works of wanderlust

Month: December 2025

  • cheap eats

    It’s December and for me that means it is “blog every day month” an effort for which I have long since concocted a list of blog-able reflective topics called my December-ish posts each of which should do little more than offer a leaping off point for some rambling writing to fill up my daily blogging quota.

    Today that topic is…

    Describe your 2025 in food.

    This blog rebooted with a theme on January 1, 2021: food.

    Also adventure, cast iron, the outdoors and simple living.  It was the middle of freaking covid and I was basically trapped in my house because of travel restrictions and winter and work from home and I latched onto the idea of rebooting the blog I had written for a decade and a half with a little less TMI themed introspection. (Funny how it has drifted back to that, huh?) 

    But I wrote a lot about food. Bread. Skillet cooking. Campfire recipes. 

    And, of course, needing to hit a quota for posting on a blog meant I did more of those things to have content to write and post about. The years 2021 and even 2022 were very food focused as a result.

    This past year I have been pre-occupied with other things.

    I still bake my bread (in fact I have a loaf proofing on the counter as I write this) and we are pretty much exclusively a cast iron cookware household (though I have not bought a new piece in three or four years, a testament to the durability and quality I suppose) but my dabbling in new and interesting recipes has dwindled.

    In the past few weeks or so and specifically since returning from Japan I have been to the local Lucky Supermart (Asian grocery store) and stocked my house with rices and spices and teas and more, mostly to hold onto that post-travel vibe of trying new and interesting foods every other day during our vacation,  I guess. But experimenting otherwise?  It’s been a slow year for the foodie in me that way.

    We are all experiencing the result of gaslighting government, of course. Grocery prices are higher than they have ever been. These days are the times for stretching staples and simplifying recipes to keep the food budget in check. I guess if you want a real perspective on our 2025 year in food it has been one of economics more than anything: adapting our recipes to use whatever meat is on sale or whichever frozen vegetables are cheaper than their golden hued fresh counterparts. We eat at home significantly more, cooking at home, and I eat out lunch maybe once a month weaning myself down from once or twice a week (which itself was a reduction from my daily downtown dining experience pre-pandemic.) 

    Eat cheap. But eat well. We don’t starve and we don’t suffer for variety, but we do squeeze value out of our food budget these days. Tho… I suspect that’s the answer a lot of people would give this year.

  • on online

    It’s December and for me that means it is “blog every day month” an effort for which I have long since concocted a list of blog-able reflective topics called my December-ish posts each of which should do little more than offer a leaping off point for some rambling writing to fill up my daily blogging quota.

    Today that topic is…

    What is your perspective on the culture of 2025?

    Can I write what I really want to write here without getting put on a list somewhere that prevents me from crossing borders? Hmm…

    I mean, you’re online. You’re almost certainly reading this on a screen, in a web browser, through a magic wire that connects you all those other people out there in the world. Online. Participating. Consuming. Having an opinion about things, huh?

    This question is basically a punch line this year. What’s the culture of the world in 2025? Um… yeah, about that.

    If you are reading this and you know me you are probably well aware that while I still poke and prod at the various social media platforms, I have reduced my participation there—all of theres—to about five percent of what it was even a year ago… which itself is a fraction of it was, say, five years ago. I haven’t done this because I’ve become some sort of technophobe or whatever, but for a reason of culture. Online culture is dark and f-ed up beyond explanation these days. It hurts to go online. Literally hurts. I have palpitations and gurgling stomach acid in my throat. This isn’t because I’m triggered or offended, but rather because I’m beyond saddened by the raw evil that has spawned in those spaces, and then almost moreso, the meta-evil that embraces it and fans it and blurts out with joyous laughter at the pain of strangers. If you are a person who think this is some kind of exaggeration then look at the medium you are reading these words upon because it’s probably not a screen and you’re probably not online. 

    Simply put, the culture of 2025, or at least the culture that has dominated and blasted and consumed our attentions is shit.  And it’s not clear it is on track to improve next year. Hold on.

  • puppy love

    It’s December and for me that means it is “blog every day month” an effort for which I have long since concocted a list of blog-able reflective topics called my December-ish posts each of which should do little more than offer a leaping off point for some rambling writing to fill up my daily blogging quota.

    Today that topic is…

    Without asking how would
    people describe you in 2025?

    We all want to viewed favourably, don’t we? 

    I mean I’m sure there are exceptions out there, oddball folks who thrive on division and get off on people hating them. Just look at the internet after all: it’s like a zoo for people like that, all coming together to troll out in public and we all clutch our pearls at the things they say and write. They love it. We love to hate it. It drives the death spiral of our society and we keep trudging. 

    But I mean moooost of us want people to think favourably of us, right?

    But I hate this question. Hate it. I wrote this list a long time ago and I’ve used pieces of it on multiple iterations of this blog and each year I ask myself why I keep including it. It’s a dumb validation-seeking terrible question.

    I guess I’m just getting old or something because each year I see this question and I feel less and less inclined to give it a serious answer. I just don’t really care… in that I don’t care to explain any personal need to be validated as a good honest person in the same way that I think we all feel.  And I shouldn’t need to. So essentially this question (and my answer) just becomes yet another whiny self-affirming therapy session out in public, doesn’t it?

    How do people describe me? Hell, I wear a different hat with virtually everyone I know these days so what does it matter, then? I’m generally a mishmash of who I need to be for the people who I need to be that for, and all of it just shades of who I really am and what song I happen to be dancing to on a given date, time, or event. It’s ninety percent performance, isn’t it? Really? When you think about it? Are you the same person for everyone you meet? Or do you act differently around family versus coworkers versus close friends versus the people in that club you belong to versus a waiter at a restaurant? And which one is really you? Or do you save yourself for just you, when you are alone and are listening to music or playing with your dog.

    So I guess in the end that’s probably the better question and answer: Without asking how would your dog describe you in 2025?

    For me, that’s both easier and far more meaningful that the other question: the dog is laying a few feet away opening her eyes just enough every minute or so to peek through her sleepy haze to confirm that I haven’t moved from my keyboard. She follows me around and seems to feel this doting affection for me. I feed her. Walk her. Let her outside to pee. And she looks to me when she wants something… so through her eyes I guess I can’t be such a bad guy, huh?

  • the japan files

    It’s December and for me that means it is “blog every day month” an effort for which I have long since concocted a list of blog-able reflective topics called my December-ish posts each of which should do little more than offer a leaping off point for some rambling writing to fill up my daily blogging quota.

    Today that topic is…

    What excited you most in 2025?

    It turns out there are two subtly different terms for non-Asian people who find themselves with an interest in Japan: one can be a japanophile …or one can be a weeaboo (or weeb).

    Both are similar terms, but like anything we do in this crazy culture of ours one is a reference to a tastefully pursued hobby and the other is a a pejorative insult meant to look down one’s nose at someone who is oddly obsessed with a narrow aspect of the same thing. One term leans positive while the other is a gut punch.

    Like, think about it this way: if you were really into wine I could compliment you and call you an aspiring sommelier or an enthusiast, collector or someone with a refined palate. Alternatively, if you were really into wine, wink wink, we could call you a lush or an drunk.  

    It read it with that vibe. 

    Essentially people who get nerdy about Japan and try to learn about the culture, the language, the food and more lean towards the label of Japanophile. But the latter term, weeaboo, gets slapped on folks who maybe turned their karate class and Crunchyroll subscription into weird personality quirk. Get it?

    I have met many of both this year. I jumped head first into the Japanese language going so far as to take a class offered by the local Japan Society, and I had a great time honing some of the lessons I had picked up on my own through tools like books and duolingo, all of that in the months before actually hopping on an airplane and jetting off to Tokyo and beyond.

    I don’t want to imply that my Japanophilia has popped out of nowhere in 2025, tho. I have been flirting with the film and food and literature of Japan for decades. I think my first “this is different and I love it” moment was in a theatre in the early 2000s watching “Spirited Away” on the big screen. I have long since added Murikami’s translated works to my top five authors list. And you’ll  almost always find a small stack of Usagi Yojimbo comics on my nightstand (which I fully understand is an American comic written by a man with Japanese heritage about Japanese history, but… it fits the theme here, no?) I’ve been tangentially interested for years and years. 

    But then in early 2025 we booked a trip and I thought to myself that it presented an interesting opportunity to go a little deeper: and so I did. I started learning hiragana and katakana characters on my phone. I picked away at some of the language. I bought books. I watched videos about the place. I dug deep into making lists of interesting Japanese foods. I prepared for our trip to make it more than a tourist jaunt, but to open my mind to observe the culture and the world when we arrived and immersed ourselves in Japan.

    And as I write this we’ve been home for about a week, and I keep practicing my Japanese and I keep poking at my literature and I still have a lot of Japan videos recommended to me on YouTube (though now I can watch them with a kind of “we saw that” familiarity or comparison mindset.) 

    I pushed into a Japanophile vibe in 2025. And I’m glad I went so deep before we went so far. 

  • an infinite well of curiosity

    It’s December and for me that means it is “blog every day month” an effort for which I have long since concocted a list of blog-able reflective topics called my December-ish posts each of which should do little more than offer a leaping off point for some rambling writing to fill up my daily blogging quota.

    Today that topic is…

    What do you want to learn in 2026?

    I mean, heck, if I put one more thing on my list of side gigs and hobbies I’m going to burst. 

    Art, music, languages, code, swimming, running, cooking, creative writing, and… deep breath… jeeze, I can’t even remember all the little hobby projects and learning adventures I’ve kicked off in the last couple years. Hell, some of the things on that list are just categories for lists of their own. 

    It’s almost as if I need to play a little catch up before I dive into anything new.

    I mean, that’s never stopped me before, but what I guess I’m saying is that sitting here writing against a blog prompt on a wintery Saturday morning I should probably pause to reflect on the state of my life and available free time before I commit to say, learning to bake French pastries or, um, tackling the mystic art of underwater basket weaving. 

    It’s almost as tho I need to learn so skill to focus and organize my learning itself. A kind of meta-learning. You know, answering the age old question of how do I focus and attune my limited attention and energy into productively advancing the skills I have already committed to learning… but, y’know, without adding a whole new field of study and distraction.

    Lifelong learning is one of the pillars of my very existence. But I get it. Not everyone looks at a piece of art or tastes an interesting foodstuff or hears an instrument and then reacts with the “hmmm… I wonder if I could learn how to do that” voice in their head. I do, for better or worse. I get this compulsion that gnaws away at me until I read more about it and dig deeper into it and next thing I know I’m finding out that, you know what, learning Japanese can’t be THAT hard or I can get a student violin for ONLY a few hundred dollars. True stories.

    But sitting here this morning I have a nudging notion that during my last year of my forties perhaps I should queue myself up for more success in my fifties and learn some kind of   temperance of self-education—that I should study how to study but studying the things I already study with more focus and structure.  It sound so easy when I put it that way, but truly, such a thing could be one of the more difficult subjects I’ve ever had to study. Damn this infinite well of curiosity.  

    Deep breath. Again.