The loneliest Sheep

Toronto - The loneliest over populated city of opportunity and sacrifice

Five years ago I moved to Toronto and I was optimistic, scared and excited!

I used to live in a small town, moved to a larger town to go to college right out of high school and then moved to Toronto for an internship that would thankfully become a job right out of college. I thought that life was going great, I thought that I was doing what was expected of me and that I was succeeding in the career world and nothing could be better than that.

It’s been 5 years and I’ve failed at making a life in Toronto, I’ve lost more friends than I’ve made, and any I do have that ‘live in Toronto’ are a 2+ hour drive (and NOT on the TTC line) from me. I’ve come to realize that Toronto is the loneliest city I’ve ever lived in, and it has the highest population of all previous ones.

In the past year I’ve lost my best friend and drifting from my main friend group, I tried to focus on work and though I adore my job and team, I’ve never really felt like I’ve belonged here. Since losing my best friend and realizing how lonely I really was in Toronto, I’ve attempted to branch out, I’ve gone to card nights at local comic book shops, I’ve attempted meet-ups with other Pokemon-Go players in the city and I’ve even attempted joining work mates in Spin Class just to find somewhere that I can feel apart of a group.

Yet we visit home, the small one Starbucks town I used to equate to the Hellmouth and I feel safe. It’s effortless to reconnect with my previous friends, I’ve gone to Magic Card tournaments there and have felt myself lift out of my depression. I’ve learned and taken up new hobbies to try and find my group and so far outside of the Card tournaments in a city hundreds of kilometres away I’ve only found one other group activity that makes me happy… an Online MMORPG where most of the people I play with are NOT from Toronto.

So with the struggle of the last 8 months of trying to find where I belong, and get myself out of the dark hole I’ve fallen into, I’ve just realized that Toronto, the city that sparkles from the outside and has so many opportunities is the dullest and loneliest place I’ve ever lived. Nothing is actually close enough to not be an expedition to get to, I can’t afford to live in the downtown core, I travel the streets and take the Streetcars and Subways just to be harassed and assaulted on a way to regular basis.

I’m not overly interested in culture or art, or large gatherings of people that I don’t enjoy, I’m an introvert that wants to feel belonging to a group I trust, and not just another sheep in the herd. And the longer I’ve stayed in Toronto the more I’ve felt like the lost lonely sheep.

With the recent personal struggles, the loss of our car and reduced trips to go back home to see family and the few friends we still have, I’ve been stuck in my lonely world spiralling around the idea that because of the career I chose, I have to give up everything I thought I was working for.

I felt like if I went to school, got great grades (highest GPA in my class and Dean’s List), and got a great job and worked up in the company that one day, not too far in the future I could buy a house, with a cute yard, have a kid and a social life and be happy. I truly thought that getting my career in Toronto would allow me to have all of those, but I was wrong. Because Toronto is where I need to be to work, but I will NEVER be able to own a house, I will not be able to afford to have more than one child, and as I’ve attempted for the last 5 years… I’m not going to have the fun social life I dreamt of and now I’m stuck. I’m stuck at a job I adore (yep I’m complaining about loving my job!), I’m stuck wanting to move up in my career and be at a job that has done nothing but support me and help me grow… and it’s the ONLY thing that keeps me here. I’m stuck doing what I thought I needed to do to be happy.

And now I look over at my family back home, a sister with a house and 1.5 children, a husband who loves her and a 10 min trip from her friends and family. I look at my friends going to Friday Night Magic together, going to movies together and feeling like they belong to a group because they do. And then I look at me, I did everything society told me I needed to, I went to school, I got great grades, I got a job (a career even) and now I’m here not knowing how to move forward, falling deeper and deeper into a hole I don’t know if I can crawl out of.

With all the internet access in the world, with all the voice and video communications, we have, with all the cities with wonderful communities that aren’t Toronto… why is it that so much of our population is cramped up in tin can condos in a cement coloured prison. Why, because I wanted to work at a job that I’m really good at, do I have to change my goals? Why can a factory worker being a sole provider of a household afford a beautiful 2 floor, 4 bedroom house and I’m scrounging to afford my roach-infested apartment on the outskirts of Toronto?

Why does the city with so many possibilities make me feel so alone, so much like a failure, so fucking shitty?

Hacked

The Witch-hunt vs Hero-worshipping in Sex Scandals. Though she is not the first, nor will she be the last female to be hacked and/or have their personal photos and videos shared online in order to shame her, when Paige from WWe had some videos and images released of her and I saw how the Twitter (and other online communities) reacted to the situation I was reminded that our society fucking sucks.

We’ve come so far, women are in every office building, they are working up in the workforce and being represented more and more in different industries. We have honestly come SO far from when my grandmother was my age or a great aunt who had to hide the fact that she was pregnant or risk losing her teaching job.

We live in the first world, we have basic human rights and we should be happy because at least we don’t live where female genital mutilation is still common practice, but I expect better from us. We’re so divided and there really are SO many double standards on all ends. I’ve seen how gender roles, feminism and misogyny have affected all sides, no one is in the right currently. But lately, I’ve been paying a little more attention to everything from the freak out online about Emma Watson’s Cover shoot and now to Paige’s deep violation of privacy.

And since our world is fucked, and we have all of these double standards, when images and videos of a sexual context are leaked we can see two very polar sides. Paige is put up on a post so everyone can watch her burn, people are bending over backwards to ensure her pictures and videos stay up, and others are scouring the internet trying to find them. And all so she can be shamed an humiliated. She is a victim of an actual crime! People hacked her and shared nude and comprising photos and videos without her consent, and now people are spreading them like wildfire… but there are men in those videos! And those men have just as much to loose, Xavier Woods is part one of WWe’s best Tag Teams right now and instead of ANY worry of a witch hunt for him or the other guy in the videos, they are being Hero-worshipped.

Why is it that in our ‘progressive’ society where women should be equal to men that we still have this? Because Paige is a female it’s okay to shame her for the same or similar behaviour as a guy? Just because a guy got to fuck her he is a hero? Woman are still prizes?

It’s disgusting that this happened to her, and what the online community is continuing to do with that content and the content of all women that have been hacked! It’s sad that our society is one that would even allow this to be a problem? We know that people have sex, we sexualize men and woman on television and in movies all the time, but yet our society is so terrified of the act of sex that we can watch people be murdered and attacked on a PG-13 show, but if you show full nudity or are too explicit with your sex scenes it’s rated R? This is the same mentality that encourages people to seek out these images and share them online. When we make sex taboo, we allow it to be used as a weapon, and since men conquer in sex and woman are the prize, when something like this happens it can ruin a women’s career while Xavier will likely be cheered on RAW tonight.

I’m sick of this world and our inability to actually move forward faster than a sad crawl.

If you respect Paige, or woman or people, please don’t look for the pictures and videos, please don’t share them, and please don’t host them. If she wanted us to see anything she would share it with us. She didn’t share these and it’s sad and frustrating that this happened to her.

To all girl gamers! (hating that term, but not my choice!) I have exciting news to bring to you! a glorious person on instagram as created a chat for all “gamer girls!” and we want it to grow. Albion needs you! So. to join, please DM or Pm whatever it’s called or leave a comment below and I will send a link to our glorious page! hope to see you there! 

(Not my art up there, credit to artist )

DM me or @oggleshy for the link to our ‘Girl Gamer’ server on Discord! Let’s make this an awesome and welcoming space for newbie, hardcore and casual gamers! :D 

My love of writing.

I love to write, I love to be able to just sit down and throw my thoughts onto the screen or write them onto paper. I feel so calm when I finally get a chance to just sit down on my couch, with a warm cup of coffee or tea and just write.

I won’t saw I am a good writer, I make a lot of grammatical mistakes, and I don’t have any formal training. I write what I think, I write like I talk, and I converse to the empty page. I find it helps me sort through issues, I can write an entire conversation or letter to someone that I am super angry with and never send the message because while writing everything out I’ve gotten to the root of them problem and moved on.

But I also love to write stories, mostly on here I blog, I review comics, movies, games, or whatever I am consuming at the time, but I adore fantasy and creating worlds that don’t exist. I have old binders of poems and short stories I’ve been writing since mid high school. I stopped for a while and could feel myself becoming more and more depressed - now I had life going on at the same time, but I feel without the outlet of writing I wasn’t working through anything I was going through and I’m hoping to fix that!

I want to write much more often, I want to write with a purpose, with a story as well as continue to work on my blogs! I do wish I could make writing a career I could count on, but I don’t quite have the chops for that! For now I will read my favourite authors and dream while I go to my full time job, working on my final 3 cosplays, and make life awesome, but I wanted to express how important writing is in my life, and how much I appreciate anyone willing to take the time to sit down and read what I write!

I will continue to work on my movie night reviews, comic book reviews and hopefully more soon, and if I get the courage maybe I will share a short story or two. Haha.

For anyone else that feels the love of writing like I do - write on! Cause there is always an audience for you somewhere.

Follow my personal blog for more posts from me! :D

Guys guys. It’s fall. And it’s so pretty.

Girl’s Nights in your 20’s-30’s

You still need them and no fellow nerds they don’t need to be at the bar, you can have a slumber party, some snacks, some wine or chocolate milk, horror movies, video games and Pokemon!

Just have your friends over, do all the things you love, chat and unwind cause you’re a professional now and you have a big kid job now and you’re still just that… a big kid!

Since my cosplay obsession destroyed my social life I’ve realized that I don’t spend time with my girl friends anymore - we talk on FB chat and text a bit but we don’t converse. I think this can be fixed by girls nights! Now I’m also trying to become more financially responsible, healthy and I don’t enjoy being hit on by anyone at bars especially when I can’t even hear myself thing. I’ve gotten old! Haha. I have responsibilities and I want to be at home or at the very least comfortable.

So I’ve been thinking - I used to LOVE slumber parties, I used to love just hanging out with my girl friends and playing video games or rock band, we used to try and find the scariest movie and all hide under blankets during the scary parts. We used to have fun and not care what we looked like. But we grew up and we all become homebodies, and some of us got obsessed with how we looked on social media every day!

Well I say take a break! Don’t care what anyone thinks, don’t work on a costume for one weekend.

Life is short, you don’t have to be a grown up all the time, and your friends are the ones that are going to be there for you when you’re old! Remember how to be offline and talk and hang out again!  

This is going to seem like a lot of work for some people, this is going be super simple for others but I think it’s important to remember that you have friends, and you’re letting them fall away as you grow up and forget how to be a friend and how to have fun!

Try it - tell me how it went! I’m hoping to schedule my own slumber parties, I will need some good Horror Movie suggestions so I can scare the crap out of my friends! :)

The different types of Creep!

The different types of Creep! - Scope Creep and how to identify them.

Last month my company sent myself and our Project Management team to San Antonio for a Digital Project Management Summit!

The Conference: http://bureauofdigital.com/summits/digital-pm/

The Summit was amazing - it was my first opportunity to interact and connect with like-minded professionals in my field. Most conferences I’ve gone to have revolved around sales or development where my focus is on my team and process.

It was wonderful to connect and continue to be connected with this network of DPMs and to start to understand what our role is - “I’m not your secretary!”

Some of the key learnings I got from the conference included the below:

“A goal is a dream with a deadline” be adaptable when goals don’t meet their deadlines, life happens.

You can help your project stay on track but identifying short term goals, and scheduling your sprints around those - just as long as we are aware of the progress of these goals - without adding unneeded stress to the team.

These short term goals can help identify the different types of Scope Creep before they occur or have gone too far in the project. And something I had never realized before was that there are so many different types of Scope Creep!

Types of Scope Creep:

Effort Creep:

Hope Creep:

Feature Creep:

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place”

While determining the short term goals, it’s important to meet and communicate about them. Having the goals helps determine what it is you’re monitoring and working towards.

How do you manage your projects to reduce the different types of Scope Creep?

-@mandamwright on all things social.