Age of Consent

Yeah, it's a scandalous sounding title for a blog post but don't worry, I'm just rocking out to "Age of Consent" by New Order on my iPhone's Songza app. It's a bit nerdy more than anything else, I totally get that.

So, in light of this, I think I will more fully embrace my eclectic nerdiness and make this an About Me post, since I haven't done that really.

I'm Meg. I also just picked my derby-name: Ingrid Locke (as in "in gridlock"), and if I feel like being more public with my blog I might use my derby-name as an alias so that I can still keep a level of secretiveness with the people in my personal-life--just a heads-up. I'm 28, turning 29 in July, and I'm from "Super Natural" BC, Canada. Vancouver Island, to be a bit more exact, since I'll likely have to mention catching ferries and such at later points. I'm the oldest and only daughter in my family, and I'm one of those lucky products of two parents who got married really young and still managed to stay hopelessly in love with each other over the years. I was born on the Sunshine Coast and living in the middle of nowhere with just adults and family around for the first four years of my life (aside from my brother John, who was a baby at the time) meant that I had to be pretty imaginative and creative, and content playing by myself--understandably, I'm pretty introverted but I never get bored, ever. I can get restless but "bored" isn't part of my vocab.

We moved to the island when I was about 4 and a half because my paternal grandfather was passing away. My grandad's death was a huge deal to me, and he pops up in my writing and artwork all the time--always has, as a matter of fact. I was lucky enough to spend enough time with him and be old enough to get to know him and retain quite a lot of memories for being as young as I was, and he was one of the most amazing people I have ever met. He was a haemophiliac who contracted HIV and Hep C through blood-transfusions in the late 70s; the rest of our family, including my Granny, were all extremely lucky that we never contracted either disease. A few years ago our family was given copies of a documentary that had been produced in the late 80s about haemophiliacs living with HIV, of which my granny and grandad had both been interviewed in. It was absolutely mind-blowing to get to hear his voice again 20 years after his death! Did it bring me any closure? A little bit, yeah. To hear him say that he had no regrets, that the surgery to correct the hemorrhaging behind his knees gave him a better quality of life even though that was the probably when he received the tainted blood transfusion, did set me at ease. For a while it really stirred up a lot of emotions and vivid dreams, and it's a really good thing that I was in the midst of re-vamping my writing practise by taking a few poetry classes with a place to work with those emotions.

Okay, so, I was one of those really children who was totally happier in make-believe-land than playing games or sports or with Barbies. And I was totally picked on throughout elementary school--I get it though, I was a little bit of an odd kid, but I did have a bit of a nerd-herd gaggle of friends to keep me company every step of the way, many of which are still close-friends. Around the age of 15 I basically decided not to give a fuck what people thought, and I was lucky to have switched to a high school with a really great theatre program (not that I was really one of the drama-kids, ever) so diversity was actually almost-promoted and bullying didn't really happen there. I hung out with the goth/punk kids, and I'll admit I wasn't as much of a metal-head as the core of that group became, or as hardcore.

Here's a mental picture for you: skull-and-crossbones knee-high socks or fishnet stockings, combat-boots or red Mary Janes, kilt, a tight off-the-shoulder Blondie shirt with neon green bra-straps showing, spike-collar, dark red lipstick, tons of eyeliner, and long wavy dyed red hair. Or, quite often, my electric blue bob wig with heavy straight bangs. Yeah, I guess I stood out a little bit in my grad-class, hey?

Obviously I don't dress like that anymore, though I still do wear an awful lot of black, but as goth/punk girls go I like to think I was pretty adorable. If you gave me an option between listening to either Indie Rock or Classic Alternative & Punk Rock, I'd pick the latter. I could have happily haunted CBGB's in NYC if I'd been born in a different decade. Give me Joy Division, the Banshees, Sex Pistols, Nirvana, B52's, Pixies, the Runaways, whatever, and I'm ready for to have a dance-party all by myself. I'm a lot more picky when it comes to new music/bands.

Back on track: I went to my local university-college, which has since turned into a full-fledged university, straight out of high school, as was expected of me. I Majored in English, Minored in Visual Arts, and took a ton of Creative Writing classes. I went to NYC halfway through my 3rd year and realised that even though I found my English classes interesting, I didn't want to teach English classes for a career and probably would have been better off going to Art School. But I was halfway through and didn't want my education-thus-far to have been all for nought so I pressed on completed 5 years of my BA with a great GPA. I even went to Italy for a month with the Liberal Studies' Study Abroad program the summer before I graduated. Yes. Italy. I lived and studied the Italian Renaissance in Italy--how cool is that?! I did two semesters of a directed studies in Museology (study of Art Museums and Curatorial practises, basically) which included an internship with our local art gallery as the Assistant Curator in my last year, and in the span of about a year and a half I was included in about 3 art shows with small groups of instructor-selected art-students outside of the annual student art show that took place at the end of the year, and my Graduating Project show. I won awards for my ceramic work but I was really into installation, and blending my art and writing practises together. I felt like I was golden that last year of university. I did a lot of really cool things, like studio-visits, interviewing artists, writing monographs for exhibitions, and even doing a few interviews with our local news channel. I felt totally poised for launching into an amazing career.

And then I decided that I would move to our provincial capital, Victoria, and get myself an intellectually inspiring gallery job before picking the right Masters program. I moved into a townhouse apartment right in the middle of downtown, which happened to share a wall with a little artist-run commercial gallery. Rent was expensive, but I could literally hear them hanging artwork on the walls next door! Only, as it turns out, getting a job at a gallery is really competitive and often only part-time, and/or volunteer-based. So I ended up waitressing--yawn.

This was also the time-frame in which I began a romantic relationship with G. I'll have to save our "love story" for another post, though. I pursued him, and I had been sure for years in advance that he was the man that I was going to end up with. I can't completely explain it, even--I just knew.

Pretty soon after I got Zoe-dog as a tiny 9 week old puppy I figured out my downtown apartment and pedestrian lifestyle was going to have to change. Even though she's only about 18 lbs, she's a Westie and she needs a certain level of exercise, both physically and mentally. We needed a yard, plain and simple. So we move back up island, and eventually I got around to buying a car. She is the reason why I became a dog-groomer two years ago. She is my Heart-Dog, and I have tailored quite a lot of my life around making sure her needs are met. In April she'll be five years old, and I am more and more in love with this scrappy, clownish, expressive, bossy, adventurous, bright little white terrier with every passing year. G too. It took him a lot longer to bond with her because of his own dog passing away when she was still a puppy (more on that in a later post, I promise), but he spoils her all the time and doesn't even like leaving her at home by herself for more than a few hours.

This is where I'm going to have wrap up my About Me post. It's only partial, sorry, but I've got this huge pile of laundry waiting for me and I haven't even had lunch yet (it's almost 1:30PM here--yeeps!!).