JamesB's blog

So yesterday I was asked to look after my cousin's two children Hunter and Paya. Both of whom are under 4. At first, the thought of me keeping these two active kids would be easy. Boy was I wrong.

When I went to their home, I knew I was in for a special treat. Hunter, who has a speech impediment, began giving me a hint that my day with them was going to be an interesting one. Sure enough, one by one he and his sister began screaming, yelling and laughing as I chased after them. Hunter, would baby talk with her baby sister who is only 2 (perhaps planning their attack) would tell her to go to the room n throw toys into the freezer. While I was in the room taking out the toys out of the freezer, Hunter would get a chair and climb up to the cupboards yelling, "Apple sauce" LOL. As I took him down from the counter, he would grab my legs and wait for me to start walking.

I tried to best keep my cool by lowering my voice to the point I had to finally put one of them to bed. Although she cried, I laid on the bed with her and read her a story about Na-na-bush, an old legend our teacher used to read to us when it would be thundering. (I am not sure if this was a good nap time story but I did anyway LOL).

Back to Hunter, while her sister was asleep, he began throwing his toys at me, and yelling "apple sauce, apple sauce" finally he got to a bag of chips and sat in front of the tv all happy and quiet. I decided to do some home schooling with him and taught him how to count by using his fingers, toes and body parts. As He counted, my mind went back to the time I too was a child. I could remember giving my babysitters a hard time to the point they would throw us in the room until we were sound asleep.

In the battle of the mind, there is always two sides. There is the good side and the bad side.
The good side will always stick to the positive while the bad side sticks to the negative. As with everybody, I too deal with my inner demons - often times I want to let it overtake me but when I look at in another angle of the situation, I see that if it does, then my gifts and dreams will perish and die.

Recently, I had to tackle with a very tough decision that involved my position at SEVEN. I had feelings of defeat, hopelessness and a bit of depression as I thought of what the outcome would be if I do let this go. Then I took another angle of it, If I do stay, maybe this feeling will make me a stronger and more courages person. I took the time to consult with a friend of mine who told me one thing I always say to him too, that is "follow your heart". I felt like I was in a crossroads between good and bad. Finally. My decision was to stay with SEVEN until it is actually time for me to go.

I am here not for myself but for others. I desire to help my fellow young people who help them walk in the positive side of life. I desire to see them succeed and overcome their struggles in life. Decisions in life often times come with a price. It's that price that proves that what we do hows that we are doing something right. I am proud to be involved with SEVEN. The work we do, the things we do behind closed doors are only small things yet we believe will grow bigger in the long run.

Hey guys! I hope everybody is doing great.
Going on from last week’s blog, I discussed our recent decision to relocate to the city of Toronto. It took a lot of pre-planning and a whole lot of “inner-battles” with everything happening. I seriously tell you if you want to move to a city like Toronto, be ready for the unexpected.

In the last blog, I also mentioned about parents. We talked about it with them and consequently, they didn’t say much about it except that they would try to help us out wherever needed. Now that we got that out of the way, we have been apartment hunting. I prefer the North York area simply because I’m used to this area. We, meaning Kerina and myself, have found a place ready. The guy renting this place to us says it is entirely up to us if we want his furniture in there or if we want to use our own. Of course, we both decided to have him keep his stuff there. The guy agreed.

Our next step before this final move is to allocate some funds. This move will require a lot of money… (yikes!!!). I am happy overall that things are going smooth then expected. We thought we’d hit some rocks but we haven’t hit ‘em yet. Again our decision to do this massive shift has received a lot of feed back from many people. We have been called nuts, crazy, awesome, super-cool, wickedly insane and so forth. We take them all as compliments. Nothing offensive. We want to prove a point to our readers that if you want to set your mind on something, then you can do it. This is our case. With some on going research, I think this will be an interesting journey.

Changes. It’s something everybody is afraid of sometimes.
Most times, change brings an uncertainty of what is to come. Change also brings a life full of different dramatic experiences. Change can be used in two terms: good or bad. In this case, good!

Change happens to everybody; some change their lifestyles, some change their habits. Then there are those who change cities to have new jobs or live in a different town to experience something different. Some leave for educational purposes and health reasons. Change is something we all need sooner or later. As writers and members of SEVEN Youth Media, we have seen a lot of changes happening in our own personal lives. We have seen changes in our lifestyles, changes in our communication and outlook of how we see things.

Being based respectfully in our communities, Kerina (based out of Webeque) and myself (based in Weagamow) talked hours in terms of moving away from our community for a while. We talked for days and shared our own experiences as to why we would do such a thing. One thing led to another, another led to another. We talked to our friends about it and they were rather happy rather then being sad.

Hey people, guess it’s time to write another blog.

I have been keeping busy trying to keep myself occupied with work, school and of course with SEVEN. I have to admit, it is not always easy when you have to meet with deadlines for any of the three. But what can I say about that? I love it. I love life. I love every minute of it. Although stressing but the rewards of it at the end is quite remarkable.

So this morning (March 11) I finally got a package that I have been waiting for since almost two weeks. I had told Joyce to send me up some recent and past issues of SEVEN which I have to send out to some communities in northern Manitoba. By word of mouth, they had requested some copies to see what we’ve been up to and what our team has been doing to keep you, the reader, focused on today’s youth matters.

I spoke with one teacher from the St. Theresa’s Point First Nation and she told me how youth in her community need something like this, to read stories of other young people who are making a huge difference in their communities. She shared her desires about how she wants to see the youth change. Of course, like many of our communities, her community has been hit hard with a high rate of drug use and abuse.

Her goals and ambitions are to get SEVEN there and perhaps plant a positive mindset to those who really need it. That’s SEVEN!

It is always an honor to hear what SEVEN is doing in terms of bettering the lives of our young people no matter where they are from. That’s our goal, our hope.

We’re proud of the work we do and we’ll always strive to change the negative to positive. That’s SEVEN for you! *Applause*. Until then, I remain.

My attempt with the “water diet” turned out okay. Or so I think.

I started back in January, on the 18th, and ended on Feb 5th. I know, I know, I shouldn’t have stopped but I did. It wasn’t because I wanted to drink tea or coffee but the pressure of it was strong enough to make me sleep more often. Why? I think it was the lack of sugar in my body or the toxins in me were wasting away.

Either way, I think I did well in terms of what I had wanted to try. Drinking water for three weeks (and may I add, eating healthy) really gave me much more than I expected.
First, my sleeping pattern went back to normal. (slept 8 hours max); second, I felt more energized and felt more power to conquer the world (kidding about that part) but I felt so much more energized that the max time of my run on the treadmill went from a half hour to a full hour. Third, I was able to think clearly. I felt like a new person. (Like a newborn baby) LOL Kidding again. But I truly felt refreshed mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally. Also, I got some people asking me if I was sick because of my “glowing” complexion. LOL I truly loved the attention. Last but not least, I think I lost some weight too. But the sad part is I was unable to fit into some of my clothes (either I was gaining weight or… I don’t know what LOL).

The three weeks I spent doing this were amazing. I could honestly tell you to try drinking more water with some exercise included. Back in my early days (okay like five years ago) I used to have major problems with Acne. Like geez to be called names like “pizza face” and “acne boy,” do you think you would want to show yourself in public again? No. I really wanted a cure for this problem.

I have been a bit slow with my blogs lately. That is because I have been extremely busy trying to get some of my school work done and over with. You see, I started school again after being “kicked-out” four years ago. I never looked back when all hell broke loose. I have since had many opportunities in terms of working and holding different job titles which I am glad I got to do in the last four years. It wasn’t until the fall when I realized that my goals needed to be accomplished. My goal was to complete high school and go on to college and perhaps university.

Before considering going back to school, I worked in children’s aid services for two years. During this time, I saw the challenges many of our young people face head on; the lack of education, the lack of social skills and so forth. It was then I felt a strong conviction that I needed to go back to school and finish what I had dreamt. I honestly felt like a fool working here without any education or background experiences. Yet, I believed the creator allowed me to hold this job to experience things that would make me consider going back to school to better myself and the young people I would be working with.

I just got back from a three day trip to the remote community of Pikangikum First Nation. I was sent to see firsthand on the issues that this community faces. I arrived at the airport and met mr Whyderman Black, who is the Crisis coordinator for his community. He was pretty happy to meet me when I told him I was working with the Seven Youth Media.

As we drove into town, I began asking him questions like thenumber of people who live in this First Nation, and which house is whose, etc. I was curious about being in what felt like a new place to me. Pikangikum First Nation has been around for quite some time. It is located 100 kilometres northwest from Red Lake and has been suffering from extreme social problems.

As we drive in towards town, homes all spray painted in
graffiti and gang-related signs all cover each home that are covered with boarded up windows. I ask Mr. Black, “Do people actually live in these homes?” he looks at me and says, “Yes”. These homes would be worth to destroy as they should not be inhabitable at all. Like so many other First Nations communities in Canada, Pikangikum’s social issues vary from lack of housing, lack of sewer and fresh water services, alcohol and drug abuse and lastly the ramped suicide that has increasingly been clouding this community of 2,500 for years.

Recently, I started drinking more water and less other beverages thinking this would be good for a blog for Seven as well as to better my health.

I figured my body needed more water intake rather than taking in coffee, tea and other unwanted beverages on a day to day basis. I started on Sunday (Jan. 17) and we’ll see how long I could do this. I know I can’t live without coffee or tea but as a test run, I said to myself, for 2 weeks I will not drink any of the three except once per day (haha).

A bit of why I decided to drink more water and less the other stuff. For the last little while, I had been experiencing a bit of irritability, fatigue, nervousness, dizziness, weakness and headaches. I then did an online research on why I was feeling like this then boom, it said, “An average adult body contains 42 liters of water and with just a small loss of 2.7 litres he or she can suffer dehydration displaying the following symptoms” that I had just written. As I got in-depth in my research about water, I learnt that it can have a lot of positive effect on the human body.

Drinking plenty of water also gives you a glowing complexion to your face as well as you feel more energetic and more strength.

The Seven Youth writers/bloggers are reaching yet another deadline. You can just imagine the last minute sounds of typing and telephone calls we all have to make as we go into the next production cycle.

As a group of young gifted writers, we have been able to learn on a day to day basis of basic journalism. This goes to say that a lot of us have not been to any college to take journalism but rather have used our spirit, soul and mind to express our well-written words.

I for one have never considered journalism nor have I had any thoughts of ever being a writer or a person to ever think of working the field of mainstream media. Since I started involving myself with the media, I have learnt a lot from other well-trained journalists like Adrienne Fox-Keesic, Bryan Phelan and many more.

I remember visiting my aunt one evening and perusing through the issue of Wawatay News and she asked me one question that triggered my interest in journalism. I remember so vividly by her asking me “What do you want to be?” I read through the whole newspaper and said, “I want to be a writer!”. Years come flying by, I got into high school. I met a group of reporters from CBC and Wawatay. I remember sitting there as they were interviewing my classmates and me writing notes and pretending I was actually one of them.

Zooming forward, as I got used to writing notes and keeping things memorized, I seen an ad on the newspaper calling for freelance writers to submit stories and photos. I remember my teacher came calling for me with excitement as he said, “James, did you see the ad for writers?” I told him yes and write away he helped me write a note to the editor of Wawatay which began another deeper experience with journalism.