More Food – Salsa Roja (roasted red salsa)
This week I made salsa 3 times. Once, apprehensively as I had conflicting advice about how to properly make it. The other two times, I had much more confidence in my ability to make it, and was able to experiment a bit. I also now know more about salsa than ever, which is hard to believe because salsa has always, always been my most favourite condiment of all. I used to eat it out of the jar with a spoon. I still do that with my homemade stuff but I feel less unhealthy about it now that I know what’s in it!
There’s lots of different kinds of salsas, but the two that I had to learn to distinguish from this week was pico de gallo and Salsa roja. The basic difference is that the former is just fresh raw ingredients, diced and mixed together and the latter is cooked in some way. I have always steered away from making my own salsa because I don’t really like pico de gallo. I taste the cilantro too much, which is a very pronounced flavour.
I really prefer salsa roja, which includes cooking then blending the cooked ingredients to make a red sauce. The first two times, I painstakingly diced (the first time I took all the seeds out as I was told to do that, but later found out it doesn’t make a difference) some of the ingredients, then cooked them in a pot for awhile, then transferred them to the food processor with the rest and blended them until it was smooth. The result was pretty good!
This time, I decided to roast my veggies instead, and since someone said they were sad I didn’t have more pictures of the construction of my butternut squash soup, I took pictures! So here’s what I did to make my awesome salsa!
Ingredients:
5 roma tomatoes
1/2 an onion*
3-6 cloves of garlic*
2-3 serrano peppers*
about a dozen sprigs of fresh cilantro
a lime
pinch of salt (I use sea salt)
Some notes about the starred items: For the onion, the first and second time I used a cheap cooking onion, about .32 cents or less for one of those and it worked fine. The third time I used a sweet onion and it worked well too. My friend Josh appears to use red onions and that probably works too. So I don’t know how to advise you on what kind of onion to use, except you might as well go for cheap the first time, and get creative later. For the garlic, I looove garlic and probably use too much for some people, but roasting garlic sweetens it and takes away a lot of the spicy flavour so you might not notice it as much after roasting. So if 6 cloves is normally too much for you, it might not be too bad after roasting is what I’m trying to say here.
Ok, so serrano peppers are HOT. To put it into perspective, the heat of chilis are measured in Scoville units. You can read about Scoville units here! It’s pretty interesting how it moved from a test involving humans tasting chilies and measuring it with that method to using high-performance liquid chromatography. Anyway, to compare:
Green bell pepper = 0 Scoville units
Jalapeño pepper = 2500 – 8000 Scoville units
Serrano peppers = 10000 – 23000 Scoville units
So you can see they’re a lot spicier than Jalapeños, so you may want to use Jalapeños instead! I don’t know where I am on the spectrum as tolerance of heat goes, but using three with seeds in makes it spicy enough that eating it by the spoonful is a bit difficult. Which is why I did it, actually. The spicier it is the longer it lasts in my house! The second time, I used three chilies, two with seeds and 1 with seeds removed and that made a huge difference in the level of spiciness and is also why it was gone in two days. 
On to the salsa construction. Preheat the oven (I put it on the broil setting because I’m impatient and it gets really hot!). Slice the romas in half and put cut side up on a baking sheet. Cut the onion in half, save half and cut the other half in four pieces and place on sheet. Roughly cut the garlic and peppers and place those on the sheet as well. I use a plastic bag over my hand to cut the peppers because I’ve gotten hot pepper in my eye way too many times to risk it. I don’t have plastic gloves but if you did have ‘em, that would make it a lot safer too. Remember, Chili + Eye = TERRIBLE. Wash your hands after you’ve handled them, just to be safe.
Throw it in the oven, mine took 10 minutes but check often. You’re going to want it to be roasted but not burned. Check the after picture below for a guideline. While the veggies are roasting, dice your cilantro and juice your lime.
When your veggies are nicely roasted, remove them from the oven! They should look pretty much like this, or maybe a little more browned on top of the tomatoes would be okay too!
Now, when I didn’t have a food processor, I would *HATE* to get this far down in a recipe and have it tell me to blend my stuff in a food processor!! But that’s honestly what I did. But I don’t feel like that’s what you HAVE to do if you don’t have one. Maybe a hand mixer would work, or a blender? If you don’t have those, maybe you could dice them finely BEFORE roasting and transfer them into a pot and mash em up a bit?! Maybe you are a caveman and have a mortar and pestle you’ve fashioned over month and months with no tv in your cave?! (I say this because if you are a foodie enough to have a mortar and pestle that you’ve bought, you’re either too advanced a cook to find merit in this recipe OR collect kitchen things and have a food processor already!) Anyway, I think you can make this work no matter what your limitations are, but I’m happy I do have a nice food processor to make it faster.
So I moved all my ingredients including cilantro, salt and lime juice into the food processor and blended it for awhile. No set time for this, it’s kind of a judgment call. I ended up with delicious salsa!
And it made quite a bit!
It makes much more than a jar of salsa would yield for less money, and it’s really tasty and doesn’t have that salty vinegar-y preservative taste to it either. To me it tastes JUST like the salsa they would serve with our breakfast burritos from the amazing mexican restaurant in Texas we went to all the time last year. Now if I can just learn how to make homemade authentic tamales, I can die happy. 
A friend tried my butternut soup recipe and said it was awesome, so I hope one of you tries the salsa and likes it too. I don’t plan on this becoming a food blog because there are WAY too many delicious and superior ones to what this newbie cook could create, but it’s more of a personal journey to be a better cook anyway so it fits with the personal theme I think.
It’s a beautiful sunny day in Vancouver, and I’m off to enjoy it!
Butternut Squash Soup: A Culinary Adventure
I hesitated to write this entry as I’ve already twittered the hell out of my butternut squash soup, but much like Andy Stitzer’s egg salad sandwich preparations (vague reference is fairly vague), my life is just boring enough for this to be the highlight of my evening. So you’re gonna hear about it again, Twitterers. There’s no way out, except for the Back button. Damn it, I shouldn’t have mentioned that.
So, my original plan was to try this recipe for Butternut Squash, Carrot and Ginger soup that I had found online, modify it to my desires, and then regale you all with tales of my culinary expertise. This is not what this post is gonna be. Also, if I was any kind of a food blogger I’d have pictures, but I have but one very-bland-and-already-posted-on-Twitter picture instead. Deal with it.
The recipe called for four cups of water and half of a medium squash. What the eff is a medium squash anyway?! My sister’s cat (who has a Twitter account) assured me a medium squash is two pounds. I now question the judgment and expertise that a cat would have about squash, but at the time she seemed to know what she was talking about. I suppose I should clarify before I lose all my credibility (read:almost none) that my sister prefers to tweet as her cat, but that kind of ruins the wonderful mental image of it all, and at any rate she’s so convincing I forget it’s NOT a cat I’m tweeting to.
Anyway, I wasn’t gonna bake half a squash and leave the other half to rot in my refrigerator after my initial spark of culinary creativity had passed, so I decided to double the recipe. So, one whole two pound squash, two pounds of carrots, quite a bit of ginger and eight cups of water. I was worried about the squash-carrot ratio due to carrots getting second billing in the soup title, but I decided it would be ok.
On my way home from work (which included a lovely detour along coal harbour, the Convention Center and Canada Place), I picked up a squash at Lonsdale Quay that came out to exactly two pounds. I am AWESOME at weight estimation, as it turns out. I wish that was a marketable skill. Though to be fair I was carrying a two pound bag of carrots in the other hand for comparison. If I WAS marketing myself disclosing that would have blown it for me, wouldn’t it? Ah well, marketing is not among my marketable skills. The total, with carrots and a big piece of ginger root came up to $3.63. Which, might I add, is less than the two cup, preservative laden boxed soup of the same kind.
Here is an semi-unrelated picture of the really beautiful view from Coal Harbour yesterday to completely throw off the rhythm of my story:
Once home, I prepared the soup as per the directions, and everything was going swimmingly until the part, when the carrots and squash were tender and boiling in eight cups of vegetable stock(see, not water, creative license!), I realized that my four cup food processor was going to have a tough time pureeing the mixture. I realized I’d have to go in batches. I think this is where the texture fell apart because by pureeing in batches the first few, despite my best efforts, contained much much more liquid than it should have.
As a result, the more watery (stocky?) portions didn’t blend as smooth as they should have, and I made a huuuuge mess in the process. Which resulted in a more watery, less smooth texture for the soup. As someone who has always choked through my cooking blunders, I think it’s delicious, but I wouldn’t serve it in a cooking competition. My other creative addition was to add honey and freshly ground nutmeg to the finished soup, which I think made it extra yummy.
Overall, it turned out ok, but not great. A big tall blender would have been ideal, and perhaps there was a very good reason they didn’t use the whole squash in their recipe. I think I’m getting better at cooking, as I seem to have progressed past the “add spice till you can’t taste anything else!” phase that has served me sort of well for the past 10 years or so.
The best part is that it ended up yielding a giant amount of yummy, healthy, tummy-warming soup that I’m looking forward to serving aside my dinner and bringing for lunch over the next week. And that’s after 2 huge bowls of it. Shush, I earned it. I even cleaned up my huge soup mess before I ate. That’s such an old person thing to do. But look!
Here’s the recipe I found if you think you can do better (Hint: you totally can!).
Butternut Squash, Carrot & Ginger Soup
Thanks for reading about my (mis)adventure, got any other recipes I can mess up?
Vaccine War – Some Thoughts
Yesterday, someone on my Twitter linked to a documentary on PBS about vaccines, or specifically, the “war” between health officials and parents who feel they are dangerous. Watch it online here. Being someone who doesn’t have children, I hadn’t taken much time to think about whether or not I would immunize my future kids.
The main focus of the doc was exploring the viewpoint of the parents, who feel that there are too many risks to immunization (autism, which the documentary expressly states has not been causally linked, as well as other side effects), versus the health officials view that immunization is for the greater good of the public. Basically, they feel that the benefits far outweigh the risks, such as the benefit of illnesses being eradicated as a result of a mass vaccination, like smallpox was in the seventies.
The documentary also explored the development in modern society of where we get our information from, and which information we are more likely to trust. It is fairly new in our society that the majority of us would much rather believe often unsourced information on the internet from social networks like Youtube than scientific research from a government entity that specializes in that field of research.
It’s a potentially dangerous development, and as someone who uses Wikipedia as a primary source of research, I’m guilty of it too. It’s funny that I have become dependent on second hand information, as I have always put grave importance on the accuracy of information I receive. This stems from high school, when a “really smart guy” that I “learned” a lot of things from, told me in all seriousness that Merlin had caused the Dark Ages by casting a spell of darkness on the world. Made me second guess everything I ever knew up to that point, as I didn’t know how much of it had come from him!
While watching the documentary, I felt strongly for the CDC’s angle, that we should trust what scientists tell us is safe to do. I find it a bit unusual that a parent wouldn’t trust a vaccine, but simultaneously trust that the food we serve is being monitored adequately enough to be safe. Is it because we can’t go without food but we might make it (individually) without vaccination? It’s a government entity that researches and enforces food safety regulations, and we trust them with our well-being every single day.
Is it because if we immunize our kids and they suffer a side effect, it’s almost like “we did it” to them by opting for the shot, whereas a health problem or death caused by food poisoning or measles, while equally devastating, doesn’t harbor the same amount of guilt regarding the outcome? Or perhaps it’s the same reason why Dancing with the Stars gets more viewers weekly than shows about how many people have died in Iraq so far. We have to cope somehow. We can’t worry about everyone, so we choose to worry about ourselves and our families instead of the world around us. Maybe there’s no fault in that, we’re very new to this global way of thinking after all.
Interestingly enough, I chose not to receive the swine flu vaccine last winter. Why? I had heard mumblings of side effects and that made me unsure enough to abstain. I was thinking “I’m not sick, or elderly, or a baby, so I won’t die from it. Don’t need it.” It didn’t really cross my mind that I could carry the virus on transit where it could affect someone more susceptible than I was. Nor were people really talking about that either. Ok, well, I think my mom may have mentioned that, but I was in ‘me-me-me’ mode and didn’t listen. First time, I swear! In the future I’ll be thinking about everyone when I make these decisions for myself.
Which leads to the more abstract but important question of the documentary, which is, should the choice of whether or not to immunize be left to the parent or the government? Though I will nearly always vote for more individual freedom than government intervention, it’s clear that with that freedom comes the inevitability that we will never see those preventable illnesses disappear as more people opt out of immunizing their children. It’s a tricky situation. I would be interested to see if autism rates truly did rise if immunization was mandatory, though children aren’t our guinea pigs to test our theories on.**Note: I was informed by the original poster of the link that they did in fact prove that immunization did not increase occurrences of autism, and in fact a study in Japan of the triple shot MMC actually showed an increase in the occurrence of autism when the shot was not taken. So I guess I don’t have to wish to see that, it’s pretty clear from studies done in the past. Thanks for the clarification and reminder of what I had forgotten from the documentary.
It is quite possible that the immunization schedule just happens to coincide with that stage of development where symptoms or autism are just starting to emerge, and it’s more coincidental than causal. We are certainly still in the beginning stages of understanding autism, and we don’t know too much about it yet.
I highly recommend watching the doc and letting me know your thoughts on the issue. My views on this one were just too detailed for the 140 character limit that the Twitter world confines us to. And um, thanks to the guy who linked it for linking it, who I don’t know well enough to link to on my blog, in case that’s weird or something. I have no idea.
5 Things I’ve Learned About Vancouver
As many of you know, I moved to Vancouver on a whim last October. I had always been afraid of “the big city”, but after a disastrous year in Chilliwack that was the product of that fear, I decided to do it. I flew straight from work in the NWT to North Vancouver by myself, where I had a temporary place to stay for a month.
Now it’s been six months, and I truly feel like a Vancouverite. I love it here. I actually feel more at home here than I have anywhere since I left my hometown seven years ago. When I got here, Vancouver was a big, scary, overwhelming place. Since then, I’ve learned a lot of things. It might be old news for any Vancouver residents who read this, but then again, maybe you’re so used to it that you’ve forgotten how special your city is!
5. What a ‘foodie’ is. I don’t think this terms exists outside of big cities. Basically, I kept hearing this term everywhere in both negative and positive connotations. “I’m not a foodie, but..” or “self described foodie!”. I had assumed that a foodie is a professional food reviewer or a chef, or something. Wikipedia (which isn’t always accurate) says a foodie is anyone with an appreciation or obsession with food. Which would make me a foodie. And probably you a foodie. So why is this term needed? And why is it looked down upon by some and a source of pride for others?
At any rate, I have had some amazing food here in Vancouver, but not as good as some of the authentic Mexican and Texas comfort food I’ve had in the south. Right now, my favourite has been Town Hall on Thurlow & Alberni, or True Confections in the West End (mmmm, chocolate caramel pecan cheesecake..), though I still have a lot to try!
4. Every area has a stereotype. I learned this when I started going to Yuk-Yuks on Burrard for amateur comedy night. Surrey is our punching bag. It reminds me of how Winnipeggers viewed anyone north of them. I think the stereotypes are cute and endearing, and I had a friend from Surrey who thought so too. We, as Canadians love to make fun of ourselves, right?
I went to Surrey once and it was fine, though. I think where I’m from is much rougher, though there was heightened security due to the Olympics. I live in North Van, scoffed at by my class of people for being full of the rich snobs. I’m here to dispute this stereotype! I moved here to feel safe, but I still have a screaming crackhead outside me window once a week or so, so I think I might’ve been just as safe elsewhere. On that note, I have never really felt unsafe in the city, contrary to my fears before moving here though I do generally play it safe on when I am out alone.
3. There are so many hidden treasures here. When my brother came here in November to visit, we decided to go hiking in Deep Cove. The hike was about an hour, with the top a rocky surface that you could sit and look out at Deep Cove, the forest and even the skyscrapers of Burnaby in the background. It was so gorgeous! That was the first treasure I found. Then I found Ambleside Park. Ok, it’s not the hardest thing to find but the various small beaches have driftwood you can sit on and listen to the waves crash against the shore while you watch the ships come into the harbour. And the smell of the ocean there is amazing! Sitting there, I felt more relaxed than I have been in years. Also, there’s a pub called the Black Frog in Gastown that’s nothing spectacular but it’s cozy enough to remind me of where I came from. Such a relaxed atmosphere. And those are just a few of them. It’s so nice that I don’t have to take a vacation to get away from the city. I think it’s a really special feature.
2. It’s ok to be who you are. When I got here, I went downtown and noticed a LOT of leggings, high-heeled boots, pea coats, scarves.. Everyone was impeccably dressed, which was really overwhelming for someone who just spent one half of her time at a remote mine site(steel-toed boots are a requirement!) and the other half either in a sleepy mountain town or in small town Central Texas. I’ve noticed that I’m generally treated with kindness whether you wear designer stuff or not and though no one seems to look dumpy, the city seems to embrace and accept personal style. I think since I’ve gotten here, with the access to all types of clothing, I’ve developed more of a personal style than I’ve ever had. Though I still can’t do high heels. Don’t know that I ever will!
Also, there are so many different types of people. You’re allowed to be a Twitter addict, that’s not weird, you can go to a tweet-up! You can be a board game addict, there are stores that offer free board game nights for you. You can walk the seawall by yourself, as slowly as you want. Basically, everything that might label you an outcast in a small town is perfectly ok here. This freedom to be yourself is really refreshing, and is something I’ve discussed with a lot of converted Vancouver people who didn’t find it anywhere else. Unfortunately that freedom makes it pretty difficult to find a group to mesh with. Nobody wants you to force you to be like them, and so for me it has been difficult establishing a group of friends. Maybe there is a such thing as too laid back.
1. The transit is AMAZING. In Thompson, we had two buses that travelled exactly the same circular route, but in opposite direction. In Winnipeg, described by Manitobans as an amazing transit system, you needed 2 or 3 buses to get anywhere, except if you were travelling to the downtown core. In Chilliwack, bus service started at 8 am and stopped at 6 pm. I have a lot of experience with ineffective transit systems, especially not having a vehicle.
In Vancouver, your car is best suited for escaping to Whistler or Seattle for the weekend, and even those trips are easily done on transit (The Snowbus to Whistler is cheap and has free wifi for the entirety of the trip!). When I arrived, I was actually scared to take the Skytrain, but now I use it daily. It’s so convenient! I can get nearly everywhere I need to go, with basically no wait time at the station. The transit here is truly special and makes it possible for me to do a lot of things I wouldn’t otherwise. The Seabus can be mildly annoying at night, as it runs on the half hour and I’m now spoiled into thinking that any wait for transit longer than 10 minutes is ridiculous, but the view is incredible and being on the ocean for even a brief time feels like a vacation.
Again, this list is pretty general but it’s a few reasons why Vancouver is my favourite city in the world and why I think it’s so unique.
Niche
I pronounce it neesh, and I don’t want to know that it’s wrong, so shh!
As hard pressed as I am for ideas of things to write about, I assure you I’m not scraping the bottom of the barrel of blog ideas enough to only tell you how I pronounce things, YET.
After consulting many experts and interesting types about restarting my blog, I keep hearing the same response, find a niche (only they pronounce it properly). Thing is, I don’t have a niche. I have always considered myself a ‘jack of all trades’. I don’t really have an interest that goes beyond all other interests to make me an expert on anything.
I know a lot about the science of food but I still have so much to learn. I know a lot about metal music but music is subjective. I could regurgitate facts about bands you can find on wikipedia, or review the few shows I make it out to. Some people are really good at that. Problem is, I love live music so much that most every show I go to will garner the same review. LOUD, INTERESTING, MMM GUITAR, SO MUCH FUN! I think that my career as a music reviewer wouldn’t last more than two bands. I can’t review restaurants either because I’m the least picky eater you’ve ever met. I can’t remember the last time I was disappointed by restaurant food. And people love it when you can rip something apart, it seems. I’m more of a “hey, good effort!” type of person. So reviews are out.
I love video games but I spent a maximum of about an hour on them a week. Not enough to make it the focus of my blog. My life is full of work, errands, and social interaction (mostly online). I love my Mac but I’ll just get in line behind the millions of other bloggers who are in love with their beautiful computer. Unrelated: I dropped my new gorgeous Macbook Pro a foot off of the couch yesterday and immediately scooped it up, pet it and apologized. Apparently my Mac’s name is “Maccy”. I know, very original, but it was a spur of the moment thing. I find it difficult to comfort things without names. Umm, I digress..
Someone else suggested I write a more personal blog, which stemmed from a conversation about some sleep problems I’ve been having. I seriously considered that, but I really have this need to make sure everyone knows I’m okay. I feel like focusing on a problem casts a negative light on the whole process, and on the whole I’m a very happy person with minimal problems. There’s a few things that can and should be fixed, but I don’t feel comfortable making that the focus of something I want to contribute to daily. That could be a stupid choice, I’m not sure, but it’s the choice I’m making, so there!
The hardest part of blogging so far is not putting smileys after every sentence. Anyone who follows my Twitter knows I have a serious emoticon issue that needs to be addressed. Maybe I could make that my niche? How to overcome smiley addiction. I might have something there. 
Ack, I can tell this is going to be an uphill battle.
Perhaps I shall confuse the masses by combining all the various blog ideas I’ve had over the years. The blog where I communicate solely through lists. Or the blog where I dissect Clutch lyrics according to cultural references. Or the blog where I comment on various ridiculous heavy metal stories. I’ll culminate them all here, in a confused mess that no one will ever commit to reading.
In the end, though, I think I’m doomed to talk about the one thing I’m most interested in and knowledgeable about: me. Which inevitably means that I will never have much of a readership. I think I can deal with that. We’ll see how it develops naturally. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to cuddle Maccy to sleep. :$
Stress
Today I figured out a problem at work that had been plaguing me since last Wednesday. I had anticipated working on it during the weekend but decided instead to recharge my batteries. Seems that was the best choice because I fixed it today.. sort of. I feel really badly for not noticing it before. Though if I had noticed it before, I’d probably have felt bad then too. Wasn’t really my fault but I felt if I had been more thorough I would have found it.
In other news, I’ve been having fun with Aperture and my iSight, and I really, really love the Vintage filter. Its a pretty easy-to-use program that is fun to play around with. Here’s an example of me looking unimpressed:
I mentioned on Twitter today that I was thinking about becoming a regular somewhere. Like a coffeeshop. Most of my recreational time is spent on this very portable laptop so i figure it wouldn’t hurt to be out in the real world instead of hiding out at home. I’m thinking Waves, either the North shore or West Hastings/Richards location.
Coen Brothers Marathon
This weekend, I didn’t have much planned so I decided to have a Coen Brothers movie marathon. The first Coen bros movie I ever watched was The Big Lebowski (which I loved, of course). It wasn’t until my brother visited me recently that I gave much thought as to how a director impacts a movie. Since I loved No Country For Old Men and A Serious Man as well, I decided to catch up on the rest of their work.
The first movie I watched was Barton Fink. It was apparent pretty early on that it wasn’t a movie to be taken at it’s most obvious interpretation, which is the story of a playwright struggling as a new screenwriter in LA. As the story moves forward the threads of reality unravel and become pretty distorted. I’ve read that this is common for Coen films and reminded me at times of American Psycho, though less calculated. Also, loved seeing John Goodman seem to lose himself in the role of Charlie. I think he’s a much better actor than he seems to get credit for. I really enjoyed the film.
The second movie I watched was Fargo. I know, I know, it’s hard to believe that this would be the first time I watched Fargo, but it was. And I *loved* it. The first movie in a long time where I got completely lost in the story and the characters. I loved how the police kind of fumbled along in the investigation, none of them being a heroic genius like they usually are in crime stories. True to real life, I think. Also, I could listen to those accents all day. I’ve been thinking about adopting one!
Lastly, I watched Raising Arizona. I probably liked this one the least out of the three I watched. I’m not sure if this was because of the movie itself or if I was just restless from sitting on the couch all day and didn’t give it the focus it deserved. It was entertaining to watch Nicholas Cage in the first role I didn’t hate him in. He was really funny and genuine. Why is it that big name actors seem to get worse the older they get? Egos I guess, and getting tired of working in the industry maybe? Not sure. I always seem to get the impression like he doesn’t try hard to be a character anymore. He is just Nicholas Cage. It was refreshing to see him in Raising Arizona. Maybe I should check out more of him in the 80s.
There are a lot more Coen movies to watch, but I only had the patience to sit on the couch for three of them. Maybe I’ll continue next weekend. I really want to see Crimewave because it has Bruce Campbell in it, who I love. Also, O Brother Where Art Thou seems like a movie I should have seen a few times already.
Back to the blog
I have been toying with the idea of writing again and I really think it’s something I need right now. The last 5 months living in Vancouver have been amazing, but I haven’t been able to make the friends I was hoping to make. And I think I felt like I really needed to have a group of friends to feel normal. But I also think that’s probably an insecurity issue. If I was secure in who I was, I wouldn’t need to produce friends as proof of awesomeness. I am who I am and I will meet people if I meet them. I’m tired of trying, I’m giving up for now. So for now, it’s work, books, and the interwebs.
I’d like to start writing as a way of producing some sort of creative output and kind of as a therapeutic way to understand and accept who I am and what makes me that way. I don’t want to make any big specific blog plan because that will be intimidating and will probably fizzle out. I’m an expert on starting projects but an amateur at finishing them.
We’ll see how this goes!
Fear of Blogging
I was talking to my friend David today about blogging.. and why I don’t update erinfedak.com. It really comes down to a fear of stirring up controversy among the people I care about. I don’t even really know if what I have to say is controversial, but I feel like what I have with everyone is delicate and important, and I don’t want to be so unapologetic about my thoughts and feelings (which is really what I’d have to do, to be any kind of a writer) that I cause any rifts.
I know that the people who really care about me will always care about me. Sometimes I worry I don’t let them see who I am enough, I fall into being who I think they’d like most. I don’t know if its a conscious effort, just something I started doing to make friends a long time ago when it was hard, and never stopped. Every year I get better at asserting myself, but I’m far from where I should be when it comes to really being myself. It’s funny, because the people I like most, I like because they are unapologetically themselves, although that’s something I’ve never been able to do myself. There are also concerns about my professional life. How personal honest can a blog with your full name in it be when it’s the first result that comes up on Google?
That said, with the possibility of some freelance work in my future, I have been thinking of making this space more of a business card, and moving my blog over to a new, as of now secret new domain that I am setting up a blog on. The new blog will be fun and likely not so much about getting things off my chest but a place to interact with friends and visitors, as well as keep a running catalogue of who I am, and what interests me in the coming months and years.
Arizona & June Bugs : Day Three
I’ve hit a mental road block! My mind has been blank all day, despite valiant attempts by PepsiCo to jumpstart my brain. However, in the interests of sticking with my quest I’ll try my best to make this readable!
Last night was the cookout, which was relaxing and comfortable. It feels good to get along so well with everyone here. A lot of the conversation centered around a road trip Joe, his friend and I are taking on Wednesday to Arizona. It should be unique compared to any of the things we’ve done thus far as it’s a new experience for all of us to be in Arizona. We have an online friend who has a band playing that weekend that we’re going to see called Rusted Satellites. I’m pretty excited, although a little nervous as well. I kind of hate meeting people from online. I always hope it will solidify the friendship and usually it does. As is my nature, I always worry it’ll end up badly but if anything it will be a great road trip through the Southwest! There’s a lot we’d like to see that unfortunately four days won’t allow us to. Texas itself is a huge state. I’m halfway convinced the maps are wrong and Texas itself actually spans the continent. It’ll be nine hours or so before we even get into New Mexico, and that’s starting off in Central Texas! Once we hit New Mexico we’ll be cruising by Roswell so i may get to consort with some aliens!
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear.”
— H.P. Lovecraft
After the cookout, we sat outside with his parents awhile before leaving. There were some crickets and giant June bugs flying around and I tried to pretend that I wasn’t completely freaked out by the erratic flight path of the June bugs but truth be told, I was. On the ride home I was so frustrated at myself for having such a stupid phobia. I suppose phobias are something you don’t have much control over, but I hate that it ruins good times for me. I remember pulling apart caterpillars and ants with my sister and some kids from down the street. Running through the forest, playing on logs and kneeling in the garden pulling weeds out of sheer boredom on a summer afternoon. The thought of any of those things now is followed up by a small voice in the back of my brain. “What if there are bugs there? What if they bite me? What if they get in my hair or crawl on me?” When did it start? Will I get over it?
I’ve managed to work through most of my fears, the insect phobia is the only irrational fear I have left. Have you ever conquered a fear? Was this conscious or did it fade over time?
