What's good, y'all? June has been up and down for me , to say the very least. On one hand, I finally got to see Toronto, though there wasn't much room for recording or performing. On the other, stress kicked my ass for most of the month. I've recovered a bit since, so let's go over some of the highlights(?) that went down during June.
For starters, I stayed at Ryerson U during the Nation Community Radio Conference in Toronto with my CKDU co-worker Nivie. The people were great, but the accommodations... Not so much.
That would probably be bad enough if not for what happened a day or two after I made that initial video...
Oy... I can't really blame facilities at Ryerson, because they were really kind about everything and even apologized, but it still had me sketched out like crazy LOL.
Other than that and a couple of scheduling conflicts, the NCRC was great, the keynotes were amazing; my personal favourite being Dr. Mark Cooper explaining how Community/Campus radio played a large part in turning hip hop into a national phenomenon in Canada. I filmed various bits and pieces of it on my Instagram story, which you can view
on my Insta page. And then, to cap the conference off, we ended it with awards, performers, and chocolate covered strawberries.
No, really.
After the conference was when the burnout starting hitting me hard. Not helping was personal and work issues flaring up (which I'm going to refrain from going into detail to avoid embarrassing those involved), and my continued struggle with Imposter Syndrome concerning my music and job. A lot of this cooled down after a week or two, but I knew I had to put some things on the backburner for the time being while I reorganized myself.
That thing ended up being the JoyRide, so that's going on a sabbatical for the next couple months or so. However, I did promise to make a new episode after I came back from the NCRC, and I wanted to keep my promise:
My last JoyRide episode (for now) featured Nova Scotian artist/webcomic creator
Kiwi, and we mainly talked about her new webcomic "Summertime Girlfriends", and LGBGTQ+ inclusion in mainstream media. Kiwi was great to talk to, and is a great person in general. If you wanna peep the first part of their comic, check it out on
Tapas Comics.
In addition to all the other stuff going on, I helped organize an all indigenous music show, for National Indigenous day in Canada (June 21). A lot of things went wrong at the last minute, but things went smoothly otherwise, and it was a great time. I'd post the audio of it, but I'm still working on splicing it all together.
And that pretty much wraps it up for what went down in June. Hopefully the rest of the summer is less of a roller coaster, haha. See you guys on the flipside!
~Vadell~
