Moving Out or Staying Home?

As I approach my 25th birthday, I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on my life thus far. I should have a lot to be thankful about. I’m a single dude with a great job, a college degree, a new car, and shitload of savings and investments. However, there’s one thing I’ve been thinking about over and over again. Am I ready to move out of my parents house?

I pay very little rent for room and board. I get food, laundry, wifi and the works. There’s a lot of perks of staying with my parents. Plus I get to go on 2 or 3 vacations a year, (Los Angeles and Toronto this year).

If I lived on my own, I could never dream of doing this. The freedom of living in my parent’s basement with all the amenities is truly a blessing, but also a bit of a curse.

There’s certainly some negatives about not living independently. For instance, living at home doesn’t do wonders for my love life, which is virtually non-existent at the moment.

Another thing is, I feel like I don’t have complete freedom yet. I still feel like a young adult and not an adult. This stigma certain messes with my mind.

If I keep living at home, I could have a swell life. I get to work close to my workplace, not spend huge amounts of money, take great vacations, enjoy myself and have a relatively sweet life.

If I move out on my own or with a roommate, then I get full freedom, but full financial freedom. Money would be tight, I would struggle a bit more, spend money on groceries, utilities, rent, and all the works.

All these pros and cons certainly rushes through my head as I approach my quarter century mark on this earth. Live with no responsibilities and live a swell life or struggle and be completely responsible for myself. The choice is certainly tough.

The Clarities of Awkwardness.

I recently watched a short film about how every moment, mundane or grandiose, in a person’s life appears to be dominated by the usage of their phone. Sharing and taking photos, texting other people, capturing even the ubiquities of life and masking it as splendid. There should be moments in life that should only be remembered and not recorded. Marriage proposals, getting a strike at a bowling alley, going for a jog up a hill, sharing conversations with your friends, etc., these are the moments that need to reflected on rather than shown through imagery (photos, videos). You can’t capture a marriage proposal unless it’s fully planned, you can’t film yourself getting a strike at the bowling alley, and you definitely can’t film yourself during a hike (keep it minimal, don’t take a million!). We’ve lost our identities and the magic joy through the tiny mundaneness of life being too connected to Social Media and technology. It has inspired me to write this essay. We, as a society, need to just be ourselves for who we are and embrace even the most mundane situations as special. A big part of humanity that is slowly slipping from our hands is these moments of socialization. A simple conversation.
Conversations can make us laugh, conversations can make us cry, they can make us cringe, make us gasp; even make us jump for joy. There can stupid conversations; there can be intellectual conversations, conversations that are all too awkward. But buried deep within those moments of awkwardness – the stupid joke, the long pauses, surprising reveals, the interruptions, the loudness, the silence, the breathing, and the judgment. Beneath all of these ‘awkward facets’ and more, we have the truth, whether good or bad, it’s real. So next time when you pull out your phone at a group table when one of these ‘awkward’ snippets arise, ask yourself, “Why are you doing it” Embrace the silence and the fears of being “there”, and remember you can check your phones later cause that phone will still be in your lap. Just the same as it was 10 minutes ago, 20 minutes ago, an hour ago. Live your life and tell the tales after. Don’t tell the tale as you’re living your life, these are roadblocks. Telling stories goes way farther than just showing a picture or a video. You’ll use your imagination more

Vancouver – The Callous and Entitled (Insider’s Opinion)

Ahh Vancouver, BC.

Home of the Canucks and some of the richest people ever to be born.

As a person that’s lived in three different cities throughout my life, Vancouver is a city like no other. Beautiful in nature, waterfront as you can get, mountainous as you can imagine. But it comes at a price, a million dollar price.

Vancouver is home to one of the most expensive housing markets in the world. Rising up in the ranks of Paris, Tokyo and Manhattan, Vancouver can hold its own for the luxurious. However, it comes at a costly price, both monetary and culturally.

The affluent class has dominated the way people interact in Vancouver. As housing prices keep rising, jobs become scarce and incomes are slow to grow, but and the cost of living keeps going up. For many (lower-upper middle class), it’s a struggle day-to-day.

However, I’m alluding to a deeper concern. The way people interact day-to-day in Vancouver. The affluent class has placed their cultural stamp on the rest of Vancouver, allowing for that culture to seep into the middle-class. People in Vancouver society treat each other different. They have become more callous, more conservative, and don’t interact with strangers. People, in a way, have become distant. It’s no wonder Vancouver’s nickname is “No Fun City”. Everything closes around 9pm on most nights, the alcohol laws are asinine, all on top of the fact that it’s hard to make friends and have romances in this city due to such callous interactions.

The best way to describe this feeling is the sense of entitlement. For example, today my friend and I were sitting in a busy coffee shop and numerous people walked by our table. They scoffed, glared and tsk-ed. Anything to insinuate for us to give up our seats faster. Then my friend said the most profound statement of all,”People in Vancouver are entitled, they want ownership to things they have no real ownership to, like this table in a coffee shop. Most people in Vancouver don’t own anything so they find other ways of showing ownership and entitlement.” Bingo.

This is why we treat the way we do. Tourists will fail to understand this because the locals will talk to tourists to help them out temporarily. Locals find it hard to talk to other locals, they almost want something to their benefit if they are talking to each other. And that definitely is the wrong way to go.

Perhaps I’m being rather harsh, but if anybody else has an opinion. The stage is yours.