eos_nyxia

I could just end this all right now and be the person I actually want to be.

Thank you for the kind words.

My Personal Canadiana: I'm still trying to figure out what exactly this means to me. Is it the obvious visual cues of Canadianness? The themes and images and lyrics? The various regional accents? All of the above? Anyway, this is my selection. Representing the East Coast flair in visual form. The singer was also the daughter of John Morris Rankin of the Nova Scotian ensemble, The Rankin Family, a Celtic folk group which found international fame in the late 80s and early 90s. It's hard to explain what makes this MV so Canadian-coded, but it is. Instead of Powderfinger (which I'm unshakably convinced is about the Battle of Batoche), I'll suggest a song which explicitly references Canada: Quebec's whole music scene, which tends to be insular as a result of the language and culture barrier. (I went through the 2010s unaware that Arcade Fire was from Montreal though. If you listened to "indie music" then, you at least knew who they were. EDIT: also, this isn't their song. It's a cover of Serge Gainsbourg's classic performed by 60s teenage French pop star, France Gall.) I think of Metric as quintessentially Canadian because so many people I know were listening to it in the 2010s, and I don't think they were quite as popular outside Canada (unlike Arcade Fire). Gordon Lightfoot's Ontarian accent: Left Out: Buffy St. Marie, because of the whole recent fiasco where it was discovered that she was not of Cree descent and her Order of Canada medal was stripped. The Tragically Hip, because I did not grow up with them and I never went out of my way to listen to them. Usually, this is the prime example of band that was big in Canada and primarily unknown everywhere else. Joni Mitchell. While I had heard a few of her most famous songs growing up, it didn't leave a formative impression for whatever reason. The many Canadian artists who became famous in the States and downplayed being Canadian or straight-up LARPed as American.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/24/oscar-winning-palestinian-director-attacked-by-israeli-settlers-and-arrested WTF. I just watched this film recently too.

I lost the will to speak again, except in private, though I've still been reaching for more. Whatever that is, whatever it ends up looking like. Do you know what I don't need though? To watch other people living their lives in the "out there", with others. I'm a lifelong observer of people and I enjoy it, until it reminds me of what I was not and have never been. And I don't need it, nor do I need them, nor do they need me. And that's fine.

This world is literally run by people who have zero issues with "entitlement", whether it's under the guise of free market capitalism or not. No wonder I never got anywhere, not that I truly had the intention to anyway.

....what does it feel like to be the kind of person who has no issue with straight-up asking for others for things that they want or need? Because I have never been that person. I'm sure it holds me back in this world, but mostly I've gotten by asking for very little and only taking what's been offered freely.

.... It really is hard to find the will to write publically anymore, especially when I just focus on living my life these days.

...as opposed to things that I love/ like.

Well, if you simply jumped from one treadmill to another, spiritual or not, ultimately your intentions beget the structure and patterns your thoughts and emotions take. How could you not be miserable? Your approach is a certain flavour of tail-chasing.

On a personal level, I've never felt like I had the right stuff to be a good mother, though I've done a lot of soul searching to think about what this would involve. As if "intelligence" and/or material resources are what make a good or decent parent. It is not. Neither is empathy or sensitivity alone. I am good with younger people in the sense that I GET them (especially late childhood/ teenagers) and I even used to work with them, but that doesn't mean that I would be a good parent. Among the many possible issues is that I have very sensitive senses and am not the most adaptable close quarters and home spaces, and there is the sheer amount of energy and effort it would take to adapt to them in a way that doesn't leave me shellshocked or me STILL taking it out on them in some way. Like, I could probably be a good mom if I had a 24/7 nanny or a partner that did 80% of the childcare stuff, lol. AKA. If.... I could be a DAD instead of a mom. Unless I could guarantee that I would get a child that was just like myself as a child (aka. like a quiet, super mature "little adult", but BTW that behaviour too often arises for emotionally unhealthy reasons), I will suffer a great deal and it will consume my whole life. But getting to pick and choose your child? That's not how any of this works, yet people often operate with this innate, unexamined assumption, that they can either somehow "pick" or mould their child into a product of their liking. Also, I would like to keep my body intact, thanks! Being in a female body has been hard enough as it is already and I've had enough. I got used to people calling me "selfish" for this when I was younger, which is usually when I start asking them about their philanthropic efforts or vocational work with youth, or if they're planning to adopt. RADIO SILENCE. People who care about helping kids are.... usually out helping kids instead of getting into these stupid discussions with childless girls and women. I would say, for whoever is interested in starting a family, a person who has this grand vision of what their kid is going to be like, what they should like and who they should be, is probably going to be shitty parent. That would be a flaming red flag for me. Even people who don't actively hold their perspective still often hold this perspective. The question is, what does it take to get a person to that point?

Yes, this would be ideal. That's kind of the point. It sucks in the shorter term for countries and economies, especially when your whole model is based on the attachment to the idea of infinite economic growth. It's not a popular view, though I don't care much about people's opinions on the matter; it's not like opinions alone are going to make much of difference. Either we get this sustainability thing right and make the appropriate choices, or we'll be reminded that we are very much still animals that are subject to the natural world who have lived beyond our means and will be culled accordingly in time, all while dragging our children and children's children into it, along with the number of other species we are currently responsible for making extinct. Let's see how people's current children and their children feel about us and our choices when they are adults, I guess, when we are the boomers' age. That's a real test. I'm guessing they're not going to be very happy with what we've left them.

My hot take is that there are two people with pieces of work for fathers, Elon and Trump, who are also magnets for people with various daddy issues. Of course they will defend them until they lose too much for it to be tolerable, or else they'll go down with that ship. No surprise there. Tell them that their daddy doesn't love or care about them in the least, and they deflect. Noticing that vibe with the people who support Canada's annexation and Maple Leaf MAGAs here in Canada. It reeks. Not that it's anyone's fault what their parents chose to do to them growing up, but still. The standard issue answer applies here: go to therapy and/ or do some introspection and sort yourself out?

I grew up in the 00s where the only sexual orientations that were recognized were gay, straight, and bisexual. At least, that was all I had ever heard about while I was still a minor. Is there a term for having a preference for dick-havers, but not an exclusive one? Not for masculine or feminine presentation, but dick-havers. That includes trans, men who want to cross-dress, etc. Throughout my life, I've thought of myself as straight, heteroflexible, bisexual, pansexual, etc., all while trying to keep up with modern vernacular. TBH, I need to be driven by a very strong, unrestrained romantic and sexual drive to ignore otherwise incompatible or repelling cishet men on a personality level, which would then make me want to compromise, converse, and work things out where I could not be bothered to otherwise. AKA. It's never been an issue with the bodies or raw sexual attraction, it's what comes out of men's mouths... Like we are just different, you know? I've even had a moment in my late teens where I asked myself, am I trans? (But how can I be trans if I don't have a strong gender-identification preference and am mostly willing to either go with the flow, or I'm willing to deliberately develop some aspect of myself or another, whether "masculine" or "feminine", and am deeply ambivalent about the current status of my own genitals?) Like I'm fine with being identified with a woman for the most part, but I've never intrinsically seen myself or felt like one. It's always been a performance or taking on a highly deliberate role.

More and more of our public libraries, especially the large and central ones, have universal gender-neutral washrooms now. Also, many of the larger public pools have men's, women's, and universal gender change rooms. The men's and women's changerooms are open, but the universal change room has all closed stalls. I can't think of anywhere else that I've seen them, though. I have no idea what my alma mater is doing, and I haven't been on a major university campus for a while.