Thursday, February 15, 2018

anywhere but home

(programmer's note: it's always hilarious and entertaining to me how whenever i write blog posts that even hint at my potential love life - or, um, lack thereof - my blog traffic absolutely goes through the roof. you thirsty, curious darlings. is it that weird that i'm single? trust me, i would at least mention if there was somebody.)

so yeah, i'm back in my own space after a week of housesitting/catsitting in the northeast end, and both house and cat were left in good condition. the location may be a little out of the way for me - and trudging through so much ice and slush and heavy snow for pretty much the entire week was trash - but getting to curl up in a cozy little ravine suite while the snow fell outside was most excellent. (i also spent a lot of evenings going through all the rammstein making-of videos and cackling.)

i mean, this sure wasn't a tough friday night:

A post shared by Caitlin H. (@mylovesubliminal) on

still, i'm always glad to be home. i've said it so many times, but my apartment is my favourite place, and i don't really feel fully at ease until i'm recharging in my home base. it's got all my things in it! (plus, like, a general good vibe and very nice decor) i've lived in my current place for almost six years now and i don't see myself leaving anytime soon, especially not when i list "great and affordable apartment all to myself" under the things that i'm constantly thankful for.

i've mentioned it before, but it's maybe a little dumb that my apartment keeps me locked down to the city; if i were to ever thinking about leaving or going somewhere else, that would also mean considering giving up my place, and noooooooooo no way. if you know anyone who lives in toronto, you've likely heard about how insanely tough it is to find a decently affordable apartment in a good part of the city. i lucked out six years ago, and i intend on riding that goddamn wave until i get to the point where, i dunno, i want to cohabitate with someone again? eh, who knows.

speaking of feeling thankful, i had my employee review a few days ago (have officially been at my job for a year and three months!), and it went swimmingly while also reminding me how lucky i am to work somewhere i like with people i like working with. aside from all the built-in bonuses of being employed - regular pay, health benefits, etc - it just feels good to enjoy what i do with the people i do it with. it's a little thing, but it means a lot.

like, i've been of a mood lately where i'm just really glad that i've got what i've got, you know? there have been periods in my life when i've had so much less than this, or when i haven't been as lucky, and thinking back on those times always gives me perspective on how good i've got it right now.

and look, i dunno. i had a turbulent few months in there, for a while, but i had good friends to rely on and some excellent music to drown myself in, and i did have to put in the work, but things have gotten better and i'm doing alright, for the most part. roll on, rest of the winter.

wrestling t-shirts intact, as always. (another bonus for my workplace is that i wear wrestling t-shirts, like, at least two days a week. i think most people just think they're band t-shirts.)

next week is a short one!: monday is a stat holiday in ontario so i have that off, then i'm working tuesday and wednesday, and then i've booked thursday and friday off because of wrestling, basically. (thursday i'm off to mississauga for nxt, and up early friday morning - and saturday as well - for the combined njpw/roh 2-day ppv special) i can get down with a 2-day work week followed by a shit ton of wrestling, for sure.

alright, i'm out! tell me something fun, and be good.

[ music | rammstein, "mutter" (vocoder mix) ]

Monday, February 12, 2018

the laws of attraction

hey, it's almost valentine's day! let's talk about love, baybeeeeeeeeeeee.

so here's an interesting thing: i wrote this blog post on valentine's day five years ago, and while it's still one of my favourite pieces - i still really like some of the things i wrote there - it struck me recently how i actually don't feel the same way about some of it. as in, my beliefs have changed quite a bit over the last year or so, and it's really shifted my point of view on a lot of this.

here's the fundamental difference: when i was younger - and as i said in that blog post from 2013 - i believed that finding a partner was something so, so goddamn important. but what i've learned since is that the pursuit of attraction shouldn't be your "driving force" as i put it. it's ancillary. your life should not be about the person you're with, or finding a person, or pursuing a person.

if that happens along the way, great! good times. but it shouldn't be your entire deal. it shouldn't be the thing that drives you forward. that's your job. you have to learn to find purpose in doing things for yourself, to better yourself, and to build a good life whether or not you have somebody to share it with you. you have to shake off the societal ideal that pairing up is the be-all end-all in life, and that it somehow determines your value. (i'll admit it right now: i have always been a tiny bit scornful of people who feel like they need to be in a relationship all the time because they need that validation. it's so much more important to learn how to be okay with yourself first.)

despite this, i mean yeah, sometimes i do feel a little busted up inside about being single right now, like ah fuck, so what's wrong with me, then? sometimes i do fall into that trap of thinking that if i was in a relationship, it would confirm that i'm fine and normal, and in the eyes of everyone else (and, to be honest, in my own eyes as well) it would prove that there's nothing broken in me emotionally and that i am capable of functioning normally. you know?

but look - that's such a shit barometer for "normalcy." whether you are or aren't in a relationship shouldn't put you above or below anyone else. what's more, it's not good motivation at all to be with someone. you should be with someone because they lift you up and support you and inspire you to be the best person you can possibly be. someone else isn't your proving ground to the world. they should be your equal footing.

i always tend to come back to this piece by andrew w.k.:

any relationship is either a real relationship or a piece of shit. and that's it exactly, always. there are no half-measures or grey areas, no maybes or i-guess's or i-suppose-so's. when it's worth it, you go all in with someone or not at all.

but in the meantime - you have your life, and you have yourself, and that should always, always be enough.

[ music | ladyhawke, "my delirium" ]

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

take me outta context

even with a side of sickness, i managed to start february on the right foot!

although both jenna and i, as seen above, were internally not feeling up to snuff (she had lingering food poisoning, i had a rapidly developing cold), we still wanted to take advantage of free tickets to the art gallery of ontario's first thursdays event. art! culture! djing! (but no selfie sticks allowed, that photo was the only one i managed to snap in time)

i like the art gallery a whole lot, but because it is big and prestigious and all that, there are always so many staff members milling around and watching you with an eagle eye to make sure you don't fuck up an expensive painting or whatever. and if there's one thing that makes me uncomfortable, it's staff hovering around me, whether it's in a retail store or a gallery. so sure, i know it's their job and all, but it doesn't make me want to hang out too much. oh well.

then i rolled on through the weekend, which included drinking wine on fire escapes in the middle of a blizzard and a super bowl party full of snacks:

definitely a get-together worth attending, even though i was still exhausted and battling my hangover from the previous night's wine-drinking on fire escapes, et cetera. sometimes you just gotta push through.

so now here's a swerve: i'd said that i would be hosting a cat in my apartment all these week, but at the last minute i decided i was just going to do the combo housesit/catsit for the third time (fifth, if you count my old friends in the east end):

A post shared by Caitlin H. (@mylovesubliminal) on

to be honest, it's not super convenient for me to be out of my own apartment for a week (my apartment is my favourite place), but it's just easier than having to cat-proof my place. i have a very large houseplant that i love, but is toxic to cats; i have numerous dangly things hanging off doorknobs that could be mangled; i do not have the money to replace anything that could get ruined. i'd long since determined that i wouldn't be getting a pet of my own, so i never thought about these things at all when setting up my own place. so the idea of putting a small animal in my space - one of the few environments that i can more or less fully control - wasn't all that appealing. (that, plus the impending havoc it would wreak on my nerves/anxiety at any of the impossible scenarios my brain could come up with. what if the cat knocks over my tv? what if it chews a cord and starts a fire??)

that means that yes, hello, my home base for this week will be my friend's little flat slightly northeast of downtown. i'm gonna be with the li'l kitkat until saturday morning, then emma will return and i'll head back home. as i've said before, it's not a hardship by any means - it's cozy, i have wifi, there's wine - it's just not super close to my work and sort of out of my usual routines. but i'm a good friend, and i try to be there when people need me.

also, unfortunately for my wallet, there's a sephora right on the walk home. oop.

but i dunno, change of scenery is also good every once in a while. i've been feeling a bit stuck in my personal life lately, and maybe this'll be good to help me make some decisions and move past some roadblocks and distractions. i know, i hate being vague, but yeah. some things are just a lot more difficult than they should be, is all.

even though absolutely no one else will care, here's my top 5 rammstein songs that i'm not sure if they've ever played live but i would kill to see on the next tour:

1. amour
2. mein land
3. der meister
4. das modell
5. vergiss uns nicht

and lastly, look, i'm a paul girl forever, but then our one true vampire lord richard shows up looking like this and gives me a goddamn aneurysm:

(i only saw this footage for the first time the other week and i made a weird strangled keening noise when i saw all the black lipstick)

okay have a good day

[ music | holy ghost!, "bridge and tunnel" ]