2008

January
- can't remember. must find old planner and fill this in later

February
- kind of a bad, down month

March
- TCSA elections coverage was a fucking trip
- last issue of Arthur comes on the last day of March
- applied to a million jobs that i never heard back from
- marked lots of shitty first year papers

April
- marked lots of okay final exams
- made "Dykes & Their Hair" zine
- applied to work at the Toronto Women's Bookstore (TWB), got an interview, got the job

May
- moved to Toronto, into Little Portugal
- May 5: started working at the TWB
- Crystal, old friend from high school, visits me in TO!
- started writing for tasteto.com
- was enamored by Toronto. spent lots of time exploring the city
- went to my first pedestrian sunday in kensington, where i saw maracatu for the first time

June
- Pride (two highlights: Dyke March and the Funk Asia stage). wore the tiniest little dress all day Saturday. was shocked by the "real" world after the pride weekend. ew.
- drank a lot of cider
- spent one of the nicest days in the summer with Kam and Sarah, eating brunch, walking down Queen Street, reading and writing on Kam's porch...

July
- saw Basia Bulat for free at Harbourfront
- got really, really sick at work from eating rotten hummus
- finally bought a bike!
- random York Centre for Women and Trans People BBQ at Makeda Sivera's house...
- fun, relaxed BBQ at Kam's parents'. lots of sitting on the porch, drinking and talking
- extremely successful Ain't No Chick Flick film screening (believe that was The Aggressives...)

August
- worked many, many hours to prepare for the new school year. got really tired of looking at purple order cards
- delicious Italian food with favourite professor
- Sleazy Listening was fun
- summer loft party at Dahn's in Peterborough
- TaiwanFest at Harbourfront, where, oddly enough, I got to see a Taiwanese aboriginal percussion group perform whom I've wanted to see for the past 10 years
- TWB 35th Anniversary party. Success! Someone bought the shirt I reconstructed for $45 for the silent auction!
- got to see Michelle Tea read at Writing Outside the Margins
- hung out with John Cameron Mitchell (wtf???) and Sook-Yin Lee at a sushi restaurant. Props to Christopher Phillips for setting that up.
- went up to Peterborough to help Ariel and James with Issue Zero

September
- worked so many hours
- Peterborough Pride
- got trashed at Kate Taylor's housewarming party
- Masia One's album release party at Revival
- LAL at The Boat
- Ladyfest (including Asian Freedom Schoolers, Rae Spoon)
- Take Back the Night
- saw Naomi Klein. we brought over 400 copies of The Shock Doctrine. Only sold 35 copies because we were set up in a shitty area and had to clear out of the space at 9:30.
- started seeing a naturopath

October
- wonderful new roomie, Anita, moves in with me
- started attending Freedom School workshops. good decision, Teresa
- Jessy, Mason and Kate Killoran birthday party. so much smoke in the attic. so much drama. so much yelling.
- organized my first academic event for the bookstore. success!
- 2nd Annual Coming Out Party at Kira's. I was a kickass DJ. so much dancing.
- TWB field trip to Canada's Wonderland!
- the fucking election was a huge disappointment
- let go from my tasteto gig
- back to the Motherland (Oct. 17 to Nov. 9) ! came out. gardened with Baba a lot. went to Hong Kong for a few days. hung out with Aidan and Diana. reconnected with Fancy, an old family friend. followed the US elections. an emotional rollercoaster ride with my parents.

November
- Peter fucking MacLean visits me in Toronto! so much nostalgia. so much ranting about high school
- attended a Writing for Comics 101 workshop with Mariko Tamaki
- County Boys at The Pig's Ear. What the fuck was I doing there???
- Meg visits for two nights. Sneaky Dee's with Bryn. Aunties & Uncles. shopping down Ossington. Nazareth's. I miss you, Meggie.
- drinks at the Gladstone with Trevor, Ale, Scott and Naja
- Morgan's housewarming/Julia's goodbye party
- made the biggest purchase of my life - my macbook. hands were so sweaty when I was paying for it
- started therapist/counsellor shopping aka. counselling consultation appointments
- super nice dinner with Julia, Morgan, Carmen and Carmelle at Julia's
- had one of the worst weeks of my life...
- Granny Boots with Rae Spoon! Hump Day Bump! Felt like allllllllll of the homos were there that night

December
- partied and went out a lot this month
- helped Corrie with frontlist buying from Random House. I want to be able to do a full sales rep appointment myself soon
- started to make a lot more art (drawing, writing, making prints)
- amazing No One is Illegal LAL show at Wrongbar
- started to hang out with Alejandra a lot
- saw Tafelmusik for free
- worked the book table for the In Honour of Barbara Godard symposium. haha...what a weird night. i love seeing academics in their natural drunken state
- scandalous Granny Boots/Hump Day Bump night for my friends
- Maria and I broke up...
- Colour Me Dragg was fucking fabulous
- City of Craft was cute and fun
- met a lot of people from Maracatu
- launch of T & B Toronto Firsts
- was and still am on a Pedro Almodovar kick (watched Todo Sobre Mi Madre, La Mala Educacion and Volver in the span of a week and a half)
- awesome Christmas Eve party at Ale's mama's place. delicious food. fun people. raphi plays MIA's paper planes on the accordian. met more fun people
- Ruth comes for a couple of days. good times with my little sister, as always
- Christmas Day dinner at Kam's parents' with Muna and Ruth. delicious food and chocolate. met Aman, the big bro!
- homemade croissants at Hanae's with Maracatu people. fun! lounged around on Hanae's bed and ate chocolate-filled croissants
- bloody brilliant Maracatu show at Lula Lounge. I danced so hard.
- New Year's Eve party at 336 Delaware. danced a lot, as usual

The last three months of 2008 were incredibly intense, for good and for bad. Lots of emotions and change. Overall, 2008 was a good year for me. There were some really fucking shitty times throughout it, but in general, I can say that it was a good one. It's been a good year because of so many changes I've had to face. I don't do changes very well, but it seemed like I did a pretty good job this year. I don't know how I feel about 2009. A little scared, perhaps. I'm not sure why exactly because, really, it's just another day upon another day upon another day. A new four-numbered number isn't going to make a difference in the quality of my days.

These are the things I want in my life in the new year:
- to make more art
- to get serious and involved in magazine work
- to join the Monday nights Maracatu workshops
- to exercise regularly. fuuuuuuck.
- to get out of the city more often. Toronto Island? Orillia or Barrie for cross-country skiing? Peterborough? Montreal? Quebec City? Cuba? Mexico?

I spent the first day of 2009 doing absolutely nothing. woke up at 11am. used the internet. watched tv shows on the internet. two or three seperate naps. ate junk food. went to bed at 10:30pm. way to go, teresa!

Over and out.

T-O-R-O-N-T-O

love:
- the different neighbourhoods
- Chinatown, baby (supermarkets, fruit stores with hawkers, being able to hear Cantonese and Mandarin, the atmosphere)
- the Dundas/Spadina old women who sell their homegrown produce on the streets, on top of milk crates
- Kensington
- small independently-owned grocery stores
- Asian Freedom School
- so many creative people from different backgrounds and experiences. so inspiring.
- cheap phone cards from Chinese women who sell from holes in the wall
- there is something to do everyday, if you so wish to do them
- $2.25 to get the airport
- ummm...food, obviously.
- streetcars, but mainly in the summer. it's nice to go down a street slowly in a tin box, absorbing the surroundings
- the parks. ahhhh i miss summer!
- the parkettes. same deal.

hate:
- it's fucking expensive to live in this city
- so many Torontonians don't dance! wtf, man.
- the subway. 
- streetcars. especially in the winter. being packed inside a stuffy metal box with other cranky people is not my idea of a good time
- winter in this city can sometimes be cold in every sense possible
- the queer world is still small as ever. or at least it seems so...
- this place makes me want to run away sometimes
- there are so many cyclists in this city, yet drivers are still fucking douches and don't watch out for them

Oh, Toronto. I love you, but I want to leave you for a little while. Just a week and a half. That's all. I am going to leave you for Mexico or Cuba. Just a week and a half.

Go me!

I'm on a roll:

Saturday, Nov. 29 - Lot 16 with Kate, Jen McHugh and Jackie
Sunday, Nov. 30 - Watched Rice Rhapsody
Monday, Dec. 1 - Bubble tea and foosball (sp?) with Freedom School people
Tuesday, Dec. 2 - Nothing
Wednesday, Dec. 3 - Drinks with Morgan and later, Hump Day Bump. Mason sleeps over!
Thursday, Dec. 4 - Pre-drinks at my place with Bryn. Sweaty Betty's with Bryn and Morgan. LAL show at Wrongbar with Morgan and a million other people. Alejandra sleeps over!
Friday, Dec. 5 - Tafelmusik concert with Alejandra, Victor, Francesca, Eliza and Roxanne. The Green Room. Henhouse. Sleep over at Francesca's and Victors.
Saturday, Dec. 6 - Rest
Sunday, Dec. 7 - Leah's surprise birthday party

Keep me company

Kate came to the bookstore yesterday to pick me up for lunch. She was hungover and looking really shitty, which touched me because despite how shitty she felt, she was a trooper and came to keep me company. 

She came and picked me up on her scooter. We were ridiculous and scooted from Harbord/Spadina to Bloor/Spadina, which is really just a five-minute walk (or a two-minute scooter ride). I wanted to be frivolous and to treat myself, so I made Kate scoot us over. Self-love, right?

We talked relationship problems (hey, what’s new?!), Xanax and the economic crisis over food that neither of us actually wanted to eat. Kate was too hung over to look at food. I just haven’t had an appetite for the past four days.

It was so nice to have an hour where I wasn’t physically alone with my own thoughts. Because that’s what I did all day at front desk – receive books, unfold cardboard boxes and listen to music that made me feel sick to my stomach.

Not wanting to go home to an empty house and to be stuck with my fucked up self, I called Kate to see what she was up to. Thank the lord she hasn’t gotten sick of me and invited me to go to the Drake for a poetry slam.

Finally got home at 7:45 to drop off my shit. Turns out Kate was wrong and there wasn’t actually a poetry slam at the Drake. I walked down to Queen anyway and thought I would just call Kate and Jen when I got to the area. When I got there, I gave Kate a ring to no avail. Twice. Text: once. No response. I found a bench outside the Drake and just sat down. It was a good thing the weather was nice. I was way too physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted to try to look for those two. I just decided to sit on the bench and watch people go by until they called me. I was too tired to even be annoyed. Turns out Kate and Jen were just six storefronts down from the Drake, at Lot 16.

The moment I arrived, Kate told me to order a beer. I was hesitant at first because I only had three triangle pieces of pita with hummus for “dinner” and the whole getting-drunk-on-one-beer thing has been happening much too frequently lately, with my lack of an appetite and all. After 10 minutes, I said “Fuck it” and ordered myself a pint of Amsterdam Blonde. Kate congratulated me. I must be the only person in the “queer communities” I hang out in who gets congratulated for ordering a drink.

Jackie joined us not too long after. Conversations revolved around dogs (all three of them have dogs…or babies…there no difference to this dogless/babyless lezzie), sex, counseling, food and funny family stories. Jackie was classy and awesome. She bought a bag of pistachio nuts from the convenience store and ate it in the bar, covering the table with severed nut shells.

I wish I had the energy to join them at The Beaver, but really, who I was kidding. I was tired and having done inventory of how many hours of sleep I have been getting these days, it was probably a good idea to go home.

And I did.

And I slept.

Six hours.

RECORD!

Because three and a half to four and a half hours just isn’t enough.

Project Me

I am in the process of trying to save myself...from my current self. This is Project Me. Or Project Self-Love. Which ever.

My mental health is not in a state that I am wanting for myself. In fact, my mental health is a huge wreck right now. I repress all emotions to the point where I don't feel anything except anger, numbness and homesickness. I don't talk about my feelings. I don't talk in general. I think I am emotionally abusive towards my girlfriend. I am generally never happy. I am not motivated to do things I know I enjoy. I feel disconnected from people I respect and like. I am incredibly judgemental and bitter towards people around me. I want other people to be unhappy too. I focus on the "bad" side of people and not the "good." I don't take care of my emotions. I've been burying them so deep inside of me for my entire life that they are erupting now in a way that I don't know how to deal with.

Basically, I have turned into a really fucking scary monster that I no longer recognize myself. And it fucking scares me and completely freezes me up from being able to do anything productive.

And I've decided I need to do something about it.

These are some realistic steps I'm going to implement in my life:
1. making those counseling appointments I've been meaning to do since forever ago
2. re-read all about love by bell hooks
3. writing at least once a day
4. talking to Corrie about the way she takes active steps in becoming the person she wants to be
5. talking to Rose about race and culture and how that totally fucks you up because you feel totally alone in a sea of people who don't understand you
6. actively talking myself through times when I feel angry and hateful
7. going out with friends at least twice a week
8. finish reading that article on anxiety
9. starting a "your turn" notebook with Maria
10. being more brave and meeting new people
11. doing at least one thing that I like once a day

I am starting to do something for myself.
MYSELF.

And it's the biggest, most important, scariest thing I have ever had to do.