works of wanderlust

Category: deeper thoughts

  • Not Created Equal

    Not all websites are created equally.

    Take this site. As a real estate analogy, this is a cabin in the woods. This blog is the digital version of a weekend getaway, stuffed with comforts and curiosities, eclectic bits of cookware, and eccentric tchotchkes piled onto the shelves to add an atmosphere of warmth while still giving it all a human touch.

    What made your job
    interesting in 2021?

    On the other hand, the website that I oversee for work is a large glass-paneled government skyscraper downtown, with elevators speeding between the floors and strict rules for how the queues to each service desk are designed, and careful attention to detail given to the colors of the wall paint and the placement of the signage pointing out everything from the washrooms to the lost and found to the exit.

    I don’t write about my work, at least not often, because there is such a stark contrast between what I am paid to build over there and what I build for fun over here.

    And I think buried in that explanation is a little of what makes my job interesting, too.

    Not everyone understands websites, and less so do people understand the vast chasm of differences that are buried beneath the design, purpose and function of those websites. Maybe that is a broad assumption, but I see evidence of such a conjecture if not daily, then multiple times per week.

    We need to think more like Starbucks. Someone will say.

    I reply that Okay, yes… we can learn from Starbucks but Starbucks is a little shop on the corner that sells coffee and fills its humbly lit spaces with warm, inviting leather chairs and groovy popular jazz. We are required to use plastic seating and provide ample lighting. How can we translate that vibe into something useful?

    The analogy breaks down quickly, obviously.

    People see something that works and while they are not wrong in the simplification, they are also often unaware that there is a huge gap — technically, functionally, even philosophically — between what our corporate website does versus what Facebook does versus what that food delivery app does versus what a little blog in the winter wilderness (quietly run by one and the same person as the first) is meant to be… and do… and say.

    And in that they are not wrong but merely interested in a design problem, the part of my job that becomes interesting in return is attempting to take the energy of such a vision and translating it into a plan for someone else to write code that can be uploaded and integrated and activated into a tool that, say, sells bus fares with the same fluidity that Starbucks dispenses lattes.

    Meanwhile, I can write and say and post and design this little cabin in the wilderness exactly the way I want to. Right here. Warm, cozy, curious, and inviting.

  • A Good Life, Well-lived & Enjoyed Aloud

    As I write these words the final month of the first year of this blog has arrived.

    It’s December.

    And after a mind-numbing and depressing 2020 I’ve been penning my thoughts and opinions here throughout 2021 to the tune of one hundred and seven thousand, three hundred and eighty three previously published words into two hundred and fifty three posts inside this digital space.

    It’s been exactly eleven months as of today.

    Deep breath.

    Describe your 2021
    in tech or tools.

    I’ve been blogging for over twenty years.

    Unless you’ve cracked through my obfuscation of identity curtained across these words (hidden mostly because I work in an industry and culture where Google search results for my real name are akin to a business card and I like to keep my personal and professional selves separated) you are unlikely to know that while I’ve only been writing here for eleven months, I’ve previously managed a string of previous personal, creative, and niche websites over the past twenty-ish years. I’ve got a bit of secret tech cred. But just a bit.

    In almost all those websites, December uniformly has become a time of self-refection and mindset adjustment for the upcoming year.

    So, after eleven months of scattershot posting here about cooking, adventure, firepits, travel, sketching and all those other little analog and outdoor enjoyments, I’ve once again set December aside for a string of thirty one posts about … well … cooking, adventure, firepits, travel, sketching, and all similar sort of those things, but in the context of the past, present and future.

    Call it a quasi-resolution-twist to wrap up the year with a bit of grace and style.

    Because routine and tradition can be a good thing, even in technology where we seem to think we want fresh and innovative turned on like a firehose.

    My 2021 was a technology reset year.

    This year I came back to a pattern of regular writing in (and this is important) a space I fully control. We take that for granted because so many of us cede that control to the social media algorithms of big private media platforms, offloading the decision-making to money-generating, click-baiting software systems that slurp up our creative effort and spill it out to the rest of the world in a way that usually makes other people rich and famous. I was tired of shipping my photographs and art and writing off to the likes of Facebook and Reddit and crossing my fingers that an invisible software system saw fit to give it some daylight online before it disappeared into a vast, bottomless pit of old posts.

    I may not have yet obtained the same quantity of folks reading what I choose to put online, but I think the quality of what I choose to curate here has elevated the whole experience for me … and hopefully anyone who chooses to join me here.

    I’ve all but vacated those controversial social platforms, maintaining a minimal presence, and definitely not a preferential one.

    This blog was my 2021 experiment, and the experiment was a success. Dozens of you read it and check in. And tho my daughter would scoff at that number saying “dad, such and such a youtube streamer has six million subscribers and makes more money that you do at your real job!” I would retort that I’m giddily loving entertaining any size of small crowd with genuine content that makes me as happy writing it as I hope it makes others reading it.

    In other words, the experiment will most definitely continue into 2022 and beyond.

  • Questions & Admissions

    Do you ever get the feeling that people don’t get you? It doesn’t keep me awake at night by any means, but occasionally I’ll have an insight into how others see me, and it’s an interesting epiphany.

    For example, every day I have a morning check-in meeting with a group of my colleagues. It’s a chance to get the work day off to a good start and build rapport with the team. We give status updates on our various areas and go through some of the emergent issues that need to be worked on together. The person who chairs the meeting also tends to bring a fun question of the day and does a roundtable for everyone’s answers. These are simple things, light and fun.

    Today she asked: What’s something you’ve been spending too much money on lately?

    My coworkers know that I run. They also know that I’m into technology (it’s part of my job, after all!)

    I guess that’s about all they know.

    See, I haven’t really copped to the cast iron and cooking obsession.

    So, today I replied: Well, I’ve been spending a lot of money on cookware lately … referring to some recent cast iron purchases, my investment in re-seasoning pans, and the money I spent over the summer to outfit an outdoor firepit, essentially so I can cook over it.

    It’s funny the small secrets we keep from people, not necessarily by a deliberate act of exclusion, but simply because we haven’t shown certain people one side of our personality.

    I do web design and digital technology stuff at work, and most of my coworkers think of me as the techie guy who is probably into video games and eclectic nerdy hobbies involving science fiction or soldering irons or databases. For some reason, it blows their minds a little when they find out I spend my free time outside exploring the world or inside cooking amazing meals.

    Some people wear their personalities on their chest, but I guess I’m a little more cryptic these days. I’m okay with that.

  • Into the Woods and Fog

    I’ve been tangled up in a philosophical kinda-sorta feedback loop inside my own head.

    See, nearly two weeks before sitting down to write this post I ran a half marathon through the local wilderness. Anyone who carefully read that post may recall that I briefly alluded to a conversation I’d had with a local trail running legend while there. It was a few minutes, a few shared words, an hour before the race started.

    I don’t want to make a big deal about that conversation specifically, or name my interlocutor insomuch that this post comes up in a search somewhere, or even just pull him into this tangled thinking of mine anymore than I need to … because having followed him on the socials for a couple years (a) I don’t think he would be the sort of guy who would like that, and (b) that conversation is more of a catalyst for another bigger idea that I’ve been cooking in my brain, than it is the main idea itself.

    Autumn fog on a suburban park field.

    But nevertheless, I will fill in the gaps.

    If you are anything like me, you know that there are sticky ideas that occasionally gum up the works of the dusty corners of our minds. These may be ideas that are not worth actively thinking on day after day, but even so seem to wend their ways into and between the empty neurons of the subconscious mind and then simmer away in the background as if a spicy pot of chili in a huge cast iron dutch oven set atop some glowing campfire coals. Those thoughts are always there bubbling away, requiring the occasional stir or taste check, but otherwise independently cooking … until suddenly the chili is ready to eat.

    That conversation I have an hour before the start of the race is mostly a pep talk from a seasoned amature athlete, a local guy who has made good with his feats of endurance, has run and won many races around the world, and now shows up to volunteer at races so the rest of us can play in the trails. According to our chat, he’s tackling some incredible challenges in the next couple years, races of physical fortitude that I barely believe can exist, let alone be taken on by a mortal being, and yet there he is casually telling me about these incredible goals he has set for himself. All while he is offering me a genuine nudge of encouragement along my difficult (but essentially entry-level) ultramarathon experience.

    Then in the middle of that conversation he points vaguely towards the trail leading into the wilderness, a splash of autumn colour in the leaves wrapping around a narrow footpath that quickly disappeared into a twisting twelve kilometer endurance race route.

    “It’s really just about spending more time out there,” he says, and pulls his phone from his pocket, ” and less time on this thing. If more people just spent more time out there…” he adds vaguely, implying something or another. It is a bit of gummy thought for my brain … the onions for a simmering pot of mental chili.

    It’s a big idea, but maybe not even anything much more than an obvious one.

    I spend too much time on my device. I admit it.

    My phone screen is the first thing I light up even as I’m walking the dog to the back door for her morning pee. I nuzzle up with a tablet and the world news or the NYT crossword puzzle as I’m sipping my first coffee of the morning. I hunker down with a bank of glowing monitors eight-hours-per-day five-days-per-week so that I can do my job. I text. I video chat. I chill with the family to watch television. I sneak some time here and there with a dualsense controller in my hands to justify buying a six hundred dollar video game console. Hey, even this: I relax in my off-time by cranking words through a keyboard so that I can post a daily rambling blog here. Then I conclude my day listening to podcasts or audiobooks as I play my solitaire card game app for a few minutes before bed.

    Sure, I also ran nearly fifteen kilometers through the river valleys with friends over the last couple days, and the dog sees her fair share of local trails multiple times per week, but by far the most prominent way I spend my time … a fact I’m sure is true for so many others … is with a glowing screen in front of my face.

    I reply to my ultramarathoning hero with my own more specific suggestion, ironic in itself. “I’ve been watching this Youtuber …” I offer. “He’s this Australian adventure filmmaker who does some interesting videos on the clash of civilization and nature. His big theme seems to be that we’re disconnected from the world in this ineffable way and he’s trying to untangle that for his own purposes through humble self experimentation.”

    That Youtuber is named Beau Miles and (because his new book doesn’t ship across the ocean to Canada quite yet … at least not at a reasonable price) I am listening to the audiobook version as I walk the dog through the foggy park this morning, the crisp air biting at the tips of my fingers. The dog is delighted to scratch at the frosty tips of the grass, but at seven am I only have so much patience for that.

    We forge onward and through my headphones the autobiographic description Mr. Miles’ youthful yearning for a life of adventure, of tackling the big world in whatever way he could manage it, loops me right back to that conversation I’d had at the start of the ultramarathon a couple weeks before. Spicy peppers for my simmering mental chili.

    These are not new ideas. Arguably, I started this blog exactly for this reason: to answer this calling for a cast iron lifestyle, days filled with excuses to be outdoors, in front of a hot fire, cooking real food and feeling real terrain under my feet.

    Having this space creates obligation to post, which creates a need for subject matter expertise and filling, and that in turns drives me to put the screen down and do these things of which I write. Into the woods. Lighting up fire. Heating up iron.

    Out of the fog?

    That feedback loop I mentioned is a recipe for a spicy pot of chili that I can’t quite get right, though, no matter how much I simmer it in the idle coals of my own mind.

    These two adventure seekers unknowingly adding ingredients into that mix, one at the start of an epic race, the other from across an ocean (and through a screen of all things!) They are just two influences on the things I seek to do in searching to find an answer to a question I haven’t even been able to articulate let alone make headway towards such clarity … as much as I’m virtually certain that I’m not alone in that quest.

    What I do know is that there is a conflict between the simmering background thoughts and the stuff that is actively nearly-burning in the foreground. It is a rivalry between the stuff I need to do and the stuff I want to do, between what I am currently and what I could be some day… if I knew the trail to follow, the recipe to cook, or even just the questions to ask.

  • Meta Monday: Undaily(ish.)

    While I hope no one missed my ramblings for a short week, it felt quite a lot longer.

    I gave myself permission to pause my writing here for the last few days.

    (And a couple other things.)

    Life has a way of steamrolling you from a blind spot now and then, and on the (purely hypothetical) Maslow’s Hierarchy of Creative Needs producing content for a blog is not quite at the peak of the priority pyramid, but it certainly isn’t foundational either. It is simply something that gets deprioritized when there are other more important things to take care of.

    That said.

    Everything is fine.

    Tho.

    I needed a few days to wander through the autumn foliage, play some mindless video games, nap in the afternoon, and hunker down on the couch with the dog.

    Busy work days. Upsetting decisions by friends and family. Aches and pains from that recent trail race. The news. Local politics. The end of summer. Oh yeah, and a booster shot (for future travelling plans) that floored my immune system for a solid thirty-six hours.

    Pause.

    Rest.

    Reset.

    I hope to be back to regularly scheduled posting now.