works of wanderlust

poetic war

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 politics, culture, and the universe?

No.

Ugh.

Ok.

I’ll bite …a little bit, for the blog.

I was doing a little experiment the other week. I had a perfectly good reason to post a pointless video clip on social media the other day, but I didn’t want to use my main account. Nor did I want to use any of my other side accounts. So I did what any sane tech savvy nerd would do and I created a brand new account, followed no one, gave it a stupid profile name and pic that pretty much no one would associate with me, and posted my video. I did nothing special, did not share it, followed no one and did not tag it or add any meta data. It was not clever, funny, or controversial. I was merely posting it as a random clip I’d filmed to check how some function of the system was appearing. Within two hours it had received 12 likes.

For context, we just spent nearly three weeks in Japan and I posted a few dozen curated photos representing some of my best work and amazing photography in that country, and my best post, with five hundred and fifty odd followers, got 8 likes. Eight. Just eight. Total.

Somehow, this temporary burner account had received 50% more attention in the duration of our car ride home for a (completely random and the content was not the point) jittery eight second video of a snow plow out the front window of our car (what I just happened to be looking at while I was plotting this technology query) than for something I had purposefully shared for beauty and enjoyment …and to put a little of both out into the world. A fucking snow plow. Twelve likes.

This really isn’t a bitter post about not getting any likes on my content. I don’t actually try to promote my stuff. I just put it out and whatever. And I really don’t even care. I’m not posting for validation. Or money. Or to be found. Or anything other than curating my own public collections of my creative work and personal giggles… whatever.

But “likes” represent something else entirely. They represent exposure. They represent voice. They represent the attention and interests of others. They represent the choices made by programmed, unthinking, not-human algorithms, choices about who gets to see what …and when …and how frequently.

And what most people are sharing these days happen to be things that largely represent culture and politics. And we all kind of understand that those folks… well, they are not trying to represent anything in a balanced or nuanced way. And same are even working and designing content to divide and anger us.

Put those things together into one big brainy thought and you might get a glimpse of the major imbalance and deep illness in our culture this past year (and probably even further back).

I have this (probably controversial) notion that I’ve spoken aloud to a few people this past year about our culture and our political reality in 2025. It basically posits that while were all standing around here in fear of some nuclear world war three, what has happened is that the third world war has come and gone and most of us missed it. That is, WW3 was a war of misinformation and the western world, democracy specifically, has been attacked and has lost …and now most people are wandering around in a state of post-psychic shock trauma not really wrapping their heads around that they and their families have been under literal assault and a kind of emotional and propaganda-based warfare for the last decade or so. It didn’t ravage bodies in the physical sense, but it has destroyed institutions, collapsed trust in each other, broken relationships, and turned our path forward into one strewn with debris and rubble. It was launched by foreign states who understood that they could not win a conventional nor a nuclear war. It was fought on Facebook and Twitter and a list of other social media sites. It was launched through the traditional media who played their role as unwitting vectors of informational violence. It was bolstered by algorithms that we trusted had our best interest in mind but were really just blindly amplifying whatever seemed to be popular or match a narrative that made us each uniquely cozy and comfortable. The truth was shattered. Reality was broken. It weaponized the minds of the weak and easily-swayed. It turned friends and family into dirty bombs of radicalized falsehoods and conspiracy-laden mistruths. And even now most of us, nearly all of us, are simply in denial that it even happened… all while we keep scrolling through the same militarized platforms that caused it all in the first place and each in our own pretending that it is still all ok.

The battle rages unfortunately.

That was 2025.

Does 2026 look better for me right now? For any of us?

Like and subscribe to find out, I guess.

December 16, 2025
these things are

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 object will
forever remind you of 2025?

One object? No. How about ten objects from the past year. Memories are not so simple these days. In no particular order…

The Kobo eReader I bought mid-year to replace my aging Kindle marked a defiantly buy-Canadian shift away from giving all my money to American billionaires, though I still give some of it (unavoidably) that direction, I made a conscious decision to shift to a different platform for my books because… uh… terrible politics.

I spent a lot of time at my Basement Desk this year, a place I had routinely avoided since quitting my work-from-home job in mid-2023. But in 2025 it was my coding station when I worked on my video game, the spot from where I took a bunch of online University courses, and now it’s become where I’ve set myself up a cozy writing nook.

I got over my “I’m a biologist” anti-Fake Plants-hate and bought about ten of them to give my dark basement office a bit of colour and texture. I love plants and love botanical things, but when the option was no plants, dead plants or fake plants … well, I finally caved and chose fake plants. Uh. Thanks Ikea?

The Aeropress Coffee Maker the Wife got me for Christmas last year became my go-to coffee device for most of 2025. It makes good coffee, pretty much equivalent to my pour over standby (in my mediocre amateur opinion) but it is plenty faster and easier to clean up. How much it features in 2026 depends on how much I stick with the coffee routine in the new year.

Then on vacation I bought a very nice little Rice Bowl in Tokyo from an actual restaurant supply story in the cooking district. It is not a touristy gimmick souvenir, tho, but rather something kinda sorta maybe more real, and it is one of my favourite souvenirs (neck and neck in a tight race) from our recent trip.

That Macbook Pro I splurged on late in the year because I started doing contract work in 2025 and needed a dedicated and capable machine to do said work upon. I’ve owned a dozen computers over the years, but this is the first “my” computer that I’ve had in a while (no more family sharing) even though it is pretty much meant for doing, uh, professional work.

Speaking of tech, I hadn’t done much with my Steamdeck for a while, leaning into playing games when I had the chance on the bigger screen and PS5, but this handheld toy makes the list because along the way of my game coding adventures this year I managed to code enough of a piece of software to boot up and be reasonably playable on my Steamdeck. That’s worthy of a mention.

Having been that guy in orchestra who was using digital music for a few years I finally splurged and bought a Foot Pedal this year to change pages (you know, with my foot instead of my finger) and it has been game changing for orchestra and music practice. I’m no longer the only guy with his music on an iPad either.

Oh. Right. Those Steel Toed Shoes which were my exclusive footwear working at the grocery store until about April finally got shoved in the closet for storage and hopefully I only ever need to wear them again to keep my toes safe for personal projects. Good shoes. Frustrating work.

And finally that Mortar Board that the Kid decorated so uniquely for her high school graduation gets a special mention… and it was in the running for the solo mention had I not caved and put ten items on this list. It’s still sitting on our mantle for the moment, but it was definitely part of a memory-full day.

December 15, 2025
unreal asia

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…

Did you travel in 2025?

In 1998 I went to Europe for the first time. Until that moment of stepping off the plane and riding the train into London’s Victoria Station with my giant backpack over my shoulder, Europe was an abstraction in my head. It was this place I had heard about over and over and over but seemed more like a story that I could read about than I real place I could visit.

Since then I’ve been back to Europe multiple times, travelled through a list of European countries so long I struggle to remember exactly when and where I’ve gone there, and have long since settled Europe itself in my head as just another option for an interesting (if expensive) vacation.

And. Until a couple months ago my thoughts about Asia were pretty much in line with how I thought about Europe in the 1990s. That is to say, I have friends from all over Asia, I have seen it in media and read about it in books, I had been studying the Japanese language, and I’ve certainly eaten the food of nearly every Asian immigrant group who serves it in Canada… but the place itself was almost an abstract concept in my head that I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around.

Earlier this year were contemplating our annual travel options and one of us suggested Japan.

If you are even so much as a sporadic reader of this blog that should be no surprise to you. We ended up spending nearly three weeks on the little island in November of this year after all, and I still haven’t caught up with my recap posts about it (blame this blog every day thing, I guess!)

This abstraction that I am talking about is not a lack of perception. I think the world is kinda chunked up into sections of people and culture that until you spend a day wandering through their streets or trying to buy lunch from a local or sitting in a hut on the side of a mountain listening to a story or lace up you shoes and run a five klick race through one of their parks… many places on this globe can be little more than an idea in your head that is hard to get a sense of what it would be like to spend time there. What does the air smell like? What are the sounds? Is it big or small, dense or wide open? A thousand questions of the moments and how it all might become real. So much of what we see from those places is framed as news or art or otherwise showing us the shiny bits that are worth sharing. None of it is any more than a story. It is not until you arrive there that it all gels into something more.

For example. If you had never visited my city or even come here to Canada it would be really difficult to describe to you what my day-to-day was like, say, even yesterday. We woke up and it was twenty five degrees below zero with yet another thin layer of snow… that I had to go out and shovel. I was squinting in the sunlight and bundled up in four layers to clean the sidewalk all so that we could hop in the car and drive down a highway over drifting snow and patches of ice to go for lunch with my mother-in-law for her birthday. The air hurts. The place is dirty with spatters of muddy snow all over everyones cars. We live in the suburbs and all there is around is the sound of engine noises echoing over the snow and the sky is filled with the chimney exhaust of everyone’s furnace running twenty-three and a half hours a day. In other words… it is absolutely nothing like the vibe you’d find on the tourism sites if you searched for us. Nothing like the story we project out to the world for people who can’t or don’t come here to know about us.

And I think that was like me and Asia. I had a story in my head but I knew it wasn’t actually real. Until we walked through the streets of Japan, until I went out and did a community run event, until we bumbled through the subway trying to find our way, until we were hungry and needed a quick lunch between touristy explorations… until all of that and a thousand other little things… all of it was a bit of an abstraction to me.

But we’ve been to Japan now and Asia as a whole just seems that much more real in my head now… almost like I should book another trip soon.

December 14, 2025
actually right

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 was your biggest achievement of the last year?

Here it is again.

I find I’m often getting tired of writing about my professional pursuits. And after all, sitting here penning out another post telling you all about them and how great it is going with the tech jobs is the so-called “right” answer. I’m supposed to have a shiny perfect resume. I’m supposed to have academic achievements under my belt. I’m supposed to rack up contract wins and be out her bragging about other business-type successes. At least… that’s what I’ve been railroaded to believing my whole damn life. Make lots of money. Have the perfect LinkedIn profile. Nine to five with benefits, right?

Yet, I’m so very much realizing that I’m not that person. Not anymore, at least. Or, maybe it’s that I’ve never been him. It’s almost as tho I’m faking it most of the time, doing a solid enough job being a guy who can get shit done in technology or all the related bits and bobs in which I’ve worked for most of my life. I’m not half bad, and that might just be twenty five years of tallied up hours in that field playing out as raw experience, yet… it’s all a mask.

See I left that world two and a half years ago… even tho the gravitational pull of it almost daily makes it seem like I will never fully escape. I walked away from “The Career” and tried to be something else, and after two and a half years I feel like I’m still explaining that to everyone, even myself.

I panicked in my transition and I took a University program in Business Analysis last spring, finishing it up as the summer arrived. It looks nice on the resume, but until I actually lock a job in it it doesn’t mean much more than that I passed some tests and did well on some assignments. And I never really knew if it is actually what I wanted to do, but it seemed… again… like the “right” thing to do.

I started a small business, too, and most people in that position would be exclusively occupied with making that work and finding new customers and building and growing and on and on. I do work but it’s more just like a part time job I have, sitting over here on the desk, that makes me feel less disconnected from the world in which I was mired for multiple decades. It felt like the next “right” step in whatever this adventure was, but now it’s just there taunting me.

But then what did I accomplish this year? Actually.

I didn’t sell any art.

I didn’t finish my novel.

I didn’t complete the code for my game.

I could give you a very unsatisfactory answer to all this tho and it goes as such: this year I’ve broken down the problem even further and revealed the raw skin under the lifetime of metaphorical wounds. I am starting to get it. I am starting to actually understand myself and the purpose of where I need to go, what I need to do, and who I need to be: it’s more than the “right” answer of a professional such and such or a guy in this or that job. It’s bigger, at least for me from my perspective it is. It may mean almost nothing to anyone else, but then everyone has their own to worry about don’t they. But I am figuring out mine… which has never been entirely clear even though I’ve always been told what the “right” answer is. But then the right answer was never a very good answer, and figuring that bit out might just be my biggest achievement of the last year.

December 13, 2025
bardo the air privateer, part one

Well, darn. The new-ish Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 was ported and released on the PS5 …in late 2025 …which is almost 2026, so you figure that one out?

But anyhow.

I, like a fool, bought it and now I’m trying to rekindle my virtual flying madskillz to set off on another adventure in and around this slightly updated simulated virtual earth. Where will I go this time?

Alas… and for those who were not paying attention during the pandemic of 2020, one of my “locked in the basement” projects involved splurging on a copy of MSFS 2020 (the previous release to this one) but on my PC. I bought a joystick “flight stick” and customized a little Cessna plane and set off from Edmonton west in an attempt to fly around the globe. I didn’t make it. Strangely enough after flying to the west coast and up to Alaska, then Russia, I found my way to Japan, and…

Well.

It was a combination of summer arriving (as if on schedule), a well-intentioned game patch causing an issue with the playability of my particular installation, and then mostly me overworking myself trying to record and log every leg of the flight adventure… and so I parked my little plane in Osaka or something (I don’t actually remember, but close to there anyhow) and we never left. As far as I know my imaginary pilot has settled into a life of eating delicious street Takoyaki, married to a nice girl all while he struggles to improve his Japanese awaiting his gamer guy to return and whisk him off to continue the flying adventure.

Jokes on him.

My new little virtual pilot, Bardo, has spawned to life in MS2024 on my PS5 and has set off on a clumsy flight of a similar ilk to the cut-short flights of 2020 Lazy Joe—though I’m feeling a bit lazier and so the notion of rigorously recording on the PS5 (which is decidedly clunkier for long videos) does not appeal this time, so his adventures will be far less fulsomely documented.

We set off once again in a new Cessna and this time flew south, first to Red Deer Regional and then on another hop down through a snowy afternoon storm to Calgary International. Alas, this poor new guy had a bit of a rough landing in both situations because (as good as the sim is) the control scheme is a little more touchy on my console controller (versus that steady-as-heck joystick.) I may need to figure that problem out before we keep travelling… but I digress.

There are missions and challenges baked into MSFS2024, but that all seems a little touristy and I have this notion of keeping the adventure going leg by leg, treating the sim as if Bardo is actually (as I write this) sitting in the pilot’s lounge in the hangar at YYC waiting for some mechanic to sign off on the fix to whatever damage I caused listening to the landing advice from the AI co-pilot (which on another side note is weirdly another Microsoft product unrelated to flight simulator… hmm… maybe that’s why it’s advice nearly caused me to crash on a mile long runway in the easiest plane, huh?)

Nevermind. We’re off once again.

This is the first entry in my flight log as Bardo takes to the open air and sets off on a new adventure. Maybe if I make it all the way to Japan again he’ll check up on Joe… or join him. Either way, I’ve got myself a new game-slash-project and you, dear readers, better settle in.

December 12, 2025

blog.8r4d.com

I’ve been writing meandering drivel for decades, but here you’ll find all my posts on writing, technology, art, food, adventure, running, parenting, and overthinking just about anything and everything since early 2021.

In fact, I write regularly from here in the Canadian Prairies about just about anything that interest me. Enjoy!

Blogging 426,972 words in 564 posts.

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