Author Archives: Kamryn Hamagami-Postill

The Joys Of Reality TV

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It’s like watching a train wreck. It’s so bad but for some reason I just can’t take my eyes off of it. I’m talking about reality TV.

At some point, I bet you’ve sworn off reality TV. “It’s trash,” you say. “It’s scripted,” you insist. And yet, there you are, four hours deep into a Love Is Blind marathon, emotionally invested in people who met two weeks ago in a pod. So why do you keep coming back to these chaotic, dramatic, and kinda ridiculous TV shows? Probably cause it’s just entertaining but it can be a bit annoying too. And trust me, I’ve seen my fair share of reality TV and to be completely honest, I kinda love it, but lately I’ve just been getting more annoyed and over it. 

There’s a couple things that always keep me coming back for more. First, sometimes I can’t believe what I’m seeing is real. I mean it’s probably heavily scripted but hey the people have to have some sort of emotional investment into what’s going on right? Sometimes it’s just so absurd and insane that once I’m in, I’m invested and I can’t look away. It’s also just good drama that you don’t have to deal with or be a part of. I mean admit it, drama can be juicy, being in it is no fun, so reality TV is the perfect way to get your dose of the madness. It lets you watch the drama you would never want in your actual life. Betrayals, love triangles, explosive arguments over absolutely nothing – it’s a trainwreck you can’t take your eyes off of. And the best part? It’s not your problem, you can just enjoy the mess without the stress. 

Yes, reality TV can be very predictable but isn’t that nice sometimes? I think it’s nice to be able to just turn your brain off and just destress and watch something that is generally easy to follow (besides all the messy love triangles, those can be hard to follow….) Be honest with yourself, some reality TV is so bad, it’s good. The editing is over-the-top, the storylines are so crazy it’s insane, and yet, it’s impossible to look away. We roll our eyes, mock the people on it and insist we could never be that dramatic… yet somehow, you keep pressing “Next Episode.”

I, for one, enjoy little sprinkles of reality TV here and there and I’ll never say no to a new episode of the Kardashians. What about you? Do you love the messy storylines? Or prefer something a bit more sane? 

Guilty Pleasure Songs

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I know you have that one song (or multiple) that you hate to love. The one you claim to despise, skip right away when it comes on in the car with friends, and maybe even roll your eyes when you hear it out in public. But when no one’s around your belting out every lyric word for word. You want to want to hate it cause everybody else, but you just can’t love. Maybe you have  a secret playlist full of them or maybe you have no shame in the game but you have your guilty pleasure song(s). 

So what makes it a guilty pleasure? Maybe people see it as cheesy, overplayed, ridiculous, an annoying one hit wonder, or one of those songs put out by an influencer to add to their 15 minutes of fame, whatever it may be, people hate it and you love it. Maybe the nostalgia factor kicks in. Think of pretty much anything Nickelback, or maybe one of Addison Raes singles, music snobs love to mock it but hey I’m not opposed, if it has a catchy beat and tune I’m all ears. Many guilty pleasure songs are tied to a specific moment in your life—maybe a high school dance, a family road trip, or a wild night out with friends. Songs like Britney Spears’ “…Baby One More Time” or The Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way” transport you back to simpler times.

2 summers ago when Nickelback had their tour my friends and I went. For starters we definitely were the youngest in our section, we put the word out to all of our friends but they were all like “you guys really listen to that stuff” duh! We jammed our hearts out and had the best night. We owned our favourite guilty pleasures and didn’t let any of the judgement stop us from having fun. 

Music is meant to be fun and at the same time super subjective. You like what you like, guilty pleasure or not.  The idea of feeling guilty about enjoying a song is kinda ridiculous when you think about it. If a song makes you happy, why fight it? Instead of hiding your love for ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” or Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’,” own it. Play it loud. Sing along. Enjoy the music for what it is—a mood booster, a time capsule, and sometimes, the perfect soundtrack to a spontaneous solo dance party. So, that brings me to my million dollar question: what’s your favourite “guilty pleasure” song?

 

Staying In Or Going Out?

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Well it’s officially Friday night, TGIF, the day we have all been waiting for. But how do you like to enjoy your Friday night? I feel like there’s some culture around celebrating your Friday night. You and your friends are probably off for the weekend, nothing big to do Saturday morning so why not! Or on other hand maybe you use your friday to rest and relax from the week so you spend a chill night in. I can be a bit of both but recently I’ve been on team stay in.

Before I did dry January I was hugeeeee on team go out. It was a tradition. Friday hit and my biggest worry was where everyone was headed for the night. Now things look a bit different. I don’t know if it’s just me or maybe it’s the rainy weather but I’ve been exhausted lately! Even if I wasn’t going out I feel like I just wouldn’t have energy for it. Now when Friday nights hit you can find me in my bed, comfy clothes on, diet coke in hand, and binging a new series. I wonder if I’ll snap out of this or if I’m permanently a grandma at 21… yikes. I mean there’s nothing wrong with a good night in. It’s good to rest and recharge but I’m kinda getting to the point where I need some socialization. 

There’s two ways in my opinion to do a Friday night right. 

  1. Staying in:
  • Order your favourite take out
  • Get a fun drink (diet coke does the trick for me)
  • Fly solo or invite a friend over
  • Comfy clothes are a must
  • And of course, something good to watch

Buttttt if you’re wanting something a bit more action packed.

  1. Going out
  • A good playlist
  • A good pre drink 
  • Someone to get ready with 
  • Dancing 

So what’s your plan tonight? Are you taking option 1 or 2? Staying in and ordering take out? Or hitting the town with your best friends? I’m taking option 1 tonight but hey it’s just Friday, Saturday night could have some serious potential…. 

Winter Blues

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The sunny streak in Vancouver has sadly come to an end and it looks like a true Vancouver winter is heading your way. Wet, cold, and maybe even a hint of snow? It’s so easy to get down in this type of weather especially when we just got a taste of what a sunny winter is like but lucky for you I got some tips for you to keep the winter blues at bay. 

rain on window

Don’t turn into a hermit crab. It’s so hard to just want to stay in bed when it’s so rainy outside and avoid any and all social interaction, trust me I get it. But just doing that throws you into more of a rut that’s even harder to get out of. Soooo make some plans with friends and keep up with your daily routine.

If it’s rainy and cold down here, it’s probably snowing up on the mountains so go check out the snow! Even just a walk around the mountain can be fun. Or if you’re being bold, get some turns in on the ski hill. Snow tubing is also always a good time and if you want to take your walking up a notch, try snowshoeing!

snow

Go to the movies. Literally everything can be streamed nowadays and it’s ruining the magic of going to the movies, getting popcorn, and just being present. It’s the perfect rainy day activity any time of the day. Go with a couple of friends or even go solo! 

Cook a meal! For some reason when it’s rainy I’m always in the mood for a home cooked hearty meal. So get in the kitchen and try a new recipe or your favourite comfort meal. This is a great way to pass some time, stay warm, and eat good food. If you have some extra time on your hands, bake some dessert to go with it – chocolate chip cookies on a rainy day are always my go to. 

The winter blues can be hard to avoid and once you’re stuck in them it can be hard to get out but doing something just a little fun everyday can keep your spirits high and help you get to the other side of winter faster. 

 

 

 

Dry January: Day 31

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I made it, well almost made it. It’s officially the last morning of dry January and I feel like I did every other day of this month. But of course the question rises, does it not count as a dry month if I drink tonight? Do I wait till the clock hits February and then it really counts? To be honest I have no major plans for tonight and I kinda expected this day to feel so exciting but I have this feeling of overwhelm right now. I can’t really pinpoint why I feel so overwhelmed. I think part of it is cause I’ve always been such an all or nothing person. So I’m kinda at this point where my brain is thinking hmm if I just did 31 days might as well just never drink again or what was the point of all that?

Cocktail Recipes

I don’t want to say I feel a bit let down cause 31 days is still huge but I didn’t expect to feel this much the same. I really don’t notice any major changes which leads me to think 31 days is not enough for me? Do I have to take on a dry February? Or how about a damp February, just limit my drinking, I think this may have to be the move. I guess I just think after drinking my first drink I’m going to feel really defeated, like I lost at something. Game over, time to restart. 

What I can say from this month it’s definitely changed my attitude towards drinking. A weekend never used to be a true weekend without having drinks with friends but now I’ve realized that it’s really not as necessary as I thought it was which I guess is kinda cool. I do not miss hangovers at all either, even just the thought is horrible. 

So I guess this brings me back to ending this month off, since I don’t have any plans tonight I might as well just not drink so I can really go the full hours of 31 days. I mean I even stopped drinking around 11:00 pm on New Year’s Eve to make it the true 31 so why not stop now right?

I definitely need to do some more reflecting and look back on everything I felt this month but for now, I’m just focussed on getting through today. If you’re also doing dry January, sending you a huge congrats and you’re so so close to February. 

 

Doom Scrolling :(

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Ugh doom scrolling. The thing you and I know all too well. You sit down for 5 minutes, open up TikTok and one hour has passed. Why does this happen? My eyes can literally get glued to my screen and I’m just swiping through content and more content until I realize what I’m doing is insane and it’s time to go to bed. I almost get a guilty feeling. Part of it probably comes from the amount of time I just wasted but the rest of it comes from me just comparing myself to everyone I see on social media. And the comparison I’m doing is literally my productivity levels. Like wow I just scrolled here for an hour. This person just cleaned their whole room – way to go me. 

social media 1

The mindless scrolling that almost feels automatic just takes over. Trust me, I get the doom scroll struggle. It’s like a mental trap that’s hard to escape from. Once you start scrolling, your brain just kind of shuts off and you go into autopilot mode. And then, of course, the algorithm does its magic—more stuff you didn’t even know you needed to see. Before you know it, you’ve seen every trend, every influencer’s “day in the life,” everything going on in the world of pop culture, and you’re mentally exhausted, but still, you keep going, scroll after scroll. It’s almost like your mind is tricked into thinking you’re being productive because you’re absorbing all this information. But in reality, it’s just draining your mental battery.  Even though you may not realize it. 

I’ve come up with a great saying to get myself off my phone, “If I have 15 minutes to scroll, I have 15 minutes to stroll”. Not going to lie, this has been a game changer with my screen time. Even when I’m at the gym and my workout is all done I think to myself, am I just gonna sit in the parking lot in my car on my phone before I drive home? Definitely? Get back up on the treadmill. 

social-media1_ME

So how do you avoid it, well to be honest, I haven’t really figured that out yet. And I’m not preaching to the choir about my healthy media habits – I’m far from it. So how do you handle your doom scrolling? No regrets video after a video, or do you feel some of the guilt that I feel. 

 

Cancel Culture: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly.

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Cancel culture, a term that you’ve probably heard bounced around quite a bit in the last few years. It can be kinda confusing too, people get cancelled then un-cancelled, maybe you’re not sure what people are even cancelled for, or maybe you’re not sure why people aren’t getting cancelled for what they said. It’s a bit of a messy topic. Some of it has no right or wrong or answers while on the other hand, sometimes the answers are quite obvious. 

Cracked Stop

Cancel culture is literally all about just canceling someone. Looking at the social media aspect, it could mean fans unfollowing, reporting, blocking, or just ignoring the person who got cancelled’s page. It’s kinda a social boycott that spreads quickly, often fueled by social media outrage. Celebrities, influencers, politicians—nobody’s immune to being “canceled” these days.

It could be looked at in a couple of different ways, people trying to hold powerful people accountable for the wrongs they’ve done, twisting people’s words, or just even cancelling someone just for the sake of cancelling them – see, kinda messy, actually really messy. 

A lot of social media scrollers have also been known to dig for the dirt. Pulling up posts from way before the person got a following or even famous for bad comments, actions or remarks. I think it’s always entertaining to see how the person handles it. They either take the high road and fully acknowledge the wrong they’ve done no matter their age or circumstance or they take the low road, the “this was so long ago, I didn’t even know” not a good look on them in my opinion, just own up to it! 

The good thing about cancel culture is that it sheds light on the people you follow, who influence you, and who you trust online. I mean you wouldn’t want to support someone who didn’t align with your views and who knows you may have never known the real them if it didn’t get brought to the surface. 

In the end, cancel culture is messy. It can be empowering, but it can also be problematic. What do you think? Has the whole cancel culture gotten out of hand, or is doing its job with holding people accountable?

Don’t Follow The Pack

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They say your 20s are a crazy time, and god were they right. I mean there’s a lot of possibilities and everyone is at different stages in life. I’m 21 and I have a friend who’s married with a child, a friend partying in Australia, a friend who’s a private pilot, a friend who’s training for a marathon, and friends who are ski bums. I mean really, the possibilities are endless. 

I don’t know about you but in high school specifically grade 12, I felt this huge pressure from teachers that going to university was the ONLY option available after high school. To be honest in high school I was never really into academics and had no care to go to school. But we had a whole course dedicated to applying to schools. I mean I think cause we went to Catholic school and our school just wanted to look good but that’s a different story.

So I was a sheep, I followed the pack, I applied, got into school and accepted the offer. The summer before getting shipped off to Victoria I was miserable. I didn’t even enjoy the summer and cried everyday cause I just wanted to work, get experience and travel. I was gonna study psychology, I don’t even like psychology!!! My parents were always super supportive and never forced post secondary on me but I felt like I was doing something wrong if I didn’t go, literally everyone from my school was and I was force fed this idea that I’d be super behind in life if I didn’t go.

So I went, and then I came home. I didn’t even last the full semester (kinda funny, you can laugh). I packed my bags, got a job and just lived. It was such a good year I travelled, lived in Whistler, came home, travelled some more and just got to experience life. 

Whistler Mountain

There’s this huge thing around knowing exactly what you want to do at the young age of 18. 18! You’re practically a baby! I’m here to tell you that that is a bunch of BS. As corny as it sounds, everyone has their own path and no way of doing things is “right”. Life isn’t linear also, so be the sheep to live your life and go away from the pack, because if you’re unhappy, that isn’t where you’re meant to be. 

 

Catholic School Chronicles

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Growing up I went to Catholic school, and for context my family wasn’t really religious. And I say really cause sure my mom and I were baptized but other than me going to a Catholic school and my parents coming to any church events and assemblies that was pretty much it.I’m also not even really sure why I attended Catholic school. I did go to public school in kindergarten but after that I just swapped over. 

Paris Church

Growing up I was never too active in my school’s sports teams, I did a couple volleyball seasons and my mom did volunteer to coach track for a bit so I kinda got forced into that but that was the extent of it. I did all my sports on North Shore club teams outside of school. All I knew was that the kids on my teams who went to normal school were a lotttt more normal than the kids at school. I guess you could describe the school kids as extremely cliquey and just weird. I had a couple good friends but in elementary school it was an excessive amount of drama. And the thing with Catholic school drama is that it always kinda about how good a person was. “Omg, did you see so and so skipped church” like really? This was just not the group of kids I needed. 

Everything just seemed normal and even if I thought something wasn’t normal, everyone else was just going along with it so I did too. Some of the weirdest memories I have from elementary school is when we had to do our first holy communion, teachers described this as “eating the body of Christ” and you know what’s even weirder. No one even thought twice about it. I mean except for me. I remember vividly looking around the room at all my classmates ready to boycott this whole thing that seemed like cannibalism. And what a way to entice second graders am I right? Common guys! Let’s eat Jesus!! How about no thanks! But nonetheless I kinda just went through the motions of Catholic school. Another thing that only recently really clicked as weird for me was the whole confession thing. Going into the room one on one with a priest to “confess your sins”. This is baffling now that I think about it. How was it even allowed? And what “sins” do elementary school kids have to confess, I think the worst I got was confessing I gave my dog the vegetables at the dinner table. 

Miagao Church

Looking back, I don’t know what’s crazier—that we all just went along with this stuff without question, or that it took me this long to realize how weird it actually was. I mean it was all still a good experience, any knowledge is good knowledge I say, but kinda funny to look back on. 

Dry January: Day 28

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The finish line is in sight. A full 28 days have passed. They say it takes 21 days to break a habit. But I’m here to say that feels pretty far from the truth to me. 

Beers

Even though I haven’t had one sip of alcohol, not even a mere drop, for 28 days, I don’t feel like this habit is anywhere close to being broken. So that brings me to my million dollar question. Do I keep going until I truly feel like I’ve broken this habit? And don’t mistake me for a crazy person who can’t get off the bottle, I’m really not like that I swear. It’s just that I’m 21 and I really like to live life to the fullest. I never say no to plans and am the friend that’s always down to do something. It’s more just the FOMO I’ve been feeling. 

And less of the fear of missing out, I like to view it as missed opportunity. There’s this whole culture built up around really just being young and living your 20s and kinda worry I’m missing out on that right now. But then when I think that way it brings me back to wellll at least I’m living a healthier lifestyle, but on the other hand I’m thinking damn, I really am just turning into a grandma at 21. And I know, 28 days in perspective is not a lot of time but I’ve had to turn soooo much down these past few weeks it’s starting to drive me insane. 

At the same time, I want to be able to just be that cool kid who does dry January and just never drinks again but at the end of the day, I just don’t think that’s in the books right now. I’m honestly on the struggle bus right now and not as even much as the cravings, it’s more the being jealous of everyone else my age right now. I’m already kinda missing out the typical college experience by staying home right now and then on top of that I’m the weird dry January kid?

I digress, I’m getting ahead of myself. For these last few days I just really need to put things into perspective for myself – it’s only 28 days. Who cares what you do after, just live your life.