DISTRACTIC ONE

I am an expert at shilling my time for a moderate per hour wage, and doing the very least I need to without getting fired. We all work with people like this, we know people like this, hell, you might even be one of those people. Others may call you a 'slacker,' a 'dog fucker,' or maybe 'useless as tits on a bull' or some other woodsy folk cliché. They are all derogatory terms because the truth is you are skilled. To shirk work effectively requires talent and dedication. As much as our ancestors taught their children to start fires or set rabbit snares, this is a skill you can teach your children. At the core of this survival technique is a trio of solid, tried and true tactics, herein referred to as 'distractics.'

Distractic One: act like you are doing more work than anyone else, complain about how useless other people are. If you constantly point out the shortcomings of others, real or imagined, people will forget to notice that you yourself are spending all your time updating your Facebook profile. To be honest this is my least favorite distractic because it can breed animosity between yourself and other co-workers, but some people find that this works for them perfectly well.

If you look hard enough it will be easy to find the faults in your co-workers. It doesn't even have to be work related. Sometimes someone has a little tic or idiosyncrasy that you can point out to others. “Hey, have you ever noticed how whenever John breathes, his nose always whistles? Man, that drives me crazy.”

Soon Johns nose whistle will be driving everyone in the office crazy and their hate-on for him and his stupid nose will obliterate the fact that you are a lazy sack of shit. The process of ostracizing John and excluding him from all work functions will have begun. John, sorry babe, but you had to take one for the team. The team of doing little to no work.

To be continued...

MATH

I have been considering returning to school and getting an accounting degree. But my rocky relationship with math does not boded well for my planned career change. 

I failed grade nine math.

I put all the blame on my teacher, Ms. ______. I had either a personality conflict with her or misplaced sexual feeling that manifested themselves in a deep rooted animosity that sprang from her attainability. Either way, I failed that class. I was also terrible at math though, too. I couldn't make sense of it the same way my grandmother couldn't make sense of the Beatles; it's evident millions of people get it, but to you it is white noise.

My failure led to a stint in summer school in the next town over. I stayed with my great aunt Aleigh, my grandmothers sister, who actually had a deep appreciation for the Beatles, Gilbert and Sullivan and wine coolers. Immersion learning was far more effective than tortuously stretching it out a whole school semester. Sure, after I solved the last equation on the final exam I immediately forgot everything I learned in the previous three weeks. But retention was not the point, the point was to get a letter grade - any letter grade - better than a 'D'. It worked.

So, why accounting?

I have a dream. Nothing noble or altruistic like Martin Luther Kings dream, but a dream all the same. I imagine getting my accounting certification - putting roots down in a small coastal town, driving the kids to little league games, playing horseshoes with friends on the weekend while consuming far too much craft beer and dabbling in yoga/kayaking/freeclimbing/recumbent bicycling/surfing/paddle boarding, or whatever soul staunching activity is recommended in the local rec-centres Fall/Winter guide.

The problem, besides my atrocious math skills, is that I vacillate nearly hourly between that and wanting to be an artist. Nothing focused, it just depends on what I have last watched, read or eaten. I may want to be an actor or pinstripe classic cars from my grimy home garage. Sometimes I want to produce high quality limited edition coffee table books about the crusades, or perhaps write a novel or direct arthouse films and give them one word titles like Desolation, or Myopic, or Sandstone.

The more I learn about artists, those who have achieved expertise and success in their chosen medium, I realize they did little else but work tirelessly and obsessively since their late teens. The recognition many of these artists experience just shy of middle age is the culmination of years and years of hard, frenetic, arduous work. Math might be a bit easier.

So, there it is: two choices, but neither wanting to abandon one, or wholeheartedly commit to the other, I resign myself to my mundane factory job and skim by paycheque to paycheque just shy of middle age, the culmination of years and years of hard, frenetic, arduous waffling.

Although I would like to, I can't blame Ms. _______ for my present predicament. Life is not like math, there is no summer school if you flunk out. Do I get a do-over? I'd gladly go sit in a stuffy classroom with other adults, hemming and hawing on the precipice of BIG decisions. At this stage of the game the only choice that really makes any sense is to just say "fuck it," go and buy an off-the-rack Brook Brothers suit and crunch other peoples numbers, albeit poorly. It might not be the path of the great artist, but I might be able to go paddle boarding with him on the weekend.

BEER

It is irrefutable, dads and beer go together like waning athletic prowess and a pulled groin. I never really had any athletic prowess to begin with, unless you count hacky sack. But I am a father and yes, now I love beer as I once loved hacky sack.

Not just any beer though. I like my beer like I like my woman, bitter and stout. Okay, that's an old joke, not even mine, but I do like my beer to have character. I like variety. I want dark beers, hoppy IPAs, stouts, porter, ales, and everything in between. I don't want the generic pap produced for the masses. If a brewery shills their beer with a TV commercial filled with scantily clad women and guys high-fiving each other, chances are, I'll pass. Sure, that beer has its place in the cultural milieu - mostly with the Wal-Mart set - like The Big Bang Theory or chaotic MMA t-shirts with brand names like Brutalize and Ass-Whupping.

But good beer is expensive. When I was a young single man going to university and irresponsibly hemorrhaging my student loan, money was no object; drinking beer was the object and my tastes were not as discerning then. Graduate university, kids come along, bills to pay, loans to manage, day to day family life puts a strains on the household finances and at the end of the day you still want to put a cold one back. But there are no bucks left to buy beer, at least not in good conscience.

I found salvation in the miracle of homebrewing. Not the nasty, cloudy stuff in plastic green bottles your uncle used to make, the stuff your dad referred to as 'ghetto-shine.' There are great kits out there. Obviously, making it from scratch, grinding the grain, steeping the cracked grain, boiling the wort, etc..., is the way to go. But didn't I mention that I have kids! Who has the time?

Buy the bladder kits, Brewhouse is great, available in almost every style and incredibly user friendly. Basically a concentrated wort, add water, pitch your yeast and Bob's your uncle. They are also very hackable. You can add hops, malt, less water, more water (why would you do that?), honey, maple syrup, vanilla, fruit, the list is endless. For about $35 you can pick up a kit that will yield a good, if not great, twenty-three litres of beer.

What?! you say.

Yeah, that's right. Let's do the math: twenty three litres is roughly 11 six-packs. Eleven six-packs of decent microbrew would cost about $132. That's gonna save you almost $100. Affordable indulgence. Put away that hacky sack, it is time for a new hobby.