works of wanderlust

Month: April 2025

  • big fishing it

    I quit my job yesterday.

    That sounds overly dramatic. But it is true.

    I have been working a part time gig at a little local retail grocery store, off and on, for the last nine months. Karin spotted the advertising along the side of the road last summer, and we followed the progress of the store getting ready to open. I had mostly been sitting around pondering my next career move and writing a novel and enjoying temporary unemployment during my career break, but it was starting to drag a bit and getting hella lonely, so I put my name in and the next thing I knew I was working.  I helped set up and stock the store. I was there for opening. I was there for a couple big management upheavals. I left for a bit, while they were sorting some of it out, but lately I’ve been back for a couple days a week, working part time, doing some inventory management and getting out of the house, to boot.

    But a few weeks ago that little itch in the back of my head started to nag.

    There is a twenty year old movie that I’ve always liked called Big Fish. The film is essentially a string of allegorical tales told at the end of the protagonist’s life and I can’t really explain it any better than to say he was a man who was full of big fish stories and this bugged the hell out of his son who was trying to understand his ailing father.  So from that the movie plays out as these big fish stories are told as tangential narrative of the film’s father son drama plot. And then, all of that is to say merely that there is one particular story that struck me as relevant lately. It was about when the young man, on his way out and away from the town of his childhood into the big wide world takes a detour that leads him to an unexpected small town in the woods. It is the town of Spectre.  And the place is filled with lovely people who have taken off their shoes and who dance in the grass and drink lemonade on the porch. It is the embodiment of what many might call success. Or retirement. Or giving up and settling. It is a place the main character realizes is somewhere he would like to get to eventually, but that he has stumbled on this place too early. He has reached it too soon.

    Spectre is, of course and as I said before, kind of an allegory for post-work, retirement, winding down, whatever you want to call it. It is meant to symbolize the rewards and spoils of a well-earned life, I think. And the main character quickly realizes that too. He sees people settling into their comforts and hiding themselves away from the hardships of the world, to waste away the rest of their lives enjoying the spoils of their lifelong efforts.

    And the main character having reached it at the start of his career realizes he had arrived there far too soon.

    Working in a grocery store warehouse is hardly an idyllic retirement. But at the same time, stepping away from challenging work that forced me to think and create and build and collaborate and fight for ideas, the warehouse was kind of an important job disguising the fact that I had arrived at that type of work too soon.  I wasn’t ready to spend the rest of my life sorting olive oils and checking the expiration dates on the backs of packages of cookies. I had arrived too soon at the low-effort post-career semi-retirement job that I had romanticized in my head.

    Like the main character of Big Fish, I needed to find my shoes—or ditch them entirely—and run back out onto the path to figure out my next challenge. And more importantly, I realized that I could not do both simultaneously. I couldn’t keep this little part time job in the soft grass and then also to devote myself to the path ahead. I needed to choose. I needed to decide if I was settling in for the long run, accepting a life of short commutes to a little grocery market in the suburbs where I may aspire to climb the little heap of food stuff dramatics and spend the rest of my life doing just that, noble and important and simple as it is—or if I needed to get back out on the hunt for the things I really wanted from my life, from myself, for my soul, my creative endeavours and my personal magnum opus of creating something far bigger than that.

    Like the titular big fish, I don’t know where my trail will lead, but I am pretty certain that I want to be on it again.

    So, I had no other choice than to make that decision. I had no other choice but to quit and move on.

    So yeah, I quit my job yesterday. 

    That sounds very dramatic, but maybe it is.

  • photo phails

    There was a time when I would have proclaimed myself a real photographer. I didn’t just have the right equipment, but I knew what I was doing, took thousands of photos, and even sold some pics.

    Not only would I likely need to wipe the dust off my SLR right now, I’m not even sure where I would start to build back into the whole photographer lifestyle again.

    There are a bunch of reasons I don’t take many pics anymore.

    I mean, I seem to have ranked these but they are all kind of equally impactful. At some point, each of them has had a huge impact on how I feel about clicking the shutter button lately

    First, and obviously, my photography hobby shifted to art. As in, rather than drag a big heavy camera out into nature to snap more photos of the river valley, I started dragging out big heavy watercolour and art sets into nature instead.  I used a camera, but I used it to take reference photos. You do that for a couple years and suddenly you realize that the habits of dragging a bulky camera along on walks has transitioned into something else entirely. 

    Second, social media used to be my jam. Back when the sites were actually about sharing and building community around creativity, it was still fun to take lots of pictures to build an online profile and portfolio. As the sites transitioned in ad mills and rage-baiting micro-vids, my effort to share my photography turned from a fun hobby into a hustle gig that I wasn’t willing to scramble. I stopped posting as much, and too I didn’t blog as much so didn’t need pics to accompany my posts, so my biggest client—me—suddenly wasn’t shipping as much.

    Third, and the reason I would often tell other photographers in commisseration of our mutual struggles was the perpetual expectation that I was the guy with camera at events, at work, at volunteer gigs, on travel outings, everywhere. I became the defacto documentarian of everything and it was tough stepping away from that without hanging up the whole camera rig and just not bringing it. I get that this was a little selfish of me, and even might come across as mildly disrespectful to friends and family who were probably just trying to respect my craft and give me chances to participate, but it does get in your head that maybe your only worth is because you own a camera.

    And finally, I would tell you that my subject matter has shifted. I picked up the photography habit first because I was in a new city and then later because I was a new dad, and then even later because life was full of photographable things. But as I alluded to above one can only photograph the river valley so many times, and then too, the kid became a teen and her willingness to be my goofy subject and model waned to raw annoyance, and the whole part where I travelled with a big old camera rig turned into a post-covid, travel light, just slip the good-enough phone camera into my pocket for snapshots mode. Heck, that iPhone takes hellagood pics ninety-five percent of the time.

    Does all this make me sad?

    A little bit. I mean, like running, photography brought me to many places and gave me a whole bunch of interesting opportunities to interact with the universe. It was an excuse for long walks on novel trails. It was a skill worth honing and which showed measurable progress the more I practiced it. And it definitely complemented my blogging. 

    I haven’t given it up, either. 

    Part of me is writing this because, well, in being all introspective on things I was pondering dusting off and charging up the camera later this week. It is spring and the trees are budding and the world near me is about to flower up.  I will definitely dig out my art supplies, but maybe some quality time with the old SLR should be on the agenda, too.

  • weekend wrap two

    Technically it’s Tuesday, but with yesterday being election day in Canada that Monday really blurred into the other days. In my continued efforts to be as pedestrian and basic as my pride will allow here once again is a wrap up of this past unofficially extended long weekend’s activities.

    This past weekend, I…

    Completed the saga of our broke ass hot water heater. The new unit was installed and after flushing the pipes for a couple days to ensure that we weren’t going to cram up the new part with crud, replaced the faucet head. Both hot water and water pressure are at optimal levels now.

    Held my member of parliament’s feet to the fire after I spotted and reported a minor (but rules are rules) election sign infraction around our polling station.

    Brought my weekly running distance total up over twenty-five klicks by rounding it off with a great Sunday run. I also happened to hand my willingness to volunteer as needed with our local run club to KB who is the area manager round these parts.

    Attended a duo of dance competition performances and watched the kid bring in top marks for her second show, much to her own and everyone else’s surprise. Apparently, according to the mom contingent, the number was a little rough even just the week before and they were worried it wouldn’t be compeition-ready. But they locked in a “diamond” and celebrations ensued.

    Finally picked up some new coffee filters for my aeropress.

    Took the dog to the off-leash park for the first time this season.

    Drank my first slurpee of the season, too.

    And, yeah, that’s about enough for one chilly April weekend, no?

  • when being annoyed is the whole point

    The primary operating mode of any bully is to get into your head.

    Fear is primal after all. Very few of us yearn for confrontation. We want things comfortable. We want to sit and enjoy our lunch in peace and quiet. We want to watch our show without being disturbed. We don’t want to be angry or shouty or have a need to knock fists in the driveway.

    So a bully threatens all of that stability with their words and actions. Threatens to cause an accident on a smoothly flowing highway by swerving wildly through traffic. Threatens to ruin your summer fun by burning garbage in their backyard. Threatens to topple your peace of mind by turning over the health care system to corporate interests. Threatens to take away your country and personal freedom by military annexation.

    The balance is sent off kilter. The seed is planted in your head, and it takes root. The fear of the bully grows…

    If you let it grow.

    There is a rumour going round these days that speaking ill of the orange dictator south of the border will get you in trouble. I am a Canadian. I consider myself a peaceful guy. I don’t own weapons and I have handled multiple bullies in my life with diplomacy and deescalation. But now here we have this rumour of a government bully, the resources of an entire nation being set on the “just following orders” dial mode where I as a peaceful minding-my-own-business Canadian am supposed to react to the bullying by doing one simple thing; just shut up and comply with the bully and you’ll be fine.

    And of course you know who the bully is. The bully is a nationalist government displaying the hallmark signs of fascism. The bully state. The do as we command folks literally pulling masks down over their faces and propping up their guns in threatening ways and wink, wink, winking that we should just shut up about their violent takeover of democracy down south or maybe some border agent will lock you in a cell next time you think about taking a flight to visit a theme park. Obey the bully state…or else. Just simply obey. But, too, obey in advance. Don’t speak up. Not now, not ever. Don’t talk about the bully being a bully. Don’t point out that these actions are eerily mirroring the actions that our grandparents and great-grandparents stood up to in eastern Europe in the early twentieth century. Don’t you dare suggest that we’re all heading down a road that leads into a dark age when the justified murder of millions will be driven by the political apparatus currently led by a clownish narcissist. Don’t question any of it or you might be next. Obey.

    Fuck that. 

    All that? That is the bully getting into your head. That is you watering the damn seed that the assholes planted there without your permission.

    This whole thing is annoying. 

    And that’s the point.

    I am insulated here, I admit that. I am far, far away from the border and have almost no reason to travel to it any time soon. I live a comfortable life and can probably get by even if society starts to collapse at the edges. It is in many ways a position of privilege, even in a bad situation.

    But still I’m annoyed. And angry. And, I will admit, a little afraid too.

    And again, that’s the point.

    The evil that sits on his fat ass in the american capital is well-practiced at being a bully who instills fear in people to get his way. It is, in many ways, his only real skill. He makes people afraid of losing their fragile political power, so they do and say anything to cling to it. He makes people afraid of losing their boundless weath, so they bow to him. He makes people afraid of each other, so they fight their family and friends because he commands them with disingenuous half truths. They obey in advance because they are all afraid of a little imbalance. None of them want to fight. They want to be comfortable. They want to sit and eat their lunch in peace and quiet.

    So? Democracy crumbles and fear abounds. Because that is the whole point, too.

  • keyboard life

    I have developed a lot of little productivity hacks for myself in the past couple years.

    It’s odd, actually.

    Realizing that.

    Odd.

    For the first year of my career break I wrote about it all the time. The career break I mean. I was always writing about it. I was slightly obsessed with working through the whole thing in long rambling essays, very few of them published anywhere but in my own personal files, but all of them detailing my reasons and logic and emotions and everything to do with this whole deal of quitting a well-paying desk job (thanks stress and burnout) and spending the following months and months and months sorting through the effort of trying to rebuild myself professionally.

    So many words.

    It’s odd, because thinking about it right now I realize that I haven’t written much about career breaking in nearly a year now. And yet, no, I haven’t moved on, nor found myself breaking through the far side of that career break quite yet, but then too all the tangled complications of the last year have sort of left me a little less introspective on this thing that I did nearly two years ago now. I think about it. Write words. But those two haven’t really intermingled recently.

    Yet, it was the first thing I thought to write about now, just sitting here looking at the keyboard under my fingers, and I guess that means it still comes up, particularly when I start introspecting on some of the changes and habits that manifested in the meanwhile of my not quite but kinda still a career break era.

    Like, I’m typing on one of those productivity hack things as I write this.

    Yeah, the keyboard.

    About a year ago I bought myself this little portable mechanical keyboard.  Well, in fact I bought two of them, each for very different purposes. First, I bought a really nice one that is amazing to type on and which I carry in a little bag along with my iPad when I go off to a cafe to write. It’s wonderful. Clicky. Solid. Durable. And no I’m not selling them. But then I also bought a cheaper, smaller keyboard. It’s not quite as nice, though still pretty nice, and its a lot more plasticky, and it tends to live in the glove box of my truck. It is a little trickier to type on, I will admit, mostly because it is lacking about twenty of the more familiar keys like number digits and punctuation marks, and when I need them I need to access those with little function key combos that also make it a bit cryptic to type on, but I use it even more than I thought I would, squeezing in a session of writing before work or, like now, sitting in a park at a picnic table waiting for the run crew to arrive and taking these twenty free minutes to pound out a blog post.

    All of this is tangled together, of course, because this whole career break has given me this little new productivity skill of forcing myself to be much more free and effective about my writing. Impromptu. Spontaneous. Picnic table in the park free-ish. 

    Oh, and that’s the other thing I should mention. If nothing else comes of this career break, I am emerging from it feeling a lot more like a writer than I ever did prior. I’ve always fashioned myself a writer, but right now I feel it inasmuch as I would not hesitate to put it on a resume and defend it as a professional skill. 

    In fact. I’m a writer in the same way that I’m a runner, because I practice and practice and practice it a lot. I’ve just logged the time, you know?

    So, here I sit in yet another gap of free time writing on a keyboard in the park on this little keyboard. And the culmination of this anecdote is that I know damn well that I was not a type in the park on a little keyboard kind of writer before the career break. 

    That is the little productivity hack. 

    The hack is that I just write anywhere and everywhere now, shamelessly, even though as I’m sitting here in the park and cyclists and dog walkers and kids on skateboards are passing by looking at me with this idle curiosity, some weirdo at a picnic table typing away like a nut. That’s just what this looks like, I suppose.

    And that is a cool realization for me, fumbling and tangled and unfocused as I feel in the emergent spring. If nothing else, I’ve been productively hacked.