What fills you with fire? Do you know what you want to be? ARE you what you wanted to be growing up? I was recently asked by a sucessful woman what my dream was, my goal. My vision. So I started to answer and had to stop. I kinda knew. I knew what I enjoyed doing. Knew what I was good at. But my vision? Shit. So I thought. I've thought more about what I wanted to be when I grew in the past month than in the past twenty years. And I figured out what my problem was.

So, when I was growing up, everybody asked me, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" And at a very early age, I decided that I wanted to be a teacher. I liked school, I liked all my teachers (can you say "teacher's pet"?), it seemed like the perfect match. And so that became the prefab answer for all those school surveys and questionnaires. I was going to be a teacher.

My family was very supportive. Many of my birthday and Christmas presents had a theme (I totally have a professional pointer if anybody needs it for a little role playing ;D). I took all the right classes in high school to set me up to take anything in university. I did all the work and got excellent grades. Got into Mac right on schedule. Honoured in English and got a minor in Earth Sciences. Went to the seminars for the different teachers' colleges and found out that I'd have to get 200 hours of teaching time before they'd accept me. (Which has to be the most insane prerequisite ever. You get to corrupt young minds for 200 hours before they teach you how to do it properly?) So I got in touch with my favourite teacher from high school and he let me come and teach his remedial class. And I learned what a teacher does.

And then I didn't want to teach anymore. I don't mind a little verbal abuse. In fact, in some situations, I kinda like it a lot. But I refuse to be called a cunt by anybody under the age of 19. I just down right refuse. And teachers have no power. I wasn't even allowed to make them stand in the corner because it might make them "feel bad". Whatever. Teachers are heroes and deserve all kinds of respect. Go hug a teacher. Right now. Thank them for the excellent job they do.

But that's not really what I wanted to tell you. I just told you that so I could tell you this.

The point of everything I've written here today is that, up until recently, I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. I thought I wanted to write professionally. Make my living by the pen...or keyboard...whatever. But then I realized that I'm not really that creative. I don't have anything to say. So I started helping the writers I know fix the stuff they wanted to say. And as it turns out, I'm good at it.

I realize now that I was pushing myself on the whole teaching thing. I was never cut out to face a room full of people and tell them what's what. It's not that I can't do that, or that I have a fear of it. I just don't want to do it. And I want to do something that sets me on fire. Charges me up, makes me excited to get to work everyday. The job I have now is a job. I don't hate it. It's easy and gives me time to daydream and come up with interesting things to write about. But there's no fire. And if there's one thing I've come to crave out of every aspect of my life, it's fire!

Reading a piece that some talented, or not so talented, young author has written and finding ways to make it better is what I want to do. Finding a way to do it and make it pay is another matter. Everybody and their cleaning lady has an English degree, you can buy them off the internet. There are tests I can take to become accredited by the Editors' Association of Canada, but no courses to train for those tests. There is no degree or diploma I can get that will make me stand out. So for now, I have to build up a portfolio of the paid and volunteer work I do to show a prospective employer or until I have the experience to take the tests. So I will.

I finally found something that fills me with fire. I've found my dream. Now I've just got to chase it. Find your fire. Chase your dream.

My tongue is loving the taste of skin between my teeth. It's a dead masquerade so come and dance with me.

The scene on TV is of a family sitting around a dining room table eating dinner. The mother rings a little bell and a man shuffles out of the kitchen. He is carrying a bowl with beans and carrots in it. He is dead. He is a zombie. It’s the new reality TV series the government has come up with to help the public deal with the situation.

The "situation" is that the dead are up and walking around, but there's no place to house them. So the government came up with the idea of housing a zombie with each person for a week. They are using the show to let the population see that there's “nothing to be afraid of”. The idea for the show is that every week they show how a new family is dealing with their week of having a zombie living with them.

Andrew and I watch it every night in the hopes that when our zombie comes, I don't start screaming and can't stop. It isn't helping. I sit huddled on the couch holding onto Andrew's arm crying. I can't stop. At least I'm not screaming yet. The zombie on the TV is throwing a ball around with the son. They come in and the son gets a snack. The mother has been nervous all week, and now as she hands the zombie a glass of milk, she smiles a trembling smile that doesn't reach her eyes. She mutters nervously as she approaches the zombie with the glass held out in front of her, "there's nothing to be afraid of, is there? You just want a snack, right?" The zombies smiles and reaches out for the glass. He grabs her hand and pulls her in and rips her throat out with his teeth. Screams, shouts from the TV and static fills the screen. That happens at least once a month.

I’ve always been scared of zombies.  I used to have horrible nightmares about undead plagues sweeping the world and getting ripped apart by grasping, dirt stained hands.  These dreams would keep me up at night; I suffered from zombie-induced insomnia.  The blurb above is one of the most reoccurring nightmares that I had.  And then I found out that Simon Pegg was making Shaun of the Dead, and really wanted to see it.  The commercials made it look really funny.  So I read the spoilers, so I knew what to expect.  And then I started reading other things on zombies.

I figured if I learned enough about them, then they wouldn’t have such a hold on my subconscious.  And I was sort of right.  I no longer have nightmares about them, but I’m obsessed with zombies in general now.  I’m fascinated by the place they’ve started to hold in our cultural zeitgeist. 

And now I’m about to spew that at you.  Feel free to stop reading if you don’t care about what I think about the interesting position zombies hold in the social subconscious.

I just feel that the zombie holds such an interesting place in the horror genre.  They don’t really provide a morality tale like Frankenstein or Dracula, and they aren’t as smart as werewolves or ghosts, and witches just don't scare us anymore.  But zombies... they are completely unique.  They began as stumbling, groaning, muddy horrors from George Romero’s original Dead trilogy, became images of blood and gore stained, rabid, human-like characters, and are returning to the slow-moving, moaning hordes once more.  Why does this frighten us?  The zombie is apart from us, separated by death, the ultimate “other.”  They can stand in for whatever fear is most prevalent to the viewer: biological, political, socio-economical.  They travel in packs, their threat remaining in their large numbers.  One by one they’re easy to kill, but coming at you in dozens, hundreds, thousands?  They just destroy and kill.  And what about what the zombie does?  Makes you one of the faceless hordes, and rapes you of your individuality and humanity.   

Zombies have no discernable race, as they are covered with either blood and gore, or the dirt from their graves.  This allows the filmmakers to make a racial point without using a particular race.  We put our own fears onto the zombie.  It is such a non-person that it can literally stand in for any person, any fear. 

Zombies are portrayed as this homogenous group of flesh eating monsters.  As a society, we value our individuality and any invading force, but especially of zombies, whose only purpose seem to be to kill and destroy in the search for sustenance, threatens this sense of individuality in particular. 

The destruction of the self is probably the bit about zombies that I find the most interesting.  I haven’t read too many books or seen too many movies that focus on this fact, but when somebody from our side of the war is killed, they join the other side whether they want to or not.  Most of us strive to be different, to be individuals.  We dress differently and listen to different music and read different books.  We don’t want to be the same.  The zombie is part of a horde.  You don’t have free will anymore.  You move with the pack, feed with the pack. 

(I’ve always assumed that my zombie dreams had something to do with my fears of fading into the background, losing myself.  Or perhaps they were a warning that I was already fading, losing myself in someone else.  Since the breakup, the only z-dreams I’ve had involve me as a hero.  But back to my informal essay...)

So why destroy?  The use of zombies in horror films gives the director an opportunity for destruction and violence that they lack within less horrific genres.  The zombie traditionally travels in a large pack, and their strength is in their numbers rather than superhuman strength or abilities.  (In some movies/books, the zombie has superhuman strength on the theory that they don’t hold anything back; but I’m a purist, a zombie is necrotizing flesh, it’d fall apart if it tried to lift a car to get at you.  And I won't get started on the difference in z-types either.)  In order to get at the humans who have boarded themselves up the zombies must destroy a building to do it; they cannot kill quickly or by stealth.  Because of their extreme “otherness,” the viewers of zombie movies are free to ignore the logic behind the mayhem and destruction and just concentrate on the action/adventure/mystery involved in eventually ridding the world of the walking dead….or not.

But that’s just a bit about why I think zombies are so very interesting.  I’ll probably hit on this topic a few more times before I stop boring you with my blog.  I mean, I could probably write a whole essay on zombies and the loss of individuality, and I haven’t even touched on the topic of the zombis that DO for real times exist in Haiti...

I can't turn back now, so I'll keep looking up...

So, all the blogs that I read have some form of year end wrap up.  A saying of good byes to 2010.  So I decided to try to write a wrap up of my own.  I certainly had a lot to wrap up.  Last year was one of the best years of my life, so many wonderful things happened to me, and I grew so much.  I managed to move out on my own, make new friends and reconnect with old, fall in love, and try so many new things that I'd always been curious about.  I have never felt so loved in my life as I have over the past year.  I have never felt as mature and independent as I did over the past year.  And even when I was uncertain and it was hard (and there was a lot of uncertainty and hard parts) it was still the strongest I'd ever felt and some of the happiest times I've ever had.

But then I realized that that was last year.  I had started out last year with the desire to live entirely in the moment.  To move forward only.  I think I managed to accomplish that...with a few hiccups here and there, but I managed it.  So while the past year was wonderful, I can't live in the past.  So instead of a post to say good bye to 2010, I decided to write a post to say hello to 2011.

So here we go 2011, you've got a lot to live up to, 2010 treated me really well.  Even when it was hard, I felt good.  Even my lowest mood in 2010 still beat the highs I'd felt before.  I'm looking to you to give me opportunities to be strong, and be happy, and be whole.  Because unlike in the past, I'm ready to take those opportunities and run with them.  Where once I was shy and timid, now I am strong and bold.  Well...I will take the opportunity to TRY to be bold.  (I mean, let's face it, this is me we're talking about.) 

I'm finally learning what it means to have dreams, to want things because I want them and not because it's what the people around me want.  To make decisions that benefit Team Nikki.  I'm anticipating a lot more hard times to come from this decision, since I've never really cheered for Team Nikki before (their cheers were complicated and I hate gymnastics) but I'm looking forward to the chance to try, 2011.  Please don't let me down.  I've learned so much about myself over the past year that I don't know what you could bring me that 2010 didn't, but I'm excited to find out.

So bring on your tears and your joy.  I'm ready 2011, hit me with it.