It’s been a little over a week since I last posted and I’ve been feeling like I need to get some new content up here. I have a couple posts partially written as follow-ups to my first one on depression which you can read here, but they’re taking longer to put together than expected. Who would have ever thought finding the words to express your innermost thoughts and feelings on a sensitive topic close to ones own heart would be difficult? Dammit brain, work with me!

So, In lieu of those posts and their accompanying stories, I thought I’d share a couple videos I’ve watched recently along with some of my thoughts on them. Think of this as a focused YouTube comments section without all the hate and internet trolls.

First up we have a video from John Green of the Vlogbrothers YouTube Channel (and others) and bestselling author of The Fault in our Stars.

While I haven’t broken a rib myself so don’t know that pain, I know the feeling of looking back at a certain time in my life that’s longer than I care to admit (and that was how long ago?!?!) knowing just how shitty I treated my body. I treated it like it owed me money. It’s like I actually thought a diet of fast food and beer wasn’t going to have consequences!

I’m sure most will have already seen this next one, but having just finally seen Captain America: Civil War I thought this was funny as shit.

As a side note  – Thanks Chris Hemsworth for setting the bar so ridiculously fucking high for us mere mortals! Seriously, he looks like this, is by all accounts a super nice guy, AND he’s funny as well? He couldn’t even leave humor alone could he! Yeah, fuck that guy!

In all seriousness, if you haven’t seen this check it out. It’s hilarious and props to them for making it.

Last but certainly not least is this video from James Cordon via the British GQ YouTube channel where he explains how the U.S. Presidential elections work. Being Canadian, and I like to think of myself as a fairly well informed one, I had NO idea about a lot of this stuff.

And we think WE need election reform. Talk about a confusing, convoluted, and overly complicated way to elect someone. I have to wonder how anyone even came up with a system like this and then got others to go along with it like it was a good idea. Might have to dig a little more into that for a future post maybe?

That’s all for now, enjoy!

I have to admit, I wasn’t planning on staying out to watch the concert but heading home to watch from the relative comfort of my sofa, but as they often do once beer and friends are introduced, plans for a quiet night in changed. Earlier in the day a friend dragged me out (thanks Lisa!) to go for drinks which landed us on a patio enjoying the early afternoon weather. This turned into watching the men’s soccer final (can we please have a final not be decided by penalties for a change? seriously), which turned into watching the entirety of the concert from the bar of a packed pub, and I’m so glad it did.

It wasn’t until I sat there listening as song after song came through the speakers that I realized just how much this group of 5 guys from Kingston, Ontario, has been an ever-present soundtrack that mark so many moments in not just my own, but likely the collective Canadian consciousness. You see, I’ve only owned two Tragically Hip albums in my lifetime (Up To Here, which I had on cassette, and Day for Night on CD), yet I knew almost every word to every one of the 32 songs played last night, and many of them have memories attached from my earliest days of high-school to college and beyond, The Hip really was always there.

For over 2.5 hours Gord Downie et al. said a heartfelt goodbye to their fans, and the emotion was palatable even from a bar stool in Oshawa over 200 kilometers away from the show. From the opening chords of Fifty Mission Cap to the closing of Ahead by a Century, they played their hearts out with a performance that will likely be remembered for years to come by anyone who watched it. It was, in the words of our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who was in attendance at the show donning a Tragically Hip t-shirt, “bittersweet”, and I don’t think anyone who watched would disagree with that as when all was said and done and they left the stage for the last time, I don’t think there was a completely dry eye in the house. I hope CBC releases the concert down the road for future viewing since I feel like we watched a live piece of Canadian history take place last night.

To Gord and the rest of the band, thank you. You’ll be missed.

If you’d like an exceptional take on the band and their final shows (which personally I couldn’t get through without tearing up), I highly recommend checking out this piece in The New Yorker by Stephen Marche.

The next, apparently your job is the worst ever (and you’re shit at it) and even the thought of doing it makes you tired, anxious, and angry. You feel worthless. You have trouble concentrating. You don’t care to do much of anything or see anyone (why would they even want to see you anyways?) if you can help it. Heck, you can barely push yourself to face the day as the alarm clock sounds, forcing you awake with the most evil sounds you’ve ever heard regardless of how much sleep you got. Every day is worse than the one before it. You’re unmotivated and even things you know you enjoy doing provide little in the way of joy or satisfaction.

The latter is how I’ve been feeling lately, and it sucks balls. I didn’t even realize this is what it was at first. The depression for whatever reason manifested itself as feeling like I was coming down with a cold, just on the verge of getting sick but never actually getting sick, I was tired, had trouble concentrating, didn’t want to do much of anything, etc… Then about two weeks later (while I was on vacation; fuck you brain) it landed on me like a ton of bricks. A massive, crushing weight sitting square on my shoulders sapping all my energy to keep it from crushing me. This meant the latter half of my vacation was spent doing little to nothing at all, and I had plans damn it!  To top it all off I still have the physical ailments that came along with how I was feeling before I really identified what this was.

Why am I posting this here? Well for two reasons.

The first and most direct is that I want to write more, simple as that. I recently wrote a letter to someone and felt so much better for having taken the time to write some of my thoughts down and share them. Call it self-therapy if you will, but I feel better when I’m creating something, and I love to write. If I go too long without having made something, well, see paragraph 2 above for an idea of what happens. The second and more fundamental reason is that I really want to start living a more authentic, open, and honest life, and apparently for me that means sharing some of my deepest and darkest thoughts on the internet to anyone who will listen. Whether it works has yet to be seen.

Long story short, life happened, and about two days after I published that first post I had a bit of a bombshell dropped on me, which sent me for a spin. Since that day I’ve had to divert my attention elsewhere, neglecting my shiny new blog.

That’s not to say that I haven’t been writing. I have two posts in rough form waiting for completion which I’ve been slowly working on. The concentration required to finish the pieces has been lacking, but they are coming along and I hope to be able to share them soon. One is a post on friendship, the other, well I’m not really sure what to call it yet other than it’s a piece of writing that isn’t a ‘post’, and if it turns out half as good as I hope I’ll be quite pleased.

Stay tuned, there is more to come!

So here I am with a new blog, freshly installed on the site which I’ve had for a number of years. Please excuse the mess.

I’ve blogged on an off over the years. I’ve had a personal blog where I wrote on some travel adventures (actually I think there was multiple, but can only find one) but that only lasted while I was away. I’ve also started various web sites with big plans, but the drive to continue with them died well before I could ever get them off the ground, some even before a single post was made. In every case I obsessed about the name of the site, as if having the perfect name would instantly make the site a success or a failure. I also had narrowly focused my sites on a single topic or genre, and as anyone who knows me well enough will attest, I just don’t stay focused on a single thing for any significant length of time.

So when I felt the urge to write again, I decided on no uncertain terms that it would be here, under my own name. No internet pseudonyms or clever names this time because as it turns out, I, Craig McConnell, do have something to say. I have thoughts, views and opinions which I’ve always openly and freely shared with my closest friends, but shied away from sharing beyond that core group for one reason or another. I could theorize on why, but would that really get us anywhere? I don’t think so.

What good is knowledge that goes unshared?

The fact is, I think a lot about a lot, and I love to learn. I constantly read and educate myself on technology, politics, games, music, movies, cars, the arts, etc… etc… you name it, and I have thoughts and opinions on all those things. Yet, I keep most of that information locked up; that is until an unsuspecting friend happens to ask about my newest obsession. It’s then I realize my desire to talk about all these things has been left mostly unfulfilled. Ahh the curse of the social introvert.

So that’s what I’m going to be using this site for, at least until I decide to use it for something else. I’ll be writing on anything and everything which happens to be my focus at the time. I’m sure some themes will develop over time and I will of course do my best to keep things organized, but expect an eclectic mix of subjects from game design to the U.S. Presidential election and everything in between. Some will be deeply personal, many not-so-much, but I give you my word I’ll try to always keep it interesting.

I have no idea where this is going to go, but I hope you’ll join me on the journey.