"I give up", said the Las Vegas Wedding Chapel of Personal Identity

So I've decided to give up on Edmonton. I realize that's probably not surprising given the tone of my last few posts. But there it is. I give up. I've met some cool people here. I've found some good projects. I could build a life here and surround myself with awesome people doing awesome things. Awesome people and awesome things I really believe in. But nothing can ever change the fact that this is Edmonton. Nothing can ever change the fact that in order to get to those awesome people and awesome things I'll have to exist in Edmonton, riding the bus with Rednecks, trying desperately not to overhear their mind numbing conversations. Nothing will ever change the fact that this is Edmonton, and I hate it here. And life's too short to live somewhere you hate.

The only thing keeping me here, the only reason I convinced myself it was a good idea to come back, is the tar sands. The guilt and humiliation I felt when I realized that the worst development project on earth was happening where I was from. An American friend in Scotland once told me that she liked to think of herself as from America, as in, not there anymore. That's how I feel about Edmonton, about Alberta. I'm from Alberta, but I don't, can't and won't belong here anymore. And as for the tar sands, maybe I can find a way to fight them from afar. I can't be the kind of activist I want to be here anyway.

The way I look at it, activism can be divided into two camps. There are actions that aim to destroy something negative, activists who fight against the things they don't like in this world. And there are actions that create something positive, activists who devote their energy to creating the world they do want. Don't get me wrong, it's far more complicated than that. Most of the best actions contain elements of both destruction and creation. And that's good, because both are needed. But in general, each action, each activist, each campaign has a focus. In Alberta, there's a lot to fight against. A lot of things I'd like to see destroyed. And there are people out there fighting. But I'm tired of fighting. I'm not even sure I ever really enjoyed it.

Looking back at all of the activism I've done, I see now that it was never the fight that was important to me. Sure, blockading the road into an Icelandic aluminium smelter and stopping a full shift change of workers was a lot of fun. But what was important to me was how we got there. How the entire thing had been planned by consensus. How a group of like-minded and passionate people had assembled from all over Europe to work together. And how we had refused to go ahead with any plan until everyone felt comfortable with it. The most important thing I took away from my time in Iceland was the experience of the temporary community we created. That while the focus of the Saving Iceland campaign was to fight against heavy industry, we were at the same time creating a model for the world we wanted to see, planning our destructive actions using methods and systems we believed in.

Without the simultaneous creation of a life I want to live, I find it difficult to remember what it is I'm fighting for. And it's become obvious to me that I can't create the life I want to live here in Edmonton. Because of the way the city is, because of the way I am, because it's the city I grew up in and will always seem boring to me, because I can only grow vegetables four months out of the year. So I give up. Right now my plan is to run off to Vancouver Island and build myself an earthship. But for the last few months my life plan has been changing almost weekly, so I'm still open to suggestions. I am the “Las Vegas Wedding Chapel of Personal Identity” after all.