You always get what you want.
A long time ago, probably at the age of 9 or some other bullshit age I was too young to remember exactly, it was spring I remember that, I realized I always got what I wanted. Infuriatingly enough though, this also means you don't get what you need or even what you want, the way you want it.
I was standing on a large burn pile. Back when I was a kid living in a rural world people would pile their garbage from around the farm or acreage. In the burning season when everything was still soggy from the long winter they would burn said piles. It was on here that I had my life altering epiphany, before the pile was lit I guess I should further specify.
It was at the golf course where my late father would later come to work as a greens keeper. For some reason I had begged to go along on the trip even though walking alongside my father while he golfed was excruciatingly painful to my outside legs. One of the boys who lived at the golf course (because his grand parents were the owner operator type deals) were playing on the giant burn pile. When I lived in the country and wasn't allowed to stay indoors climbing on things became entertainment. I have a scar under my left eye from such entertainment taking place on a pile of boards taken off the side of a barn and lying nails up but I digress.
Back to that overcast spring day on top of the burning pile. Among the evergreen branches and tree pruned branches was also house hold garbage, specifically a broken transformer, more specifically soundwave with a broken off tape door slot thing. I went berserk. You see I grew up in a family of six and was a toy breaker. These two things specifically contributed to my parents not wanting to waste money on expensive toys for me such as transformers.
As I was going berserk over this broken discarded toy, Mike, the previous owner slowly and awkwardly said I could have it. Amazingly enough he didn't make fun of me, probably because the situation was far too alien for ridicule. I realized at that point that if you want something hard enough you'll eventually get it. Even if you have to become a garbage picker and swallow your pride your treasure will become yours.
Oddly enough a later on I would break this toy playing my "throw shit over the house game" in which I would take toys, rocks, branches or half full fresca bottles and throw them over my house. I wasn't allowed to be indoors and there is only so long a little boy can be entertained by beautiful scenery. Also as I said before I was a toy breaker, to a disturbing point where I didn't even keep my toy breaking to my own possessions. My siblings will be more than happy to tell you a tale of how I broke their hearts by either lighting something of theres on fire, throwing it in a creek or simply ripping it in half in the sand box.
Lets follow this life lesson to modern day, no not the ripping stuff in half in a sand box, but rather the getting what you want idea. I went to school to become a writer. I didn't want to, I just thought I would be able to be a professional writer for some idiot reason or another. The fact that I didn't do well in grade 12 English should have made this glaringly obvious to me.
I always wanted to be an artist. I was completely afraid I would fail at it though and that there was no money in it and I would die of starvation. I am not sure where I got the idea that there was no money in art maybe it was more the other reason I might have been underachieving so that I wouldn't have to deal with the broken heart of failing at your one goal.
In high school I never art past grade 8. Instead I took other classes that I figured would be better for my career. No career in particular just one that would have me wearing a suit and doing grown up things with my beautiful wife who wore red dresses and had blonde hair. Turns out that the only two school subjects I am naturally good at is Math and Art.
Art I have a natural talent for and my sheer laziness made me good at Math. Instead of doing math the way I was supposed to using formulas and such I would half use the formulas and half guess. I got so good at this method that I could actually do my half guess half formula method faster than other kids could do it with the formula. I'm not pretending this made me smart in anyway especially because of the way my math career ended.
It was nearing the end of Grade 11 and my classmates and I were sitting around with a calculator using math for real world applications. We were figuring out the percentage we would have to get on our final exams to still pass the year. Since I had an 82% rating in the class I could pass the year with a measly 24% on the final. I was after all a 16 year old dick head who's only real goal in a final exam was to be done by the one hour mark so i could leave. I did what I guessed would be enough on the test and Spelled ABBACADABBA the rest of the way down the multiple choice scantron bubble sheet. I had seen the method in the hilarious early 90's predominately black comedy Who's the man? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108560/. I ended up get 28% on the final exam and passing the year with a 60% average in the class. Totally awesome right?
Well my teacher didn't think it was that great. He cornered me in the hall. "Dale I see you've signed up to take Math 12 with me next year. I think we both know this is a waste of both of our time." So I dropped the class and took History 12. Which I legitimately bombed without even slacking off. Canadian History is so fucking insanely boring there was no way I could remember the dates of drunken prime minister this or scary bush men paddling up river that.
Don't worry this is still on track in a round about way. I promise.
Since I failed History 12 and barely passed English 12 I had to do some upgrading. I needed 2 classes to meet graduation requirements. The quickest I could do this in a single semester of another year of High school. Since I could never face the shame of being in the same class as my little brother and everyone else I had known since they were in grade 8 (our school was 8-12) I opted to go to school in the next town over. Weirdly being in a school full of strangers sounded like an amazing idea to me at the time.
Since the bus ride was a 45min jaunt and only went twice a day I would have to hang out in the next town for half a school day with nothing to do. I remedied this by somehow weaseling my way into Art 11 and Art 12 at the same time. Another example of getting what I want and it backfiring and making my life more annoying and difficult for me to arrive at my wanted goal.
I did however meet my BFF of 13 years in that half year when we were in a comparative civilization course. I had come up with a theory on the spot that to see both creationists and evolutionists happy. My theory involved Adam and Eve interbreeding with chimpanzees to create cavemen. We became modern humans by selectively breeding the chimpanzee genes out of our lineage. Derek thought this idea was extra funny because unbeknown to me our teacher was a devout Christian and extremely insulted by my theory. He let me know weeks later when we met at a house party. I was horrified to realize my teenage paranoia of the teacher hating me was actually true.
I knew that I wouldn't be able to succeed at life unless I had a college degree. In what I had absolutely no idea. I went to college and took general studies and the swollen head I got from my creative writing teachers loving my unique ideas I mistakingly thought I could become a writer. Fact is I'm a good idea man but a terrible fucking writer as you may have guessed by the thousands of horrible abuses of the written language in this post alone.
I never really liked writing overly but I had completely fallen in love with sharing my ideas and opinions on various subjects. I figured I could struggle through learning the mechanics of writing because I loved the artistic side so much. That's when I decided to take journalism.
I wanted to be a music reporter or a news guy but either way I was going to change the world with my sausagey typing fingers. Sidebar to this day I don't type properly. I dance around with a hybrid hunt and peck method that abandons the home keys as well as any use of my pinkies. My ultimate goal in life was to write for spin magazine. So I made my way through Journalism School or J-School as we obnoxiously referred to it. Turns out these profs hated my loosey goosey use of grammar even more than the creative writing profs did.
Struggling through my three years that was supposed to be two I realized just how much I hated writing. All the pleasure had gone out of it and I would only do it if there was a big shiny carrot on the end of the string ie concerts and free stuff or impressing a girl which never really happened. While in J-school I was introduced to layout and graphic design. I realized that I could do that instead of writing. I opted out of writing feature stories to do the layout of the class production on more than one occasion. I eventually graduated from college BARELY and moved to Vancouver where I was going to be rich and famous and find my blonde wife who liked red dresses.
While I was there I ended up doing layout writing and photography for a heavy metal mag called The Nerve. Again getting what I wanted eventually. Since it was a volunteer position it was another instance of what I wanted being not what I needed. I had probably the best time of my life for two years. I almost starved but I did get to have sex once in a while. Trust me to a 25 year old male the later is way more important than the former. Even though I was happy doing layout and taking pictures for the mag I would force myself to write. In some bizarre way writing even when I hated it made my 5.5 year college education not a complete waste of time.
Eventually my want of a real job outweighed my want of an interesting friend filled life so I moved to Calgary where after just a short 7 months I got a job doing graphic design full time for the Calgary sun in the advertising department. I was ecstatic I was finally working a job that I wanted and didn't have to put up with. Even if I had sold out and went to the dark side of advertising. Eventually though my want changed.
I wanted more money and more friends and more sex. All three of which I was entitled to because everyone should be getting as much of those three as they want. Sadly that's not the case. I moved back to Kamloops and all the multitudes of friends I had there barring a few had not changed since I left. I did get a bit more money but only a little more. The sex I did get wasn't really as magically as I had remembered from college. Turns out I didn't get a lot in college I had just mentally compressed the five years from college to a beautiful montage of endless ecstasy in my mind.
While in Kamloops my dad got sick and passed and I had a reinstalled fear of mortality. Specifically I had to get my shit together and get some semblance of financial responsibility. I need to get my faltering career back on track. I had been demoted to part time at my job there and was making ends meet as a pizza delivery boy. Which turned out to be one of the funnest easiest jobs I ever had but I was a 30 year old pizza man boy. So back to Calgary I headed.
It took just over a month but I got my old job back and it was like I never left. I was happy to spend that year and half close to where I grew up and near my dying father. It felt good to be back in the swing though. The ability to pay my bills with just one job seemed like a luxury before but I finally got what I wanted... again.
8 months later, two weeks ago I switched out of the advertising department and now I do graphic design for the editorial department. While more artistically challenging and even broaching on artistically intimidating it is heaps more rewarding.
Oddly enough the reason I went on this nostalgic tirade is I watched the Devil wears Prada. Well that movie and Twitter are why I wrote this. In the movie the main character doesn't do what she wants, which is write. On twitter I re-established a connection with people I went to J-school with who are now professional writers. While watching the movie and thinking of my re-activated acquaintances I kept asking myself why don't I write more. I went to school to write. They are all writing and by the end of the movie Anne Hathaway was writing again too.
I had an epiphany: I don't write anymore because I never wanted to write. I always wanted to be an artist and in a round about lengthy trip thats what I am doing. What I want and what I need have never been closer than they are right now.
For the record I realize how asinine it is that I just took 2450 words to blather on about how I don't like making words. I just had the uncontrollable urge to warn you all, you'll get what you want. Always. Just make sure you don't waste too much time letting yourself get there.
