I used to be a bullet.

5^th grade. Summer, and piles of sunburned grass littered the school field. What was left after the seasonal mowing was a fresh green turf. My new launchpad.

“Hey, James. I see in gym class, you’re really fast. How’d you like to race for the school?”

Done. A sucker for complements.

One problem: I had asthma.

No matter though, I was a spunky kid and I was set on beating as many other kids as possible. A nasty competitive streak that gets me in trouble 18 years later.

After tryouts, I became the anchor of the relay squad, the fastest on my team in the 100 metre sprint. My friends learned a lesson in humility. I thought my lesson learned was that I was gifted with speed. I didn’t realize I a bigger enemy was coming.

I remember we had to wear yellow pinnys. I hated it. It was just extra fabric hanging off my shirt and bunching up under my arms. It scuffed my confidence. I was a soldier off to battle with a 30 pound backpack and a 15 pound gun in my hand.

I was imaginative.

The main competition in town is held at the university’s stadium. It’s the real deal, obvious by a grandstand filled with cheering elementary school kids and everyone’s relative screaming like they’re watching sharks tearing their children apart.

An arena of scary shit. Another scuff.

There’s nothing so immediately frightening – so nerve-wracking that my eyes blur, chest tremors and feet turn to anvils – than standing behind a line of boys that burst at the crack of a gun towards a horizontal thread in the distance. Then, we were called forward. The A class.

I walked shaking my legs out because my knees were knocking. Looking at the other boys, sizing them up, was getting to be suicide so I looked at my blocks and pushed my feet in, bending into the ready position. My head was just noise. It’s all you hear. Noise.

CRACK.

The push-off. I felt my whole body weight sag into my left leg. And I was down the track, head up, eyes forward, arms pumping, slashing my way past a line of other heads and arms.

My vision bounced with my strides, watering against the wind; snowglobes bumping down moguls.

Running on synthetic rubberized track frees you from feeling like you’re running. Some say it’s like running on clouds, but there’s still a sensation of being propelled forward.

Running on track feels spiritual. Your soul is thrown through the air and your body is just along for the ride. At no time do you think about your body. Just the line.

And the line was there. It was there. And then… it was wrapped around my chest and I was thumping to a halt.

I won.

Today, I was walking home from university class, worrying about what felt like a million projects and people relying on me. And my chest tremored. And my feet were anvils.

So, I ran. And I lived.

This is a doozy of a doodle. People like it. I’m proud of it, and that’s what counts.

This was for an assignment, a “video doodle”. Here’s how it went down:

1. Go out on the weekend and shoot random video on whatever you’ve got. I tried mine using my cellphone, just so I could say I did.

2. Put the video footage on the computer. This class is obviously as easy as making toast in the morning.

3. Take archive footage from the interweb and cut it with your video footage using iMovie. Screw that, I use Final Cut Pro because I’m comfy with it and so my vid would look cooler than anyone elses. I’m not competitive at all.

4. Finish what you have and turn it into a movie file to show for the class. Again, toast.

It’s funny. I shot random stuff and figured I was going to make an artsy film. Alas, I made a narrative. Yup, I’m definitely a Writing student.

Hope you like it.

“Breakdowns can create breakthroughs. Things fall apart so things can fall together.”

I’m merely the little boy of my past who is looking for his one and true path that leads to a successful life and career. That’s how I was raised.

“I’m gonna be a policeman,” I’d say. A couple months later, “I’m gonna be an astronaut” or “I’m gonna be Bryan Adams.”

My parents got a real charge out of that, and their glowing responses made me feel like I had won a million bucks in LEGO. So, where does that leave me now that I’m in my mid-twenties and in my last semester of university? Without a million bucks worth of LEGO, a frightening conscience shift, and only the hardest audience of all to please: myself.

I was super emo when I wrote my last post. I can see the pros and cons of writing it and putting it out into the world. Thanks to my friends for their caring and empathetic words. Not everyone who looks like they’ve got it together can pull it off for too long.

But, that being said, it shouldn’t be dwelt on. Yeah, I have feelings of being lost and needing to identify with some kind of career label. Add beating myself up for even thinking these things and for not being where some concept of success and life preparedness sparked in my Irrational Brain dictates I should be, and you’ve got a winning recipe for doom and depression.

Last night I went to bed early. Just slept it off. In the morning I made sure I got out of bed, showered, dressed and ate a healthy breakfast.

NEWSFLASH: If you are down, doing these things in the morning will BREAK YOUR CYCLE OF SUCK.

I was feeling better already, though whispers were still in my mind. But, the more I paid attention the more I realized that they were just the same “I should/I could” thoughts from the last couple days haunting my consciousness in the same weird, disconnected ways ghosts haunt the earth.

But not scary ghosts. Lost and confused ghosts. My emo thoughts had become the married couple in Beetlejuice.

That, and my girlfriend’s constant vigilance – we’re talking strict EAT REALITY with a side of shotgun scare techniques – (to get me out of what psychiatrists call “disaster path thinking” with her full clips loaded with Irrational Idiot-piercing rounds) pushed me into the epiphany I hadn’t considered, but indeed what was needed:

(This thought literally hit me as I was returning a stupid, spindly spoon and getting my favourite one)… THE TIME I SPEND BITCHING ABOUT NOT KNOWING WHAT I WANT OR WHO I WANT TO BE IS LESS TIME SPENT WRITING TO CREATE IT.

I was raised with the idea that you are your career choice. It’s your destiny. Your calling. Well, guess what? Fuck that. I’m going to TEAR DOWN 2010 by doing the artistic projects that I enjoy. I’ll let my work do the talking and still remind myself that I, James Roxby, am not my art. I’m not what I do.

If I’m judged, it will be on how I was to other people. I’ll work on that whole BEING KIND TO YOURSELF thing. I’m stuck with me. I’m happy being me, but I also get frustrated with me and want to kick me in the brain with that boot-knife that bitch villain wore in Thunderball. I just need to apply the same defensive karate chop that 007 did.

Here’s my thing with identity crises; when you have one, the only way to find yourself is by not looking at all. Get away from your mind – listen to music, go for a walk, meditate, or paint your bedroom again – and all of the questions and judgments you have of yourself will melt away revealing the You cowering underneath. Hold that close.

If, this year, you need to take your life back, find yourself, or build yourself back up, you have a teammate and a friend in YOU…

…and me.

as they say, the grass is greener...

(NOTE: What follows is stream-of-concious, AKA: messy, but it’s my best to shake off Holiday Brain and make sense of the year to come, dammit.)

Returning from the holiday break is like returning to math class after recess. It’s jarring.

And lame.

But, life must go on, as they say so forcibly. Now, we go about the day waiting for the goodtimes. In school, this is like waiting for the class clown to say jump out the window (it happened), or to get a note from the curly-haired cutie in the back that she loves you.

It’s funny how love notes have become love texts (or love Blackberry Messenger messages. Ugh. LBMM’s?) thanks to my curly cutie, so life can’t be half bad. After all, 2009 was the year I got EFFING CANCER.

Missed that?

Yeah, only 2000 other guys in Canada can say they got testicular cancer last year, too. And beat it. No big deal.

Correction: BIG FUCKING DEAL.

This made 2009 for me the YEAR OF THE TESTICLE JOKES. So, to all my friends and family: Thank You. Truly. Your testicle/nut/ball/sack/scrotum jokes have been pretty hilarious and I really had no idea there were so many opportunities to make them. So many. Lots and lots.

I do not miss my lumpy, cancerous nut. In 2009, I learned that it’s okay to maintain an aerodynamically wind-resistant crotch.

Last year, I also had the most memorably fun summer thanks to Julia, our lust for adventure, and our default CHILDHOOD setting.

Oh, and there was that election that I forced myself into at the threat of the worst guilt complex ever. And I won, and now I’m editor-in-chief of a publication (a title that sounds so distinguished I feel I’m missing parties in New York.)

My 2009, like yours, was full of ups and downs. Sometimes I wonder, was the time between wasted? And, if I had used all of my time to really knuckle down and write, really make a push for my career, would I be happier and more prepared for graduation?

Probably. But, I can’t fret.

In all honesty, my last year got me here and “here” is a very happy place for me. I may stress about how exactly I’m going to move all my stuff to Toronto and how and where I’m going to find work THAT ISN’T RETAIL, but things seem to be moving in the right direction.

2010 for me is going to be a year that I look at my time and money and spend (or save) both the right way. I’m still struggling with how to sell myself, being that I’m so multi-faceted with writing, am not sure exactly what career I want and haven’t had any real paid work.

Ah! I just stressed myself out.

So, 2010 is my launch year. I’m looking for a leg up; or more specifically, I’m looking for the leg that will do so. I feel like I need help when it comes to this career stuff this year, but I know that it will just be left up to me. And that’s okay. I’m aerodynamic.

Whatever you do this year, whatever you’ve decided on your New Year’s resolution to be, please spend time doing something creative that you enjoy. Anything. We have to push each other. We live in time-wasting, bully cities and we must stick together, inspiring each other, or we’ll be trampled and forgotten.

And worse, we’ll make it to New Year’s 2010 and have regrets.