Livin' in the city

I was holding out on writing this blog, hoping that world events would turn a different way and I could go back to an old well on this blog. 

Maybe next week. 

While I didn't exactly grow up rural, the communities I grew up in were far from cities. As a kid I always wanted to live in a city. The lights of the skyscrapers, the bustle at street level, the culture and the 24 hour life always appealed to me. 

Of course, living in these bucolic conservative little cities on the prairie shielded me from the gross underbellies of the city. The pollution, the crime, the poverty and the noise. I had to move to the city to see the whole picture. 

Now, at a quarter million or so residents, Regina is far from a megalopolis. But it's got some tall buildings (including the one I work in), some interesting culture and more crime and drug problems than you can shake a stick at. 

Last night as I headed home from Open Mic, I was really gravitating to that positive vibe that I've chased by living in a city. I just left a very entertaining evening full of all the various performing arts. The city was aglow in the lights only high rise buildings can provide and I was tempted by the juicy temptation of an 11PM Whopper. It felt like this was why I was here. 

But I also passed by several people, bent over from the damage fentanyl addiction has caused. Passed mounds of garbage in my alley as I got home. I went from high to low pretty quickly. 

So what am I getting at here? 

I think I'm just returning to the same theme I've been feeling and discussing over the past year or so since I came back to blogging. The ying/yang of things. That there are positives and negatives to everything and I don't know where to fit in it all. 

I think the fact that we are living in a time of extremism when I've been raised in what is now proving to be a very stable time is part of it too. It's hard not to see how bad it is in your backyard when the whole world looks like it's burning down. 

So all that to say, I was hoping we'd be voting on a new pope today and I could restart the campaign. But we aren't so I'm babbling for a few hundred words. 

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.