I take a new route to NAIT every day. Now, I drive right by the Via Rail train station. The other day as I drove past, the train had pulled in and was picking up passengers. There it was, a silver traveller, ready to head for parts unknown. I honked my horn as I drove past, and all the people getting on board stopped to wave. Never had the temptation to blow off school for the day, buy a ticket, and hop on board been any stronger.

I’m sure I’ve ranted about this temptation before. In Japan, my place of business was actually in the Kumagaya train station. So, every day as I talked to work, I would pass the turnstiles down to the tracks. I’d pass busy commuters heading into Tokyo for a hard day’s work. I’d go buy schoolchildren going to their school in the next town over. I once asked one of my coworkers if he ever felt tempted to not go to work; just buy a ticket and head to parts unknown. “Every damn day,” he told me.

Apparently, a former teacher at my place of business actually did that one day. After a particularly rough performance evaluation, he went to lunch, hopped on the train, and was never seen again. This teacher even had my apartment, so a lot of the stuff left behind by old teachers was apparently his. But I digress.

What is this temptation we have? Most of us, no matter how much we deny it, have it. No matter how much we love our jobs and look forward to going each day, we always have that feeling. “What if I just kept on driving? How about I have an adventure today?” Why do we feel this? Why do we desire to break from the every day and just head over the horizon?

I have no answers for these questions. We delude ourselves. We tell ourselves of the value of consistency, that we have responsibilities, that, above all things, the schedule must be adhered to. We tell ourselves of the nobility of the routine. But we all want to break from the routine. We all want to skip days. We all want to have an adventure.

But we deny ourselves. One of our most base desires, and we deny ourselves.

And so, I keep walking to work. I keep driving to school. But I know that one day, the temptation will be overwhelming, and before I know it, I’ll be buying my ticket and hopping on that train for parts unknown.

It’s getting to be a busy time of the year. Between the Christmas shopping, end of semester projects, and the usual year-end depression, we could all use a break. But sometimes, the weekend seems kind of far away, and it’s still a good month to Christmas. So, what are we supposed to do? This is when we have our “10 minute vacations.” This is where we have our own special place that we take off to for a few minutes when a real break won’t do.

Continue reading 10 Minute Vacation →

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Didn’t have any time to write anything original, so here’s the news article I spent the last 5 days compiling

Well, we’re entering the home stretch of the Provincial Election. I know, it’s been low on a lot of people’s radars, but still, you have a chance to get out there and make a difference! This is your one chance to get out there and tell the politicians in charge what you really think of them.

Continue reading Candidate Profiles →

Just finished doing my homework for writing class. We’re currently covering a subject that my instructor feels that the advertising industry as a whole hasn’t done enough study of: writing funny commercials. I think that it’s kind of funny that she’s trying to tackle this issue. Humour, as we all know, is such a purely subjective thing. Why should one even bother trying to figure out what makes us laugh?

Continue reading The Unanalyzable →

I had an interesting discussion with one of my instructors the other day. It was one of those difficult classes and, during the break, she pulled me aside. She said to me, “You know, Mark, I’m starting to get the impression that you’re, well, not anti-establishment, but anti-corporate. And seeing as to how every radio station is owned by a corporation, I’m starting to fear that you’re limiting yourself in your job prospects.” Naturally, I’m wondering how I’ve been projecting the anti-corporate image. I mean, I’m not like Mr. Anderson, who has the big bold list on the front page of his website: “These are the companies I boycott!” I’m of a much milder vein of anti-corporatism. I think she got the impression from the fact that, as we were filling out a course evaluation last semester, I said this about one of her classes:

“Really, though, you should look into dropping this one particular lesson. It’s fairly obvious that it’s just a recycled corporate workshop, and I really, really, really hate corporate workshops. I was subjected to far too many in my last job.”

Continue reading Corporate Interests →