The Meditative Zone

It’s day 5 of Ramadan and I’ve been chilling in this meditative zone for the last few days. I’ve been thinking about where I am now and where I’d like to see myself in the future. I got accepted into a 1 year postgrad writing/communications program this fall and it’s giving me an idea of the life I want to lead. It’s also forcing me re-evaluate my online writing in terms of putting out news items and critical essays. I got into this as an aspiring novelist and I honestly want to focus more on that. Will I quit online writing? Right now, no. I’m just thinking out loud and who knows how I’ll feel in a few days or post-Ramadan but I’m happy that I’m thinking about it since the last few months has been rough. I want to get back to being that person who knew what she wanted and how to plan for getting it.

Who knows? Maybe I just need a break from it all.

I’ve also been thinking about writing short posts every day for the rest of Ramadan so we’ll see if I can do this. It’ll be about whatever I’m into that given day and I can define “short” however I want so there is no pressure.

For now, here are some things I’ve written the last few months:

March

Over at Panels, I picked Spider-Woman #4 as the best comic I read for the month. I wrote about comics for the blind and my reaction to the DC Rebirth livestream via gifs.

At WWAC, Christa and I reviewed the Yo-Kai Watch toys as well as interviewed editor Allison O’Toole for Toronto Comics Anthology vol 3. I reviewed the new Mediator novella (Proposal) Salt to the Sea, The Widow, In Real Life and defended The Illegal for Canada Reads. I contributed to the cute babies in comics post and wrote reviews of the Canadian Film Fest for both short and feature films. I covered Book Beat while Angel was away and talked about my love for the Batman v Superman cereal.

April

More mini book reviews with The Night Gardener and Exit, Pursued By A Bear. I wrote about the depiction of residential schools in Black Apple and my favourite comics review to date is Mean Girls Club. I also added my two cents into the Dramaworld roundtable discussion. At Panels, I wrote part two of my TCAF catch-up series.

May

The final TCAF catch-up post is up! I had a blast at this year’s festival and even read some cool comics. I did mini book reviews of The Winner’s Kiss and The Raven King (also chatted with the WWAC crew about our feelings on TRK). I took over Book Beat for a hot minute and got the ladies in formation to discuss Lemonade. I went to the Festival of Trees this year which was a lot of fun and I added my thoughts on the Preacher premiere.

My favourite thing I wrote in May was The Misrepresentation of Daredevil’s Elektra about how Elektra is pathologized in the second season of Daredevil compared to the other white and male characters.

Like I said, it’s Ramadan so I thought I’d draw your attention to #RamadanReads which is about signal boosting muslim storytellers and letting the book industry know that representation matters. You can check out the tag on Twitter for recommendations or the account: @RamadanReads.

-A.