A Triumphant Return?
Hello again, it’s been a while.
Let me start off by saying this, I am not the type to announce grand entrances or departures, I would much rather slip into the night. When I made this blog, I had the biggest of intentions to speak with honesty and meet my audience in the middle of ideas. I wanted to create a space where people could leave themself at the door and think about ideas from new perspectives without jumping entirely into one camp or the other. As an only child of two people both on the political left and right, I’ve always found a duty in trying to meet ideas in that middle, digging deeper at the truth on both sides. I’m not here for the black and white, I’m only interested in the grey.
The trouble with that intention is the tricky nature of how to communicate those ideas. Do they belong on posters or street poles? Art exhibitions or museums? Talk radio stations? As a millennial child of the internet, I figured the best place to communicate those ideas would be online. The digital reach is similar to that of the Gutenberg Press, it hits even the most unexpected of homes. Why would I even attempt to communicate locally when I could communicate globally?
“What do you want to do when you grow up?”
The devil is in the details mind you. If you want success online you need eyes, and lots of them. In order to find that success I need to showcase more of myself online. These days, no one cares to just see a post of a headline, they want to know about the person behind the story. The most successful digital creators have a public self that comes part and parcel with a product. I’m not interested in exchanging my image for a blind endorsement of a product made in a sweatshop overseas. I’m also not interested in turning my image into a commodity for a young audience to blindly emulate to the point of insanity. But at the same time I know that if I don’t exchange even a piece of me I risk losing the attention of possibly thousands. In this respect there is a double-edged sword to being a woman or girl.
I remember before the pandemic hit and I still had a job working at a busy coffee shop in Drake’s beloved Toronto. There I used to get into conversations with those from the baby boomer generation. We would about everything including politics and current affairs. As we would carry out the exchange I would always clock their face when they eventually realized I knew more than they expected. In response, I would always assure them it was because of the history and politics degree I was earned. They would always reply by first putting down the rest of my generation for being apathetic and ignorant about the world and then they would finish up by encouraging me to find a career in a job they thought was suitable for me.
“You should be a lawyer with that mouth, I’m sure you’d get really far,”
“Have you ever thought about a career in politics? I’m sure one of the parties would be dying to have you,”
“Man TV needs a voice like yours, I’m sure you could tear it up,”
I’ve heard it all. Funny enough, very few of those people have actually ever just asked, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” While they all acknowledged that I could keep up with them (and perhaps even lead the conversation many an occasion), no one seemed to want to draw attention to the most logical next question and just ask, “Well, what do you want to do?” I think I know why I was never asked. They probably wouldn’t have liked what they heard.
“I want to work online. YouTube has grown from a small niche video sharing website to being a Google-owned media enterprise with a substantial roster of talent that is growing every day. Their reach is farther than any traditional media source as they can be in the homes of people around the world at any time. I want to create a job for myself writing and telling stories where I can impact the lives of people as far as Asia and beyond. I just think that’s where the eyes are going nowadays.”
Image by cromaconceptovisual from Pixabay
This pandemic has been hard; I doubt I am alone in feeling that way. For many of us, this is our first living memory of the world collectively, ‘going through it’. While many of us may have been alive to remember 9/11, not all of us were directly impacted by that event in the same way. Covid-19 has affected millions globally with many of us practically one degree away from someone affected by the virus. In that sense, it is more of a connecting event as the Cold War was than 9/11. We will all remember what we were doing during the ‘Great Lockdown.’
Like I said, before all of this I was brewin’ beans. Not everyone likes being a barista but I certainly loved being able to grow my knowledge of the coffee plant while simultaneously communicating it to others and learning about those I met along the way. Cafes are beautiful creatures of what feels like a bygone era. Those bustling shops were filled with creatives, business professionals, community members and everyone in between. I loved the fast-paced environment of an early morning rush and the challenge that came with precision and speed. For that reason, I developed most of my conversational skills from that place. Sure I was funny and could communicate with my friends, but strangers were a whole other beast. Strangers are unpredictable. They’re like jellybeans, you never know what you’re going to get. I loved the challenge of a new face. I always strived to do my best to make people leave feeling slightly better than when they came in. I knew caffeine was a huge factor, but I could certainly infuse that caffeine with charm if I tried.
The pandemic took away that environment, it took away many environments. The pandemic forced me to look inward and reflect on where I really wanted to be. As the job many have before their next big ‘gig’, or the job that puts food on the table for a working-class family, a coffee shop is a great place to build character, but is it what I want for my future? It’s a lot to consider for someone who has worked jobs in the industry since 2011.
Getting into the weeds on the emotional transformative experience of shifting your job and perspective during a pandemic is not something that I feel I want to discuss personally on this public platform. I did not create this space for that purpose. There are countless places online for those who need that but this is not one of those spaces.
What I am trying to say is excuse me for being Canadian but, “Sorry for my sudden absence in posts.” I want to make writing on this blog a permanent thing and I want to build this space into something I can be proud of where people actually learn and grow from what they read or consume. I am finally at the stage where I want to jump in headfirst into that ‘online job’ I always envisioned. I want to create that space. A space that you want to bring your friends to. Not because of what I look like but because of what I have to say.
So if that is something that interests you you should stick around, I know I will.
See you next week,
Amanda
