the shadi show

I want to tell you a story. A happy one, about a concert that I attended recently. It had been a long day. After a month of intense work and very little respite, I was finally enjoying a day where I didn't have to do anything . I spent most of the day dozing and reading and drinking coffee and re-watching Harry Potter. I was still very sleepy by the end of the day, and was in half a mind to not head into town at all, spending my evening as I had spent my morning and afternoon, but decided in the end that if I spent any more time on my couch I would become a part of it - sort of squishy and lumpy, but largely inert and dormant. Besides, I did want to see my friends: it had been a while since any of us had been free at the same time, and I had missed them. The trip to town was pleasant enough. It had been raining lightly for most of the day, leaving the city and its parks and churches and old brick buildings in a quiet, reflective sheen. I enjoyed the walk to the restaurant throu

If you were to ask me where I stood regarding the Same Sex Marriage plebiscite, I could answer you without a moments hesitation: I voted yes. It's a given. I believe in love and I believe in equality and I think that not being able to marry someone you love - to have that be illegal - is total and utter nonsense. The past few months have not been pleasant. I feel like a week hasn't gone by where I haven't seen someone post something about the traditional values of marriage and nature and how homosexuality is a sin. The plebiscite has brought thoughts about homosexuality out into the open, and some of what I have read has made me sad and angry and hurt. I can't imagine how my gay friends must feel. Anger and outrage is a very common and understandable response to these sorts of statements. It was my initial response. I unfollowed some family members and friends who posted about voting no. I couldn't contain my disgust. How could they support something that was so

OCTOBER IS ALMOST UPON US! You know what that means? It means I start wearing a lot more black and my little black cat becomes a little bit more magical and I am the happiest I am all year. There's something about this time of year. It's warmer, and more colourful, but quieter too. I guess I've always sort of spent this time of year at home, with my books and my mum and cats, doing nothing but study and read. There's something in the wind, too. It's warm and blustery, but there's something in being swept up in it that feels a little like magic.  I hope to intensify that feeling by reading some spooky books this October. Below are the 13 that I hope to get to: City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare City of Glass by Cassandra Clare Dracula by Bram Stoker The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins By The Pricking of My Thumbs by Agatha Christie Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur

Sometimes, sad things happen, and it really brings me down. I spend every minute thinking about what went wrong and what I said and what I did and how I could have been better. I am sad in a way that seems never-ending and all-encompassing, and life really seems to stop being anything but what went wrong. The above video presented itself to me in the form of an ad for Headspace that popped up in my life at exactly the right time. I remembered how, when I was in high school, I always carried a notebook around with me and would always right down exactly what I was thinking and feeling and how that affected me, just as it happened. It was a bit of a quirk, but it was a quirk that made me feel so safe in my own company. As high school turned to university, I stopped carrying a journal around, but still kept a diary at home for whenever I was feeling blue. I never found myself writing in it when things were happy, so if you looked at any of my diaries from back then, you'd thin

the thing about hands is they don't have to be empty they can hold each other the thing about heads is they're bigger on the inside they can hold more than your sorrow the thing about hearts is even when they're broken they never stop beating

Hey world, Listen. For the past year, nay, few years of my life, I have just let everything happen to me. If things went wrong, well of course they would, and if they didn't, then they would eventually. That was my mentality. I was a victim of life. No longer. I am tired of letting life happen to me because I'm too afraid to put myself out there. That is not who I am or what I stand for. So this is me, making a big old announcement to the world that I am back. I am going to take greater risks and give fewer fucks and see whether that actually gets me somewhere. It's better than living in perpetual fear of the sadness that life will bring. Life sucks, and then you die, right? But if that's inevitable anyway I feel it is my duty to figure out what it is that I want to do and go about doing it. From now on, I am all in. Luke and Lorelai, baby. All in. -Shadi