Slow work
I finished, or mostly finished, Robert Caro’s book Working. It came recommended as a book on writing craft, and while there turned out to be little of that in the sense of an author telling you to do this or that, one point is repeated endlessly by example: good work takes time.
Caro would spend a week trying to experience what his protagonist experienced, so that a few sentences would be as accurate as possible. He would spend years working full-time before releasing his books on Robert Moses or Lyndon Johnson.
Many years ago, one of my main creative outlets was photography. Street photography, as I think it was called then. I spent my weekends exploring the back streets of Hsinchu, and later Bangkok, judiciously taking photos with one of the many Lomos or SLR cameras I had at the time. Finding interesting subjects wasn’t difficult, but because each picture had value, unlike a photo taken on an iPhone, it might take me a full weekend to fill a roll of film. Then I would take that roll to the developer that bordered the East Gate in downtown Hsinchu — he would digitize them too, put the copies on a CD. Before that, I used a scanner at work. Processing wasn’t instant; I think it took a couple of weeks. The developer had a lot of customers. Afterward, I would review what I’d taken, and hopefully a few shots out of that roll would turn out okay. I would share them on a blog I’d built myself. Eventually that blog ran on Movable Type, which saved a great deal of time, though sometimes I still built slideshows by hand — designing the layout, the transitions — another vehicle of self-expression. Later came Flickr, and Instagram after that, forever changing how I shared photos. With the iPhone, everything became instantaneous, and I became addicted to filters that made my photos look like they’d been taken on a Lomo.
A lot has been lost in that process, not least the joy of the slow act of creation itself.
I no longer build my own websites, a practice that once took me a month or more to complete, even for something as simple as this blog. I moved to Squarespace because WordPress was rife with security issues and getting expensive. But mostly I just wanted it done. I wanted to hand Squarespace my font choices, my color palette, and what resembles a logo above, and be finished. It hasn’t worked out — there are mistakes everywhere. I lack patience, and time, because I am doing far more today, more busy things than deep things, than I ever did before.
I am trying to change. Every morning is the same, regardless of weekend or holiday. After a few other habits, I open this iPad to a white page and tell myself: write something. When it was just a sentence, or a short bit of microfiction, or a blog post, it worked well. Lately I’ve been trying to expand that time from a short stint to hours, and I am failing.
I sit in our dining room looking at the white screen, then out the window, then getting up to make toast I don’t need, then sitting down again. It used to work. Now it feels like my brain is broken.
On Monday, I wrote a particularly flat 700 words — the start of a children’s story. It was a mess, more of a mess than usual. I have deadlines, and I need to produce well over 10,000 words a week. Every week. So I put the draft into an AI agent that knows my work, and it transformed that flat, lifeless passage into something with life, almost instantaneously. And I hate that. It did what I couldn’t do, at least not on Monday. What would that passage have become if I had left it, or toiled over it all day, improving it rewrite by rewrite? Would the words carry the weight of that effort?
There is no joy in fast work. Yes, I am fortunate to have an imagination, I can tell stories, and I could sketch out a story guide, hand it to an AI assistant, and be done in thirty minutes. The joy comes not from the idea alone, but from putting in the work to bring it to life — from spending a week inside your protagonist’s experience so that one paragraph can breathe, can carry a sense of space and weight. Modern life pushes harder against this all the time. Much is lost when we remove toil and effort. Clearing obstacles has value. But quick is not better.
I think back to those Saturday mornings in Hsinchu, or the trips to Bangkok. Walking around with my camera bag, sweating in the heat, no map, just exploration — and eventually something would reveal itself. I wasn’t a great photographer. But it was me.
Brown
The snow has largely melted, but for a few stubborn piles here and there. It’s Prince Edward Island, so that means nothing. It could snow in June. Last weekend an incredible amount fell in a single afternoon, hardened overnight, and became a serious chore to move. Winter here doesn’t leave so much as it retreats.
I don’t like this time of year much. If I had my way, the calendar would go summer, fall, summer again. Spring earns its place mostly because it means growth, and summer is close behind.
Looking out the window, I see a lack of colour. Brown ground in need of work I didn’t get around to before the snow came. Trees that are nothing but spindly sticks against a flat sky.
And yet. By July, maybe August, I’ll be tired of it — the weeding, the hauling, the endless small tasks a garden invents for you. I know this about myself. But right now I’m looking forward to the sweat and the dirt, and the return of the raccoons and the birds and the snakes.
The skunks can stay away.
Good people
These are good people whose work generally goes unrecognized. Whenever I get the chance I listen to their thoughts, maybe share mine, but mostly listen. I always come away with a small feeling of hope, and some idea of how to be better in the world.
Low Bar
Last year in workshop I related how I hated editing. Not just because rewriting a piece numerous times is hard, but because with each attempt at fixing things, something gets taken away. The paragraph loses its roughness, its edge, its imperfection. I see people rewriting whole novels multiple times and I just cringe.
That's one of the reasons I like writing for this blog. I'll open a white page on the iPad and just scribble down my thoughts — like I'm doing right now — and not worry about things. Sometimes I use Grammarly, but it's horrible for fiction, and maybe just horrible period. I tried AI, and at first it was heavy-handed and didn't save any time at all. Then it progressed, and with the right prompt became useable — but still far too perfect. Perfection is overrated. And I still haven't made up my mind about this tool anyway.
The post "Far Removed" I wrote about six times — not that you would notice — and each time I rewrote it and got suggestions to improve, it became far removed from the fragmented rant it started as. I was upset about the rampant killing, the state of the world, and people on the Island spending all their energy salivating over the possibility of a Costco.
Anyway, my editing skills are worse than my writing, which is a bit of a low bar.
Far Removed
Perhaps it’s the images of children huddling in fear as bombs fall. Or the picture of a young boy mourning his sister in an elementary school that was likely deliberately targeted. Lately I find my sense of calm replaced with grief.
Each time I make the mistake of checking the news it’s the same uninformed nonsense. The same twisted worldview. Endless chatter about lack of strategy, stupid decisions, effects on the economy, rising gas prices, how the women of Iran will be free — after they dig themselves and their children out of the rubble — how superior the American war machine is. War as sports. Everyone is an expert, except those running the show.
All I can think about are children with vacant stares. Mothers pulling their kids close as another missile lands nearby. You’d think I’d be immune to it by now, after Ukraine and countless other places.
On the Island we are far removed from all of this. We talk about Costco. A Taco Bell. A few other chains coming to town. Each dollar sent back to corporate headquarters. Each tax paid quietly upstream — somewhere near the end of the line where the bombs get made.
I mentioned previously we received emails from families in Iran. They were curious about science. Wanted shoutouts for their kids on the show. Had story ideas they hoped might be written. They were just families.
I still think of them often.
This Old House
We had an electric water heater installed yesterday, and now this old house has a shower like some kind of luxury hotel. Which is nice.
What is not so nice: last night, sitting on the couch, the power went out the moment Sheryl turned on the hot water in the kitchen. In this cold, going outside to get into the basement to flip the breaker is nobody’s idea of fun. There is a trap door next to the kitchen, but it’s buried under a lifetime supply of canned tomatoes.
I suspect old houses like this were never built for modern amenities - or maybe the electrician we hired to wire the water heater phoned it in. I lean toward the house. The heat pumps, the dishwasher, the clothes dryer, and the myriad of other small things push the limits of an old electrical panel. When we had the front door light installed last fall, the electrician discovered that the existing wiring was some kind of ancient extension cord, badly frayed. The previous owner was a do-it-yourselfer - from before the age of YouTube tutorials.
An imperfect house comes with increased costs. Our very imperfect house, more so. But I like its faults. The rolling floors. The ceiling at the top of the stairs that catches your head. The complete absence of right angles. It feels more human than the sea of gray, white, and black that passes for quality these days.
What we allow
We received emails from families in Iran a while back. Story requests, shoutouts, science topic requests. The same kinds of messages we get from families everywhere — which should surprise no one. Kids are the same the world over.
I think about those families today. Their children especially.
There has never been a year in my lifetime without conflict somewhere. And in every conflict, regardless of the stated reasons, it is the children who absorb the cost — the disruption, the fear, the loss. From that comes resentment, and from resentment the cycle finds its next generation.
We tell stories to children because we believe in their capacity for empathy and wonder. I have to hope that somewhere, that matters. That the kids listening from Tehran or Gaza or Kyiv feel something other than what the adults around them are feeling.
I'm not sure what else I have to offer them. But I think about them.
A535
It’s white page time, but the flow is broken - broken by pain I didn't want or need.
I take after my aunt. Not the part where she loved loud colours and had a loud laugh — I missed out on both. But her body, which always seemed to be staging some small rebellion. So many complaints that people stopped taking them seriously — the way a word loses meaning if you repeat it too many times. By the time her problems became acute, no one was paying attention. In the end, she went quietly — so quietly that if I hadn’t been in the room, no one would have known.
I’m not there yet. But I’m sitting here negotiating with my spine, which seized up because a chest cold forced me to cough and sleep upright for one week straight. The mechanism was explained to me. It sounded like nonsense.
In Toronto recently, crossing an intersection, a young woman coming the opposite direction sneezed at the exact moment we passed each other. I turned to Sheryl and said, I guess I’ll have whatever she’s having. I like to think I have her to blame — that stranger — for the smell of A535 that now permeates the walls of the house, and the scent of Voltaren that clings to my hands no matter how many times I wash them.
There are always roadblocks. The white page waits. My back does not care.
Negotiate
I’m not good at business. Specifically, the parts that matter. Usually money.
Since returning to Canada I’ve negotiated four significant contracts — significant mostly because they define how I’ll work, and what I’ll work on, for the coming year. I have no boss, but I have a contract, which feels close to the same thing.
These have been different from what I knew before. As the “creator” — a term I despise — you have little leverage, especially early on. The agreements are almost always lopsided, favouring the larger company with more lawyers. There is no win-win.
You can say no, of course. Hope your efforts pay off elsewhere. Go back to having a hobby. But then sunk cost sets in. So much time, effort, and fun. It’s hard to walk away. Also, I like good coffee too much.
So you accept the last-minute change in terms — the one with no significant reason behind it other than we can — and you sign. And you hope that somewhere outside the edges of that agreement, you can build enough that next time you can pause and say: we don’t agree.
9 years
Journals are a wonderful reminder.
Looking at a photo of my mother in palliative care, nine years gone now, trying to navigate the food they brought her. The tray table too high for comfort, but an ideal height to catch whatever might slip from her plastic fork. Easier to wipe a table than to wash the baggy oversized t-shirts she always wore.
She looked older than she should have — or at least older than I hope I’ll look at that age. The skin hung from her arms, no longer held up by muscle. Inactivity and age will do that to a frame. She had been active once — golf, mostly, and long walks — but problems with her mobility went undiagnosed for years. So she sat. The local medical system is a shambles until you have an emergency, and then all manner of care and diagnosis becomes suddenly available. Her palliative care was wonderful. But I suspect she would have preferred some of that wonder earlier, so she could have kept golfing.
Her face told a different story than her body. You could see someone who had loved the sun, loved being outside — and the sun had left its mark. But the closer she came to the end, the smoother and more angelic her face became. As though the effort of living was quietly releasing its grip.
Until finally she was at peace, and no longer had to wrestle tough meat in gravy from a cheap plastic fork.
Man cold
Of all the minor afflictions one can suffer, the common cold deserves a special place in hell. Nothing is quite so immobilizing as a virus that settles into your chest and saves its worst for bedtime — a cough that surfaces precisely when you need to sleep, dragging the misery out for days while making you largely useless in the meantime. Last night was night three of no sleep. No amount of cold medicine, in any dosage, actually eases the symptoms. All it does is threaten my liver.
Yes, a toaster analogy
When you first look at a toaster its usage might be somewhat confusing, butt if you have had toast before you could guess its purpose, and by looking at it guess its function. Watch someone use it once and you will know how it works. There are some settings, but you can learn about them later, and generallly they are not essential to making toast. I'm looking at ours right now, and while there can be plenty of refinements made to the interface, smoother or motorized push of the lever as an example, it's pretty much the same as toasters costing 5 times as much. The interface works.
I can't believe it's an age thing. If something is working I see little reason to change unless that change brings a leap in ease. More delight sure - I could see the value of adding some joy to my toaster. Maybe some sound indicating it's started. A little jingle when toasted. A display with a happy face. But would you want the lever too hard to find, or harder to press, or perhaps replace the up down interaction with side to side? Would you want the settings transparent and without enough contrast to read?
Last night, somewhere between a bad chest cold and a weak moment, I finally gave in and updated. My iPhone had been nudging me for months, and I'd been holding it off the way you hold a door against wind — reading the reports, knowing what was coming. But I caved. And this morning I picked up a device I've used daily for years and had to think about it. The interactions I'd worn smooth through habit were gone, replaced by something that looked considered but felt arbitrary — a toaster whose lever now moves sideways, whose slots have been repositioned for reasons that must make sense to someone, somewhere, who does not make toast.
No skill
My father wouldn’t be impressed. There are certain skills I was brought up to be expected to have, of which I have very few. This week was a good example.
One of our Toyotas wouldn’t start. There was power, but the engine wouldn’t turn over. I had no idea what was going on, so the car just sat there while I cancelled a couple of trips into town. After consulting ChatGPT, we called a local garage who said they’d come have a look — but they never showed up, losing a sale, a customer, and a referral all at once. It wasn’t a huge deal in the end; the battery needed a charge and likely needs replacing. The embarrassing part is that I didn’t even know how to use jumper cables. Luckily, Sheryl knows how to use YouTube.
We’ve also had water pressure issues in this old house for as long as I can remember. I told myself it was just an old house, which was a convenient excuse for not knowing how to diagnose the problem. The worst offender was the kitchen sink — despite having new plumbing, it flowed far too weakly. When the hot water pressure suddenly got worse, we called a plumber. To avoid embarrassment before he arrived, I went down to the basement and checked all the water valves to make sure nothing had been accidentally turned down. Turns out the kitchen issue was caused by a small plastic insert in the faucet head, designed to reduce pressure and catch sediment. A terrible design. Once removed, the cold water pressure was fantastic. The bathroom shower head has the same problem, but the insert can’t be removed, so a new head will be bought.
The hot water situation is not so easily solved. The copper tubing in our old furnace needs replacing, which costs nearly as much as a new water heater — so we’re getting a new electric water heater instead. Except that also requires an electrician, who has to piece something together because our 100-amp panel is full. Upgrading the panel is cost-prohibitive just to solve a hot water problem.
There are plenty of other basic maintenance tasks around the house and cars that I haven’t the faintest idea how to do. It’s not that it would be difficult to learn. It’s just that learning requires time, and time is the one thing I never seem to have enough of either.
TO
Sheryl and I spent a few days in Toronto and came back Monday evening. On a whim back in January, we decided to catch Gregory Porter at Massey Hall, and it was a great concert. Tucked away on Prince Edward Island, we don't often get the chance to hear music of this caliber, so it was a wonderful treat.
It was, coincidentally, Valentine's Day weekend — something I had no idea about at the time, because I don't seem to have a romantic bone in my body. Our Valentine's Day "dinner" was at Shake Shack, though we did manage a fancy brunch near St. Lawrence Market. The kind of fancy where you're expected to hang your coat (I didn't) and staff come by to introduce themselves. Someone was playing jazz on a white piano. Most people wore pants and jackets. I wore ripped jeans and a hoodie. The food was well prepared, but the prices would make you laugh.
We have a few more trips planned this year, most of them for business. I'm looking forward to visiting Calgary again in August, and if things go well, the Vancouver area in September and Shanghai in the fall. There may be more. The odd thing about traveling in Canada is that it can cost more than going abroad — what we paid for a weekend in Toronto might have covered a package deal to Mexico or the Caribbean. I'm not really a resort-and-free-beer-on-the-beach person, and Europe might have run almost the same price, but my passport has expired, and Gregory Porter was singing in Toronto, not Sintra.
If you get the chance, % Arabica in Union Station — of all places — makes the best espresso drink I've had in a long time. Given the volume of customers they move through, you wouldn't expect them to pull it off, but they do. They even have a dedicated latte artist. It had a lovely mouthfeel and tasting notes that should appeal to just about anyone. Nothing funky, just really solid.
We stayed at TOOR, which had a nice gym, friendly staff, and was quiet.
Child’s POV
I attended a workshop yesterday on writing from a children's point of view. I've made some progress in thinking as a child would, but writing to their vocab. level remains difficult. Better editing skills - or more time - might help.
The best part of these workshops is often the prompts. This time I had ten minutes for each exercise. A couple of the results are below.
Playing with Fire on Prince Street
Mommy wanted me out of the house. At least that's what she said, but I think it might have been because Daddy wasn't really well again or something.
I wasn't allowed to go far, so I just went outside our apartment. Bobby was already there at the patch of grass on the corner. He lived nearby, I think. We didn't really talk much most days. I don't think he had many friends either.
We sat watching the cars whiz by. They moved so fast.
"Someday I'm gonna drive race cars," I said. "And be famous and on TV."
"Yeah?"
"So famous I might even have two TVs. Like Sarah said she has."
Bobby pulled at the grass. There was only so much we could do, just sitting there.
"I got something," Bobby said. He looked around, then pulled a lighter from his pocket. "Kind of a secret."
My eyes got big. "Can I try it?"
"Maybe."
"We could light the grass on fire. Just some of it. Then we could send smoke signals to the kids across the street."
Bobby handed it over.
I flicked it a few times. Nothing. Then—whoosh—a little flame jumped up. I tried to touch it to the grass but something bad happened. The flame got my thumb instead.
"Ow!" I dropped the lighter and stuck my thumb in my mouth.
Bobby grabbed the lighter quick and shoved it back in his pocket.
My thumb hurt. A lot. But I didn't cry or anything.
The next day, Bobby came back. And we tried again.
Boredom
"Hi Bobby."
"Hi Bernice."
"Wanna play?"
"Can't. Mom says we have to stay inside."
"How come?"
Bobby got quiet. "She said something about ICE. Not the cold kind. The people kind."
"Oh." I didn't really get it. "Is that like... police?"
"I don't know. Maybe? Mom got all weird when I asked. She just said it's not safe to play outside right now."
"That's dumb. It's sunny out."
"I know! And I'm so bored. All I can do is read the same books over and over."
"You could come to my house," I said. "We could do a science experiment or make stuff or something."
"Can't. Mom says I have to stay home. She keeps looking out the window a lot."
"My Papa said something might get better after... midterms? I don't know what that means."
"My mom said we might move to Canada."
"Canada? That's far away! Can I come?"
Bobby laughed. "I don't think my mom meant you too."
"But we're best friends."
"I know. It's stupid. I don't even know why we'd move. Mom just keeps watching the news and getting all worried."
"Grownups are weird."
"Yeah."
At Grandma's House
Daddy's always in a bad mood, especially at night.
I try to show him stuff I made at school or ask if we can play a game, but he says he has important things to do. Then he gets upset if I ask again.
I guess I can just read by myself at night.
Mommy says we have to be quiet. But sometimes I forget and I start dancing or singing, and then she cries. Which isn't fair because I'm not even being that loud.
I don't know why she cries. Maybe I'm too loud and I don't realize it? Or maybe I'm supposed to know when to be quiet without anyone telling me?
It's different at Grandma's house. She reads to me for hours. She puts on the record player and we dance together in the living room. She says I'm super smart and know lots of big words.
When I'm at Grandma's, everything feels wonderful. She bakes good cookies too.
Sometimes I wonder if Mommy and Daddy would be happier if I lived at Grandma's all the time. Then they wouldn't have to tell me to be quiet. Then Mommy wouldn't cry.
Maybe I'm just too much.
White on White
Every day I start with a blank slate. Just me and my iPad at the dining room table, the white screen staring back.
Sometimes I walk circles through the house hoping something will percolate. Often a prompt arrives—last week a listener requested a story about a boy and a squirrel, and that one flowed easily. I love writing about kids with racing minds, thoughts tumbling out faster than they can catch them. Earlier this week my writing group sent a prompt that became more dystopian microfiction. That flowed easily too, rooted in something I'd heard: someone in Brudenell suggesting we deport Chinese landowners, confiscate their property, auction it so locals can afford it.
Today there's only the white screen. And the snow.
The flakes fall past my dining room window—each one distinct if I watch closely enough, catching light as it spirals down. Some drift lazily, taking their time. Others seem urgent, racing toward the ground like they have somewhere to be.
It's beautiful enough that I forget winter is my least favourite season. Forget that by February I'm usually researching flights to Thailand, pricing out escapes.
I watch one flake land on the window ledge. It sits there, perfect and temporary, already beginning its small surrender to warmth.
I'll likely fail today to write something new, like I have numerous times this month and last. But facing this white page is important.
The snowflakes keep falling. I keep watching. The screen stays white a little longer.
F*ck
My mornings are built carefully. Like a small, delicate structure made of good intentions and caffeine. Coffee by the water if it’s summer. Journal. Reading. Writing. Fuelling for a run. No news. No idiots. No world.
This works as long as nothing goes missing.
The moment something is lost, my vocabulary collapses to two words: f*ck and f*ck.
This morning it was oatmeal.
I own an unreasonable amount of breakfast food. Super seeds. Chia experiments. Ground nuts. Things that look like gravel but promise longevity.
But what I want - what I need - is my maple and brown sugar oatmeal. Low sugar. Responsible. My favourite these days.
It is gone.
A whole box. Vanished.
I check the places I would have put it. The pantry. The counter. The shelf where things wait to be used. Then I check the places I wouldn’t have put it, because experience has taught me not to trust myself.
My temperature rises. The morning peace collapses like a folding chair.
F*ck.
This is usually how it starts with keys. I put AirTags on them for exactly this reason. Sometimes they’re exactly where I left them but something has been placed on top, turning them invisible. Other times I search the entire house, growing increasingly furious, only to reach into my pocket and pull them out like some stupid magic trick.
But oatmeal cannot hide in a pocket.
Which means it is truly gone.
So I eat Super Seeds and Grains. The cereal of compromise. The breakfast of people who have lost control of their lives.
F*ck.
—-
Another exercise, but based in reality, as this is what happened this morning. The prompt was: “He reached into his pocket, and pulled out an object”.
Winter avoidance
I’ve been avoiding winter all week, except for Monday when I spent an hour shovelling the driveway. Last weekend we were in Saint John watching Camren swim, stayed at the Delta that connects to the pool. No need to go outside and start a cold car, or walk anywhere. This also meant eating greasy onion rings and a burger in the pub attached to the pool. It was bad. Our friends went to a nice restaurant because they weren’t afraid of a three-minute walk in the cold.
If there’s a heaven and hell and I find myself visiting the latter, my version will be full of snow and I’ll be poorly dressed.
Except I do have proper winter clothes—technical layers even, from back when I thought running in winter could be a thing. My boots are a problem. Wearing them is a surefire way to fall on ice. I thought they looked nice at the time. Now, just like in my youth, I wear sneakers in snow unless I’m shoveling, and then I wear rubber boots that aren’t fashionable and, combined with my slovenly appearance, make me look like I just came in from the backwoods. Since I live in Montague, there’s some truth to that. My sneakers have those cleat things on them. Sometimes they work.
I watch all these videos of people doing cold plunges, or even more extreme, jumping in ice-filled lakes, and shake my head in disbelief. They’re made of something I’m not. I have a weight lifting session tonight, which means I have to clean off the car. I’m sure I’ll survive. Maybe I should just force myself to embrace the cold. Go sit in the backyard on a lawn chair drinking my morning coffee, visualizing myself on a sandy beach in some exotic locale. Like Brackley. Or Phuket.
Or not.