Time spent in contemplation is seen as odd, anti-productive and dangerous.

Joe was screaming and everyone in the boardroom was trying to look elsewhere. But it was hard to pretend you were checking Facebook when someone was turning purple and thumping the table with both of his hands.

I was the focus of this tirade. His spittle was striking the table in front of me. I watched as it formed into tiny pools and flowed towards the sunken power strip.

We didn’t have the paper ready. I wanted more time and contemplation from the team. This required us to get more context on the problem the client was facing. And I had made the mistake of asking my new boss for said context.

My boss couldn’t handle my questions.

He took them as an attack.

In a world gone berserk, anyone who wants to stop and contemplate is suddenly the crazy one.

We have to be busy, so busy we can’t even take the time to even explain why we are so busy.

Double booked is now for amateurs.

Status in companies is built by being triple and even quadruple booked. If one of those can be in a different city, you get triple points and a pass to scream at your assistant.

My mistake. Screaming at subordinates is always allowed.

The new white collar worker takes pride in being so stressed out that they are on medication and even seeing a counselor for their “problem”. Or rather, they would be if they didn’t keep cancelling because of their assistant quadruple-booking them as instructed.

So instead, they just fly off the handle and then write it up as battle wounds or some bizarre new form of PTSD they’ve invented. There was a rumour that my last boss was autistic. I’m pretty sure he started that rumour.

All of this is pretty much why I left the business world.

I was burnt out. Toasted. Done.

And worse, I had developed a negative association with contemplation.

The idea of taking a walk and doing nothing else caused me to break out into a sweat. I couldn’t even eat a meal without stopping to check my phone at least a dozen times.

It would take me years before I could begin to enjoy time spent in deep thought. Or the idea of going somewhere without my phone. Okay, I’m still struggling with that last one, but I’m working on it!

There are days where I don’t feel like I have time to take a morning walk and so I put it off. I focus on getting my work done. After all, that’s the responsible thing to do, right?

These are always the worst of days.

And then there are the days where I remember to get up thirty minutes early. Where I don’t take my phone with me and I spend an hour walking with my dog, just being present with my thoughts and emotions.

These are always the best of days.

My first attempt at an underwater levitation. Clearly, we had some issues to work through.

“Can someone please tell me what lenses we have for the Lekos?!”

A trickle of sweat is making its way down my lower back. I want to scratch at it, but everyone in the room is looking at me. They seem confused. Why won’t I answer such a simple question from the Hollywood-credited Director of Photography?

I’m panicking because I don’t know a Leko from a hole in the wall.

Two weeks prior, I had been the superstar gaffer of the no-budget, unpaid Canadian short that never saw the light of day. I was able to create almost acceptable lighting setups from one-hundred-year-old lighting gear. Then the producer fell into a crazy opportunity and her professional gaffer bailed on her.

So now I was on a paid gig with a big name DP, a full crew, two lighting trucks, and a giant studio space currently undergoing a full set build. And I was losing my shit fast. The two days of hell would end with one of my crew in tears, two 10k bulbs blown through incompetence, the DP ignoring me and my name on an industry blacklist. I was out of my depth and sinking fast.

---

“If I looked like that, I would never leave the house.”

My client gasped, grabbed her face and uttered her horror aloud for everyone in the room.

I’d been taking portraits for a couple of years and had worked with a growing list of almost-household-names: artists, painters, dancers and actors. Each knew their likeness and some had even expressed concern about a certain feature or angle. But all had been comfortable with their portrait.

This was definitely a departure from my experiences to date. I think she may have started crying.

I had basically destroyed this woman’s self-esteem with my “skill” and “craftsmanship.” In front of my peers, no less.

I attempted to offer some Photoshop cleanup or a reshoot, but it was clearly over. There was no passing Go and no receiving $200. We were done. For all I know, this woman lived the rest of her days locked in her home with all the windows shuttered.

---

Avoiding failure is a significant motivator in my life. It gets me up early to do yet another check of my gear. It makes sure I’ve got a backup for my backups and it helps me assess new opportunities to ensure I don’t take on something that is outside of my capabilities.

But it also pulls me away from anything risky. It stunts my growth by declining opportunities to grow as an artist.

Without fail, every piece of meaningful work I’ve created involved pushing the envelope and seriously risking failure.

So I’m torn. I want to improve my craft, but not at the risk of reliving those painful moments of abject failure.

I thought I had found the perfect solution.

I would minimize the risks I took in business and relegate risky endeavors to personal projects. I could build my business safely, meet client expectations and risk failure on my own time. It made sense and was the logical solution.

But life isn’t logical.

Removing risk from my work killed the joy and freedom that first drew me to photography. My art and craft stagnated. My work grew tired and boring and I hated it.

I stopped picking up the camera in my free time. My personal projects ground to a halt. Even my work projects began to slow.

Clearly this approach wasn’t working.

I needed a way to embrace failure and take some of the sting out of them, after the fact.

What if I could reframe and take pride in my most horrific failures — to see these moments as waypoints on a pretty epic journey?

I’ve had a ridiculous number of careers to date. I’ve been a military man, a professional juggler, a strategist, a salesman, a coach, an agency owner, a photographer, an artist, a dog trainer, a 3D animator, a film gaffer (albeit briefly), and much more.

I’ve even managed to achieve some level of success in many of these.

And there’s no way I could have done ANY of these without risking public failure and humiliation.

This constant rethinking of who I am and what I do for a living requires that I push my skills and abilities to their limits and then some.

As I reflected on this, I began to see that those moments of failure helped to inform who I have become. In some cases, it made me realize I was not on the right path. In others, I doubled down and worked that much harder.

In fact, how can I be so afraid of failure when I am even now considering changing careers yet again in my late 40s?

As always, it’s the stories we tell ourselves that prove the most challenging and damaging. Without even realizing it, I was using these failures to frame a story of endless failing, instead of seeing them as moments of growth on a pretty awesome journey.

I was focused on the man who fails so much instead of seeing the man who is capable and willing to reinvent himself, perhaps endlessly.

I’ll never get to the point where I want to fail. Failing sucks. But hopefully I can learn to be a little kinder to myself and to see the journey and not just the difficult moments along the way.

Thanks to Alexainie on Medium.

I totally bought into downsizing my life. I wanted to learn how to live within my means, get out of debt and get off the hamster wheel of the working stiff.

And my partner agreed. So we began to make a lot of changes. We moved into my studio and rented out our house. We cut up credit cards and stopped going out to eat. And it started to work. We were paying down debt, making our bill payments on time and even starting to plan our first month long vacation-like-thing.

And then my partner got laid off.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad we did what we did. Him getting laid off would have ROYALLY sucked if we hadn’t made all these changes.

But our life is anything but tidy, organized and full of joy.

If you are listening to the “experts” talk about how sexy and amazing their lives are after downsizing, I’m here to tell you that this is bullshit. Life is messy and it will take a ton of hard work, endless concessions and even new friends.

Sure, it has its advantages, but you can’t show up at the bar after work anymore. Nights out on the town happen at most once a month and are now at places where the food is cheap and salmonella rampant. And even if you do manage to get a friend to come over and visit you in your new 400 sq. ft. apartment, you won’t have anywhere for them to stand, let alone sit down.

And let’s talk about the heat.

Two days ago, a heat wave hit Southern Ontario with temperatures well over 34 degrees C (43 with humidity.) For those Fahrenheit fools out there, this means it is hot enough to melt cars left out in the sun.

Bring your cars inside, fools!

We’ve spent the past three days living out of our tiny pink bedroom. The $100 air conditioner in a losing battle to cool down the 100 sq. ft. room. Its death rattle drowning out anything we attempt to watch or listen to. Last night we sat in bed (with the dog) and ate pizza out of the delivery box.

I should point out that pizza was not in our budget. I blame heat stroke and those damn Domino’s coupons.

It was the coupon. Really. encyclopizzeria.com

 

This morning, I emerged from the room long enough to make coffee and take a cold shower. I noticed that my partner was valiantly attempting to use his iMac in the other room. I suppose you could say that we have four rooms: the bedroom, the kitchenette, the bathroomette and the sauna, otherwise known as the work/storage room with the giant greenhouse window.

My partner was perched, squatting and naked on his office chair, attempting to answer email while trying to not stick to the upholstery.

This left the dog and me to claim the bedroom, where I sat as I typed these words, sipping lukewarm coffee and praying for the heatwave to break so I could one day get back to editing photos in the sauna.

Or consider cooking again.

Please visit the project at:  medium.com/intercity-toronto

While I am an immigrant to Toronto, I am a white man and come with all the baggage and entitlement this endows. To write about poverty and discrimination was no easy decision and I fully acknowledge that some might question my right to do so.

That said, I’m done being silent. To be silent is to give support to those who continue to abuse their power and standing.

I struggled with what to name this project until I came across a quote by Shawn Micallef and John Lorinc. They were writing about a part of the city that used to be known of as The Ward. It was a place of desperate poverty and was right in the heart of what we now call the Eaton’s Centre, City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square.

“where is The Ward in 21st century Toronto? It is hidden in slab apartment towers, on the sides of ravines or in townhouse cul-de-sacs — the in-between spaces that lie well beyond City Hall’s locus of concern.

Now, as then, the city averts its eyes from inequality and the geographies of difference.”

This medium publication is for all the in-between spaces of Toronto — those communities lost to or ignored by politicians, developers and even city planners. I have started by speaking to artists in these neighborhoods, but I am totally open to other voices.

I have begun with a focus on three neighborhoods, but please note that the publication is not limited to these. It is simply where I started.
St. James Town
Regent Park
The Junction Triangle

An out of service pool in St. James Town

I was drawn to St. James Town because it seemed strange that the most densely populated community in Canada would also be entirely private property, with pretty much no public space or any of the services that would generally be found elsewhere in the city.

The dividing line of development in Regent Park

Regent Park is in the midst of tumultuous, and some argue, callous change. It will be the most ambitious redevelopment of a neighborhood in Toronto’s recent history. Almost overnight, this part of the city is being transformed into a shiny, new “utopia” with many of the residents having been migrated elsewhere, regardless of their wishes. I find it ironic that the Regent Park it replaces was once known as the “garden city” and was seen as a massive success in replacing the slums that existed on the site prior.

As you approach the Junction Triangle

Finally, I am drawn to the Junction Triangle because it remains one of the last vestiges for the struggling artist in our city. But no longer is this the case. Rents are skyrocketing and condos are going up at a crazy rate. We are losing the artists, the elderly and the working class people who made our city what it is.

I hope you will join me by visiting and following this publication on Medium.com or even by writing and submitting a piece on a part of the city that you see as in-between and lost to the majority.

If you have a piece about a community in Toronto that you believe is a fit for publication here, please send a link to the piece. You can email intercityproject@seanhoward.ca.

Annecy, France

Jasmin and Adrien take a dip in Talloires, France

Megève, France