…or maybe it would make more sense to title this november first (epilogue)?
On October first I set out to write five hundred words a day, on the blog, for the entire month. There were no additional rules, and no penalties if I missed a day. Without looking back and counting, I think I covered roughly two thirds of the month. Less than the goal, but still more than any other month this year.
The exercise also did help me shake out the cobwebs, as I was hoping it would. The place is still a mess, but it’s not as daunting to start tackling it anymore. Sometimes you just have to start and stick with it. If you can do those two things, you’ll succeed it most things I think.
In other news, big shame about the jays game today. I’m not really a big baseball fan, but I got very into the last few games of the World Series. There’s nothing quite like a seven-game series between two great teams.
As we round the corner on October, we can be pleased to know that I wrote a silly little blog post almost every day for the entire month. Or like, at least roughly two thirds of the time. Whatever! I’ve enjoyed it a lot of the time and it’s only felt like a chore some of the time.
I’ve written a couple goofy little stories and I’ve felt very inspired. Much more inspired that I’ve felt in a long time.
I’ve spent a lot of time with headaches this month. What’s up with that?
I have listened to the new Taylor Swift album and I will take great reputational risk right now by saying, for the world to see, that I did in fact like it. The Fate of Ophelia is particularly catchy.
I spent the majority of October on strike. We’re just back at work this week actually. We haven’t ratified a new agreement yet, but I’m expecting that it will pass.
Where am I going with this, you’re probably asking yourself. I’ll let you know when I know.
I’ve been vaccinated against COVID and the flu! Can you believe that while this is free in British Columbia, in Alberta not only do you have to pay for it, but they also make you sign a waiver? And they don’t even have enough for everyone! Crazy what’s happening in that province.
I went to a beautiful wedding, watching one of my oldest friends getting married.
I spoke French with a fellow BCGEU member on the picket line. It was choppy and rough, but I did my best!
I have made and subsequently eaten a ton of salad rolls. I’m getting really good at it actually. I make them with tofu and avocado, and I shave off thin pieces of carrot and cucumber with the peeler. I start by layering the carrot and cucumber down, and then I add some lettuce and vermicelli, and then roll it up with the tofu and avocado getting snuggly tucked in last.
Couple tricks:
use cold water to soften the rice wraps
roll on a clean tea towel, not a cutting board
don’t overstuff
Cilantro is obviously optional, but I really like the taste, so I add it in when we have it.
Next week my partner and I are going on vacation and it could not come any quicker.
I’m so tired.
It’s been a really weird month and I don’t really feel like myself. It’ll come back, I know, but I was hoping it wouldn’t go on this long.
I’m not sure what I’m going to write about tomorrow. Maybe something spooky in honour of the day. Maybe I’ll be too busy! Maybe I’ll make something up. Maybe I’ll continue my space tailor story from the other day?
I think that one has legs! Did you read it?
All about the boys, Mac and JJ Shekoda running their dad’s tailor shop on Pluto. Classic science fiction. I feel like I left it at a really interesting point. Who is the mystery woman? What’s her connection to the main characters? What’s next for Mac Shekoda?
Eyes dart around the room waiting for the show. From my hiding spot on the stage, it looks like a sea of hard boiled eggs, bobbing up and down across black waves.
This is my favourite part. The energy hasn’t yet built to a crescendo. The writhing fans haven’t yet begun to chant out our names. There’s an electricity in the air that I just love. So much anticipation.
As part of our contract the lights are off and the speakers are gently playing Russian classical music. Right now it’s Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto no. 2.
Damnit I love that concerto.
The band doesn’t really get it, these little rituals I force them into following.
It took a lot of trial and error to develop the perfect show. If you go on too late, the crowd might turn on itself. All that anxious energy builds and builds and if it isn’t satisfied, the audience implodes.
But, if you go on too early, the show isn’t satisfying. If the energy hasn’t built to the right level, when the lights go up and we hit that first chord, everything just kind of fizzles out. The people cheer, sure, but you can tell it’s not what it could be. And like, it’s not just that they don’t cheer loud enough. That’s only part of it. You can tell.
And that’s before you even start to consider the other details like pyrotechnics, screens, speakers, the setlist, and of course tone.
The other guys don’t get it. They’ve got more of what I’d call a “traditional rockstar mentality” wherein you like, kind of go on whenever you want I guess? They’re always happy to make people wait though.
Anyway, while they hang out in the back, I’m sitting on stage, in the pitch black, watching the sea. This is my favourite part.
It’s where we come from, you know, the sea. I read a book about it.
Okay, I didn’t read a book about it, but it’s true isn’t it? I feel like I learned it back in school. Like, a long long time ago, before there were any people or animals or whatever. Everyone was fish! And one day, some of us fish were like, let’s see what this land is all about! And we did it man. The rest is history.
But I think about that, when I look out at the waves. It feels like home. I think that’s what crowd surfing is. Going home, right?
It’s not an exact science, figuring out how to time a show. That’s why I sit out here. You have to feel the energy, you have to gauge the mood, and you have to keep an eye on the bar and the security. If you have a bunch of goons walking around the venue looking for fights, you don’t have much time if things turn. Same if the drinks are cheap or if you’re in one of those towns where they just tend to go hard.
This is my favourite part.
I love seeing the little puffs of smoke in the crowd. Some places will shut that down, some don’t seem to mind. It used to be cigarettes people would sneak, back in the day, and joints of course. Now it’s mostly vapour. It’s fine. Things change and you’ve got to change with them, I guess.
Apologies to the faithful for missing another couple days this week. It’s been a mix of being too busy with the extra curriculars, and a little drained from the job action stuff that’s made me a little low energy this week.
From the picket line, morale is holding. We’ve adjusted to the new normal, and we’re all making the most of it. We just finished five weeks yesterday at my site, though other teams have been on strike for as long as eight weeks now.
We get a lot of feedback from the public about how bare the liquor store shelves are, but only the occasional comment about anything else. I’ve heard a couple people talk about things like vulnerable sector checks through the Criminal Records Review Program, name changes, or security worker licensing, which are all similarly either slowed down or on hold. I don’t believe you can register a business right now with that whole team on strike either.
Anyway, this is all to say that it’s a weird time to be a public servant in a province with an NDP government. It’s nice to see that the BC Greens are capitalizing on the moment and showing up at rallies and on picket lines to support us though.
And yesterday we had some visitors from the Vancouver & District Labour Council which was cool. I’m still not really sure what they do, but they came by with halloween candy to show their support. There were some longshoremen there, who have a much different experience with job action than we do.
But there’s good news if you’re a jays fan! We just watched the highlights from game one, and though neither of us know anything about baseball, it seemed like a pretty impressive win. Baseball salaries are ridiculous, but I enjoyed reading that the jay’s starting pitcher, a rookie named Trey Yesavage, who is only twenty-two and earning something like fifty-seven thousand dollars this season struck out Shohei Ohtani who just signed a ten-year, seven-hundred-million dollar deal.
It’s been a wild ride, and I’d like to keep it going after the month is over. I don’t think five hundred words is unsustainable, right? Especially when you factor in the occasional breaks as just part of the process.
What I’d really like to do is write stories though. I think friends who’ve known me for a while would be surprised because I actually suck at telling stories. But I really like to write, and I’d like to do more of it. This exercise has really shown me how rewarding it can be to just put words down, string a couple of sentences together, and leave it up on the line for anyone to read.
Someone I deeply respected told me it would be good for my career. That’s the only reason I joined in the first place. I can blame her for that.
But I can’t blame her for my stumbling so badly on a last second excuse that I ended up actually agreeing to go to for drinks after the meeting.
It was a nice bar, no matter where you sat it felt private enough to plan a revolution or something. That’s not what we were doing though. They were talking about their kids, or dogs. I was thinking about how cool it was that no matter where you sat, you could hear the murmur of interesting conversations without being able to make out the words. Felt very cozy.
The kind of place where you could probably smoke at your table if you had enough cachet. But I didn’t have enough cachet. And I quit smoking.
Someone tapped on my shoulder.
“I SAID,” she said, enunciating each word as if I wasn’t paying attention, “HOW’S. THE. JOB. HUNT. GOING?”
“Fine,” I said, “I’ve been watching a lot of Star Trek and I’m waiting to hear back from Safeway.”
Everyone around the table nodded slowly, you know the way. It’s kind of big eyes, raised eyebrows, and a tight smile. It’s like, “Coooooooool.” Long and drawn out, like this whole evening.
I’d already moved back to the bald man, sitting across the way from us. From my spot in the booth, I only had a direct sight-line to one table. And at that table, I only had eyes on one man. He was bald, the cul-de-sac type of bald, and wore a navy blazer over a white and blue checkered shirt. No tie.
He leaned on the table, elbows on the mahogany, right hand gripping his stemware like it was his oldest child who was graduating high school and getting ready to leave for college. Yeah, just like we were talking about at our table. I wished I was at his table though, because it looked like whatever he was talking about was the most important thing in the world,
I looked down at my tie. It was five dollars at the thrift store down the street. It had little motorcycles on it. I couldn’t ride, but I was “going to learn” one day. Okay. I was better dressed than the man across the restaurant but only if better dressed meant wearing more pieces. We both wore a shirt and coat, but I had a tie. We both had wristwatches, but I was wearing a pair of nifty cufflinks.
But under the tie, the shirt didn’t fit right. It bagged out over the sides and you could clearly see where I frantically stuffed it in the back of my pants. I ironed it every time I wore it but still deep creases cut across the front, the back, the sides and the arms. My chinos sat a few inches too high above the second hand black aldos that covered my twelve ninety-nine for a half dozen dress socks that were fifty percent off at the suit store in the mall.
I yawned, and stopped even pretending to follow the conversation.
photo is from a summer 2025 march for palestine (thirty-five mm film)
I’m writing this one early in the morning. It’s six thirty two as I type this out. As you may know, I’m in week five of my BCGEU strike (lengths vary by ministry, branch, and division, with some people on strike for as long as eight weeks at this point). The reason I mention that is because it has wreaked havoc on my daily routine.
I’ve found myself with an extra four hours each day, as we only picket in four hour shifts, but I’ve squandered it!
So last night I decided I’d go to bed early, shortly after ten pm, and I’d set an alarm for six am and get back into my normal routine. I’d go to the gym, make breakfast, have a coffee, and then head to the picket line. But then I volunteered to help out a little early to get things set up, which meant that even if I woke up and immediately and went straight to the gym, I wouldn’t have time for breakfast and a shower. And I find both of those to be essential in the morning, especially after working out.
Anyway, I ended up doing morning pages! Are you familiar? You write three pages of anything as soon as you wake up. It’s kind of like journaling but with less purpose. It’s like a creativity warm up. And it has to be on paper. You can’t do morning pages on a computer. I’m not sure exactly why, can’t remember that chapter from The Artist’s Way, but I definitely agree with the sentiment. Too easy to edit your words on the screen and you’re more connected to the words when they come out in your own handwriting maybe?
I’ve never been on strike before. I’ve voted to strike, when I was a member of SFU’s Teaching Support Staff Union (TSSU), and they did end up going on strike later that year, but I had already graduated and wasn’t working as a Teaching Assistant anymore. I had to watch that one from the sidelines.
For a first strike, this one’s a big one. I was chatting with a friend on the picket line last week about the fact that, while it didn’t feel like we were doing much more than just standing around or walking in circles, the strike could have a profound impact. For instance, I think it helped connect members to the union in a positive way. No one is particularly happy about being off work, but everyone at my site seems to understand the importance of what we’re doing.
For an example of that, there hasn’t been a shop steward at my building the entire time I’ve worked there. Since we went on strike, several people have expressed interest in stepping up into that role.
In another example, one of my colleagues was telling me the other day that she didn’t know what a picket line was until going on strike. Now she knows that it’s her responsibility as a union member not to cross another union’s picket lines.
I also think this is going to be pretty catastrophic for the NDP when the next election rolls around. The Green Party has been really inspiring with their new leader and the BC Conservatives seem a little chaotic at the moment, losing another MLA this week.
Anyway, it’s interesting times again. Maybe the strike will have a big impact, maybe it’ll be something we all sort of forget about until the next time it comes up.
Back in the day, when I was living in Australia and I wanted to be a writer, I tried the Stephen King method (as he wrote about in On Writing;an excellent read if you’re looking to learn a bit about the famous writer and procrastinate your writing for a bit). That meant that I was writing two thousand words a day, every day.
I think that was the only rule, but this was roughly ten years ago.
I wrote two novel-length manuscripts in the time that I was down there. The first one was pretty easy. I wasn’t working when I arrived, so my days were pretty relaxed. I’d usually make a pot of coffee and have a big breakfast, reading something light. After that I’d roll a cigarette and have some more coffee on the porch. Then I’d tackle my two thousand words for the day.
After that I’d head into town to my favourite café, the Athenaeum, where I’d order another coffee (a long black) and sit outside smoking and reading. Then I might head to the used bookstore, or drive an hour to one of the bigger towns for something to do.
There was a woman named Marg who ran the Athenaeum. During the day it was a coffee shop, and at night it was an Italian restaurant. Everything I had there was great, but the carbonara was especially fantastic. In my experience, Australians do a great carbonara.
It was hard for me to make friends in the small town I was living just outside of, but Marg was always really nice to me. She hated pretty much everyone, but she liked the fact that I read because she liked to read too, and she felt that no one else in that small town read. I think she smoked as well, so having me sitting outside rolling my cigarettes, drinking my black coffee, being polite (as a Canadian must) and reading a book was interesting to her. In a town where everyone knows everyone, having someone new is kind of exciting, I guess.
I miss that time a lot.
The writing I did was absolutely terrible. I’ve learned from reading (and confirmed through personal experience) that not all writing is good when it first hits the page, but what’s most important is the act itself. Get words on the page, because editing is easier than writing, and there’s no sense in limiting yourself from the get go.
One of my stories was about a space station on the moon. The idea, if I remember right, was that this was the second attempt at a permanent base on the moon, as the last one had gone through some terrible accident and everyone had died. There were a bunch of different scientists all doing different research, and two psychologists who were there to make sure everyone stayed sane.
The reason for the two shrinks was that the “terrible accident” in the first attempted moon base was related to the astronauts all having psychological breakdowns.
In this story, you follow one of the psychologists as he watches everything start to get strange. It seems like there’s another presence on the moon and he starts to have dreams about these shadow figures. Eventually, our hero begins dreaming that he’s working alongside these figures, building out scaffolding on the edge of the moon. The dreams start to feel very real, and the entire time he’s asleep, he’s working on building the moon. There’s a little foreman’s house and everything. He wakes up and he’s too tired to do anything, but can’t sleep. He feels like he can’t get any rest.
I can’t remember how it ends, but I don’t think I’ll be able to read it again. It’s living as a .docx somewhere on the hard drive here, having moved with other stories and photos from laptop to laptop over the last ten years.
One of the things that I’ve found really nice about this little exercise is that I’m getting inspired again. For example, yesterday’s space tailor story was a lot of fun.
Oh, I almost forgot, the reason why I started this one off with
another day another dollar
is because when I was rereading one of my stories, with the intention of editing it into a potentially finished product, I noticed I’d used the cliché
the more things change, the more they stay the same
I missed yesterday’s post, but Friday’s piece of exploratory fiction clocked in at over a thousand words, so I hope I had some goodwill banked with you and you’ll forgive me. Today we’re going to take a lighter approach though.
Had a bit of a false start with this one. I was going to talk about the 1975 cinematic masterpiece, Rollerball, staring James Caan. But as I was getting into it I realized that I was kind of just rehashing the movie’s wikipedia page, and what’s the point of that?
I got there because I was thinking about the kind of science fiction I used to read and watch as a kid. You know, where people wear chrome jumpsuits and robots serve them their breakfast in the morning.
Then I thought, I should write a story about a tailor who works in a world where the only clothes that people wear are chrome jumpsuits.
But then I thought, I don’t know anything about tailors or how they work and I should write about what I know.
And then I thought, but maybe it would be more interesting to write about it as if I knew, but really just make things up as I went along.
And then I thought, okay let’s get started. How do I make this interesting? What’s the story here?
Finally, at around that point I really started to spin out and so I decided to start again from the top and that’s how we got here.
Some days this is really easy, but today’s not one of those days.
I really want to revisit that space tailor idea. Hang on.
I could smell the rocket fuel on her boots before she came in through the sliding doors. I was working the graveyard shift at my brother’s shop, Shekoda and Sons Tailors, it was called. The sign was all lit up in retro-inspired flash bulbs. Jack Shekoda was our father, he’d taught us everything he knew and more. Friends used to call him Big Jack. It was my younger brother, Jack Jr. or JJ, who really took to the business. I could do the work, but that was about it. My heart wasn’t in it.
A few earth years back, Big Jack got caught in a solar storm as he was passing Jupiter. He was headed to the moon colony to personally deliver some new suits to an old friend who was heading up operations there when his ship caught a solar flare. It careened into Europa. That’s when JJ took over the shop. I joined him an earth year or so later.
I’d always been a bit of a disappointment to the old man. He wanted me to be an explorer. See, he’d grown up in a time when the only humans in space were either rich tourists or scientists floating around in a dinky little space station. The human race hadn’t visited earth’s moon in decades, and his head was filled with utopian visions of a spacefaring future where humans were good. They explored the cosmos, seeking out new life and civilizations, boldly going where no human had ever been.
By the time my brother and I were walking, humans had spread throughout the galaxy. Big Jack was one of the first entrepreneurs to open up a shop at the station on Pluto, and that’s where we grew up. He had learned how to make suits from his father, working in a little shop, making bespoke Italian suits.
Anyway, that’s probably enough background to get you up to speed.
It was around 03h45, and I was just a couple hours away from the end of my workday and the beginning of my two sweet weeks of annual leave. I was looking forward to taking a vacation at the resort on Enceladus. They had a fantastic spa with great views of Saturn’s rings.
The sliding doors hissed open and the smell of jet fuel filled the room. That happened all the time, but there was a hint of something else that made me look up. Far above the unmistakably sweet smell of the petroleum based rocket juice hovered a musky, lightly floral scent. It was unmistakable. I only knew two women who wore that perfume.
There are different types of unease you can feel in different circumstances, right? Like, one version lives on a rollercoaster, just as you cross over the first hill. Another one you might feel sitting on the bus beside a stranger who really wants to talk to you about conspiracy theories. There’s also that feeling in your gut when you haven’t had anything to eat for a while, which is different, but similar.
It was another sense of unease entirely that I felt that night, as the branches rustled in the wind outside my window. The screen door to the balcony shook against its frame – something I’d been meaning to talk to the building manager about, but never got around to. Big thick dark clouds blanketed the sky, ready to burst like an overfilled salad roll that I put too much vermicelli into. But dark, like it was dipped in soy sauce or something.
We were deep into fall and I was still getting used to the shorter days. It was already dark when I left my office…
You know what? If I can back up just a second, there actually were a few things I’d been meaning to mention to the building manager. The heat was broken, which would have been fine as it was spring and I wouldn’t be needing it for a while, but somehow it had broken in the “on” position, so it was constantly pumping warmth into the apartment. It must’ve been over thirty degrees.
And he promised to replace the kitchen counters when I was moving in as well. That never happened!
Anyway, I couldn’t focus on the New Girl episode I’d put on the tv, so I turned it off and let the light fade out of the room. I turned and lay down on the couch, staring out the window. The wind howled outside. I hadn’t made dinner, wasn’t hungry. Still didn’t feel like anything to eat.
I watched the hanging fern I’d put on the patio that summer, now dry and brown, as it frantically swung back and forth in the wind. It was so lush when I’d bought it. Green and full. I’d overwatered and underwatered it, given it both too much light and not enough.
Maybe it was the warmth of the apartment, radiating through the windows and mixing with the cool air outside, but a steam started to form. It grew and lingered on the patio, thickening like a (vegan) chili.
I drifted off to sleep. It can’t have been for very long, but when I woke up the fog had seeped into the apartment. A blanket, at least a foot and a half thick covered the entire floor. I dipped my arm in it, slowly flicking wisps of fog and watching them dissolve as they rose towards the ceiling.
The dim yellow light from the lampposts outside hit the leaves of the still living houseplants in the apartment, casting grand shadows on the walls.
I’d been staring at the shapes the monstera shadows were making on the wall for ages before I realized that something was weird about the whole situation.
I was also dripping with sweat, so I grabbed my notebook from the coffee table, opened it to a random page, and wrote down
clean apartment and then text David re heat
But realistically, I had to do something about the fog. It was cool, but it wasn’t right. And maybe it was the shadows of the money tree interacting with the shadows of the prayer plant, but I was starting to get a distinct impression that there was something else in the apartment with me.
I closed my eyes for a second, figuring I’d try going back to sleep and waking up in a normal apartment. Or, maybe I was having a weird dream and I’d wake up.
It didn’t work.
And then I heard the balcony door slide open an inch, and then get caught. I listened as the door kept sliding open another inch and then getting caught, slipping, and getting caught again. I was too scared to think that this was yet another thing I needed repaired.
I kept my eyes closed. I figured, if I can’t see it, it can’t hurt me. Makes sense right?
I closed my eyes tighter as all the warmth in the room was sucked out the sliding door. Goosebumps covered my arms.
It’s kind of funny, earlier that same day, as I walked home in the twilight, I was thinking about how boring my life was. I watched too much science fiction, the type where a regular kid (and at almost thirty I still felt like one of those kids) is in the right place at the right time and is thrust into some sort of crazy intrigue and has to step up and save the world. As I walked home, I kept thinking, when will I be tested like that? I’m ready, aren’t I? I can handle anything.
Well, as I was lying there, eyes tightly closed, more goosebumps emerging across my arms like grey whales rising to the surface for air, I guess I found the answer to that question.
With visions of a cloaked murderer with grey skin and black soulless eyes coming into my apartment, I kept whispering it’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real over and over again.
Who knows how long that went on, but the room got a little warmer, and then felt a little brighter, and the sliding door had stopped opening, so I slowly opened my eyes.
Outside, the sky was a brilliant pink. The sun was poking out behind the mountains. The fog was gone.
I looked at the balcony. The door was open, all the way. That definitely wasn’t me. A pair of pigeons stood on the railing, bobbing their heads as they walked back and forth.
Heat was once again radiating into the room.
I looked at my phone, it was almost seven am, too late to go to the gym, but I still had time for breakfast before getting ready for work. I wasn’t hungry, but needed the routine.
I stood up and caught something out of the corner of my eye. I swung my head back towards the patio. The pigeons had taken off. That was it.
Only end pieces remained of the loaf of bread I was keeping in the freezer. I put them into the oven and turned it on.
Weird dream, I thought. But if something like that ever happened for real I would definitely be ready. I wouldn’t just lay there with my eyes closed hoping for nothing to happen.
For those just tuning in, I’m writing five hundred words every day for the month of October. It’s been going well, thanks for asking, and I’ve only missed a couple days so far.
There are no rules, so a lot of the posts are kind of like journal entries where I talk about whatever’s on my mind. Otherwise, I did a fake news post yesterday that was fun, and some fiction based on a dream I had earlier this week.
The idea is to write a little every day, because it’s a hobby that I love, to kind of shake out the cobwebs and flex those writing muscles again. I find that writing is kind of like washing your hands after working on a car. It’s takes a while to get all the grease and oil off (and you have to use a special orange grainy soap), but once you’ve put in the work, the water runs clear. Does that make sense? I don’t know, I’m going to leave it though.
Today has just been weird right? I mean, it started when I woke up at around three am, as awake as if it were the middle of the day, thinking about the time I lived in Montreal fifteen years ago. I was a different person back then and there are a lot of things I would do differently if I had the chance, but it’s not a time in my life that I tend to dwell on anymore. Except for this morning.
So, since I’m trying to write more, I decided to spare my partner my tossing and turning and write about what was on my mind. But then after I’d done that for a while, I still couldn’t sleep, so I watched Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and had a nighttime neocitran and that knocked me out for a few hours.
Anyway, later on I was on the picket line and it was busy and I just didn’t feel very social, so I went to the back alley which is usually a bit more chill. Luckily, one of my public service colleagues who happens to be Indigenous had brought sage and was smudging people.
I’d just been in such a funk all morning that it was so nice to spend a minute with the sacred herbs. She could tell how tense I was right off the bat and said, “Mark, you’ve gotta let yourself relax.” It was fantastic. I almost cried afterwards.
Maybe it’s the tension from the loss of income from the strike (week four for me now), the fact that we have a trip coming up, the myriad of other bills to pay and costs to cover, or just the changing weather, but these last few days I’ve really felt on edge.
And this next part might sound stupid, but I feel guilty for being stressed. When I think about my problems compared to say, the plight of the Palestinians right now, or the fact that the United States is rapidly descending into fascism in front of our faces, I’ve got it pretty good.
But also, reminding yourself about how much worse it could be doesn’t help solve the current predicament either.
