Andria Parker
Andria Parker is a twenty-something writer living with her feet in Kamloops and her head in the clouds. She spends way too much time in self-reflection and is fascinated with the effects technology and popular culture have on her soul-seeking generation. You can find her looking for answers on the daily in six-inch heels or on her fourth Americano writing for her lifestyle blog anchorsandfreedom.com.
PARKER: Forget the Full Monty—are you up for The Full Ninety?
Listen up — there’s a new cleanse in town and it has nothing to do with juice. Immediately I know you’re intrigued. How do I know this? Because cleansing is like New Years Eve, whenever you want. It’s like being born again. It’s like a blank slate — and we’re all so messed up these...
PARKER: Rolling up her sleeves for the millennial generation
PREPARING FOR BATTLE AGAINST GENERATION Z When was the last time you put in a hard day’s work? Like, I don’t mean you busted your ass at CrossFit and did 57 kettlebell swings. I mean, when was the last time you put in a hard day’s work for someone else? Millennials seem to have a...
PARKER: No more justifying the junk drawer
I met a woman once who told me every time she found a box in her home that hadn’t been opened in two years, she would throw it away without looking inside of it. The idea of this propelled me into a panic attack faster than discovering a new imaginary body part. What if it...
PARKER: Saying yes to saying no
My entire life I have strived towards being a Yes Person. You know the kind — the one who bungee jumps off bridges in Portugal without understanding a word of the waiver forms, the one who went scuba diving with unknown species of sharks, the one who took too many drinks from too many strangers...
PARKER: The recipe for an Andria Parker Original
Over the past two weeks I’ve been experimenting in the kitchen. Not because it was requested of me, but because I currently have nothing else on the go. Also, I’ve been watching a lot of Chopped and, like, how hard can it be? If you can make a dessert out of squid, artichoke and licorice,...
PARKER: A good walk rescued by beer and new shoes
My boyfriend turned to me and asked why I was crying. “I always cry before I play sports,” I sniffed at him. This is actually quite standard behaviour for me. It’s not like the temper tantrums I throw when I’m too poor to buy that doggy in the window, it’s more like a quiet, blubbering...
PARKER: Finding a sense of certainty from an uncertain future
Nine years ago, I teetered across a stage filled with my hooting and hollering peers in a pair of strappy silver stilettos and my mother assured me I would fall. The voice of my principal boomed over everyone in the crowd and said I was going on to pursue a bachelor’s degree, that I had...
PARKER: A twenty-something’s guide to being glamourously poor
What is it about being poor that makes a person immediately want to buy a bottle of wine? I just don’t think it’s very fair to be tested like that, you know? Because, yes, I’m well aware I should probably spend my last $10 on some sort of starch but, in the battle of Great...
PARKER: Plenty of truth behind every twirsonality
I follow a girl on Twitter whose profile claims she doesn’t follow anyone with whom she wouldn’t have beers in real life. I can totally appreciate that, even though she doesn’t follow me back. In a world filled with Photoshop and photo-bombs, edit and delete, themes and filters and personal manifestos disguised as About Me...
PARKER: An uneasy return to pen and paper
For the past three weeks I have been unable to use my MacBook. My inability to find a UK adapter strong enough to charge the thing (or my hair dryer) left me paralyzed where technology was concerned (and frizzy elsewhere), and the first thing I did after flying into Pearson International yesterday was to find...
PARKER: A joy ride from the wrong side
When I turned 14, I wrote a 730-day countdown to my sweet 16. It wasn’t that I was expecting anything special to happen for me — this was long before MTV started that craze — it’s just that I knew my life was about to change for the better. The day of my 16th birthday...
PARKER: The sweetness of doing nothing
I spent the first three months of last summer unemployed. It wasn’t an “I’m living off of EI” unemployment, either. I tried that route but they didn’t buy the story about me taking a female lover and leaving my job to follow her to the B.C. Interior. Fair enough, I suppose. Without the pressure of...
PARKER: Crossing the bucket off my bucket list
I like to consider myself a pretty worldly twenty-something year old. This one time, I built houses in Guatemala and yeah, I feel like because of that I’m allowed to dub myself experienced in the ways of the earth. I guess also because I grew up with three brothers — but that’s another story. I have...
PARKER: I don’t want to grow up
ACCIO, FUTURE! On Thursday afternoon at 4 p.m. on the dot I handed in my last university paper. It only had to be 1,250 words, so — naturally — I wrote 1,000 and included a 300 word title. That’s just the way I do. The first thing I did after handing it in was cry...
PARKER: Resisting the call of the freedom marketers
THE COST OF FLOWER CROWNS AND DANCING IN DUST This week on the Internet there are two kinds of people — those who went to Coachella, and those who are bitching about not going to Coachella. It happens every year in April. Music festival season kicks off and hundreds of thousands of soul-seeking, fashion-forward, bohemian-hippy...