Toronto Friday
How does the unpaid intern settle a heavy bar tab?
Working in Toronto in your mid-to-late twenties burns a candle from both ends. It’s the perfect time and place to jump headfirst into the gladiatorial hamster wheel.
The working culture was vastly different from what I experienced in Vancouver. Work hard, party hard. The cliche never lies. The hungry intern never sleeps. When you move to a new city to follow your career, your job is your life, your family and your recreation.
This is an excerpt from a poem about that time in my life. It’s one of my favourites to perform on the mic.
Let’s get into it, Toronto-onto-onto, Friday, FRIDAY, FRIDAY!!!!
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What’s bothering me?
(HAPPY HOUR in a dark time)
Not much, baby.
Toronto Friday don’t care.
Get your balls out.
work-hard-play-hard:
Burned out? remember, there’s ALWAYS
“Someone Else” (younger, hungrier)
to catch the chase. Flex.
You’re a Beautiful Machine.
Show ‘em how you do: 9-5, 5-9, 9-12, 12-3.
Spin this internship into gold.
(Will I get to go home for Christmas?)
Find yourself: standing on a sticky tabletop
at a karaoke bar in Koreatown drizzle,
screaming Nickelback’s worst hits
(cuz it reminds you of somewhere
[home] in yr sour prairie heart)
surrounded by people you spend 40+
precarious hours a week with — but now
they’re funhouse disco ball refractions
watching K-pop videos in a dizzy peripheral,
folding furry coffee-burnt tongues,
nursing canker sores with whiskey burns,
sweat-pocked ralph lauren polos curling at the collar
(ulcers nest below the belt line).
👏🏽