My past is haunted.

The places I once frequented have become places of evil. The old Western dorms in which I raised hell as a youth have returned to the den of sin that they were when I was there, the difference is that now the patrons are forced to worship the god of money. The old WOT Outlet has become a retailer of foreign-made costumes and costume accessories, open one month of the year selling lead-based products to exhibitionists and children. Whether it is just coincidence, or whether the empty vacuum of my soul sucked the decency out of each place, I do not know. But capitalizing on the holiday of the devil is maybe the most evil thing there is to do. Or do two evils make a holy? Ask the Tim Horton’s inside of the Walmart.

Returning to a familiar place, one expects things to stay relatively the same. I got back, I told myself to make things different. To avoid falling back into the habits that I decided to leave behind in the first place. To not slip back into the hole of unclimbable negativity. I decided that upon arriving back to Regina (which made me feel like I had failed, not because of Regina, but because no one moves here by choice), that things would need to be different. Starting fresh in a new city is common, but starting fresh in an old city is more rare, I didn’t want to let comfort and my selfish being let me return to the mindset that I purposefully left almost two years ago. My attitude, my leisure activities, my transportation habits would have to change

I am feeling haunted by these old ghosts. Watching television that I don’t even like to reward myself for the twenty hours a week of hard labour or the three hours every two days of writing that I invest. Zombieing out to Dr Mario and digital Scrabble. I am trying to learn the balance of leisure and entertainment because when I’m not working on something with purpose, I feel like I am falling back into that haunted place that I so badly want to avoid.

Human progression occurs. Human failure occurs more often. Halloween weekend is the time that we get to fantasize about who we wish we could be and dress up like them. Or dress up like a complete douchers or sluts. Pretty well everyone has one costume that they’ve used several times in the past and that they keep for back up, in case they can’t come up with anything better. Easy back up plans. A cowboy: plaid shirt, cowboy hat. Hunter: plaid shirt, gun. Hockey referee: dad’s ref jersey, hockey helmet. It is always easy to be the cowboy that we were last year, but this year I want to progress to something new.

A cowboy rockstar. A referee astronaut. A slutty lumberjack princess.