Category: A Day In The Life

So, it looks like I missed a couple days. You’re probably not waiting for me to start making excuses, but I have some! Wednesday was especially busy for me. I had to picket my workplace in the morning, pick up my partner from a procedure at the hospital in the afternoon, attend a Green Party meeting in the evening, and then later in the evening head over to a local French restaurant to celebrate the birthday of a dear friend. Evidently, a full day.

And yesterday—I had all this work to catch up on in the morning, picketing in the afternoon, and then I made dinner and had to polish my dress shoes for today. Hopefully that’s enough to satisfy you!

But the sad thing is, this means I only made it a week before failing in my blog-a-day goal for October.

The good thing is it doesn’t matter!

Today was a weird day. I attended the memorial of a colleague in Victoria. I woke up extra early, got myself ready, ironed my shirt and pants, and walked over to the home of one of the directors in my division so she could drive us to the ferry and then to the church. I’m on strike and she’s in management, so I hadn’t seen the her in a minute, but it was nice, despite the reason, to spend some time together. We picked up another colleague on the ferry.

The service was beautiful. I’m not religious, but it was held in a church so there was Christian music and some praying, and to finish the day, the pastor of the church gave a lengthy sermon-like talk that I’m sure is common for these kinds of things. He did start by saying “I’m not going to keep you long,” which often seems to be a lie, no matter who’s saying it. 

It was moving listening to my former-colleague’s husband talk about her. I realized that I don’t know my coworkers all that well at the end of the day. She left four kids. Her oldest, only a teenager, gave a really moving tribute to her mum.

A number of my colleagues are based in Victoria or elsewhere on the island, so I got to see some old friends too. It’s perhaps the only positive aspect of a funeral—getting to spend time with friends and family that you might not see often otherwise. Sometimes the food is really good too.

I’ve been to three services this year, all for people who I knew and wanted to honour, but who also lived in my periphery. It makes me realize how lucky I am that my family is healthy. But also, it makes me think about how fragile we all are. It doesn’t take much more than a moment to change your life forever. And then, once it’s all done, there’s nothing you can do. Nothing you can take back, or contextualize, or add nuance to. Nothing you can apologize for.

No more opportunities to say I love you, you matter to me, I care about you.

I guess it’s the kind of thing that everyone knows, but it’s important to be reminded now and again about what really matters. 

This photo is from a trip my partner and I took to Cortes Island, but it made me think of one of my favourite little things in Germany, fritz-kola.

Fritz-kola, as the name suggests, is a German soda brand. They make a regular cola, a “super zero,” which is effectively a zero sugar cola with extra caffeine, and other flavours (including mischmasch, which is a delicious combination of kola, orange drink, and lemonade).

Growing up, I was a big soda fan. We never really had it in the house, but I’ve got a wicked sweet tooth, so I’d drink as much of it as I could get my hands on. Sugar, as we know, is the devil, so I had to try to cut it out or at least find alternatives. Diet Coke is okay, but I never really liked the taste that much, so when Coke Zero came out and I found that it tasted pretty similar to the real thing, I was already primed to be hooked.

Anyway, fritz-kola is way better! And it comes in glass bottles, which is cool. I mean, it’s better than plastic, that’s for sure.

But anyway, one of the things that it made me realize is that if a savvy entrepreneur in Vancouver were to develop their own zero sugar cola alternative that:

• tasted as good as Coke Zero
• costed roughly the same amount
• had simple but elegant branding

then they could potentially do decent business, right?

I think there are two types of small businesses these days. First, are the businesses started by someone who doesn’t just want to be an entrepreneur, but wants to run that type of business. Think restaurant owners who work as either the General Manager or Head Chef, breweries that are owned by their brewers, or book stores where the owner works the cash and stocks the shelves.

The second type are businesses like the first, but the owner doesn’t want to be involved in the day-to-day. I’ve worked for a couple businesses where the owner really wants to treat it almost as a sort of passive income stream, and wants little to do with the day to day. Or, they hire managers to run the business so that they can take on a more “strategic” role, and end up getting in the way more than anything else.

What I’m trying to say, is that I don’t think you’d do very well starting a soda brand in Vancouver if your goal was to not have to work, or to eventually compete with Coca-Cola and Pepsi Co. I do think you could make a good living, create some good local jobs, and provide a valuable product that I would be so grateful for. I hate giving Coca-Cola my money!

It can’t be that hard either, right? Maybe you could rent out some space in a local brewery, because they’d have similar equipment I think. I know Calister was doing soft drinks for a bit, and Phillips does sodas too. So you find some space, get your recipe figured out and really dial it in. And then put some decent thought into the the branding. But don’t spend too much time on that. Get a nice logo and font, and maybe a website so that people can contact you for orders once you start to gain steam?

And then what, bottle a few palettes and try to sell them? It can’t be that hard!

Think about it!

Yes, you are correct, this absolutely sick custom toyota pickup has been raised and a hot tub has been added to the bed.

I’m not sure if it’s still for sale. Anyone in Tofino may be able to confirm it by heading to Tofino Brewing Co., going up the hill past the Tofino Distillery, and looking for a parking lot on the left side of the road.

Or maybe, if you have some digital forensic skills, you can enhance the phone number in the photo and try that.

Either way, whoever snaps this thing up is an incredibly lucky person. Not only is it an early toyota pickup, so it was built back when cars were designed to be easier to repair, but it’s also got a manual transmission.

I tried to convince my partner that we could buy it. Imagine having not only a sick truck, but also being able to hot tub wherever you are. Ferry line ups? No more sitting in the car on your phone. Now you can sit in your truck bed hot tub!

Take it to Spanish Banks and park it beside the mobile sauna that hangs out there. You can go sauna to ocean to hot tub to ocean as many times as you’d like. You could even rent it out for parties.

If you wanted, you could sanitize the hell out of it and then fill it with jello. And then people could just scoop jello out of the hot tub.

Needless to say, there are a ton of potential applications for the hot tub truck bed.

But I didn’t get it. I don’t really know where I’d park it. It certainly wouldn’t fit in the underground parking. I guess I could get a permit for street parking, and then I could share the hot tub with the neighbourhood. It would be a nice way to make new friends, wouldn’t it?

No, I guess I’m pretty happy without a car these days. My partner has a jetta that I borrow once in a while, but most of the time I get around on my bike, or on public transit. Sometimes I take evos.

In the next couple years we’ll also have a skytrain station nearby! We’re not a long walk from the future terminus of the millenium line at Arbutus. That’s going to be great.

If I did have a car though, I’d want to have a pickup with a hot tub on the back. Or a sauna.

Have I written about the Tofino trip yet? My partner and I went over the May long weekend this year and it was fantastic. We did all of the regular touristy things, like the boat ride to Hot Spring Cove and a surf lesson at Cox Bay Beach.

We stayed at a perfect little cabin in Ucluelet where we saw a bunch of wildlife. Actually, you know what? I’ve got a bunch of photos from that trip, I think I’ll just do up a whole post on that. We’re still on strike at work, so I’ve got some extra time.

Stay tuned!

This photo was taken in Germany last summer when I had beautiful long hair. And though my hair was beautiful, I’m happy to be wearing it shorter these days. I think my partner is too. Even a colleague mentioned it the other day; he called the long hair

so gross

which, though a statement generally too brief for a quote, merits it’s own distinction.

Germany is very cool. We visited Hamburg, Berlin, Munich, and Schwangau (to visit the castles, of course).

I was quite shy at first. We started our trip in Hamburg and I didn’t want anyone to know that I couldn’t speak German. On our second day, we stopped in at a lovely little gluten free bakery/cafe. I ordered a decaf coffee, my partner ordered a regular one, but when the guy brought them out he didn’t say which was which.

So, I mumbled out a question about which was the decaf and I guess he didn’t hear me, so he asked me to repeat myself, and again, being self-conscious about speaking English in the land of German, I mumbled the question. He figured it out that time though, and after pointing out the decaf, said,

“To be clear, I actually speak English very well. I just couldn’t hear you.”

And then we all became best friends.

Hamburg was really cool. Everyone told us to visit Miniature World. We thought it was a bit of a joke, but enough people told us to visit that we decided to go. You have to book in advance, and the earliest spot we could get while we were there was nine pm one night, but it was well worth it. They close at midnight, and we heard that you needed to budget at least two or three hours. We ended up getting kicked out as they were closing.

It is well worth it!

They have tiny models of entire cities! Little cars and trains that move on highways and tracks. They have a big remote control ship that moves around in actual water, but the best part is the airport.

The airport is so cool. They have planes that land and take off, and they have a little simulation where a plane catches on “fire” and then these little fire trucks race over from the other end of the airport to “put it out.”

After we’d spent a couple days in Berlin, I felt a little more settled. I think I could live in Berlin. It’s such an interesting city. Big and busy and cosmopolitan. Really great vegan food. Lots of cool non-alcoholic drinks. I had a fantastic non-alc rose and some delicious dumplings at a market there.

The twentieth century history is probably the most interesting part of Berlin. You can’t miss the ways the wall shaped the city. As an outsider, it’s fascinating.

Munich is different again. We were there as they were setting up for Oktoberfest. It seemed like dozens of huge structures were being built up to facilitate the celebration.

I don’t really know what Oktoberfest is about, to be honest.

Schwangau was one of my favourites though. A really small town that you can stay in while you’re visiting the Neuschwanstien and Hohenschwangau castles.

Also, I should take a second to shout out Asia Food Place where, as they could accommodate my vegan lifestyle and my partner’s gluten intolerance, we ate several times.

My castle photos didn’t really turn out unfortunately. Oh well. Well worth the visit.

When I was twenty three I “moved” to Australia. I didn’t have much of a plan beyond wanting to get out of Vancouver and do something different. I’d spent most of my life up until then living in and around Vancouver, and so I figured I’d take a shot at living in the countryside.

My mum’s side of the family is Australian, and from the early nineteen eighties up until she passed, my grandmother lived in a small house just outside of a town called Yarrawonga. When I moved in, it had been fairly quiet for a while. The bore water was undrinkable and the place was crawling with mice. There was no wifi, no cable, and if I wanted to get service on my cellphone I had to sit outside. The rabbit ear antenna meant I could watch the occasional rugby league or aussie rules game, and Gilmore Girls was on quite a bit too actually. These days my partner has me on the annual Gilmore Girls cycle – we watch it every fall – but back then I’d just watch whatever was on.

Another part of the reason I moved to Yarrawonga was because I wanted to be a writer.

I’ve always really enjoyed writing. It’s funny though, because it still feels like such a chore to sit down and actually do it. I just reread The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, and it made me feel a lot better about how lazy I’ve been about it. I won’t spoil the book, it’s a great read.

It’s part of the reason why I’m doing this daily writing test, shaking out the cobwebs a little.

Next, I think I’m going to revisit The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I never got through the whole program, but morning pages have been a part of my daily routine on and off (mostly off) for the last few years.

When I was in Australia I read a lot. I was in a big Haruki Murakami phase, so I read Kafka on the Shore, Norwegian Wood, Sputnik Sweetheart, and my favourite, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I keep meaning to pick up a copy of 1Q84, but I’m afraid I’m past my Murakami era.

That was also when I read Hemmingway for the first time! For Whom the Bell Tolls and A Farewell to Arms.

Simpler times! That was ten years ago and now I’m an old man, rapidly creeping up on thirty three. I still want to write though.

It’s kind of scary trying to pull something from nothing, isn’t it? Writing is daunting when so many great stories already exist. The greats that stood before us set standards so high that it feels like it would be arrogant to even try to join them.

But then, is that sense of self-doubt part of the process? Pressfield calls it Resistance, and he argues that we have to fight Resistance every day.

I don’t know. And I only ended up spending about seven months in Australia before getting bored and moving home.

But I’ll keep doing these short little journal entries I guess, and leaving them on the blog. Hopefully the practice is good. This is four days now.

Okay, so as you may know, by day I’m a humble public servant. Right now my union, the BCGEU, is on strike. My building has been on strike for two weeks now.

I’ve been in unions before, and I’ve even voted to strike, but this is the first time that I’ve been on the picket line.

When I was working as a teaching assistant at SFU, I was a member of the Teaching Support Staff Union (TSSU). I think we were bargaining for a new contract the entire time I was doing my master’s degree. In my last term, we held a strike vote, and I volunteered to do some polling shifts. It was actually pretty fun, sitting at the table and helping people vote. We ended up with a pretty strong strike mandate (I can’t remember what the percentage was). In fact, one of my colleagues in the School of Communication actually served strike notice at convocation, as he was receiving his PhD. It was pretty great to see the look on the president of the university’s face as he handed it to her.

Unfortunately for me, I was graduating too, and was no longer a TA or a member of the union when the pickets were set up soon after.

But anyway, now I’m actually on strike.

I’m not sure what the cats have to do with this, but they are perfect.

So, we’re on strike. It’s a nice change of pace honestly. The strike pay, though less than I would get if I were at my desk, is fairly reasonable for a union of 34,000 just finishing its fifth week of progressively escalating job action.

As government employees are scattered in offices across the province, my building has attracted BCGEU members working in all sorts of different ministries. I’ve made new friends from across government, and one of the things I’ve noticed we all have in common is that none of us have ever been on strike. And it shows. There have been a lot of challenges, but we have such a great group of volunteer picket captains that take everything with good humour that I know there’s no problem they couldn’t solve.

In the past, our union has relied on the BC Liquor Distribution Branch (LDB) and the BC Liquor store’s employees to strike for us, so I’m glad that union leadership isn’t taking that route this time. It doesn’t seem fair for LDB staff to always shoulder the brunt of job action for the whole union.

What this means is that a bunch of office workers, most of whom have never struck their worksites, and most of whom don’t really have much contact with the union at all, are experiencing what solidarity looks like for the first time. Some people hate it. They just want to get back to work and seem embarrassed to have to be out with us.

Others, however, are really into it! Or at least, are being good sports. We’d all rather be working, but it makes such a difference when people come to the picket line with patience and an open mind. We spend a lot of time standing or walking around. We cheer when drivers honk for us and when cyclists ring their bells for us. We get really excited when members of other unions refuse to cross our picket line.

It’s an interesting time. I’ll leave it there for now.

I was hoping to start today off with a run, but it is pouring rain outside so here we are!

One of my favourite albums of all time came out in 2018. Arctic Monkey’s sixth studio album, Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino. It’s a science fiction concept album, a bit of a departure from their fifth studio album, AM, and maybe a musical foreshadowing of their seventh, The Car. It is also fantastic.

I had a friend when I was in Montreal who I used to argue with about everything, but the one thing he was definitely right about is that music is best appreciated by the album, not by the song. And Tranquility Base is one of my favourites end-to-end. To start, the first lyric on Star Treatment, the album opener, is

I just wanted to be one of the Strokes

Which obviously resonated with me big time. The album is centered around this resort on the moon, but it has a lot of really interesting technological critique. There’s a house band called the Martini Police (also in Star Treatment), and a taqueria on the roof called the Information-Action Ratio (Four Out of Five) which is a very cool shout to a Neil Postman concept. Read Amusing Ourselves to Death, it’s a good read!

Anyway, the album is all hits, the lyrics are phenomenal, the music is incredible, but the reason I’m thinking about it this morning is because of a lyric that’s been in my head a lot lately

Everybody’s on a barge
Floating down the endless stream of great tv

And I guess the reason this resonates with me is that

a. there is so much great tv available right now
b. it does feel like I’m floating down an endless stream of it

I’m trying to think of a smart way to talk about this, but simply put, doesn’t it feel like we’re floating down an endless stream of great tv?

But what does that actually mean? I think if we compare how we used to “consume” television content (on cable, with episodes generally released once a week) with how we predominantly consume it now (multiple episodes at a time, sometimes an entire season or more) the metaphor is pretty clear. It’s also more than just bingeing, because that was also possible when they started putting tv shows into dvd boxsets. But it wasn’t endless! You’d watch a bunch of episodes of Friends in a row, but without the access to countless other shows in an endless stream.

Okay, and stick with me for a second. Remember Marshall McLuhan, famous Canadian media scholar? Well he argued that the form of media shapes society more than the content of media. You’re probably familiar with his saying, the medium is the message. It’s almost like the form a medium takes is more important, at the macro level, than the content it disseminates.

Now, McLuhan lived in the era of broadcast television (he passed away in 1980) and had grand visions for what tv would accomplish. I don’t know that his predictions necessarily came true, but I really like his analysis of the media of his time.

Neil Postman, who also lived in the era of broadcast television (he passed away in 2003), wrote about the “Typographic Mind” or basically what people were like when the dominant medium of the day was the printed word. As he put it, the written word is logical and linear, so people thought in more logical and linear ways. The Typographic Mind was more rational.

Of course, the way we could jump around network television changed that. And streaming has certainly changed that further, right?

Take all this with a grain of salt though. I once had a professor tell me that I had “severely misunderstood McLuhan” in a paper I submitted, but I was never really clear on what I got wrong. Oh well.

This last one is from American Sports

I lost the money, lost the keys but
I’m still handcuffed to the briefcase

Pitchfork gave it an 8.1 (I read their review after writing this!).

It’s the first of October and I decided last week that I was going to write up a post every day for the entire month. The big problem with this, as you’ll soon see, is that I don’t know what to write about. I’ve done this kind of thing in the past, and when I did it always ended up devolving into a sort of sanitized version of a daily journal.

ucluelet, may twenty twenty five, shot on thirty-five millimetre film

I love writing out numbers. There aren’t that many opportunities to write out numbers though, except for cheques! Remember those? I almost completely missed the boat on cheque-writing, except for a brief 10-month stint in an apartment where the company only took cheques. Weird right? I had to go to the bank and pay for a whole cheque book then wait for it to arrive in the mail. This happened across twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen. Anyway, I guess I didn’t really enjoy writing out the whole amount on those, but that was due to the size of it. The rest of the process wasn’t bad.

I’ll have to prepare a list of topics for the rest of the month because I am sitting here staring at the blank screen and spinning out. I wanted to avoid this turning into a sort of stream-of-consciousness/morning pages type endeavour but I think today I’m just going to have to tell you about my day.

We have Gilmore Girls (in the markdunn.ca style guide the names of tv shows are italicized, is that normal? I can’t remember) on in the background, and a pile of dishes in the sink. The older I get the more it feels like all my time outside of work gets eaten up by the administrative duties of running my own life. Cooking meals, doing the dishes, doing the laundry, cleaning the kitchen, cleaning the bathroom, fixing things, picking up the groceries, taking the car to the shop…it’s much easier living with a partner, but still! Anyway, I think you get the point and this isn’t interesting.

I met two city councillors today! My union is on strike, and I was helping answer questions and sign members in for a rally today. We were set up at the end point of the march (near the convention centre) and Sean Orr came by while we were waiting for the thousands of marchers to arrive. He came up to me and one of my colleagues (who thought he was a BCGEU member and tried to sign him in). Should’ve taken a selfie.

Later on, Lucy Maloney was locking her bike near where we were checking in the stragglers. So, I went over and mentioned that I waited three and a half hours in line to vote for her, and I’d do it again if I had to! I’ve been pretty happy with Lucy and Sean, and I’m hoping that we get a strong progressive council when we have our municipal election next year.

I brought my film camera out today and I’m hoping the photos I took of the rally turn out. The roll’s been through an airport scanner, so I’m not sure how it’s going to turn out, cross your fingers for me.

That’s probably good for day one right? I think tomorrow we’ll talk about coffee or something. I just bought an aeropress last month and I’m obsessed with it.

Since I live in the West End and lost my job in mid-March, I’ve come to appreciate the sounds of the apartment in a way that I always used to be too preoccupied to notice.

There’s the construction along Haro, that used to be a faint chorus of banging, buzzing, clanging, and other construction sounds that generally form an important part of the ambience of the city’s weekdays. A few months ago it was quiet enough that I would barely notice it, but as the work moved along the street, and closer to me, it’s quite efficiently replaced my alarm clock, and allowed me the opportunity to do things like run the seawall before it gets busy with my neighbours doing the same thing. Now the work is moving further on, and only time will tell if the merits of waking up pre-7AM will go with it.

I live right next to some big trees. I’m not sure what kind, but they lose their leaves in the winter and  they take quite a bit of my privacy along with them. But they’re home to lots of different birds. Little ones, whose names I don’t know, crows, and pigeons. It’s also home to old clothing that has been discarded by either the folks higher up in my building or the one next door. I hear a mix of cooing and chirping throughout the day, but it’s most peaceful in the morning. You can pair it with coffee and avocado toast.

Two of the pigeons that spend a lot of time hanging out in the trees also made a nest on my patio. The eggs hatched a little over three weeks ago, and the nestlings have gone from tiny little yellow stress balls (in appearance only) to quite respectable juvenile pigeons. City pigeons are descendants of rock pigeons, and you can see this in the light grey birds with the two black stripes across their wings. Overtime, they’ve interacted with “escaped” domesticated pigeons, and this is why pigeons can have such different plumages today.

These birds, part-wild, part-escaped pets (bred for different reasons but no longer in captivity), have carved out their own space in cities all over the world, adjacent to, but separate from our own.

The nestlings make a little squeaking noise, one that’s very un-pigeon-like, when they know they’re about to be fed. It’s very sweet, but I can see why some would find it irritating.

In terms of gender-parity in child rearing, pigeons appear to be somewhat ahead of us people. When incubating, though the mother generally spends more time on the eggs, the father shares the responsibility. Watching them switch out is a very cool experience. I believe, and this is based on what I’ve read about wood pigeons (columba palumbus) which are a different subspecies, that the hen pigeon will warm the clutch for roughly twice as long as the cock. There are periods when neither is incubating though. When feeding, both produce “milk” which is made up of regurgitated plant and insect and held in a spot in the neck called the crop.  Both parents seem to share the feeding equally.

Anyway, as you now know, I’m a bit of a pigeon-landlord these days, and have taken the responsibility seriously. They are not very happy with me though, and when I put out water for them they shat all over the bowl.

It’s kind of a weird time. I was a server before all this started, so I lost my job fairly early on in the global pandemic. I drove down to Seattle on March 9th for the Strokes concert, driving back that night, and got a bit of a cold a few days later. Apparently Seattle got hit bad, but I didn’t really know that at the time. None of us really knew what was coming, I guess. I’m psyched I got to see the Strokes twice in one week though. PLUS they played One Way Trigger and Evening Sun in Seattle, but not in Vancouver and those are BANGERS.

A few days later, a Thursday, my boss and I decided that it wasn’t worth the risk and I should take a few days off. I phoned the health line the next day and they told me to self-quarantine for the next two weeks. When that was done, the world was quite a bit different, and instead of waiting tables, my colleagues that had stayed on were mostly answering phones and boxing takeout. And trying very hard to stay apart in a very small restaurant with a very very small kitchen.

Today, a lot of people in my position have found ourselves with the incredible good fortune of being able to stay at home collecting $2,000 a month in order to keep the more vulnerable parts of society safe. I have to remind myself every day that this is a gigantic privilege, and though I’m fairly introverted and thrive when all I have to do is read books and write nonsense, a lot of people aren’t anywhere near as fortunate. Beyond the effects of the actual virus, people are killing themselves, people in abusive relationships are finding that they now have no escape and are confined 24/7 with their abusers, people who don’t qualify for CERB or EI and have lost their jobs have really limited options, and people who were already in precarious situations, like living in the street, can’t really shelter-in-place and are having a really hard time navigating this.

All the while, front-line health workers are dealing with the brunt of this every day. They don’t get to sit at home earning $2,000 a month. Neither do grocery store workers, restaurant cooks, and tons of other people that work in jobs that are incredibly essential but are not well-paid. This virus has effected us all differently, along lines of race, class, and gender, and once the world gets a handle on it, we desperately need to revisit the ways we’ve structured our institutions, and the ways we treat each other. The old way wasn’t working, so it’s on us to do what we gotta do to survive…I think that’s a Tupac lyric.

With the privilege acknowledged and out of the way, overall these last couple months have had a fairly positive effect on me. I’ve had the chance to really think about what I want to do, what’s important to me, and who’s important to me. I’m exercising a lot and feeling really fit, despite the ever-present bulging gut, and I’m writing again. I really like writing. I missed it.

When I lived in Australia a few years back I’d kind of sequestered myself at my grandma’s house (RIP Jean), a roughly 10 minute drive from Yarrawonga, a town of about 6,000 year-round residents that sits about three hours north of Melbourne. I’d read Stephen King’s On Writing and decided to follow his advice and write 2,000 words a day. I churned out two decently-thick science fiction manuscripts that I have not looked at since.

To be fair, a couple years ago I tried to edit one down into something reasonable, but realized that I used the cliche, “the more things chance the more they stay the same,” three times in the first 10 pages or so. I was so discouraged I shredded it. Haven’t looked at either since.

Maybe I’ll revisit them again one day. I still have the .docs somewhere. But lately I’ve had the chance to dive back into this love that I’ve always had for stories. I’m reading so much, and writing little short stories that I’m really hoping other people might actually like.

–

Anyway, I just wanted to stretch my blogging muscles a little bit. I’ve clearly got the time. Take care of yourselves, take care of your families, think about what’s really important, don’t stress about ordering sushi 3 or 4 times a week if you can afford it, it’s a crazy time so do what you need to do.

Lots of love,
Mark