works of wanderlust

patio season

It is only just the second day of May and I find myself sitting on the patio at the local Starbucks.

Yeah, I know. There is a likely chance that you are reading this from somewhere in the world where (a) patio season in May is entirely normal and (b) eighteen degrees would not be considered patio weather whatsoever. But I am writing this from a place in the world where the second of May is just as likely to be a snowy inside day as it is to be one facilitating a coffee from a suburban bistro table two meters from a bustling drive through. So I’ll take it where I can get it, and celebrate it just the same.

It is also my first writing excursion since walking out of my latest life phase: if you are a dedicated reader (but who am I kidding?) you may recall that I wrote earlier this week that I had quit my part time job. Resigned. Hung up my apron. De-shifted in order to pursue some more mentally stimulating contract-type work, and as I sit here sunning the light reflecting off a mini-mall cafe, it still hasn’t quit sunk in that yesterday was my last day juggling expired foods and lugging boxes of olive oil. It will, but there has only just been long enough to mark the space between shifts, so I could walk back in there this morning and only just be a few minutes late for work. I’ll let it settle out a bit more, but either way, I am free of that.

And now here I am. It is in fact the first day of patio season and the first day of whatever comes next for me, and neither are lacking prospects. The patio function of the equation urges me to stop procrastinating with navel-gazing blog posts and finish my damn novel already, jeeze! The whats next(?) steps part of the same mysterious equation is a little less crystalized and may give me cause to write more about that in a day or a week or so, but not so much yet. There will be time for explanations when the dust settles.

Patio season is different than the rest of the year for some reason, too. It is a simple calculated fact that I spend a good chunk of my free winter morning agendas sitting at a table in this or that or other cafes around the neighbourhood. Everyone generally puts their heads down and avoids eye contact. But this morning, sitting and typing at a wobbly little bistro table, tilting my screen to angle it for best visibility in the glare of the outdoor ambiance, I’ve already had two jovial conversations with other patio folks. “What a great day!” “Do you live around here?” “Finally I can ride my bike to the cafe!” The glory of the finally spring mentality has burst through the hunkering isolationism of the winter chill and everyone is just happier enough to glory in the moment.

Spring is such a cliche for new life I am reluctant to draw such an obvious analogy here, but alas it seems unavoidable. It seems cliche that I have timed my emergence from the chrysalis of career change in such synchronicity with the world around me.

On my very first day of the job I just quit, back in August, when I arrived to a store-under-construction on a hot late-summer morning, it happened that the sun was shining and the dust was blowing and we all sat on the curb for our coffee break drinking cold pops and munching the assortment of salty snacks they had provided. It had been a hard morning lugging boxes and meeting new people and settling into a physical job. Yesterday, I stepped out the back door of the warehouse into that same alley, now just the cluttered space behind the store, the sun almost a parallel spring analog to that day last summer. We’d been through a winter, made a store, struggling in solidarity against the silliness of it all, and there I was on my last day on that same patch of asphalt almost a year later feeling about as full circle as one could feel about such things. Hardly a patio, but not completely different from where I am starting my day, this new era ahead of me, typing these words.

It’s patio season. A new one.

May 2, 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.

April 30, 2025
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.

April 29, 2025
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?

April 29, 2025
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.

April 26, 2025

blog.8r4d.com

I don’t quite know what this site will be yet, but I have this writing itch that needs to be scratched, a yearning that can’t be sated with social media, so I expect I will find an excuse to put words here sooner than later.

collections

archives

topics

tags