch with a bottle of wine and a pile of snowboard videos. Wine has helped me scribble out writing assignments with a looming deadline. But I need to put on my big girl pants, and learn to write without word lubricant. If I want to write as a career, it would be very sloppy if I was dependant on a wine bottle to make the words come out.
Its always at the end of a realtionship when you can look back and remember all the good times that were shared. Wine and I had some good times - maybe even great times. We both still love and respect one another, and I likely will indulge in bottle again. For now, I am going to do what I do after every bad break-up - watch really bad movies and eat popsicles. Purple popsicles are the best part of any breakup.