Tara Henley - Lean Out: A Meditation on the Madness of Modern Life

One of the great challenges of my life is that I have never had the stamina to match my enthusiasm. In the beginning of things, the shiny and new stage, Im like those motivational posters in corporate boardrooms, all triumphant hikers atop mountain peaks and eagles soaring through cloudless skies. Which is to say: I unleash my potential, I go above and beyond, I make things happen. And theres a real sense of satisfaction to be had in that. At least, there would be if I could ever get a moment to stop and catch my breath.

The thing is, Im a sprinter, not a marathoner. And so, after hurling myself at a job for months or years, I inevitably get weary and worn out. I cant keep up the pace. And then I get a lung infection, or some other such ailment, and I can never quite seem to regain my momentum.

This is the story of my complicated relationship with modern life. I moved to a big city at the age of thirty, and stayed until I was weeks shy of my fortieth birthday. But if I had a stronger constitution, I would probably be there still, logging twelve-hour days and donning cocktail dresses well into my sixties.

When I arrived in Toronto, back in 2006, I had no idea Id stay. Like many across the country, I thought it was too big, too ugly, too corporate, too cold. I figured there was a reason my hippie parents had fled the city when I was still an infant, driving a run-down camper across the States to the West Coast, stopping at folk festivals along the way.

So I cant say that I wanted to move to Toronto, per se. It was more that I needed to move, period.

In short: my hometown was suffocating me. I found Vancouvers scenic beauty oppressive, its inhabitants slow-moving and smug. I did not want to sit in coffee shops, waiting for friends to finally drift in, thirty minutes late. I did not want to check out The Secret. I did not want to quit eating refined sugar, or have my chakras read, or attend workshops to learn Lions Breath. I did not want to do a master cleanse.

There were other problems, too. After completing a masters degree, I was $60,000 in debt. And trying to make my living as a freelance journalist. It was difficult to pay rent, and at times even to buy groceries.

I hadnt planned for this state of affairs. During grad school, studying English Lit, I had joined the staff at the student newspaper on a whimlargely because one of its editors, now an acclaimed essayist and stand-up comic, penned a weekly column called Thank You/Screw You that was so insanely smart and funny I felt compelled to get involved.

My first assignment was a news story on Disney and sweatshop labor, in the summer of 2001. Nobody in Canada was able to get a comment from the company. Late one night in the papers cavernous basement office, I somehow got through to Disneys director of corporate relations and he gave me an interview. The next day, I went to see my favorite professor, and she told me I should call up our local independent newsweekly and offer to sell them the story.

I did, and they bought it, and then after it ran the news editor agreed to meet with me. Do you want to do this? he asked over coffee. It had never occurred to me that I could become a journalist. Without hesitating, I said yes. I was, by then, writing my masters thesis on hip-hop (a story for another day), and so the news editor referred me to the music editor, who started assigning me concert reviews and interviews.

I soon discovered one of the great joys of journalism: you could get curious about something, anything at all, and call up whoever was doing it and ask them about it. I loved this. And I loved doing things people in my sleepy West Coast town would never have imagined possible. Covering global hip-hop summits in Caracas or Johannesburg, say, or landing an online column with the American rap bible, XXL. I loved feeling like I was bang-smack in the middle of the action. Of life.

Of course, I knew absolutely nothing in those days, and was too scared to ask anyone, let alone my editor. I did not know, for instance, that it was not normal for a male recording artist you interviewed on the phone to invite you backstage after his show to say hello. (I learned fast.) I did not know that you werent supposed to spend your own money chasing down stories, either, so I waitressed and sent myself to Manhattan to stand in the back of B.B. Kings at two in the morning, surrounded by semi-famous rappers, and to share vegan meals in the East Village with radical rap duos who were unfailingly polite.