…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?
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.
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.
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.
I sometimes wonder if anyone’s reading these. I haven’t advertised anywhere and no one, besides my partner, knows that I’m doing this.
I could’ve easily put five hundred words a day into a .docx or a notebook, and it would’ve likely had the same effect right? I’m just shaking out the cobwebs after all. But I like the fact that these are online because they set up sort of a boundary on what I can put down.
You can google my name and find this website, so I have to be okay with the words on these little posts being reflective of who I am.
However, because there’s so much stuff out here, there’s very little chance anyone is going to stumble into my little corner of the internet. So there’s some privacy here I guess. It’s like being on the second floor of an apartment building with big windows. I know that people can see in, but I know that generally no one is. And if they are, they probably don’t know me.
So am I writing for the voyeurs? You’ll have to tell me. Maybe there is a sense of excitement reading posts like these that are really not meant for anyone, but sit there, just a couple clicks away.
I don’t know.
I’ve had these awful headaches all weekend. Sunday was the worst, and yesterday they sort of came and went. I woke up this morning at around four am feeling terrible. Stuffed nose, piercing headache. I took a pill and came out to sleep on the couch, but didn’t fall asleep for a while. Felt better when I woke up though, and my partner made me drink a neocitran, even though I’m not sick! It’s just a headache.
I hate headaches. They shut me right down. I have a colleague who gets migraines and I have no idea how she gets through each day. The worst part is these lingering low-level ones, where everything is just really annoying to do, but not enough to take off work, or cancel plans. Sunday was definitely a cancel plans day. Today isn’t.
Anyway, no more complaining! The fresh air of the picket line is going to do me good, I’m sure. We’re into week four on the picket line (though others are entering week seven) and it’s a beautiful sunny day. To my knowledge, there is no sign of this letting up anytime soon and some of my colleagues are expecting this to potentially extend into November.
I hope not.
Being on strike does make you think about how much you actually like your job though. And, to be honest, while I have a great team and we often do interesting work, I’m kind of enjoying the half days right now. We only picket four hours a day, and that means I have a lot more time for me. It’s part of the reason why I can do these little posts.
When the strike finally is resolved, it’s going to be hard to go back to work for a government that put us through this. I think there’s going to be a lot of animosity towards the NDP and towards managers who lied to or mistreated their staff while they were striking. That’s thankfully not a concern of mine though.
I have an awful headache today. It’s paralyzing. I’ve had to cancel plans and lie on the couch watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Smallville and Gilmore Girls on the TV all day.
Yesterday one of my oldest friends got married, so I was up a little uncharacteristically late. Now, the following day, like a detective, I’m trying to figure out what happened to cause this headache!
So, here are the potential culprits:
Skipped lunch on Saturday because of poor time management
Drank two cokes and two san pellegrinos at the wedding
Spent time inside the Cambie (though didn’t drink anything)
Fell asleep on the couch at two am
Danced like nobody was watching
Anyway, who knows what’s going on.
The wedding was beautiful though. My friends are just starting to get married now, and this is the first of what I’m expecting to be a bit of a slew of weddings in this friend group over the next couple years.
Parallel conversations seem to happen at weddings. Friends asked my partner when I was finally going to propose and I imagine a lot of other girlfriends were dealing with the same. At the same time, the other boyfriends and I shared notes about the expectations, the hints, and the pressure to pop the question.
But anyway, the wedding was perfect, and I’m looking forward to many more!
I’m still very frustrated that I had to cancel plans today though.
who watches the whale watchers by me on thirty-five millimetre
This is another film shot from the trip my partner and I took to Tofino and Ucluelet earlier this year. Have you tried the Harman Phoenix rolls yet? It’s the new colour film brand from Ilford. I can’t remember exactly why, but for some reason Ilford isn’t able to sell colour rolls under the main brand. This photo was taken on one of their new(ish) phoenix two-hundred ISO rolls.
Looking at the whole roll, I found that they were a little darker than photos tend to turn out when I take them on fuji or kodak rolls. I’ll have to keep that in mind next time. But phoenix film is apparently known for it’s graininess and that certainly comes through.
Same roll, on the same trip. This one, a classic mirror selfie, is another good example of the graininess of the roll.
I love reflection photos. I don’t know why. Is it because it’s kind of like a two for one? Or could it be because of the unique perspective? Does something ordinary become more interesting because it’s reflected in a window, clear water, or a mirror?
It’s also nice, because it’s an easy way to include myself in the composition. I do love that.
Some days I struggle to hit the word count in my quest for the daily five hundred. Some days it’s a breeze. The muse sits by my side feeding me inspiration.
Now the muse is absent. Maybe they’re taking thanksgiving weekend off. Or maybe they’re here hanging out watching me struggle. There is only one thing I know for certain though.
Today my head hurts, and I’m hungry, and it is not a breeze.
It’s Saturday, it’s eleven thirty, and it’s a little wet outside. I’m eating oatmeal with frozen berries and a little maple syrup and drinking a medium roast coffee prepared in my aeropress. I’m drinking the coffee black, listening to the song Waves by Bahamas.
I’m trying to decide if I want to italicize song titles when I write about them. When I did my post about Tranquility Base Hotel and CasinoI remember noting that the markdunn.ca style guide requires albums to be italicized but not songs.
Actually, on review it was photos in black and whitethat references the style guide. Potential archivists looking for work, looks like I may need some help here.
Last month I had lunch with a friend and had a coffee. I normally don’t have coffee with lunch, or in the afternoon at all unless it’s decaf, but I felt like one. And it was amazing. I was awake all afternoon, including that three to four pm time where I’m usually fighting to stay awake.
Anyway, I remember texting my partner something like
I think lunchtime coffee might have saved my life
which is a little dramatic, don’t you think?
So I went out that day and bought myself an aeropress. I really wanted one anyway, so it wasn’t going to take much to push me over the line. I rode my bike to the Gourmet Warehouse at Hastings and Clark after work that day and picked it up. A guy complimented me on the BC Lions hoodie my partner bought me too. Out of all my hoodies, for some reason that’s the one that gets all the compliments.
Well, the aeropress is amazing. There are all these “recipes” online which are basically just different ways to make coffee with it. The way it works normally is you put in the little aeropress filter into the filter tray and screw that on to the main piece, and then put that on top of a sturdy mug, scoop in fine ground coffee with the scoop they give you, add hot water, stir with the stir stick they give you, add the plunger, and then wait a couple minutes and plunge it. Easy.
But then I learned that there’s an inverted method (haven’t tried it yet) to get better espresso-style coffee. There’s also the Hoffman method, which I quite like, that involves no stirring, but a little gentle sort of swirl instead.
What I learned from the Hoffman method was that you’ve got to control the temperature. I started sticking my partner’s meat thermometer into the kettle so I knew to stop it at around ninety degrees. And that way I get an excellent cup of coffee. Almost every time.
I can see how things like an aeropress can be a gateway to fancier coffee equipment though. I already want to get a hand grinder. We use an electric one, but apparently the burr grinders are better? And a gooseneck kettle with temperature control, plus maybe a chemex to go with the kettle.
And maybe after that I could start sourcing fresh coffee beans and roasting them on the stove. Woah.
