California Posting Preview

Well friends,

I have a lot of posting to catch up on.  Instead of jumping right into that now, I'm going to post a great photo of the Golden Gate Bridge that I took today, and leave you with the promise that I will be posting great things about great wines in the extremely near future. 

I'm visiting my friend Elaine in Sonoma this week, and already have gotten to try a couple of new kinds of wine and purchased a couple more bottles.  The week is shaping up to be great!  I can't wait to tell you about the wines, but I do have to admit right away that many of them will be hard - nay, impossible - to get in Ontario because of the LCBO rules.  I'm sorry about that.  Maybe one day we can remedy this.

Until later in the week - or at least a day or two!

Sugar, Cocaine, and Shoes

united nude Mattijs shoe

I'm at the Canadian Obesity Network Summit, in beautiful Vancouver, BC.  The sun is shining, the mountains are quietly watching, and the cheeky blue heron in the harbour is eating her breakfast.  I'm thinking about money. 

I've been learning intensely interesting things about obesity, and about the complex nature of our (humans') relationship with food.  There's a lot of blame that lands on heavy people for their weight, as if there is something obvious that they could be doing about it and that they're just not doing it, or not doing it right.  People love this vantage point - just stop eating so much, or this kind of behaviour, and you'll be fine - because it puts all of the work on the heavy person, and leaves industry, society, and biology totally alone, whistling and avoiding eye-contact in the corner. 

This is what's both obvious and fascinating: our drive for food is not in our control.  The obvious part is that we get hungry and need to eat things.  The fascinating part is that the most ancient part of our brains - the limbic and mesolimbic regions - are maniacally bent upon getting us food, and not healthy, low-fat food, but fatty, salty, sugary food. 

One comment from a speaker that really stuck out for me yesterday was that to this area of our brains, which responds by releasing dopamine and endorphins and making us feel super good (our biochemical rewards), sugar is as powerful and pleasing as cocaine. 

In my own case, I would amend this:  Sugar is as powerful and pleasing to my brain as cocaine, and designer shoes.

You see, a lot of what we've been hearing about so far is the addictive nature of foods, based on the ancient evolutionary drives of our brians (even fruit flies have mesolimbic regions).  As someone who is super fortunate to have both a healthy relationship with food (thanks Mum and Dad) and also no physical, hormonal, or thyroid problems (thanks body) I don't have to worry too much about my learned behaviours surrounding food.  I will probably for the rest of my life be an "afternooner" - a person who is most likely to get my extra calories in a day between 3:30 and 4:30 (thanks after-school chips and Much Music), but that's OK. 

However, that doesn't mean that I have nothing to learn about my behaviour patterns.  We could apply this reward principle to pretty much anything we do compulsively or semi-compulsively.  Could be smoking, could be drinking, could be eating candy... or it could be buying things. 

What made me really think about this is the Cycle of Disconnection.  Here's how it works:
1. I am the problem.  Begin here, by thinking that you are doing the wrong things, and hate yourself right now.
2. Do something self-harming (however defined).  This reduces stress and promotes calm emotions - could be gambling, gaming, eating disorders, drinking, etc.
3. Feel better - you're doing the thing that makes you feel OK.
4. Feel worse - you're doing the thing that makes you feel OK and it makes you feel like a shitty person that you feel OK doing that.
5. Feel depressed, lack of control, loss of motivation.
6. Start at #1 again.  I am the problem.

Here's how the Cycle of Disconnection applies to me and my spending habits:
1.  I am the problem.  Enter Counter-Dialogue: "Get a handle on your finances like a fucking adult, already.  They're not really that out of control, just stop putting things on your visa."
2.  OK, I've stopped putting things on my visa.  It's all paid off.
3.  I feel really good.  Enter Permission Thoughts: "You know... my visa is clear, so though I don't have the money in my bank account right now, I am getting paid next Friday so I can afford this and will just pay it off next week right away."  Repeat this step three or four times.
4. I feel like shit.  I'm stressed out because I loaded my card, somehow without even knowing I was doing it, and now I'm going to be squeezed on that incoming paycheque and have to spend the next two weeks totally broke.
5. Feel depressed, lack of self-control, loss of motivation to pay off my (unrelated) line of credit, and insurmountable (in this moment) school debts.
6.  Start at #1 again.  I am the problem.

Except for replacing 'self-harm' in #2 with 'pay off your credit card', this is totally accurate and describes at every point my EXACT thought process.  It's amazing to have it so clearly laid out for me.  When one presenter described permission thoughts, I saw my own mind clearly in that moment, and was glad to see it. 

The Cycle of Disconnection doesn't only describe addictive behaviours; it certainly shows us our patterns.  This cycle would work as well for someone who was chronically late for work, and for someone who was cutting, with the modification of #2. 

I have no idea if this information will be valuable to me in changing the way I cycle through this sequence, but at the very  least I know what I'm up against.  This cycle isn't fully in control of the conscious mind.  The original drives at #3, before the permission thoughts come in, start with external cues as a low-level want.  The want can be up-graded or down-graded by other cues, or by our consciousness.  An example of this given by a speaker was of a smoker on a 12 hour flight: ask them 5 hours in if they're craving a cigarette, and they'll likely say no.  The reason is that the subconscious wanting of a cigarette can only make it to the wall of consciousness, where the brain's reasoning centre (frontal lobe) says, "oh well... on a plane," and the wanting sinks again.  The impossibility of fulfilling the want actually makes it go away, rather than making it worse.

So does that mean that I have to cut up my credit card?  I don't know, I really like collecting air miles....

Write Therapy

This winter, after a feeling of epiphany in the fall, I decided to apply to a PhD program.  I had been inspired, I had a project in mind, and I was determined that this was going to provide me with the change I'd been yearning for.  I was elated in late January, when I found out I had an interview.  Visions of my life come September were swirling in my brain: jeans every day unless I wanted to be fancy, biking to campus in fall weather, drinking coffee while working on papers in little cafes, sleeping when I wanted to, walking when I wanted to, working when I wanted to.

I was shattered by the disappointment of not being accepted to this program.  That news came about six weeks ago.

Since then, I've had to go through the process of telling people - many people - that I didn't get in.  This usually leads to shock and dismay on their part, and feelings of shame and failure on mine.  Then the conversations lead to their own recent disappointments in school or work endeavours.  The course of these conversations is what lead me to write 'Employment Purgatory', which was published by the Globe and Mail this week (and as of yesterday morning, had had over 16,000 reads and 100+ comments).  The article resonated with many people around my age (and has been derided as the whinings of an entitled 20-something by others - who likely didn't read the full piece).

I've been thinking about employment options for a long time now.  My fall epiphany was that I wasn't going to get where I wanted to go by having a master's degree and working in my current position.  As 'Employment Purgatory' explained, there aren't a lot of in-house options for me right now, and the outside market is tough.  I realised in the fall that if I want to stay on the same track I'm on now, I'm going to need more education to gain the position I want and to achieve what I'm aiming for.

On the other hand, I also started thinking about radical change - as in, abandoning the social definition of 'success' and abandoning the current track: opening a cafe/wine-bar with my friend, or taking project management courses.  My current strategy is to pursue all three things at once.  My friend and I are working on a business plan for our cafe/wine-bar, I'm signed up for a project management course that can get me the CAPM certification through PMI, and I'm mentally re-working my PhD application and considering which departments beside the one that I already applied to might find my project appealing.  This, of course, is in addition to still having my usual full-time job.  The Globe and Mail piece resulted in a lot of positive feedback, and a lot of suggestions that I should be a writer.  Someone believes that so strongly that I was approached yesterday to work with him in writing books - plans for which are already in the works.

This lead me to a new epiphany:  I already am what people think I should be.  I'm a writer.

In the past, when people have asked me what I do in my current job, I've stumbled through an answer, sort of throwing out key-words related to my responsibilities or deliverables.  When it comes down to it, in my current position, I am a writer.  My topics vary within the general field of public health and health care, and my job title is significantly different, but actually I'm just a writer.  I've been a writer all my life; I had diaries when I was so young that the main topics of discussion were my hamster and whether my sister was bugging me.

This epiphany might sound totally superficial, trite, and meaningless to many reading this, but it's been really profound for me.  I can feel a shift in perspective now.  Ever since I discovered in high school that my lifelong dream of becoming a veterinarian was completely not the right path for me (as a result of a pretty traumatic volunteer experience in the local vet office), I've struggled to find the 'thing' that I want to be when I grow up.  This has lead to a sort of directionless-ness.  I've followed passions as closely as I could when they were clear to me, and I certainly know my skills, talents, and beloved hobbies, but I haven't had a clear-cut goal, or something to aim at.  If I now think to myself, 'I want to be a writer; I want to write about things that I like to write about,' then I have a lot more clarity and direction on what I need to do to get there.

I'm not saying I want to be a newspaper columnist, or journalist, or even novelist, and it doesn't mean I want to quit my job and be broke and pretend that I can live a Carrie Bradshaw life.  I still don't really know what I want to do.  But having the idea gives me courage to pursue options that I would have written off (pun!) in the past.  It even gives me courage to write a blog post like this, because the first thing you have to think if you want to write is that someone, somewhere is going to want to read your thoughts, and let's face it, that takes guts and also some amount of egotism.

I'm excited about this new clarity.  Now I know the following:

I like: writing wine animals volunteering coffee science travel project management leadership

I don't like: being a vet sales cilantro retail finance the suburbs boredom clothing in grocery stores

I think that I can use these insights in making decisions about the future and my path through it.  This is never an easy task, and there are multiple ways to get off-track or turned around.  I've said to Drew and others recently that since finding out that I didn't get into the PhD, which I saw as my ultimate way out of job stagnation and the key to my future, I've felt like the rug was pulled out from under me, and the tray of possibilities I was carrying was flung into the air.  I've been waiting for something to land since then.  Now, I feel like things are finally about to hit the ground.

Review: Four New World Reds

Bergstrom Cumberland Reserve Pinot Noir, 2009
Willamette Valley, Oregon
This wine was definitely a treat.  It's tough to get here because it doesn't always make it to the LCBO, and when it does, it flies off the shelves.  I was really excited to get it, and it did not disappoint.  This wine was ruby coloured with a pale pink rim, and had all the classic Pinot flavours with a new world twist.  Cherry, cranberry, and orange rind took centre stage, with orange pekoe tea and dark earth in the wings.  The wine was energetic and light, and was a great match for Drew's home-made orange-ginger-soya chicken wings.  Holy yum! 
Chip pairing: Kettle Chips Red Thai Curry     Verdict: Lovely

Ring Bolt Cabernet Sauvignon, 2011
Margaret River, Australia
In the interests of full disclosure, I'll readily admit that I love wine from the Margaret River appellation.  This was a particularly nice example of the non-new-world-y kind of Cabs that can come from that area.  While definitely appearing to be bright fuscia with a zippy pink rim, this wine had a touch of welcome backwardness, with white mushroom, dark earth, and mocha coming through alongside ripe cherries and a touch of green bell pepper that wasn't off-putting.  It was well-balanced, angular, and all-around delicious with the BBQ short ribs in a slightly sweet and tangy sauce. 
Chip pairing:  Kettle Brand Backyard Barbeque      Verdict: Delicious

Terra Noble Reserve Terroir Carmenere, 2011
Maule Valley, Chile
Is anyone else here a fan of Carmenere?  Just me?  This one might change the minds of Carmenere-haters and disbelievers everywhere.  This beautiful, deep ruby wine was rich with fresh ripe cherries, cassis, and mocha, with just a touch of green pepper on the nose (but not so much on the palate).  It was round and plush, but had enough acidity to pair well with the fois gras on paris toast and black bread that we ate with it.  The herbaceousness of the fois gras was a great match for the slightly-earthy, rich wine.  It was a real crowd-pleaser.
Chip pairing: Pringles Ranch     Verdict: Yum!

Starry Night Old Vine Zinfandel, 2007
Russian River Valley, Sonoma Valley, California
Holy Zin Batman!  I love me some old vines - the older the better!  This wine blew me away, and I'm sad that it was a limited release at the LCBO.  Again, I'm very glad that I had a chance to scoop some up.  This wine was so dark it was almost opaque - the deepest of rubies - and was brimming over with ripe field berries.  Blackberry, blueberry, raspberry, boysenberry - all were present, along with freshly turned earth, black pepper, and white mushrooms.  My mouth is watering again writing this.  The wine was full bodied, smooth and powerful.  We paired it with shaved marinated flank steak with horseradish mayo on fresh slices of baguette.  The two were clearly made for each other.  I don't know if I'll ever get the change to drink this again, but I certainly hope so.
Chip pairing: Ruffles Loaded Baked Potato Skins
Verdict: Wonderful!

Employment Purgatory

I decided to write this post because for a number of weeks now, I've been talking with different friends about their career aspirations, current work situations, and life-long dreams.  We're all speeding up to or hovering around the 30-year-mark, and none of us are satisfied with our positions.  These conversations have lead me to wonder aloud and to myself, 'why are there so many intelligent, talented, valuable people who are being totally wasted by their employers, or can't even find work?'  I know that this is a question for the economists, and all we seem to hear about in the Careers section of the newspapers is that university graduates are increasingly indebted and unemployed.  That's by the numbers, and it's depressing.  But let me examine this question from a different angle, because the economists' bleak outlook doesn't help me any.

By and large, my friends and my friends' friends are all intelligent, educated, gregarious, and creative.  They're insightful and thoughtful.  They're critical and ambitious.  So why do so many employers put them in positions that don't take full advantage of what they've got to offer?  We're told that we have to ask for what we want in our careers, but there are so many barriers to doing this - including corporate culture, loss of jobs around us, and the inability to find another better position.  The places that we work for are chock-a-block with people who are contented in their positions; they're sitting low in their saddles, riding out the last miles toward the sunset of retirement.  They're not interested in changing horses any more, the way we are, and so those saddles that we want to have remain full, often by people who have lost more than just their ambitions for new jobs.  They've lost the drive to get things done quickly, they've lost creativity, and they've especially lost the outsider's perspective on the job they do and the company they work for.  They're entrenched in the corporate culture of the place, and nothing kills innovation or ambition faster than people dedicated to the status quo.

It's frustrating for us, the not-so-young, not-so-old, not-complete-idealists, not-yet-cynical employees who still have hopes and dreams for bigger things.  We can sit in our jobs - that underpay us and under-utilize our talents - or we can start looking around outside the company.  But this is really bad talent management on the part of our employers.  If you have ambitious, smart young people who actually *want* to do more work and use their talents to the maximum, so that they can grow as people and employees, then you're an idiot as an employer to not take advantage of this.  This is where I am, and many of my friends are in this position too, just hoping and waiting for either the next better job outside, or some radical shift inside.  I've thought seriously about changing my LinkedIn profile blurb to something like, "My career goal is to gain a position that energizes, excites, challenges, and values me, so that I can continue to develop my skills and talents, and as a person."  I wonder if that would catch anyone's eye?

However, my perspective is actually incredibly privileged because I actually have a pretty good job, despite my dissatisfaction; I have another group of friends who are unemployed or radically underemployed.  These are people with university degrees and an incredible amount of smarts and life experiences.  They are writing wine blogs, translating German literature, contract-teaching at massage colleges, waitressing, executive assisting, and generally trying to cobble together a living with piecemeal hourly wages or contract work.  They know the work they want to do, but the leap from knowing it and doing it is massive and uncertain - especially the part about getting paid for it.

My friend told me last night about a German immigrant who lives in the Okanagan, and who noticed upon arrival there that there were bushels and bushels of apples lying on the ground in the orchards that apple farmers weren't using, for a variety of reasons that include the fickleness of produce purchasers.  Aghast at the waste he was observing, he decided to start collecting these apples from the farmers, and opened an apple brandy distillery (now called Okanagan Spirits).  He sold that, and decided to start creating mobile juicing machines, to take to orchards across Canada to collect the fallen apples and juice them, right on the spot, and to then give the juice back to the farmers to do what they like with it.  He needs a bit of a different business model (like maybe keeping that juice and branding it), but still I have so much respect and admiration for this man and all the people who are like him; all the people who are out there without jobs of any specific description, who say to themselves "here's something I could do, and I think I'll just do it."

My friends are like that - the friend who has a wine blog, the friend who is a swimsuit designer, the friend who's translating German literature - and I admire them so much.  But they struggle nonetheless, and they have other jobs that they depend on to get by from month-to-month, and sometimes these other jobs have to come first, and that labour of love takes the back seat for a while.  All of them wonder when their break is going to come, when the thing they're doing will finally spill over from 'just making it work' to 'making it'.  And I wonder that too, because this risk-taking group of determined individuals should be rewarded by the universe, I think, for their innovation and dedication.  The other group, sitting undervalued at their desks, should be likewise rewarded for their abilities and ambitions.

My overall sense is that we're all in the same place, sitting together in a kind of employment purgatory, waiting for something to happen.  We keep working - we're not sitting idle.  We apply for jobs, we network, push for promotions or projects, advertise ourselves, and keep our eyes on the horizon.  We are striving, ever striving, for the thing that we want that we know we can do.  Economists be damned, we're all just waiting for our big break, and we won't be satisfied with a comfy saddle riding toward the sunset.

Patti's Camera Solo

On Thursday night, Drew and I had the magnificent good fortune of being able to see Patti Smith in concert at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO).  It was the opening of her photography exhibit, called Camera Solo - doubly meaning 'a room of one's own' and 'a single camera show'.

The exhibit showcases Patti's tiny photos, all black and white, which she took with an old Polaroid.  The photos are created by some kind of gelatinous silver tracking the light exposure.  Aside from a few photos of family and friends, Patti's collection focuses on famous dead people, giving the strong impression that you're looking at an exhibition about death - or alternatively, about love.  The photos are of the relics of dead people who did remarkable things.  For example, there is a photo of the River Ouse, in which Virginia Woolf drowned herself, along with a huge round rock sitting on a table, like the ones she filled her pockets with.  There is a photo of Frieda Khalo's bed, a reproduction of the litter that carried Rimbaud across Egypt, and numerous headstones from famous graves around Europe.  There's a sense through the exhibit that Patti wants us to focus on the ways that the dead live through us long after they're gone; about the legacy of a chair or a wooden cane.  Love is what carries the memories of these people and pulls the threads of their lives through the eye of the present.  Love will keep us alive long after we have died.

To complement the photos this night, Patti gave a short performance in the central rotunda of the Gallery.  The glass ceiling and high arching walls provided incredible acoustics for her voice, guitar, and grand piano.  Patti's songs, too, were about death and love.  She sang Redondo Beach, about a lover looking for her girlfriend who has killed herself, This is The Girl, written in tribute to Amy Winehouse, and Because the Night, about the passion of lovers and the safety they feel in their own world in the dark.  She dedicated her songs to various people along the way, and the last song, the People Have the Power, was dedicated to Stompin' Tom Connors who passed away on Wednesday.  He is a Canadian folk music hero, and Patti put it right when she said "a guy like that doesn't die, he's just walking along in another place right now, but he doesn't die.  He never leaves us."

Patti ensured her legacy with us that night.  The crowd was ecstatic.  There were so few of us, she was so honest and genuine, and the music was so big and full.  The Waterloo Choir, who had bought tickets to come and see her, unexpectedly - to them as well - ended up backing her on the last two songs, and killing it, I might add.  The entire evening was deep with meaning, richly celebrating life, and death, and love.

Camera Solo runs from February 9th to May 19th, 2013, at the AGO, in Toronto.

And the Academy Award goes to...

open-faced ravioli

Andrew of Scaramouche,
inspecting soup vessels

...the amazing food Drew and I had the extreme pleasure of eating last night!  We were invited this year to an annual Oscar party, and this was our first time attending.  The party was catered by the chef of Toronto's very famous Scaramouche.  Guests were invited to dress like characters from their favourite movies, though this was not a requirement, and wine was poured liberally.  All in all, this was a great night.

root vegetable truffle soup

On the menu, we had ricotta-filled cheese puffs, followed by open-faced ravioli (whoa).  This was followed in turn by a foamy delicious root vegetable and truffle soup (ahmagah).  The main course was a melt-in-your-mouth piece of tenderloin in an incredible gravy reduction with creamy mashed potatoes and roasted vegetables.  The dessert was a layered fleur de sel caramel and chocolate pudding in a martini glass with whipped mascarpone and honeycomb on top.  Are you drooling yet?

Of the wines we were drinking, one was this little beauty.  A tasty and friendly little Rhone wine, this wine is a blend of Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre, and other grapes. I am a fan of Southern Rhone blends, and this is no exception; muscular enough to get along with most food dishes (including the succulent tenderloin we had), but accessible enough that you don't need to be a wine connoisseur to get into it.  I find this is true of most Rhone blends, but certainly not all.  This bottle also comes in under $20, which makes it a great party wine if you're hosting.

We couldn't stay to the very end of the show, and with all the people and food in the room we really only caught a fraction of it anyway, but I hear that Jennifer Lawrence was graceful and funny after she fell on her way to get her 40 lb statue (no, really. Oscars are apparently super heavy), and Daniel Day Lewis was the unsurprising winner of the Best Actor category.  I haven't seen Lincoln, but it is apparently good if you like long, talk-heavy, political films.  I might be more into it if they did a Lincoln musical, or if the leading actor looked like this:

Lincoln enjoys root-truffle soup, pre-award.