The Josie Pages

A videopoem. trying to get some hits for my youtube videos. if you like this check out others of mine, subscribe to my videos!

Field Notes In/On Transition Different Directions One of those blog posts where I feel like I have to apologize for not posting more often. I’ve been trying to get my thoughts together for a new blog for a couple of weeks. But the thing is that while I have been driven to write everyday, it hasn’t been this blog that i’ve been working on: I’m working on a novel. It may never see the light of day, but I’m trying my hardest to sit everyday and work on it in the mornings, before work. Blog thinking has been hard to come by, when I sit down to type, even now, i’m getting ideas for what I’m going to write tomorrow. The writing is just as therapeutic for me, as working on this blog, or writing poems, but it isn’t in anyway autobiographical. I am not giving any story away other than to say it would be classified as Sci/Fi and it has some fantasy elements. I’ve been doing this, (missing only one or two days early on) for almost six weeks, and every day I write a thousand to fifte

Fiel Notes In/On Transition Feedback and other Fuzz Feedback is something we all want a little bit of at least. Of course we mostly want, need positive feedback, but I think most people also enjoy constructive feedback on whatever it is they are talking, writing, blogging, painting, whatever-ing about. Negative feedback can be very important as well, but only if it’s constructive. Why bothering critiquing something or someone if all you have is ‘blankety blank’ sucks, or should die? That is not criticism of any kind, or discussion, it is the meanest thing you can do really. Offer another way of looking at the thing bothering you, or at least in your comment, discussion express why you are displeased. I say this to again bring up the point that while I allow ‘anonymous’ comments, I moderate them as I don’t get a lot of comments, and a few here and there are hateful almost robot-like in their generic hatefulness. Anything that is not a genuine discussion, negative or positi

Field Notes In/On Transition The Former Poet’s Guide To Survival  I don’t consider myself to be a poet anymore. I’m not writing any new stuff. I have written maybe 4 poems in the last five years. I’ve put out my books sure, and even written a few poems (for those books,) that I’m proud of. Editing of my old pieces has been the only real work I’ve done in that area. Yes, it is work, completely unpaid, but such is the life of someone who writes. We are the bottom of the barrel, expected to work for free far more than any other ‘content provider.’ A term I loathe. One more thing the internet has helped to ruin, is the idea that people should be able to earn a (meagre) living from their art.  Every artistic endeavour I’ve ever undertaken, people expect the work to be done for free. As a graphic Designer in the late 90’s my heart was constantly broken by small businesses who would hire me to design their business cards, or signage. Very few ever actually paid me. They were d

Field Notes In/On Transition Ch-Ch-Changes! I’m thinking about going back to school.... I'm a writer and a self publisher, but I'm not good enough at either right now to make a living at it. My gut is telling me to apply at the SFU Writers Studio downtown (where I already know a lot of people), but there's no student loans for the intensive but still part time course... I just found out that you can borrow from your RRSP to cover tuition etc. But after I finish, likely still working in the video store, will I be able to pay back my RRSP? There’s a summer course that is shorter and less expensive, but still too expensive to do without going into more debt. And that one is in Surrey, a commute I’m not into. I could do that, and keep working... or should I try some MA program? I feel like I have very few options for work the rest of my life, and the video store thing doesn't really pay the bills anymore. Any other retail position I could get, (which I do no

Field Notes In/On Transition. Smile Therapy There seems to be no end to my disappointment in myself and the world around me. I’m having a really hard time keeping my shit together lately, but I am keeping it together. Almost everything about my current job grates on me. All the little things that no one in their right mind gets worked up over for more than a minute or two. I dwell on these things for days, weeks.  I’m very grateful to have a job where I’m accepted, my transition at work could not really have gone any smoother elsewhere, unless maybe I worked somewhere with a health plan and the same awesome accepting coworkers. But to me, having a job like that; with benefits, maybe earning enough that I could save something every month instead of putting myself into deeper and deeper debt is like some kind of pipe dream.  I feel like I have a better shot at winning the lotto. Since I lost some hours in the spring, I’ve been over budget almost exactly the amount of in

Field Notes In/On Transition. Owner of a Lonely Heart (Some long ago music to underscore not only how old I am, but maybe my old person taste in music) I have most of my life been a follower, not a leader, at least in the human group of friends sense. Wanting more than anything to be liked and accepted (when I feel/felt worthy of neither in a deep profound way) I more often than not defer to bigger personalities in whatever group dynamic is happening. This is sometimes the place people call the “Friend Zone” but more often than not, for me, it is just deferring your own preference to that of your friend, or friends in a given situation. It’s actually kind of amazing that I never experimented with a wider variety of drugs, sex and, rock n roll given these supplicant circles I am/was caught up in. But in fact I’ve never been able to take those things that far. I get sick from/of booze, or drugs, and/or weirded out with sex, I retreat, stay home, and eventually d

Field Notes In/On Transition Untitled Long Ass Blog Entry #67 I’m having a really hard time sitting down and writing this blog entry. I’ve been trying to do so every day for over a week. What is holding me back? Fear. I’m afraid of everything it seems. After a life spent “knowing” that I could never succeed, that every dream I had, was just that: a dream, or at least that’s what those I shared those dreams with told me. And to be sure many of those dreams were of the pipe dream variety.  I was regularly labeled by family, teachers, etc as a “dreamer” which if you come from a working class background is akin to being called lazy or some kind of jerk. (turns out that a lot of my “starings into space” that got me in trouble in school were petit mal epilepsy seizures, and that my utter and complete ineptitude with math is from a dyslexia around any series of numbers)  It’s not possible to be a comic book writer or artist (I have done so in my life in fact) or a poet, (check,

Field Notes In/On Transition Yesterday was a slow ass day. Time, this week has been moving like molasses uphill in February, In Winnipeg. I had this one great little moment when this dad and little girl combo came in to the store.  Nice folks, I chat a lot with the dad, and I don’t recall him ever misgendering me, or even gendering me at all. But he says to his daughter:   “Can you take the movie up to the man at the desk?”  The girl looked at him all serious like... “That’s a Lady! Not a man.” He says, “well then, give them to her.” So she brought them up. Nice moment for me, maybe this guy will if he does gender me, do it correctly. Thank you cute as a button 5 year old girl. The rest of the day though dragged on, no matter how busy it seemed, only a minute or two would go by it seemed. Eventually my shift was over and I wandered home feeling tired for no real reason, and stopped at the market to buy bread, coffee and toilet paper, of course forgetting, act