My dear friend Ronni has been writing “30 Days of Me” and is just about reaching the end now.  I’ve been having trouble keeping up with blogging, or writing in general (a lot of it went into notebooks in the first half of 2010), and I think it would be a great idea to take this up as a writing exercise.  And what else do I do but write about myself anyways? =P

Day 01 Introduce yourself

Okay… Hi, I’m Jess, and I am a time and a place.  I started at a new school about a month and a half ago, so there were plenty of introductions going around.  “I did my undergrad at McGill,” “I’m from Toronto,” “I studied East Asian and Middle East studies,” et cetera. While those basic introductions are important, I think if I wanted you to know things about me that aren’t just facts from my transcripts, I would probably tell you that much of what I am and what I identify with comes from a place and a time.

Let’s start with place: Toronto is important to my existence, and the North York experience moreso.  I am a city girl, but not having grown up downtown, a 40 minutes’ commute is totally acceptable to me.  On the other hand, despite not having grown up downtown, I’ve become an incredibly snob about the concept of suburbia.  It’s not only the awkward (poor) planning that makes life inconvenient and unwalkable in a lot of North American suburban developments, I’m also slightly frightened of it too.  I’ve been away a lot, these past five years, but there’s nothing like coming home.  My family (this includes people I’m not actually related to) is there.

Four of the last five years were spent in Montreal, a city which now bears my soul (I think it’s still there).  As much as there’s nothing like coming home, there’s nothing like the train pulling into the city past the old Farine Five Roses building.  I’ve made some really good friends there, and it pains me sometimes that I can’t be there now.

I think growing up in Canada has probably had the most explicit impact on my self-identity.  They talk about American exceptionalism, but I really do feel sometimes that being Canadian makes me special and awesome in special ways.  The warm and fuzzy feelings of democracy and social inclusion we try to market as a nation (for example, at the Canadian pavilion) really are the sustaining myth(s) of my national identity.  On the other hand, I totally realise that this is true only to a limited extent.  Obviously, not everyone is or feels included, for a variety of societal and systemic reasons.  Living outside of Canada this past year was also sometimes crushing: I met my first douchey Canadian abroad, and people kept telling me I didn’t look Canadian.

On time: I think I can identify two ~eras that were particularly formative for me.  The mid-90s are extremely important to me culturally.  When I think about current events and popular culture, I believe I “woke up” to the world in 1994.  I have very strong memories of Paul Bernardo and Bosnia on the news and warm feelings toward Britpop, the end-years of the Golden Age of Hip Hop, and the Backstreet Boys.  One of my favourite movies is A Little Princess (1994).  The second formative period is the mid-late 2000s, i.e. uni.  I won’t say more because I’ve already blogged about it, and you were probably there.

The in-between period is important for all sorts of reasons (adolescence, ahem) but most tangible is my socialisation towards to the internet, and my identity as an internaute and a sraffie.  There is a Chinese word 网民 wangmin that translates as “netizen,” which brings me back to place.  I was trying to argue about the significance of this in the context of globalisation a couple weeks ago in Social Policy, but it was lost in the fact that a Facebook message to the people of Pakistan will not help flood relief.  Yea…

Okay, I think that’s all for now.

Les autres:

Day 02 Your first love
Day 03 Your parents
Day 04 Your music
Day 05 Your definition of love
Day 06 Your hobbies
Day 07 Your best friend
Day 08 A precious item
Day 09 Your beliefs
Day 10 An inspiration
Day 11 Your siblings
Day 12 What’s in your bag
Day 13 Your mode of transportation
Day 14 Where you live
Day 15 Something you love about yourself
Day 16 Your first kiss
Day 17 Your favorite memory
Day 18 Your favorite birthday
Day 19 Something you regret
Day 20 Your morning routine
Day 21 Your job and/or schooling
Day 22 Something that upsets you
Day 23 Something that makes you feel better
Day 24 Something that makes you cry
Day 25 Your sleeping habits
Day 26 Your fears
Day 27 Your favorite place
Day 28 Something that you miss
Day 29 Your favorite foods/drinks
Day 30 Your aspirations