Last night as my roommate and I walked into our apartment to find all the power out and the -20 degree cold slowly creeping in:

Me: Thank you laptop battery! We can watch a movie.

Berto: Sure, what do you feel like?

Me: I dunno, you?

Berto: The Great Outdoors?

Me: Meh. I was thinking Aliens.

Berto: Whoa. We’re kind of on opposite ends of the scale on that one.

We settled on Cool Runnings, for obvious reasons.

I’m sitting in the bus shelter. Christie and Dupont. Waiting. In a see-through box. Staring at the passing traffic. A pair of Asian guys walk past; big, flamboyant hair and clothing, the kind only Asian kids can pull off. Another man. A bit older, he’s walking towards them. He looks Italian or Portuguese. I’m watching as he stops them and asks, “Hey, either of you guys, by any chance, have a cigarette?” They both pause long enough in their conversation to shake their heads. He mumbles or grumbles or something. Keeps walking. Past me in my glass cage. He turns his head and unleashes a literal stream of spit against the see-through wall of the bus shelter. It’s dribbled halfway to the ground before he’s stopped ejecting spit from his mouth. And he’s looking me right in the eye the whole time. Watching me watching him.

And I think to myself:

“Yeah. I have cigarettes. I have a lot. Fresh pack. I would’ve given you one. Maybe even two. But you never asked.

Instead you spat at me.

I think I’ll have a smoke.”

This man is my new hero; someone who fully appreciates the utter perfection of aimless meandering.

In my constant effort to make myself a more engaged digital citizen, I often find myself at the business end of a problem of integration. I like to write – I have a blog. I like photography – I have a photoblog. I have designed materials professionally – I have a portfolio. All of them online but all of them exclusive of each other, in separate locations.

Granted, locale doesn’t mean much on the Internet. Nevertheless, I’ve been thinking of ways to combine my various digital online outlets into one unit, comprised of a written blog, a section for (almost) daily photography, and a portfolio portion, to which I could direct people interested in my work. That’s what I’m trying to do with mattwatson.ca; turn it into a hub of all internet-related me.

This blog will, of course, be my personal written outlet, and as such will probably contain unsavoury language (at some point). However, it is my intention to keep this blog well written and thoughtfully composed.

Here’s hoping.