My Fat Wednesday Weight Loss Strategy

Several years ago I got assaulted. I didn’t provoke it, I didn’t get anyone angry at me, I wasn’t arguing politics nor religion with anyone, nor was I racist or abusive of anyone. They came from behind, sneaked up on me, and assaulted me, as cowards often do. When it happened I was walking to the soccer field to play football. I was an assuming simple fit white male in his late 30s. It happened during the day in the middle of a university campus. Before it I was quite fit, after it I developed some dysfunctional coping strategies that lead towards tremendous weight gain.

One of these coping strategies that I developed to cope with my pain and trauma of enduring violence was to go shopping every single day. Another strategy was to buy a lot of junk food. Another strategy was to buy coffee too often. Needless to say I was gaining weight and losing money. Within a year I gained 60lbs and was in debt a few thousand dollars. But I was happier than not doing these things. This coping strategy allowed me to forget what took place, to forget how “weak”, “pathetic” and a “loser” that I was. These thoughts were what I ascribed to myself after the ordeal. They won that fight, didn’t they? I kissed the ground while they laughed. Clearly I was the one who didn’t prepare for this fight my whole life.

Generally I spent my days back then playing football for 3-4 hours a day, then changing in the washrooms, eating from the food truck on the corner, and sitting comfortably at the libraries composing music on my laptop and studying from various books that were on the nearby shelves. I was a student of life and of many subjects as well as pursuing my hobbies. I wasn’t preparing for a fight, I wasn’t training in combat skills, I wasn’t using weapons. If anyone knew the fight was going to happen and saw how the two sides were living their lives, they’d say I was wasting my time. The bullies were training in martial arts, fighting amongst themselves and with thousands of others well before encountering me. The fight was won before it even began and I was always going to be on the losing end.

Back then, before the attacks on me, I didn’t shop often, hardly ever, except for food. I made lunch the night before and brought it to university in plastic containers, warming it up in the campus microwave at a building near the soccer field. The only reason I bought food at the food truck is because I loved the idea of socializing with others in front of the food truck, and the people selling the food were quite nice to chat with. Once or twice they even gave me a free lunch for how much they loved my company. I got to know about their children, families, all sorts of life details that make people glad to see each other. But after the assault on me I couldn’t face anyone and I withdrew. This is when I began shopping.

Some days I’d go three times to a coffee shop and twice to a fast food place. I was charging everything on my credit card and racked up quite the debt. My minimum monthly payments were over $250 and that’s just the interest, without lowering the balance. I had to make a change. Plus I couldn’t fit into most of my clothes anymore, let alone my favourite sports stuff. I went from size 34 shorts to size 42. Back then I weighted 180lbs but after the assault my weight skyrocketed to 260lbs. Something had to change because I didn’t like where this was heading. I was coping my way but it wasn’t the way I wanted to live. This new victim life style wasn’t ideal. I loved sports, I loved being physically active, but now I sat at home eating and watching Netflix all day and chatting online. This was a new me, one I didn’t approve of.

So I came up with a plan a while ago and have seen tremendous results. It started off as a joke. I called it Fat Wednesday diet. Every Wednesday, Burger King has a discount on Whoppers, which I love buying. And the big change was that I decided instead of buying fast food whenever I felt like it, to only buy it on Wednesdays. Either a Whopper or something else, doesn’t matter. But Wednesday was my fattening day. On all other days I would make food at home. Over time this diet evolved into an entire life style.

Next I tackled the coffee issue. I decided instead of buying coffee multiple times a day I would limit it at first to just one cafe visit a day. Then I lowered it even more to just Tuesdays and Saturdays. I also lowered how much caffeine I am consuming when I make coffee at home on other days by making it half half or going fully decaf. As well I added tea to my assortment of drinks. One of my other dysfunctional habits was that I was buying a 2L bottle of coke very often. I added this to my Fat Wednesday and decided to only have coke on Wednesdays with my Whopper or other fast food.

On my calendar I noticed that Tuesdays I buy coffee, Wednesdays I buy a meal, and Saturdays I buy a coffee.  This gave me an idea.  What if I bought something every single day of the week, this would give me that therapeutic shopping experience and a reason to go for walks every day. I would walk for an hour and then buy something. So I made Monday my grocery day. On Fridays I buy fresh salad ingredients from the market and Sundays I buy something sweet like a cookie. So what once was shopping whenever the mood struck me, became a budgeted and planned exercise in healing.

Shopping allows me to control my interactions with others, makes me feel safe in that I am not randomly going places, and it ensures I have money left in the bank. The Fat Wednesday diet is therefore me cooking at home and eating out only once per week. This is quite sensible and is what many experts recommend anyway so I’m good there. Most days for breakfast I make healthy oatmeal with fruit. For lunch I have a soup and a small sandwich, and dinner I have with my family. I don’t put sugar into my drinks, and only have artificial sweetener on Tuesdays and Saturdays in my coffees.  I don’t use too much salt, I don’t buy chips, candies, or anything with sugar in it, not even bottled sparkling water. I also don’t feel like I am giving anything up – this is how I was raised. If anything I am returning to my childhood roots with this diet. I eat fruit almost every day so I have no need for sweets. Fresh oranges and apples and strawberries keep me perfectly happy.

So far on this diet I have lost 15lbs, and have paid off one credit and canceled it and am working on paying off my other debt. I am less afraid, less need to cope, less suffering from trauma and more enjoying life and doing things almost as much as before the events.  I am back to composing music, and I am exercising at home almost daily. I do thirty minutes of Tai Chi almost every day, sometimes I do Qi Gong, sometimes I practice with a Kettlebell and dumbbells, too. Life is getting better the more I stick to the Fat Wednesday diet. Buying something different every day is also fun even if it isn’t anything expensive. People like me don’t need a lot to make us happy. For instance, when I do buy coffee it’s never at Starbucks. It’s never a $10 cup or a $5 cup. My coffee costs $2.50 and is freshly brewed. Otherwise I make it at home for pennies. My ultimate goal is to again wear size 34 or 36 shorts, to slim below 200lbs, and to again play soccer while listening to music.  I am slowly achieving my dreams again.

Drinking Beer As A High School Dropout

Here I am in my mid forties, sitting all alone in my home office and drinking beer and watching old video games for the Dreamcast console. I have spent the whole day on Twitter, avoiding my chores, projects, and hobbies. The first of April is coming and a huge decision looms over me – do I enroll in a high school course towards completing my OSSD? Do I try a third time even though I had to withdraw from class the previous two times? Do I want to admit that I’m such a big loser that I couldn’t even finish high school by trying, once again, to do what the rest of you did in your teenage years?

When I was a teenager, it was the mid-’90s and life was grand. I lived in North York (Toronto) and loved every single thing I did. My hobbies included learning Slackware 1.0 (Linux), programming in C++, downloading warez (games), and composing music in trackers in DOS. High school at the time offered programming in boring Turing, biology, chemistry and physics and geography – who cares!  What a bore!  Studying covalent bonds, whatever those were, didn’t seem half as interesting as how to get LILO (pre-GRUB) configured on my 386sx-16mhz machine with 4mb of RAM.  Before long I was skipping classes.

It got to the point where my Calculus teacher asked me why I skipped 80 of 88 classes that year. I had no answer, I just told him math didn’t interest me. This wasn’t the real truth, for I loved calculus. But what was I going to say to him? Gee, learning from a blackboard and paper and pen is lame and computers are the future? Everyone who was smart knew that Linux would be the future. Back then we didn’t have Google, or books at the library, so I had to learn everything the hard way. Through trial and error. I had to use the man pages a lot, too.  There weren’t forums the way there are now, and there definitely wasn’t AI nor experts I could collaborate with. Everything I had to learn by changing one line at a time with plenty of print statements, and this held true for configuration files as well as source code compiling.

Many years later, after I had dropped out of high school and got a job in Toronto’s tech industry I would excuse my bad decision of leaving high school by saying there simply wasn’t enough time. And it was easy enough to buy into this illusion. I first noticed my faulty thinking when I explained this lack of time to my grandma. I told her my daily activities included hanging out with friends, rollerblading, coding, writing music, and playing with Linux. My grandma looked at me stunned, and she said that I was wrong in how I looked at things. She reminded me of her experience in high school during World War II! She had to take a train to school, not a subway. And at that it was a cargo train, without seating. She had to do homework, but also house work to help with the family, she had to cook, sew, clean, etc. I never did any of this. All I ever did was sit and stared at a computer screen. When I thought about it seriously, what my grandma said made sense. Except I was listening to it 25-30 years after the fact. She said I had time for both, school and personal projects, just like she did back in the ‘40s.

This was difficult for me to accept. I had always told everyone as well as myself that I was following in the footsteps of giants like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates – dropouts who made it big in tech. I felt I had made it big, too. In my 20s I was making more money than those who finished university and had “wasted their lives earning a piece of paper” – as I used to explain.  This of course wasn’t the reality. When I was a teenager my parents divorced. And a way I dealt with that was by imbuing myself into computers. I would put on my headphones and stare at the screen doing work and so it was a form of escapism or avoidant behaviour. Going to school meant having to deal with realities at home, which clearly I didn’t want to do. Writing music was more fun than studying chemistry or biology or physics even, but I had time for both. I could have had my mom help me at the dinner table after dinner for an hour every day!  I could have done my home work, passed my exams, and still composed all the music I wanted. I would have still had time to hang out with friends and play video games with my sisters. My grandma was right. I lacked time management skills. I was also poorly coping with the family situation.

Oddly enough there were no councillors calling my parents when I skipped class. My parents never talked to me about my missing of classes either. I don’t recall my dad ever asking me why I was home and working on Linux instead of at school. There was never a moment when a teacher asked me why I wasn’t showing up. I did still attend high school, but only the classes I liked. I would show up for lunch hour to hang out with friends, and gym was always what I was in. I sometimes attended economics as that interested me. I naturally thought tech would lead me towards running my own business. None of it ever materialized. THe lack of organizational skills I failed to learn in school lead towards a disorganized adult life. I had plenty of success in the tech world, but whenever something complex was asked of me I avoided it and skipped out. There were moments I even skipped out on work whenever a presentation was required of me. I got fired for it, too.

I guess all I’m trying to say is that this April I’ll be enrolling in high school classes as an adult. I have to admit to myself that for thirty something years I have been living wrongly. I have been pursuing things the wrong way, walking along the wrong path. I will need maybe five or six credits to graduate. I’m not looking forward to any of this. But it is time to set things right. It is time to finish high school. I believe my grandma was right. I believe I still have time for everything.

Superman Goes To Jog

My motivation is determined, in large part, by what I foresee myself accomplishing. If it’s something small I don’t even begin the task. If it’s monumental, I immediately drop every other project and get to work. I don’t plan my days, weekends, or quarters. I just wing it – that’s my time management philosophy, it’s always worked and I’ve always achieved more than most, until now. I am in a rut, the dumps, and I’m struggling to climb back to the top of my mountain top.

About ten years ago I was quite fat, weighing close to 260lbs. I am 5’10” and generally look best at around 185lbs even without a large muscle build-out.  But at 260lbs I am wobbling when I walk, my clothes don’t fit me right, I’m wearing baggy size 42 pants, as opposed to my more usual 34 or 36 shorts. When I am fat I don’t want to move, climbing stairs to my apartment feels like a chore so I take the elevator many times. Even carrying groceries and tying shoe laces feels like a difficult task where I have to hold my breath just to bend down to the shoes.  Being fat is quite limiting as it even negatively impacts my sleep. When I am fat I don’t enjoy sitting at the computer as I always want to go and exercise, only I don’t have the energy to so it’s a constant struggle. That’s when my super achieving ego kicks in. I call it my internal Superman.

My inner Superman makes me want to exercise at three times the intensity to make up for lost time. It makes me want to go for a jog when I haven’t even warmed up. It makes me want to lift 100s of pounds of weight at the gym when I haven’t even done a few lower reps. It makes me want to jog for 3 hours on the first run day of the season. Then when I have knee pains for a month, when my back hurts, and when I have a cold, then I think some secret magic voodoo was involved against me, that the whole world hates me, and then I stop working out. My inner Superman thinks he can do anything, and doesn’t care about the process. My inner Superman thinks I can jog even when it’s winter, rainy and slippery, or muddy even though I was blessed with disabled eyes and thus stuck for life with low vision at best.

I explained my predicament to my sister Lola a few years ago. You see I have two sisters, so I get double the advice, which I sometimes listen to. And I have started to listen to Lola’s jogging advice this year. First I began by changing my diet. I have swapped out pasta, butter chicken, and burgers for lunch, for soups and a boiled egg and a small sandwich – all of which I now make at home to save money and sanity. Then I took Lola’s excellent advice, as she is into running and has ran marathons several times. She told me to take it slowly at first, since I’m not a regular, and to ramp it up as I feel good in my body. Instead of jogging for 40 minutes in the cold she suggested I limit my first runs to 15 minutes at most. And even then to run for one minute and then walk for a minute. But the Superman inside me isn’t pleased with this. This feels like a pittance compared to what I want to achieve. Superman inside me wants to be an ultra-marathoner, to run 24 hours non-stop, to be the best jogger in existence. So for a few years now I’ve put off jogging because running and stopping makes me feel like I’m not really doing anything.

This was a great mistake and one I blame Superman for. He wants to achieve world shaking things, whereas I just want to fit back into my pants in my closet that have been waiting for me ever since my Kung Fu training days.  And then I had an epiphany!  What if Superman can be happy at the same time as I’m jogging properly? But how? How to appease his appetite for speed and duration while running start-stop like? Well, by looking into the future!  If I run without limits I will incur injuries and then I won’t be able to run or do other things at all, as has happened in the past. But if I take Lola’s advice, and start slowly and then over time ramp it up as I build stamina and muscles and muscle memory, in a year or two I’ll lose the weight and garner enough time jogging to be able to jog for a full hour non-stop!  After a year of start-stopping Superman will have what he wants. But I must endure the training period. And that’s only natural isn’t it? Training first, then success.

Superman doesn’t believe in that. In the movies about him we never see him training.  Or at least this was my mistake in thinking. I recently re-watched Superman and he does go through training. He discovers his powers one by one, like when he’s running against a train, etc. He doesn’t start changing the course of rockets, or moving frozen lakes on his first day on Earth. These things come with time! Similarly the Superman in me needs time to train. So if I wish to go for a jog while listening to a full music album, which is my goal, I need to take it slowly. This is what I’m learning this year. Coupled with my new diet, I feel I am on a winning track. Much thanks to my sisters and their advice. Superman will go jogging later.

A Luxurious Adventure In The PATH

Like any disabled man I long for those moments of inclusion whereby I am one with the normies. You know, when you are wearing glasses you wonder what normal eye sight feels like? Similarly whenever I feel isolated I take a walk through the PATH to see all the employed, hip, and fancy fellow citizens and I pretend I belong. I sit there in the PATH eating my Burger King and feel like others looking at me might mistake me for a daytrader out to lunch. I don’t need a suit and a tie to be a daytrader, and I can fit in, as long as I shave my man face. But then comes the problem of going to the washroom, and this is for me something very stressful. I have low vision and signage in the PATH is terrible for those like me.

Usually I only walk around downtown Toronto between five routes that I have memorized. One takes me to Eaton center, another one to Distillery, another one to the PATH, and then within the labyrinth I know two or three routes. Otherwise I can’t go for a walk on my own. I just don’t feel confident in my old age. And let me tell you, 45 is quite old. I’ve survived 33 Canadian winters and many others in Belgrade. This in itself is quite an accomplishment! I’m very proud of this fact. But I did fall once or twice on my hip so maybe I’ll pay for that in my elderly years, I don’t know. Like any man I need more muscles to defend the fragile skeleton that the meat hangs off of.

Finding a washroom would be easy if signage was large, clearly labeled, and in easy to spot places. But in Toronto’s underground PATH the big fancy business owners decided to go with minimalistic style. So much of the signage is in the corner, out of the way, hard to spot, hard to find, and is even black icons on a grey background – of all things, come on! How am I supposed to spot that? So sometimes I beg my dear mom to come with me to PATH and teach me where the washrooms are. After two or three times I have it memorized and can go there alone from that point forward. Unless I know where a washroom is I can’t go to a place. I am like everyone else in this regard. My disability is visual but that limits me to ten percent of activities that others can enjoy.

So today I went by the Hockey Hall of Fame entrance and needed to use the bathroom. Now for some strange reason the cleaning staff synchronize when they are cleaning bathrooms. They do it at peak times, around 1pm, and they clean multiple washrooms at once so that none are available for public use. I went to one, it was being cleaned. I went to a second one, it was being cleaned. But I needed to go, so I discovered a third washroom around the corner of a corridor. The signage is poor and barely visible and I entered. Boy this was something magical.

The washroom had a waterfall, there was a little pond with fishes swimming in it, it smelled like cookies and cream, and there was no smell that I am used to in normal washrooms of feces and urine. There was no papers on the floor, there was no hairs around the sink, it was clean and tidy. There was also mood lighting like at a club! There was even music playing, it was dubstep of all things. I was in the stall minding my business and wondered if I made a mistake if this was some kind of private club washroom or something. It was unbelievably clean and nice and the toilet seats all worked, even the flushing wasn’t broken! Then I went to wash my hands, and to my left was young woman prettying herself up by tidying up her hair.

This was unusual, I have never seen a woman in a washroom before. In a corner was another woman standing playing on her cell phone. I immediately left and looked at the door sign. Now it all made sense. The reason why this washroom was so much more beautiful than any I have ever been to was because this was a woman’s washroom. The sign for women and men is quite similar, only the little square is a tiny bit triangular. Who knew women had such clean and luxurious washrooms compared to us men?

I prayed and hoped nobody would notify security. But just to be on the safe side I contacted a psychiatrist and explained what had occurred. He told me that yes, indeed, women’s washrooms are much nicer and that many men in his practice have made this mistake and have accidentally once in their lives entered the wrong bathroom and to not worry. He assured me I was sane. I questioned why do women have a waterfall in their washrooms and men do not? He said he didn’t know but would inquire and let me know. It did leave me speechless that even the floor was shinny like it was brand new. I’m used to the filth and the scum on the walls in men’s bathrooms so much that I thought women’s must be the same. Boy was today an eye opening adventure in the PATH. I hope that in the future men can learn from my misadventure and learn to invest more in their spaces. I’d also like a waterfall soothing me while I am in the bathroom.

On Music

Why do I compose music? It is a question I ask myself more and more. Especially after being assaulted. Why do I contribute to the world that has hurt me? Shouldn’t I refuse and protest? Shouldn’t I be upset and wait for an apology from you all for mistreating me so harshly? Doesn’t contributing good quality music for everyone’s enjoyment encourage mistreatment? I never used to wonder these things back as a teenager before I was wronged. Back then in the mid ‘90s life was perfect. I had my family, I had my high school friends, and I had my DOS tracker program for composing. I couldn’t have dreamed of a better life back then. I never once wondered why I wrote music – it was just something I did and enjoyed doing.

Back then very basic things were pleasant. Things like the falling snow or rain made me happy. I know most people aren’t smiling to walk in the rain with an umbrella, but I do! Rain makes me happy, as does snow, as does the sun. I like being outdoors. But I also liked sitting in front of my computer, composing for hours. I tend to be very diverse in the things I enjoy and that I spend time with. Back then in the ‘90s I used Scream Tracker 3. It has a text interface for music creation arranged like a spreadsheet into columns and rows. Special codes are typed into each cell, such as X00 for left pan or S91 for surround sound, and then when F5 is pressed it compiles the music and you can hear it until you press F8. Then I’d make more changes and press F5 to hear them. It wasn’t real-time composing like most people know today. It was a paint-by-numbers process or rather compose-by-numbers. It was more similar to editing financial data in a spreadsheet than anything else. The way to tell a quarter note from a whole note is by how many cells are between them. It took me two years to master it.

I got so good at writing music that a scene publication even published some of my techniques. The e-magazine was called TraxWeekly and anyone who’s anyone had an article published in it. It’s like an industry journal for science such as nature where scientists dream of being published. Only as a teen I didn’t have an ego at all, I didn’t dream of being a published author, it just happened organically. I thought my ideas could benefit others and emailed them. It was that simple! In fact I am quite reserved and even shy when it comes to sharing my art so unlike other musicians at the time I didn’t upload my songs to various BBSes or websites for sharing purposes. I would write over a thousand songs and never release any of them. To this day I still haven’t released anything except for one album. That one I released even though it’s in a rough draft form because I wanted to listen to it on Spotify and it was easier than making MP3s. Goes to show how faulty tech development is these days.

Writing music made me feel accepted in this sad world. It made me feel normal and one with others. I was born disabled as at birth my eyes developed congenital cataracts. I had eye surgery at eighteen months and could see but with low vision. So using big letters in MS-DOS programs was far easier to work with then today’s tiny widgeted interfaces. I blossomed under those conditions, whereas today it’s difficult to get work done, and I was able to pursue a wonderful hobby in my spare time. Whereas many teenagers partied with drugs, alcohol, marijuana and other not-so-wise choices, I sat at home programming, composing, drawing in 3D software and Photoshop, I was rollerblading and watching movies with friends as well as playing games. I led a perfectly healthy and happy life. Music was integral to it all. I never imagined that writing music would become difficult.

Several years ago I got assaulted. It doesn’t really matter by whom or why – there’s never a valid reason for violence anyway. People often make excuses like he said something or he did something or he looked at a person wrongly. But those are all insane rationales for bad behaviour. Violence can never be justified under any circumstances. However, it left me questioning everything, every step of my life. I question even myself while brushing my teeth. I wonder if brushing my teeth will lead to being assaulted again. It sounds ridiculous but hear me out. What if those who assaulted me were jealous of my perfect teeth because their genetics was inferior and they had tons of problems and thus they bullied me into not brushing my teeth with violence? Just one of my countless thoughts I’ve had ever since the world gifted me violence into my perfect life.

I also question whether wearing nice clothes will lead to further violence. I question if being strong and physically fit will lead me towards being abused. Jealousy is a powerful motivator for people with mental illnesses who are violent. And any point of a person can be perceived with jealousy. What if a bully is jealous of my talent in music composing? Maybe writing music is doing a disservice to myself as it will lead to further violence against me? What if the people bullying me do not want me to shine? I have to ask these questions because there is nobody out there working tirelessly to protect me and my interests, nobody. My mom cares for me, and helps me, but she can’t protect me, she’s quite old. Other than her, nobody here in Canada cares or even pretends to care. I’m basically on my own. Just me and my music. And music can’t protect me, can it?

As a teen I never wondered about jealous people and what damage they can cause. Nobody in high school made fun of me, nobody insulted me even though I have a lazy eye and don’t see well. All my friends were respectful, kind and supportive. What’s more back then they all loved my music and would encourage me towards stardom. But I was always afraid of success. Deep down inside I must have known about jealous people, about bullies, about the violent nature of the rest of you. I’m different, I don’t have any violence in me, I don’t even get angry, I find both of those concepts alien. But the rest of you suffer from it and I live in your world and thus have to learn to co-exist. I have to learn to write music without the bullies knowing. And that is difficult since I also want to release music.

I don’t have any designs on being famous. In fact I’m terrified of the spotlight. In high school, on days when we had to present in front of the class, I would not show up for class. In fact I skipped much of my classes and the teachers never once called home either. Strange, isn’t it? But it allowed me to focus on Linux and programming, which was a sort of school I suppose. My high school was teaching basics of variables and arrays in Turing, which was boring. This is why I was skipping most classes. Who needs biology, chemistry and physics when computers and spaceships would be the future! This was my logic back then. But these days I dream of going back in time and finishing high school. I dream of releasing my music as a teenager, of getting that important feedback from strangers, from industry pundits, from experts whom I respected. I dream of having spent my time differently. Of instead of playing video games of having gone dancing or playing volleyball. Now that I’m a victim of your violent world I dream of something better instead of creating something better, and that bothers me.

I had a goal last year and I tried to stick to it as much as motivation allowed. I made a new folder every month with the name of the month and in it I put my music making experiments. At the end of December last year I tallied up all my files. There was merely fifty of them. My goal for 2023 was to write music every single day and to release an album every month. I believed fully that I could release twelve albums in one year. And there’s no reason why I couldn’t. But fear of violent people, even here in Canada violence rules society, prevented me. I would sit down to write and then I wouldn’t save my work. I would be afraid that saving a song would lead to a fully released track and then bullies would be jealous and would assault me. It’s a type of victim’s paranoia that is self-protective yet not. So instead of writing 365 songs, I wrote only fifty.

This month I have the exact same goal. I want to release twelve albums. But I’ve lowered the bar. I no longer seek to make professionally sounding works, but bad music. I want to release twelve bad albums. That way bullies can not judge me, and they probably won’t assault me if they’re busy laughing at how poor my music is. This goal makes me happy and I realize it is a stepping stone towards a full music career. Most notable artists do not release their experiments, or their bad takes, but I also believe in the #buildinpublic mantra. I want others to learn from my mistakes – I want a better world I suppose that is it in a nutshell.

I want a world of people holding hangs and singing kum-baya. I want people dancing, singing, and playing sports. I am tired of all this violence everywhere. Whenever I look at cable TV channel lineup for the day it’s either violence in entertainment form, violence in the news, or violent TV shows, or something boring. There is nothing in between, there is very rarely an educational show – maybe one nice show per day is all that is available here in Toronto. I remember back in the mid ‘80s when I first started watching TV daily as a kid in Belgrade, we had only three channels and it was packed with good quality content. Almost every show was exciting and interesting. Now some are tempted to say that this is because I was younger. No, show quality has deteriorated definitely. It can be measured. Netflix is all the rage these days, and they produce their own movies, and much of them are formulaic and repetative concepts from the past. Man with gun running around a city type of shows. Nothing interesting have I ever found on streaming services. So I stick to composing music and art.

In fact despite having low vision I’ve taken up a new hobby that might surprise you all. I’ve started to paint with a brush just like my dad Dubravko. I am not very good at it but that is not important whatsoever. I am thrilled every time I put a paintbrush to a white canvas. I enjoy it so immensely. I feel alive when I’m painting. Today, of all things, I’m going to sip herbal tea and paint something I’ve been dreaming of for a long time – I’m going to fill every part of the canvas with a different colour. A kind of kaleidoscopic effect. I’ve never done this. And maybe that’s what music will evolve to in my life. Maybe music reminds me of a weaker me, one who got beat up, abused, locked up and ignored. But painting still doesn’t have any negative connotations. And this is the most important thing. What emotions we associate with our art, with our creations, will be out there in the world. And at no point do I ever wish to contribute negativity to the world through art or any other means. I know a lot of victims of abuse write hateful rap music, or other negative lyrics or art pieces – but I do not wish to embark on such a journey. I wish to ignore what transpired and focus on positivity just like I did when I was a teen, happy in my comfort zone, creating and contributing to the world that made me that happy. Maybe by painting for a while it will bring back all those good vibes that I once associated with art and then I will be able to, once again, freely enjoy composing music. That is the ultimate dream. To feel free to create.