This is the bar at the Hotel California in Todos Santos, Baja California Sur, Mexico. It’s a little tourist trap that claims to be the Hotel California of the Eagles song of the same name. In reality it isn’t, but it was still interesting to visit.

The famous Cabo Wabo Nightclub. Owned by Sammy Hagar. Lot’s of fun, people of all ages go here.

A lady is washing the street in front of her shop in Cabo San Lucas.

The beautiful Dreams Los Cabos resort. I felt like a king!

A rusty metal Mariachi band on the roof of the Hotel California, Todos Santos, Mexico. 

A Mexican guard dog.

Laying down on the job. Guarding a corner store is tiring work!

These pelicans look like the are up to no good, don’t they?

The courtyard at the Puerto Parasio Mall in Cabo San Lucas.

Scotiabank! Just like at home!

A sombrero and running shoes hanging outside a shop in Cabo. Odd.

I have no idea what this sign means.

Home sweet home, for someone I guess. Todos Santo, Mexico.

The problem with following your heart comes when the hearts wants something that conflicts with what the rest of you wants. For instance, all of my life my heart has desired to be creative and be involved in the arts, which directly conflicts with my desire to have a strong, stable income stream and live a comfortable or even luxurious lifestyle. Unless I get lucky and achieve some level of celebrity, it is unlikely I can have both without compromising.

On the other hand, ignoring your heart and making decisions based solely on the practical considerations of your brain is not necessarily the best choice either. And personal example from my own life is my decision to attend broadcasting school. Though I do not regret my decision, I must admit in hindsight I made it for all of the wrong reasons. I did not go because I was truly passionate about broadcasting, thought I did have a strong interest, I went because my brain told me and was a more practical, smart choice, that theatre school. I thought broadcasting could be a good “day job” for an actor. I was wrong, and this may explain why I have not found success in the broadcasting industry.

Recently I have chosen to follow my heart and get back to my real passion, acting. A curious thing happens when you make a decision that truly resonates with you. Things start falling into place. Several months ago I was ready to sign with a small agency based in the suburbs. Another actor I know told me she thought that would be a mistake. Her opinion was that I should hold out for a bigger agency with more “pull”, as she thought I was beyond what I small, relatively new agency could do for me. She then went on to suggest a list of three specific agencies I should target, with one in particular that she thought would be a good choice. I took her advice and decided to wait.

Now here is where it gets interesting. About a week later I was hard at work making coffee (I work in a coffee shop, at least for now) and a lady came in and as I was making her drink she made a comment about being tired and not wanting to go back to work. I asked her where she worked, and she says, “I am a talent agent, I own _____ Talent”. Well it just so happened that that was the exact agency that my actor friend had told me I should try to get into. To make a long story short she ended up asking me to drop an audition DVD off at her office.

It took me more than a month to get myself organized and prepare that audition DVD, and during that time she did not come into the coffee shop even once. I was a little concerned that she would have forgotten about me or no longer be interested, but nevertheless I packed up my resume, photo and the DVD and took it to work with me just the other day, with the intention of stopping by the agency to drop it off on my way home from work. Well wouldn’t you know it on this particular day she finally came back in, and what did she say? She said, “So are you ever going to drop off that resume for me?”

Coincidence? Perhaps, but that’s two coincidences in a row that resulted from me letting my heart guide me.

It doesn’t stop there, just the other day I was auditioning for a play. The audition location turned out to me in a very sketchy part of town. My brain started taking over, it wanted me to ditch the audition. It was saying, “Crap dude, do you really want to have to come down here to rehearse a play several nights a week? They could be weirdos you’re auditioning for”

I almost listened and bailed, but then I realized that this was a non-profit theatre group and this was probably the only place they could afford the rent. I followed my heart went inside, had one of the best auditions of my life, and even had a fun. And then just tonight I was walking home from work and stopped to grab a shawarma for dinner. As I was waiting for my food, who should wander by, but the director of that play, and he had some pretty encouraging things to say. In a city of two million people, it’s another interesting coincidence…

All in all, I think your brain is far more likely to lead you astray than your heart. I’m not saying you should stop thinking, but learn to keep those thoughts in check. It’s easy to let your brain take over your life to the point where you spend all of your time thinking, but never doing. If you follow your heart, trust your gut, things have a way of working out, and usually for the better.

Well once again we have a similar case on our hands, and once again, the psychopathic nutcase is gonna get off. I am talking of course about Vince Li, the insane lunantic who stabbed an innocent young man on a greyhound bus about fifty times, and then decapitated him, mutilated his body and ate his eyeballs. His trial ends tomorrow, and get this: Both the prosecution and the defence agree he should be found not guilty by reason of insanity.

You have got to be fucking kidding me. Oh, there’s no doubt this guy is fucking off his rocker, but in my oh so humble opinion I don’t care if you’re the biggest nut job to ever live, if you carve up an innocent passenger on a greyhound bus in a totally random attack, you should be locked up forever. That means you NEVER get out. EVER. This is for the good of society, and the good of society should always come first over the needs of a murderer, even if “God” did tell him to do it.

As it stands, by finding him not criminally responsible, the door has been left open for some moron psychiatrist with more education than common sense to pronounce this nut job sane in a couple of years and let him back out into society. Then he can stop taking his medication and carve someone else up. In the meantime he might be moving into a care home right next door to you.

I’ll tell you what we should do, we should deport this man back to China and let the Chinese deal with him. In this instance they might act with more sense than our stupidly liberal justice system will.

Let’s face it, mental illness should not be an excuse to get away with murder. Mentally ill or not, this man is as much a danger to society as any other murderous bastard. The idea that his mental illness prevented him from knowing it was wrong is obscene. We have fucking Pitt-bull dogs put to death  when they attack someone, even if they DON’T kill them, and I am sorry, but unlike a human being, they actually don’t know that mutilating people is bad.

I turned away, but then on an impulse I asked him is I could take his portrait. I quickly snapped this photo.

It would be fairly accurate to say that I have been going through a period of change over the past few months. The scope of those changes are for the moment private, though I suppose anyone with the will to do so could connect the dots and at least form a rough idea for themselves.

But allow me to fast forward to now, where I find myself living in downtown Vancouver, quite a change from the little town of Nelson to be sure. Few things in life our free, and there have certainly been trade-offs, some minor, some more significant, but for whatever reason my move into the city has set in motion many great things for me. Perhaps one of the simplest is that I now get to walk to work every day, which makes me feel healthy and alive.

Of course it also means that on a daily basis I encounter some interesting characters on my way to work. Some of them try to sell me drugs or stuff they have stolen, such as cameras (hey dude, you want this camera for only five bucks!), and I can now safely say that I have met at least one person claiming to be the anti-christ, and another claiming to be the messiah. Of course more often than not it is just boring ol’ panhandlers begging for change, some polite, some not so much. Some just sit quietly holding out their cup, while others are pushy, make up elaborate lies, and yell when you don’t give them what they want. They say that familiarity breeds contempt, and I can safely say that is true. While it has always been my habit to give my spare change away, I have actually found myself doing it less and less now that I have more opportunities to do so.

I guess my sympathy has been eroded away somewhat. After all, when it gets down to it, these people did at some point choose their own destiny, didn’t they? Ah, and doesn’t that just give me the perfect excuse to harden my heart and pass them on by.

But then just the other day I passed a man on Granville Street. He had a cardboard sign laid out in front of him stating that he was “ugly, dumb and broke”. Well he was certainly ugly and broke, but for some reason I just didn’t want to accept that he was dumb. After all, would a truly dumb person have had the wit to make up the sign that he did?

It triggered a new question in my mind. Why. I still had no doubt that this person had chosen his own fate, but I realized that the more important question was “why?”. What events in this man’s life lead him to decide that he was dumb? What events lead to him choosing to use drugs and alcohol to the point where he had indeed become very ugly? How is it that his self esteem had been eroded to such a disastrous level?

I don’t actually have the answers to those questions, because I cannot begin to imagine them. My childhood was not perfect, my young adulthood wasn’t either. But whether he simply had greater pain, or less tolerance for it, I can never be qualified to judge what I have not experienced for myself. I cannot rescue him, fix him, or really do much to help him, but what I can do is refrain from judging him. And on the days I can afford to, I can toss him a few coins.

What he does with them is not up to me to judge.