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The blue jays and the cardinals singing to each other as the sun begins to rise. The exuberant “hellos” from neighbors as you pass them on your morning walk through the neighborhood. The ice clinking in your glass when you opt to deviate from your norm and decide to drink a cold, iced coffee instead of your usual americano. The splashing of water and laughter of children as they enjoy the backyard pool. The whoosh of the swing every time it flies by you because you pushed it really hard the last time and your little one is giggling with glee at going so high. The whirring of the air conditioner as the cold air comes through the vents to cool the house on the sunniest, hottest days. The music coming out of people’s cars as they drive by with their windows open—not always to your taste, but an aural variety to the urban landscape. The crackle of the flame as you put Adana-style kebabs on the grill in anticipation of a hearty and joyful dinner in just a few minutes. The clink of the spoon against the bowl as you scoop out whatever ice cream is left, before it all melts, from the heaping serving you scooped yourself just a few minutes before. The low hum of the night as you lay your head on the pillow after a busy, tiring, but delightful day, ready to do it all again tomorrow.

More and more these days, I’m making it a point to take out my AirPods and listen to the world as it rushes by.

A poem

A close friend of mine died last month.

He was young, only a few months older than me, and like me, was a father to a young toddler. He brought so much joy into my life that I find it hard to imagine what my life would have been without him; I’m sad that I won’t get to know what the future with him would look like.

We bonded, as I do with most of my friends, over music and food. He was a connoisseur of a wide spectrum of musical styles and genres, and could slip easily between bopping his head to ‘90s hip hop to admiring the smooth saxophone tones of Coltrane. He especially loved soul music, and we would spend hours listening to, and talking about, soul and neo-soul, all while eating good food in dives across the city. He knew where to find great eats in the most unlikely of places, and he’d often lead me into small unnoticed holes-in-the-wall for excellent meals over fantastic conversation.

On Sundays, we would often watch football together. Those Sundays really weren’t about the games, but instead about finding space in our week to make sure we connected, to ensure that we were spending time with each other. We criticized the plays on the field, but we also talked about our families, our friends, our hopes, our fears, and the things that kept us excited through the days. We relished in learning about each other’s small joys and delights.

I worry a lot about what will happen when machines take over my job.

As someone who does a lot of writing for work, whether that be in briefing notes or presentation decks or memos or just in Slack, I’ve long thought about what it would mean if a machine could do my writing better than I could.

For a long time, this was just conjecture. But with the emergence of ChatGPT and its ability to write—and emulate a person’s specific writing style—highly technical prose, the future where my work will be fundamentally different can’t be too far away.

It will, of course, take a while for tools like ChatGPT to get to the point where they can build the political acuity and broad analytical ability that is needed to do my job, but I’m sure that day is coming. Coupled with the fact that I’m growing older, and being older in a tech-adjacent field is often a liability, I can’t bury my head in the sand and pretend nothing’s going to change. The nature of my work will have to change, and with it, the way I define my professional self, as well.

If you asked my what my favorite word in the world is, I’d say it’s a toss up between “delight” and “grace.”

I’m sure I’ll have a lot more to say about grace sometime soon, but today, I’m thinking a lot about delight.

Every day, I look for the little moments of joy, the little bits of delight that cross my path. I even have a prompt in my nightly journal to encourage me to look back upon the day and describe what delighted me.

Today, I’m delighted that we can see a brief sliver of the moon just above the rising sun. Yesterday, I was delighted by the colors of the tulips on our kitchen counter. The day before that, the delight of a robin singing outside the window in the early dawn.

At this time last week, we were caught in a winter storm.

It is the time of year for snow and ice; every February we hope that the winter will pass us by, that we will avoid the worst of the storms, but undoubtedly the storms come, and we hunker down indoors and wait for them to pass.

Last week’s winter storm came with dire warnings. My weather app on my phone had a dark red bar running across the top of the screen, warning of untenable driving conditions and significant risks of power outages. First, we were to get some snow, and then the snow would turn into freezing rain, and all of this would be accompanied by high winds. It was not the time to be venturing outside.

As the storm rolled in, I turned forty-one years old.

We went on vacation a couple of weeks ago, to Mexico, to escape the cold and snow of an Ontario winter.

Prior to the pandemic—and prior to having a child—we traveled a lot. L and I get joy from exploring new places and trying new things, so travel was high on our list of things to do. Since the pandemic rolled around, and since having our daughter, our travel plans have quieted: other than going to see family in different parts of the country, we haven’t really taken the opportunity to escape very much. During the early years of the pandemic, safe travel was impossible; now, traveling with a toddler requires much more effort and planning than just leaving on short notice.

That’s why this trip to Mexico was a welcome one: it was a chance to escape not only the doldrums of the winter, but also to experience something new, go away somewhere, as a family. We planned it months ago (knowing that January in Ontario can get bleak) and spent a great deal of time preparing for taking a trip with a two-year-old.

Our daughter loved the trip, as did the rest of the family. It was not without its mishaps, but no trip is ever perfect. Overall, we slept well, ate well, enjoyed sunshine and warmth, swam in the ocean and in pools, and just enjoyed having a little bit of downtime amidst what has turned out to be a busy winter so far.

Growing up, I collected stamps. This probably comes as no surprise to most of you that know me: I’ve long been enthralled by all things related to postal correspondence.

Stamp collecting is a fascinating hobby, because it allows you to really become obsessed about a single thing, a single theme, and jump into that theme with a meticulous gusto that only other stamp collectors can understand. For me, that theme was Scout stamps.

As an avid Scout growing up—I went on to achieve my Chief Scout’s Award, that’s how committed I was to the movement—I was also drawn to stamps with Scout themes and motifs printed on them. Surprisingly, these kinds of stamps were not rare. Every country, it seemed, had printed a few different runs of Scout stamps, and finding them become my passion.

I remember my father taking me to stamp collector shows, where I would run off and scour the racks of stamps and first day covers to find anything that had some kind of relation to Scouting. After hours of searching, I would often find a few stamps that I would plead for my dad to buy me; we didn’t have a lot of money back then, but I know now that my father would save up before heading to these shows so that I wouldn’t leave empty-handed and disappointed.

After almost a year away, I return to work next week.

Zoya will be starting daycare early in the week, and both L and I start work shortly after that.

My worry is palpable: I worry about how Zoya will do at daycare and how she will adapt; I worry about how we will juggle new schedules and do meal prep and still make time to spend with each other; I worry about making sure I provide the support L needs as she transitions back to work; I worry about going back to a workplace that has functioned so well in my absence and what my role on the team will be; I worry about being away for too long and for the struggle that comes with any transition; I worry about not knowing enough, not being enough—at work, at home, everywhere.

I have nothing to say. No stories to tell, no insights to share, no ideas to explore.

I’ve been sitting on this list of links for weeks now, waiting for inspiration to strike so I can write a nice preamble before posting the links, but I’ve come up empty. I have nothing to say.

In the interest of sharing these links and not having them sit in my bookmarks for weeks, I’m publishing this newsletter now even though I have nothing to say here, in the introduction. I hope you find the links useful, and that you find yourselves with lots of stories to tell, insights to share, and ideas to explore in the coming weeks.

Five nice things that passed through my mind this morning as I sat in front of my iPad and started to type:

1. We have a magnolia tree in our front yard, and every year, it blossoms in a burst of pinks and whites that brings so much color to the front of our home. I can see the tree from the window of my office (now: baby’s playroom) and love the vibrancy it brings to my day. The blossoms are short-lived, but the few days they erupt on the tree each year are days that I cherish and treasure. Sure, the blossoms have turned brown now after the recent snow and deep freeze, but I feel lucky to have been able to see the tree in full splendor for a few days, and delight in its visual celebration of life.
2. Our cat turned five years old this past week. It’s hard to believe she has been in our lives for that long, and incredible to see just how attached I’ve become to her after never having a pet before and being sceptical of getting one in the first place. Cleo still spends her nights sleeping on my legs—I worry when I wake in the middle of the night and she isn’t there—and her days underfoot (and often, like now as I type, on my keyboard) trying to get us to pet her or feed her; she still knows how to get our attention, and no matter how busy we are, we still love to give her the attention she craves.
3. Having a baby is a busy time, and so I am thankful for a few places in town that are always there to help with feeding us when we need the respite. Grace, one of our favorite restaurants prior to the pandemic, has a pantry service that delivers groceries, meal kits, and pre-prepared meals to our door many Sundays. We indulge in the David’s Sunday dinners from time to time. At the Saturday outdoor market, we get bread and viennoiseries from our favorite baker, Seth. I am grateful to them and the countless other places that bring us food on those occasions when cooking just isn’t in the cards.
4. I’ve always preferred scripted drama and comedy to reality television, but there is something so charming and joyful about The Great British Bake Off that makes it one of my favorite things to watch on TV. The format is delightfully low-stakes: there is tension in the challenges, but everyone is rooting for each other to do well instead of trying to cut down other competitors. The contestants are adorable, and the fact that they all help each other and seem to genuinely like each other makes the competition feel like a family affair. When I’m looking for some joy on the television, I can count on it coming from GBBO.
5. This pandemic has been hard for so many of us. I am lucky to have been able to spend it with my incredible wife and adorable daughter. My family is healthy and happy, and being off on parental leave over the past year has meant that I have been able to relish the love and laughter of my family with my full attention and being. The pandemic was isolating, and I miss seeing friends and extended family, but I am buoyed every day through it all: every day I celebrate being able to spend my days with my wife and my daughter, and celebrate being surrounded by immense love every minute of my day. I am so lucky, and so grateful.

A poem

People I know are starting to get vaccinated.

Depending on where they live, friends and family are starting to receive their COVID vaccines, and I couldn’t be happier for them. The faster we all get vaccinated, the closer we all are to resuming some kind of life where in-person social interaction isn’t verboten.

I miss people. I miss my friends, my family, but I also miss the baristas and librarians and all the acquaintances that made up my everyday life prior to the pandemic. I miss connecting with strangers over coffee and helping people find books at the library; I miss having people over for dinner and bumping into friends while browsing a bookstore.

My inbox* is filled with newsletters.

There was a time in the not-too-distant past when I was able to stay on top of things using my RSS reader, by following blogs that updated regularly. My friends wrote blog posts. People I wanted to learn from updated their personal sites. Organizations I wanted to follow updated their blogs. Subscribing to a bunch of blogs and personal sites was all I needed to do to get a daily fix on all the happenings I needed to know.

At some point in the past few years, everyone started having a newsletter, and personal sites and blogs started to disappear. I’m not sure exactly when that was, but I remember that instead of following sites in my RSS reader, I started having to subscribe to newsletters to hear from the people I cared for and wanted to learn from.

I don’t blame people for using newsletters to share their thoughts: it’s immensely easier for people to put together a newsletter than it is to start a personal site—and especially a lot easier to make money selling newsletter subscriptions. It’s also a lot easier to make sure people are reading your stuff through a newsletter, because it arrives in their email inbox. People don’t use RSS readers—I’m happy to go on about how the death of Google Reader started the decline of RSS and led to this newsletter boom—but use email every day: if you want to reach them, you need to be in their inbox.

A few words from the pen of James Baldwin:

Letter from a Region in My Mind, 1962:

A bevy of the parenting books that I’m reading all refer to a fourth trimester: that a baby would normally stay in the womb for a few extra months if it was physically possible for them to stay, but that the size of their brain means they need to born by the end of the third trimester to protect their health and that of the mother.

The idea that we emerge from the womb too early is a new concept to me, and has now got me questioning the role of timing in all other parts of my life. What things am I rushing, taking out too early, because of (often, very valid) reasons but could benefit from a little more slowness?

I think of the cup of tea I’m drinking right now: did I steep it for long enough, or did I pull the leaves out too early in my desire to drink it while it was hot? I think of the sleep I got last night: did I wake up too early in my desire to do a lot before the morning was done, and would it have been better to slumber a little longer and feel more rested through the day?

The Pomodoro technique isn’t working for me anymore.

Just a few months ago, I had no problems getting my work done in 25-minute chunks, and was able to do dedicated work without noticing where the time had gone at the end of each cycle. Just a few months ago, even when I eschewed the Pomodoro timer, I could write or read for hours and not feel the need to do something else.

I think I'd like to try something, and need your help in figuring out if it's a good idea.

I'd like to host mini "coffee breaks" every Wednesday afternoon at 2:30pm where I'd bring together four people—ideally, people from various spheres of my life who don't know each other—on a video call and we'd spend three minutes each (for a total coffee break of fifteen minutes) telling each other a story based on a prompt that I will circulate the day on the Tuesday.

Prompts may include things like:

• Tell me a story about the best thing you've eaten this week.
• Tell me a story about a color that you noticed this week.
• Tell me a story about something that made you laugh this week.
• Tell me a story about something that made you cry this week.
• Tell me a story about an adventure that you had this week.

When people asked me what I missed most about living in the big city, all of my answers involved access to things outside of the house.

I would answer that I missed having access to great restaurants of almost any kind of world cuisine. I missed being able to go to the symphony, the opera, the art gallery, or the ballet without much advance planning. I missed being able to hop on a streetcar or the subway and get to the far reaches of the city to explore a new neighborhood. I missed having a plethora of coffee and tea shops within walking distance where I could meet people and make new friends. I missed knowing that there was always something interesting going on in the city—a meetup, an advocacy meeting, a show—and that I could make the plans that same evening instead of planning days or weeks in advance.

There are so many things I love about where we live and the lifestyle we have, but still, now, there are many things I miss.

I realized this morning that all of the things I miss are things that I wouldn’t have access to, right now. Restaurants and coffee shops are closed, as are the galleries and show stages. Subways and streetcars are to be avoided, and all the in-person events have now moved to online get-togethers with no limits on geography.

I don't make things with my hands, that often. Apart from the time I spend in the kitchen crafting meals, I'm not really someone who "makes" things, especially tactile things, when I have time to spare.

What I do, however, is write.

I write a lot. I write in my journals multiple times a day, I write blog posts that I will never publish (and a few, like this one, that I do), and even when I'm not spinning my own sentences, I'm helping others edit their own prose. And when I'm not writing, I'm reading—a lot.

I'm obsessed with words, and I was only reminded of that when I read Stacy-Marie Ishmael's most recent newsletter, where she described her relationship to words in a way that resonated so deeply with me:

One of the questions that comes up often when we're having video chats, either at work or in our personal lives, is about the first place where we will go once the world returns to some semblance of normal.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of answers are divided in two categories: exotic locales and places with family. For every "I'd love to go back to Paris," there is a "I can't wait to go see my mom again." It is heartening to hear these answers, whatever they may be.

I too, would love to travel—maybe reschedule our trip to Morocco that we had to cancel, or head to New Orleans like we do every few years—and would also love to just return to the family home in Toronto to see my parents and my grandmother. Both of those sound like the most delightful ways to usher in some normalcy after all of this subsides.

My answer for where the first place I will go once I'm able to leave home is none of the above, however. My answer is simple: the first place I'll go is to our local coffee shop.

I have taken to listening, with conscious intention, to the sound of the kettle as I make my tea.

The kettle always starts with a low hum, as if it is struggling to get started, waking itself up from a slumber that I have interrupted. As it begins to heat up, the sound becomes a rolling murmur, still barely discernible, but beginning to fill with life. Before boiling, the murmur turns into a louder cacophony, as if something is inside banging against the walls hoping to escape.

My tea kettle is electric, so it does not whistle when the water is boiling. Instead, it emits a loud ding and turns itself off when it reaches the desired temperature. After the ding, sounds continue to emanate from the kettle as it settles back into a stupor; they are the sighs of a machine that has done heavy work and needs to decompress.

Eventually, there is quiet. The kettle is asleep again, and I sip my tea in silence.

When the pandemic shutdowns and closures started ramping up two weeks ago—when people were recommended to stay home and only go out for essential services—I told myself that I would write one blog post a day. I was convinced that I could write a sort of "pandemic diary" where I would have something interesting to say each day I was homebound.

Instead, the opposite has happened. Not only have I not been able to write for public consumption, my writing in general has stopped. I have found it hard to write in my journal every day, going full days without scribbling anything down at all; I have only written two letters to friends, eschewing my regular cadence of 3-4 pieces of correspondence a week.

I have found it hard to write even in small doses: my email inbox is overflowing with emails that require responses, and I have hundreds of unread text messages because I can't bring myself to write a reply. This struggle extends beyond written prose, but also to my voiced words: I struggle in video chats and on phone calls to find the right things to say, or to say anything at all. I have been moved to silence.

I have lost the ability to share my thoughts, my concerns, my ideas, and my support with anyone, including myself. I read all these articles and lists that are about "what to do with your extra time during the pandemic" and shake my head; I have no extra time, and in fact my days are more full and exhausting than they have been before. I am cognitively and emotionally tapped out each day before noon, and this literal exhaustion of my faculties has meant that I am not mentally able to conjure the words I usually use to process the world around me.

It's hard not to panic when the state of the world is changing by the minute.

Even for someone who is notorious for being level-headed and (perhaps too) rational in almost every situation, the pace of change and the influx of information is panic-inducing. I'm doing my best to keep my worries at bay, and to remind myself that our collective action will help us get through all of this, together, but it's still hard, on a Friday morning after two days of massive change and upheaval, to feel settled and at peace. I'm breathing heavier than I usually do.

My incredible wife is an infectious disease physician who is on the front line of clinical care for people who present with COVID-19 symptoms. I know they take good precautions and safety measures at the hospitals, but it's hard not to worry when you know she is putting herself out there every day to make sure that the people who are suffering most are cared for. Someone has to do the work of caring for others, and despite my underlying panic, I'm so proud of her for doing what needs to be done.

Earlier this week, we canceled our vacation to Morocco that was scheduled for the end of this month. We were really looking forward to the trip, but it wouldn't be responsible of us to go somewhere and risk being a vector of transmission and exacerbate a problem that is best managed through social distancing right now. It was a hard decision to make, but it was the right one. It's up to all of us to work collectively to help reduce the spread of the virus; no vacation is important enough to supersede that collective imperative.

A few unrelated, miscellaneous things that have been occupying my thoughts recently, in no particular order:

1. Jesse Wente, on our national broadcaster, said the words that we all needed to hear and that we all knew but were afraid to say: "Canada is a state built on removal of Indigenous peoples to make way for resource extraction companies." The demonstrations in solidarity with Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs across the country have started conversations that we needed to have in this country. In some cases, those conversations have been marked by racism and hatred, but in some, they have been marked by a true curiosity. I've had three people reach out to me and ask me how they can learn more, because they felt uninformed. I've pointed them to this excellent resource by Chloloula.

2. The fear around COVID-19 has really ramped up recently, and I know many people for whom the uncertainty around what it means for them has developed into a full-blown panic. I wonder what to tell people when they come to me, scared and uncertain. I am not a medical professional, and though our public health units constantly remind us that we have this under control—and I value and applaud the immense work our infectious disease physicians and nurses are doing, on top of the work being done by public health—this is no longer just a global medical crisis, but a crisis of how we share information, report on news, and assess global concern. There's so much being said, all around the world, but very little coordination in what is being said and how; as we grapple with the global pandemic, we must also grapple with the way information moves across the world and how that information shapes us.

3. There is a literary publication called the Taco Bell Quarterly (not officially affiliated with Taco Bell) and the writing in it is quite good.  All the pieces are about, or involve, Taco Bell in some way, but don't let that keep you away: this is an excellent publication, featuring real writers who have an excellent command of the language, and the pieces have artistic merit and emotional resonance. I'm already planning out my submission for their third issue.

Today is Valentine's Day, and so I'm asking you to write a love letter.

Last week, L and I went to a pop-up supper club hosted by a very talented couple who make North Nigerian cuisine. I didn't know what to expect when I walked in, but I was quickly blown away: not only was the food incredibly delicious and cooked with love, but the group assembled at the supper club was amazingly diverse—the room was filled with people with an immense variety of backgrounds and histories and perspectives, all celebrating each other around a long table, where we all sat together to enjoy this very special meal.

The supper club reminded me that though this city infuriates me often (and though our elected officials seem to continue to do everything in their power to make our city worse instead of better), it is still filled with small gems, small delights—wonderful people, delightful events, surprising and joy-giving experiences—that make me appreciate, and even love, this city where I live.

It's hard for me, sometimes, to say that I love this city, but I do, and events like last week's supper club remind me that I need to voice that love, express that gratitude, more often.

Some days, you have nothing to say. And that’s okay.

Some days, you have so much on your mind and can’t figure out how to get it all out in a way that makes sense. And that’s okay.

Some days, you’re too tired to have insight, too exhausted to exercise your thoughtfulness, too overwhelmed to find the calm that it takes to write. And that’s okay.

There are so many other people with things to say; sometimes, it’s best to just be quiet and listen. That’s okay.

I’m not sure when I became someone who wears headphones over his ears every time he ventures out of the house.

I’d like to blame audiobooks, or podcasts, or maybe streaming music. I’d like to think that the reason I’m always listening to something when I leave the house these days is because there’s just so much there for listening. There is, of course, no shortage of excellent audio entertainment available these days; I’d like to think that spending my day listening to that entertainment is a tribute to the many creators who put such hard work in creating such good stuff. A thank you, of sorts.

It wasn’t always this way. I used to venture outdoors and listen only to the sounds of the world around me. For years, I had hummed along to the ambient music of the built environment, had conversations with strangers, and danced to the rhythms of nature and all its wonders. My ears were unencumbered; I listened to the world, and listened deeply.

Recently, I’ve been feeling a little disconnected from the world around me; I’m beginning to realize that I don’t listen as often, or as deeply, as I once did. These days, my headphones play voices that are beamed from my phone, voices I have selected, sought out, and chosen. The serendipity of sound that came from listening to the world is gone.

Today, on the third day of the new year, I woke up thinking of ferry breakfast.

The BC Ferries ships that head to the Southern Gulf Islands all have a small cafeteria on board with a kitchen that makes a variety of meals throughout the day. If you hop on a ferry that sails before 11am, you'll be right on time for ferry breakfast.

(I'm not sure when we decided to stop calling it "breakfast on the ferry" and instead started giving the meal its own noun, "ferry breakfast," but the name has stuck.)

Ferry breakfast is similar to other cafeteria breakfasts in many ways: the standard selection of eggs, hash browns, bacon, sausage, waffles, and oatmeal dominate the menu, and while all of it tastes decent, none of it is particularly excellent. The hollandaise, if you choose to get it, is lacklustre, and the scrambled eggs taste like they have been sitting in the warmer for a long time. Lineups are long, but the service is quick and cheerful; a plate of hot food will be placed on your tray within minutes of ordering. You pay at the counter, and you take your tray to your table to enjoy your meal. When you're done, you clear your own table.

Our friends started receiving our Christmas cards in late November this year.

December is always a busy month: between wrapping up things for the end of the year—accounting, finances, etc.—and all the holiday preparations—decorating, gift-buying, travel-planning, etc.—it always feels like I go wheezing into the new year. The month can often feel like a scramble instead of a celebration.

This year, we sent our Christmas cards out in mid-November, on the same weekend that we put up the tree and decorated the house. It was early, but it was the only foreseeably-free weekend on the calendar until the end of 2019. Last week, I sent our accountant all our financial tracking for the year (something I usually try to collate over the holidays and send over in early January), and we finished buying all our Christmas presents a few days ago.

I still have lots to do to prepare for my class over the holidays, but otherwise, I'm going into the next few weeks feeling a little more settled, a little less scrambled. I'm hoping to enter 2020 not wheezing, but breathing deeply. I haven't been shy to share that 2019 wasn't my best year, but knowing that I'm closing it off with a sense of stability and strength is a good harbinger for the year to come.

A little over halfway through my freshman year, almost two decades ago, I agreed to let my friend S cut my hair.

S had never cut anyone's hair before, and didn't quite know what she was doing. She was, however, passionate and committed to learning, and needed someone to give her a chance to test out the skills she had been working hard on to acquire.

Never one to worry too much about my hair—it grows back a bit too quickly—I volunteered to be her guinea pig.

I've been thinking about that haircut a lot these days because, recently, someone decided to take a chance on me.

We didn’t have any trick-or-treaters come to our door last week for Halloween, so I’ve taken on the formidable task of eating all these chocolate bars myself.

We expected a few—maybe a dozen or so, like in past years—but the miserable weather seemed to scare everyone away from our neighbourhood this year. It’s a stark change from the days when we used to live in Cabbagetown and we would have hundreds of trick-or-treaters (literally, our best year we had over 400 children show up and we had to shut down early because we ran out of candy) scurrying around the neighbourhood. No matter what the weather, we could count on more visitors than we could count, or could prepare for.

Our little enclave in the southeast of is much less bustling than Cabbagetown, and is surrounded by farms and woods instead of heavily-populated urban neighbourhoods. This offers one explanation of why the numbers of trick-or-treaters are low here, but doesn’t tell the whole story. The real reason we don’t get many people coming to our door on Halloween is a reflection of the failure of urban design.

Every year, by mid-October, our home is filled with an abundance of apples.

Even after making apple crisps and apple crumbles, even after taking apples into work and giving them to colleagues and friends, even after making it a point to eat at least one every day, as we approach the end of the month, our refrigerator is still overflowing with them.

There are at least a dozen varieties in our fridge right now; the Honeycrisps and Cortlands dominate, but they are interspersed with Empires and Mutsus and McIntoshes and Jonagolds and Fujis and so many more. We picked our own early in the season at Great Lakes Farms, and then added to our stash during a visit to Crunican Orchards a few weeks ago. We are lucky to have so many places to pick and procure apples within a short drive from home.

We didn’t have a television when I was really young, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t get to watch TV.

Our neighbor down the hall in our building was a good friend of my mom’s, and she had a small television in her apartment that she rarely used. Some days, I’d sneak into her unit—she always knew I was there, but I thought I was being surreptitious—and turn on the TV set while our neighbor was cooking, or doing some other household chore. There, I’d sit transfixed for half an hour before having to run back home.

The television was always set to PBS; I don’t think she even could get any other channel. I learned the times of the day when I could expect to watch Sesame Street and and would dutifully head to her apartment to watch them as many times in the week as I could. They were shows that, as a new immigrant child in a family who was doing their best to survive in a new country, made me feel like I belonged.

A few disparate, unrelated, unedited and unrevised reflections from the past two weeks:

1. I have had to explain the concept of minstrelsy to at least a dozen people over the past fortnight, and have gone further to discuss Orientalism with at least another half-dozen more. The reason I have had to have these conversations is disappointing; the fact that I was able to discuss these issues with people who were willing to listen and wanted to learn more is heartening.

2. Beacons of hope are welcome in what has been a mostly dark year. The Global Climate Strike (culminating today) gives me incredible hope not just because it is shows that young people around the world care to do something about the peril facing our planet, but in the fact that it feels like all the world is speaking up, together. Too often our worldview is confined to the local, the national; it is rare that civic action makes me feel like part of a global community, and for that, I'm thankful for the Climate Strike and all it is doing. (UPDATE: Scott Ludlam says it better than I do.)

3. They say that if you want something, you need to tell the world that you want it. In that spirit, I've decided what I want to do next in my career: explore in the intersection of ethics and digital public services. It is a confluence of my interest and current and past work in digital governance, public policy, ethics and inclusion, and making things better for the people around me, and it is a part of digital public service that is not discussed enough right now. I'll write more about this later, especially since I'm just figuring all this out right now, but if anyone has any resources, pointers, opportunities, or thoughts, please send them my way.

4. After the release of a special investigation into the assault of a woman by London Police and into the toxic culture that allows this kind of behaviour to percolate, I've read and heard a lot of people saying that they are shocked, that they surprised, and that their perception of the police is irrevocably changed. To all those people, I say: I hear you, and now I know that you didn't bother to hear us, the communities who have been adversely affected by policing for generations, when we spoke out. Your words of shock and surprise tell me a lot about who you are.

5. Last week, we announced the launch of Teaching Public Service in a Digital Age, a global initiative to rethink how we teach future public servants (mostly in public policy and public service programs at academic institutions) so that they are prepared for serving the public in our current and future world. If you're interested in co-designing learning resources on digital fundamentals for future public servants, please get in touch.

6. I've long been enamoured with Liana Finck’s illustrations, but this one really resonated this past week:

Cleo, our cat, has become my first responder when I am feeling the onset of a panic attack.

I’ve had enough panic attacks by now to be able to feel them coming on, and in many cases I’m able to lie down and avoid the full attack by focusing on my breathing and using mindfulness techniques that I’ve been working on for years.

Over the past month, when I’ve been feeling panicky and I’m able to take action before a full attack, Cleo has come to find me, wherever I am lying down, and has climbed on to my chest. There, she curls up, gets comfortable, stares directly into my face, and begins to purr, loudly.

Having a ten-pound cat lie on your chest is one of the best things you can do when you’re trying to focus on your breathing. Her weight forces you to breathe with intention, with conscious effort. Her loud purring resonates in your ears and helps to chase away some of the thoughts that plague your mind. When she stares into your eyes, it is as if she is telling you that everything will be okay, that you’ll get through this, and that she’s always there for you.

I was reminded that L (my wife) and I wear the same size of footwear—yes, I have small feet—when she recently came home with a pair of shoes with a floral print that I immediately started to covet. I have been lobbying her to let me borrow them since she brought them into the house; so far, my efforts have been unsuccessful.

On one of our first dates, many years ago when L and I had just met, she wore a pair of glitter-covered flats as we strolled around Toronto Island. They were new, and about two hours into our island walk, she began to feel quite a bit of discomfort. Knowing that we wore the same size by then, I offered to swap, and she spent the rest of the walk in my comfortable loafers, while I enjoyed breaking in a new pair of glittery flats over the next hour or so.

I've been thinking about that date quite a bit recently, and not just because I've been coveting her new floral-printed runners. As we walked across Toronto Island that day, I felt the ground beneath me much more intensely than I had when I was wearing my own shoes; every pebble on the ground felt more jagged, every crack in the pavement felt more destabilizing. Some of this was perhaps because her soles were much thinner than the ones I was used to, but part of it was probably because my feet was taken out of their (proverbial and literal) comfort zones and exposed to something new, something different.

That the world looks and feels different when you walk in someone else's shoes—metaphorically or literally—is a reminder I give to myself often these days. There's a beauty in being shaken out of routine, even if just for a short while, and even if that shaking is somewhat uncomfortable. There's a lot to learn, big and small, in that discomfort—and I have a lot more learning to do.

At the top of Scex Rouge, as part of the Glacier 3000 experience, there's a suspension bridge between two peaks that sits 9,800 feet above sea level. Around you, as you traverse the bridge, the wind whips by between the mountains that stretch out as far as the eye can see. The bridge swings very slightly in the wind; there's a moment of quiet contemplation that occurs as you stand in the middle, between two summits on a swinging bridge, lost in a quiet Alpine reverie.

People gather at both ends of the bridge, seemingly working up the courage to make the traverse. You can see the emotions in their faces, a hesitancy that turns into determination and then wonder and fright all mixed together. The first few steps are daunting; the next few marvellous. By the time you hit the contemplative middle, you are ecstatic that you made it this far but also in a rush to make it to the other end.

I stood in the middle for some time, watching some people hurry by, some people pause for a deep breath, and others snap photos all along the bridge. I am lucky to have been born with an ease of heights, so the gentle swaying and the whipping wind did not bother me; instead, I was able to stand in the middle of the suspension bridge and be grateful. There, between two mountain peaks, I reminded myself just how lucky I was to be able to have this experience, to have a moment of pause in my life—tumultuous of late—where I could just look out at the expanse of mountains around me and not worry about the world, if only for a minute or two.

Sometimes, all you can say is thank you.

Today is one of those days where I don’t have anything to say but to express gratitude for everyone who has reached out to me, everyone who sent love, everyone who showed their kindness and compassion over the past few days as I’ve grappled with a relapse of my mental illness, and done so publicly.

Thank you.

Our internet connection at home went out earlier this week, a byproduct of the work being done on our driveway and some severed cable lines that really weren’t supposed to be cut. According to our ISP, it may take a full week—maybe more—to get the infrastructure examined, assessed, and fixed before we have connection again.

As someone who works from home—and as someone who is deep into watching the new season of Barry—the lack of internet access was troublesome, at first. I bemoaned my inability to get things done from my home office, and the loss of the ability to mindlessly turn on some streaming music and television when I needed to pass the time.

Over the past few days, however, I’ve come to peace with the disconnection. I have my LTE connection on my phone for essential communication and to look up recipes when I’m cooking dinner, but otherwise, I’m using the internet much more consciously, now. The public library has become my office, forcing me to leave work when I leave the library and not allow the boundaries between work and home to be as blurry as they have been recently. To listen to music, I download albums and playlists when I am at the library and then play them at home, making more deliberate choices over what comes through my ears. I’ve put my -watching on hold.

From the sun deck, a ferry does not seem to move very quickly.

Upon leaving the ferry terminal, the motion of the boat is barely perceptible when you are on the vessel, and the expanse of sea in front of you feels endless. The ferry is—or at least it seems—a slow, lumbering vehicle.

The trip on board is meditative, with the islands in the distance only gradually coming in to view upon your slow approach. I sit on the sun deck and stare out across the water at the silhouettes of mountains in the mist; there is nothing on my mind but the sea and the slow roll of the waves below us.

It is only when you are approaching the islands, when the ferry docks come into sight, that you realize just how much distance you have travelled. It is then that you realize that this seemingly slow vessel, the ambling nature of the voyage, was in fact a speedy traverse of the sea. In all its seeming slowness, the boat has moved incredibly quickly.

Here's something I had forgotten since the last time I had a major relapse of my depression and my anxiety at the same time: my cognitive function suffers, and continues to suffer months after I've re-set my medication and have started to feel better.

I'm a little slower at getting things done these days, and there are many things that I've just put on hold because I can't bring myself to jump into them right now. My cognitive load isn't any heavier than it was six months ago, but my cognitive function has not recuperated enough to carry that load right now.

Even though I have sent over 150 pieces of postal correspondence this year, I have only sent three letters in the past two months, and zero in the past month. (In fact, there is a stack of unopened correspondence from friends—at least a dozen envelopes, if not more—sitting on my desk.) I may have already read 39 books in the first half of this year, but only a handful of those were finished in the past two months; in June, I have not completed, or even started, a single book. I took a break from my community and nonprofit work back in February, and still have yet to emerge from that break now that I am ostensibly feeling better.

Since February, and perhaps more intensely over the past two months, life has slowed to a crawl. This is mostly because I can not keep up with the pace of everything happening around me; instead of trying to catch up, I have retrenched, become even slower, even quieter, even more removed.

I was there, in Dixon Park, when they opened up the Vince Carter basketball court. Vince was there, too, wearing his Raptors purple, passing the ball to the kids lined up to take a shot on the new court. I was one of the people in that line—even though I was already 21 years old at that time.

Vince spoke to some of the kids there after the formal opening ceremony, and he told us that they were going to work hard to win a championship; that the Raptors would win one for us.

I remember looking out at the sea of mostly Black and Brown faces there, at the court, all eager to meet Vince, to take a shot on his court, and to feel like someone was playing for them. This was a community that was mostly unseen by the other professional sports teams in the city, and these kids couldn't always imagine themselves on a hockey rink or baseball diamond; they could see themselves on the court, though, and the Raptors were a team that saw them, too. When we all assembled on that new shiny court in Dixon Park, we felt like we belonged, like someone realized that we were there.

Last night's NBA championship win for the Raptors wasn't just a title for the city—it was a promise kept. It was the culmination of something that Vince Carter told us more than fifteen years ago: that we mattered, even when everyone else didn't care that we were there, and that we mattered enough to work hard for, to fight for, to win a championship for.

Earlier this week, I had my final appointment with my psychiatrist before he moved to a new city.

I don’t blame him for going—he was leaving because his wife got a job offer she could not turn down, and I know what that’s like—but I was sad. Not only was my psychiatrist the best mental health practitioner I’ve ever had, but he was also the best medical practitioner of any kind.

The practice of psychiatry can often be about the removal of agency: regimens of behaviours and medication that make you feel a certain way, act a certain way, be a certain way. In many (most?) cases, you don’t have much choice over what regimen you will follow, or even to be seeking help in the first place. By it’s nature, psychiatry is about control: helping you establish control over yourself, your mind, your actions, and your neurochemistry.

Surprise! It's me. I know I've been quiet for a while, but I haven't gone away—I promise.

This month, I'm starting to emerge from my silence, getting re-involved in civic issues, and also getting back to writing and sharing in public, too.

A few of you have mentioned that you missed my Weekend Reading newsletters while I've been gone. The good news: I kept writing them! I just didn't publish or send them out via email while I was in my period of quiet.

If you're interested, here are some Weekend Reading link posts that I've collected over the past few months:

I am sending this Weekend Reading newsletter on a Monday morning, but it is still a newsletter meant for the weekend. Let it sit in your inbox for the week, if you’d like; let it percolate and open itself up to you when you are ready, when the world has eased itself up on you for a few minutes.

The start to 2019 has been inauspicious; the past six weeks have been marked with heightened anxiety, a return of my depression, and a lethargy and malaise that I have not been able to shake, no matter what medication I take, what therapy I attend, what self-care I commit to.

As a small coping mechanism, my doctor has suggested that I make a list of the things I have done in the past month that have brought me some solace when I was feeling at my worst. (The stipulation was that it was a list of recent interventions, not those of my past, because they would be things I could repeat when needed over the next few weeks.)

In my effort to think out loud, to embrace the concept of blogging as exhale, I am compiling that list here, with all of you.

Bringing me solace, these past few weeks:

Someone at work remarked that I was the “fastest person in the office.” This was, of course, not meant to describe my running speed—with my knee injury and chronic back pain, running is not something I do these days—but instead my time from saying I will do something to eventually getting it done.

The secret, however, is that I am not fast at work at all, despite what it may look like from the outside. I take an immense amount of time to get anything done, but because most of the hard and slow work is invisible, my sprints to delivery seem jet-propelled.

I am bursty.

It took me a while to understand this part of my nature, something that manifests itself not just at work, but in every part of my life. I work in spurts, fast spurts, separated by prolonged periods of thought, reflection, and planning. These prolonged periods go unnoticed, but they are the most important part of my process: I can not take action on anything without time to process, without time to reflect, and without time to critically examine how any task will affect my cognitive, emotional, and mental load.

There is a feeling that often overcomes me, a feeling of having so much to say but being completely unable to say anything.

There is a paralysis that comes from being overwhelmed, an inability to articulate everything that is racing through your mind, or even process that jumble of thought effectively.

This has been a hard, loud, overwhelming month. My efforts to find quiet, to find slowness, have been somewhat successful, but even then I am at a place where I am consumed by noise and speed that I do not know how to handle. My ability to think, to write, to articulate has disappeared as I scramble from one moment to the next.

If anything, the beginning to 2019 has been incredibly loud.

My computer speakers have never been good, but yesterday I noticed that I could barely hear what was coming from them, even when the volume had been turned up to the maximum. I had to lean in, with my nose at my keyboard, to hear anything.

I realize now that this is just a sign that my almost-nine-year-old computer is slowly fading away (the speakers are not the only part to be breaking down), but at the time, one thing jumped into my mind: I couldn't hear the soft sound because I was too used to everything being so loud. I have become used to having music or podcasts in my ears all day; I have become immune to the sounds of construction on the house next door.

More than that, I have become used to people raising their metaphorical voices, offline and online, to make a point, to be heard. This year, especially, I have been inundated with stimulus: loud voices, urgent demands, heightened (and somewhat crippling) anxiety, and an overwhelm of things to do and people to please.

At the start of the year, every year, I choose a word to guide the next twelve months ahead. I have been doing this since I was twelve years old, and over the past two-and-a-half decades, the words have varied from being direct to esoteric.

The mantra I chose last year, "be kind," seem to be having a renaissance this year: at least a dozen people have mentioned to me that their guiding words and goals for 2019 will be kindness. For this, I am grateful. The world needs more kindness, especially now.

I have spent the past four days heavily contemplating what my guiding word for the year ahead would be, and still have not settled on a single one. Among the words I have considered—words I have written down and mapped out their resonance—include:

• Enough
• Grace
• Quiet
• Dance
• Write
• Giggle
• Reflect
• Flicker