Tuesday, November 18, 2025

Done did a football

 While my love of Canadian football and, in particular, the Saskatchewan Roughriders is well documented in this blog, I haven't written about ball in any real depth here since restarting a couple of years ago. At least not Roughrider football. So it might come as a bit of a shock to the uninitiated that my beloved Riders brought home the Grey Cup for the first time in 13 years on Sunday. (Well, technically, they brought it home yesterday, but they WON the Cup on Sunday)

It was a very good season for the Green and White. With a teenage son who's obsessed with football in the house, getting out to games has been something we put some work into, and it was early in the season that we were discussing how good the team worked and how maybe-just maybe- this was the year. 


Well, we led the league in wins coming out of the regular season, and we got a chance not only to attend the West Final to see them beat BC, but the winning touchdown happened in the end zone right in front of us. 


And so we reached last night - and a 25-17 win against the Montreal Allouettes in Winnipeg. We walked down to the Green Mile (Albert St. and Victoria Ave in Regina, and Albert St north/south of there) to join the celebrations. We'd gone down in 2007 and 2013, so it felt like a "must do" this time as well. 

We got there relatively early in the night; there was a group enough to fill the intersection, but it hadn't filled the streets yet. But there were fireworks being fired off and plenty of folks celebrating the win. It was a bit wet and cold, but nothing like the deep snow from 2013 or the bitter cold the night we won in 2007. 


I said it on the walk home - I've become so conditioned to being disappointed by the Riders, it felt weird to be celebrating the win. And it's gonna feel good for a few weeks, love being in this city when we're champions. 


Tuesday, November 11, 2025

Quotable Quotes

When I think back to some of the things that I miss from before the internet, magazines come to mind as something I'd love to have back in my life. Yes, I can still subscribe to Rolling Stone or Wired if I want, but it feels like that era has passed. 

One of the pivotal publications of my early years was a stocky little magazine called Reader's Digest. Now, I'm sure my only reader is aware that Reader's Digest was less about putting together a collection of new articles than it was more of a soup of articles from other magazines all over the world. It made the Reader's Digest a delightful view into a million subjects. Perfect for a polymath like me.  

One of the recurring features in the Reader's Digest was "Quotable Quotes", a page of quotes from famous or notable people. It was my least favourite of the recurring Digest pages. I much preferred "Humour in Uniform" or "Laughter in Medicine". 

I've always felt that way about quotes. We've all seen those Facebook posts from some Karen telling us to "Believe in urself" superimposed on a picture of a creek. Or like "Where's my wine" and it's just women laughing. Truly the very dregs of modern culture. 

I think it's why I love Disappointing Affirmations on Instagram so much

So it's in that context that I find myself quite confused about my recent obsession with quotes.

I think it's coming from all of the self-help books I've been reading lately. If the information in a self-help book is the tile that builds the floor, quotes are the grout that keeps them together.

I've found myself writing these quotes into my journals and copying them onto my studio whiteboard on a regular basis. I don't think they're changing my behaviour or making my life any clearer. But I'm copying them. And this isn't me copying quotes from the books I'm reading. They're quotes I'm hearing out in the world, stuff I'm hearing people say.

Stuff like: 

"Money is the result of investing in hard work" - Susan Sneath

"Always move on. Take the next step forward" - Elder Harry Francis - Piapot First Nation

"You are playing the game of becoming more yourself every day" - Designing Your Life

Ok well that last one was from one of my books. But it's not a quote of a quote - it's right from the book. 

Maybe it's helping me to put all of these new ideas I'm grinding on into context. Or maybe knowing someone else said this stuff gives it more legitimacy. 

I dunno. But I'm pretty into quotes lately. 

Share your favourite quote in the comments. Or better yet- write me your own quote that I can put in my journal and write on my whiteboard! 

Tuesday, November 04, 2025

A story about gitch

Gitch. Gotch. Ginch. 

Call them what you want, they're all underwear and of late, I've needed some more. It's a combination of realizing that my 10-year-old Pac Man underoos have very few outings left in them and the fact that the Fruit of the Loom pack I bought last year never really lived up to their promise. 

So it was in that environment that I was on the search for something new a few weeks ago. I investigated some new styles, learned about breathable cotton and all sorts of things. Through this sea of options, it occurred to me that maybe I could be finding something Canadian or local to buy. And that's where I found Do + Dare

It's a small company out of Toronto that makes underwear here in Canada out of bamboo. They've been on Dragon's Den and overall seemed like a good match for what I want. 

I put in an order for a couple of different styles, including, of note for this story, a 3-pack of "Shorties Undies" which were listed under the Unisex section of their site. Honestly, what I'd been looking for was something closer to a brief over boxers, and these seemed to be the closest thing they had. 

Now, I'm not so naive that I didn't clue in right away that these really looked more like women's "boy short" style underwear, but I thought maybe there was something about the material or make that I didn't see. They were listed as "unisex" after all. 

A few days later, a little paper-wrapped package arrived with my new underwear! It was with the type of glee one can only experience when new underwear arrives that I ran upstairs to try them on. And they... they weren't right. 

To the uninitiated, wearing women's underwear is a strange thing. Sure, there's the kink of it all. We can all enjoy that. But they just don't fit. And it's not just the pouch in the front. It's like they aren't tall enough. Like the bottom of the underwear comes up just a little too high. That's the experience I had putting on these underwear. 

But fret not, this wasn't a waste! By some serendipity, while Rhonda and I are of very different heights, we are nearly identical around the waist. So Rhonda got herself three new pairs of Canadian-made underwear. Everyone wins. 

A few days later, I got the usual "review our product email" and did so by giving the product 4/5 stars and commenting that maybe they shouldn't be categorized as unisex because they're clearly designed for people with female anatomy. 

Imagine my surprise when I got a personal text message from the owner of the company asking to discuss the issues I had and offering to make things right! We had a really productive and open conversation about my experience, and he was very open to my observations that this wasn't an issue with the product but an issue with the marketing. To his credit, he shared that the underwear is indeed designed for women, but they found a lot of men in the LGBTQ+ community were buying them, so they thought they'd give this a shot. I didn't say it to him at the time, but the thought occurred after that: maybe there's some kink to buying women's underwear, and you're actually taking that away with the permission that unisex grants. We also talked about sizing and how maybe an XL of this product would have been a correct fit.

All this to say, a company saw that I had even a minor issue and reached out to see if they could fix it. I do note that the shorties are still listed under the unisex category, and there isn't a change to the sizing guide. But maybe that's coming. You can't change every time someone makes a complaint. Plus, they gave me a $10 credit, which I used to buy some 4" Boxer Briefs, which fit great. 

And wouldn't you know it - there was another minor problem in that I ordered a 3-pack and the colours I wanted were out of stock. So in came another text message to make a few quick substitutions and another text from the owner saying he'd made sure my new order was sent out with care. 

All in all, it ended up great. The new undies fit like a dream, and I have a company that I'm prepared to sing the praises of. 

Oh, and there's an epilogue to all of this. Wouldn't you know it if I got an email last week inviting me to test drive their new underwear style - men's briefs. Dammit. By the time I got on the website, my size was sold out, but you can bet that I'm going to be waiting with baited breath for them to go on sale!

Incidentally, I understand that my only reader is my brother, so a post on underwear is uncomfortable. But I spared you the details of the thong, and I didn't post any pictures of me in the shortie undies to illustrate the poor fit. So just say thank you and move along. 


Tuesday, October 28, 2025

Is AI coming for me or not?

 Come at me bro.

If you've been anywhere outside or online in the last 2 or 3 years, you know that we are in the gold rush of the 2020s - Artificial Intelligence. At first, I thought it was just large language models like ChatGPT, but increasingly I'm seeing that the world wants to put AI everywhere - in our fridges, our underwear, heck, I even ordered a sub last week and had to ask them to hold the AI. 

I've got some opinions on AI. I've certainly looked it in the face and played around with it. I'm not one of those "not in my backyard" type folks. I've tried to implement it in my work, talked through a few problems with it and even wrote an academic paper about the application of AI in disaster communications for an insurance company. I know, I'm an absolute riot at a party. 

But more and more, I'm not liking AI. And I don't think it has so much to do with the product itself, I recognize it as the next step in technological advancement and that it's in an imperfect early phase. It's how it's being implemented and pushed by the tech sector that has me annoyed and frustrated.

At the most basic level, CoPilot, Microsoft's AI model, has been pushed to our software at work. Which wouldn't be an issue but for the fact that every document takes an extra 30 seconds to load while Copilot pre-reads it for me. Or every time I right-click to copy something, the Copilot option is up there. And yes, I know Control-C is there, but I want to keep my hand on my mouse, quit trying to control my life! 

Even more frustrating is its integration into our search. At first, I thought it might be useful, but it's all but destroyed Google. I've received demonstrably incorrect answers from Gemini AI, and it has positioned itself as the first stop when I use the search. 

And I think this is where we're at the crux of our modern world - we're happy to gobble shit up long before it's ready. Generative AI is, at this point in late 2025, completely mediocre. Yes, it can write, but it doesn't do it well. I will, I know that, but it doesn't at present. It's kind of like how when/if you buy a game on day 1 and you still need to do an update to make it work. Brand new things are not ready for market, yet we're happy to let it go out. 

Ok, enough old man rant. But a couple of other thoughts. 

I saw an ad today that made the claim that our lives are twice as busy as they used to be, and in order to SURVIVE - yes that was the word used, survive - moving forward, we would need AI to help us. What happened to the dream of this technology making our lives easier? Like, shouldn't we be granted more breaks and more time off since the computers are doing so much more work? 

But more concerning is that I've heard and seen a lot of recent discussion about AI being in a bubble. A bubble that's ready to pop. Today I saw an article that said the AI bubble is 17x larger than the dot com bubble - and the chart is pretty wild to see. So like - if we need this to survive and it's about to burst - um. What? Like I can fix my dryer so I'm sure I'm ok but like we're gonna be seeing a lot of people jumping off very tall narrow buildings pretty soon if any of this is to be believed. 

But then. Maybe why worry? If it's all gonna collapse or it's plateaued - another claims I've seen - then this really is as good as it gets and it's really not much of a threat. Maybe it all adjusts itself soon enough and we can get back to playing lawn darts and smoking in the car. 

Only time will tell. 


Tuesday, October 21, 2025

Repair Guy

 Well, speaking of being an impostor, I spent the last weekend pretending I'm an appliance repairman. That's twice this month I've had a washing machine apart in the house to fix it. It was the dishwasher earlier this month, this weekend it was the clothes washer.


I joked to Rhonda as she was lending me a hand with the dishwasher that when I die and she goes through my photo reels, it won't be salacious photos of me with another partner, it'll just be thousands of pictures of the wiring harnesses, pump innards and valve bodies. Scandalous nudity indeed. 


I said it earlier this year; on one hand, I'm grateful that I have the knowledge to do some of these repairs - and the know-how to watch YouTube videos and read exploded view drawings on Parts Select. It not only saves me money but it helps when things go wrong to be able to handle the situation until I can get someone out to fix it. 

On the other hand, I blew a full evening and an entire weekend fixing this goddamn thing. I had other things I wanted to do. But I got it fixed. Eventually. I think I ran through every single other system in the dryer and was on the last one before I found the problem - a dirty lid switch. 


Which is where I argue that doing these repairs is much harder for me as an amateur than it would be for a professional repair person. They've seen it all before and probably would have gone, "Oh, these Amana washers, 9 times out of 10 it's a dirty lid switch." They'd then proceed to spray it with some weird shit called "Miracle Repair All" and give me a bill for $500. I sprayed it too - I guess my time is worth $500. 

But I suppose that's just being a dad and owning a home. At least I got all fixed. And you won't catch me complaining about it when it helps me fix my guitar or an amp that's on the fritz. 

Oh, and these photos? They're not just from this weekend's challenge. There are photos from the clothes washer, dishwasher, camper, clothes dryer and Jonas's computer. All from the last year or so. 

Maybe I got into the wrong line of work. 




Tuesday, October 14, 2025

Impostors and Impostor syndrome

As I enter midlife, I'm pursuing creativity more in my life. And not just as a hobby or pastime, but as something that defines me and as the foundation I want to set my career and life on. I've always been creative, but my creativity was never properly encouraged growing up. For a long time, I thought that meant I didn't have as much creativity as others. As I've matured, I recognize my creativity is very different from others, and they didn't know how to process that. 

But especially when you're young, it's not easy to see that. So it's made it hard for me to enter the creative realm, and like many people in my position, I've really struggled with impostor syndrome. Struggled to the point where co-workers have had to actively tell me I am worthy of what I have. It's a hard thing to work through. 

Which is why I'm floored when I come across stories of real impostors. I don't encounter a lot of real impostors in my life (or at least they're really good at imposting, so I don't recognize them). But every so often, you hear stories of them.

For example, I've really been into police bodycam and dashcam videos lately. I don't know why. I bear witness to enough violence and vehicular carnage in my neighbourhood to satiate that urge. One of the videos I watched recently was of a group of officers investigating a guy who was pretending to be a cop. It's pretty cringey to watch since you know from the very start that the guy isn't a cop. For someone who feels like an impostor in a place I've been asked and encouraged to be, it makes my skin positively CRAWL to watch this guy try and squirm his way through this. I just don't know how he does it. 

Or maybe one of the more famous and egregious impostors is the story of Tania Head (or so she called herself). Tania claimed to have escaped from the impact zone of the South Tower during 9/11. But, as this blog is likely leading you to see, she wasn't. She wasn't even in the US. The whole story is told in some depth in the documentary, The Woman Who Wasn't There. And she didn't just claim to be a 9/11 survivor. No no no. She actually took control of a couple of 9/11 survivor support groups, led tours of the WTC area and was a very visible face in the survivor community. Until the New York Times started meddling in her past.

Watching impostors like that gives me much the same gross feeling inside as watching urban explorers in places they shouldn't be. It all seems very fun right up until you're going to get caught. Then there's no way out. 

I sometimes have an urge to create a different personality. Or create a second me that's maybe a little wilder, more daring. I'm not even talking about being an impostor as much as just having a second personality that amplifies certain parts of my own persona. Maybe that's the kind of place where impostors come from. Maybe the cop dude watched body cam videos like me and just pursued that interest in the wrong direction. They say Tania Head suffered from some lack of empathy in her own life and maybe saw the 9/11 survivors as a place where she could find love. 

I don't know where it comes from, but it's fascinating to watch people who have dug themselves so deeply into a lie. And it always makes me wonder where it started. 

Leave me a comment as an impostor below! 

Tuesday, October 07, 2025

The Return of Rush

Back in our radio days, The Navigator and I had a "Trilogy of Rock". Rush, Clutch and Motorhead. 

Unfortunately, neither of us would ever see Motorhead, but we've both been able to see Clutch and Rush together over the years. We saw Clutch a couple of years ago in Saskatoon and saw Rush in Calgary in 2015 on their final tour. 

Or so we thought. 

It was to my great delight yesterday that I opened up YouTube and saw a video that was only a few minutes old from Rush called "Geddy and Alex Send a Message to Rush Fans". Rush is back, baby.

They're reuniting with German-stickswoman Anika Nilles, who, per the video, recently played with the late Jeff Beck's band. I admit, I hadn't heard of her before yesterday, but the videos I've seen have been promising. She certainly has the chops. And if Ged and the other guy think she's good enough, then I trust she is. 

I'm glad to see the guys back at it. It always bugs me when talented folks aren't playing. I know it's selfish as a fan to say that, but there's always a pretty good reason for musicians to stop playing together. It makes me sad that bands like Rage Against the Machine don't play together. There is too much talent in the surviving members of Rush to leave them in a retirement home. 

Tickets go up for sale next week, and I expect I can't afford to go to Toronto for the show. But boy, it's tempting to see them again. 

One more time. 

Tuesday, September 30, 2025

Dogs! (Oh heck and why not cats too?)

 I've wanted to do a post about my dogs since coming back to the blogiverse, and since I've caught the curse that's befallen my siblings, today is the day for that lazier path. 

Long-time readers will know about my first dog, Bootsy, and Rhonda's pupper, Shadow. Bootsy left us in 2013 after a short and kinda disturbing set of illnesses. That was a pretty tough one for me, and I still miss her from time to time. 

Bootsy wasn't gone for long before Rhonda dragged me to the Humane Society, and we dragged home an adult Husky I named Leika after the first dog in space

Leika was a pretty challenging dog. She had a drive to run - especially away, and she was never easy to walk despite practicing every single day. But she did have a lot of love in her heart and was unflinchingly protective of the kids. Like Bootsy, she had a very short but extreme decline at the end of her life in late 2020, and we said goodbye to her while we were in lockdown.

In 2013, we started to notice that there were an awful lot of mice around the 100-year-old house we moved into that year. So we decided to get a cat. And so we adopted Chopstick from a farm. He was a famous scrapper on the farm, and the family there thought he might do best if he was taken away from the other cats in the area. 

Chop really was an excellent family cat. He was patient with the young kids who would drag him around, knew how to keep our big dogs in check and kept the mouse population in the house at zero. But he never lost his scrapper attitude or his wanderlust, and he paid the price for it over and over. More than a few times, he came home with severe fight-related injuries to his face, eyes and ears. 

Most famously, Chopstick was a victim of violence at the hands of an unknown assailant in the neighbourhood. One evening in late June 2017, Chop came home dragging his rear hind leg behind him. We couldn't figure out what had happened, and when we took him to the vet, it was quickly determined that he had been shot in the butt by a BB gun. The pellet shattered his rear hip, and unfortunately, it led to an amputation of his hind leg. 

Chop would spend the remaining five years of his life as a tripod who still loved to go out and scrap, catch mice and keep the dogs in check. While Chop got along famously with all of the dogs, when Liberty showed up, he no longer had patience for dealing with dogs. Chop moved himself outside permanently when Lib moved in, and he stopped coming by the house for visits in late 2022. We don't know what happened to him, but I suspect someone will find a kitty skeleton under the deck someday. 

Like when we lost Leika, it didn't take long for the thought of another dog to start making the rounds in late 2020. So it was in November 2020 that I got my first real puppy - though she wouldn't stay small for long. We got my first purebred dog from a breeder, the Newfoundlander dog, Ahsoka. The new Star Wars series of the same name debuted that week, and Ahsoka is one of my favourite Star Wars characters. So it was an easy one to do. 


Ahsoka has been the most successful dog I've had so far. Maybe it's the breed, maybe it's because she was the first dog I raised from a puppy, but she's been easier to walk, train and communicate with. She is absolutely the big teddy bear that everyone thinks she is, and is just a pleasure to have around. But she's unfortunately enormous, and I've not got the body I need to have for such a big dog. Because she's still a dog and they need to dash at squirrels and cats, even if I'd rather she doesn't.

Ahsoka is also my first pet with a social media account. But we basically never update it anymore. I wonder if people think she's gone? 

As mentioned earlier in June 2022, Liberty, the Great Pyreneese/Border Collie cross, joined the family. His owner, Gary, passed away, and we agreed to adopt Liberty and give him a good home. This made the family a three-dog family for a short while (tragic foreshadowing). 


Liberty is a pretty good dog, but he's also quite anxious. We've never been sure if it was some of the stuff that happened when his owner passed, or just his nature, or both. But he's always been quite reactive and headstrong. And he's obsessively protective of Rhonda. He reminds me a lot of Leika a lot of the time, especially when I walk him. He's got his own path that he wants to take at all times. 

And so we come to late 2022 with our last welcome and our last farewell. 

During Christmas break in 2022, we welcomed a new mouse management officer to our home in the form of a tiny little grey/gold tabby named Baba. For my own reasons, I rarely call her that and have just nicknamed her an altered version of "Chop" to "Chip". She's a very small cat compared to Chopstick, but she's extremely fast and very bold. Despite living in a home with two large dogs, she rules the roost. And she might be even better than Chopstick was at mousing. Because there has been ZERO sign of mice since she took over the job. I think she's just able to fit into spots he wasn't. 


She's a troublemaker, but she's cute and clearly thinks she's a dog that weighs over 120lbs. No one's bothered to correct her. 

And I've hinted enough, but we said goodbye to Shadow just as 2022 turned into 2023. He was nearly 18 years old, and the last year of his life was not very high-quality. Shadow was a fierce protector, despite his diminutive size, and I don't think he ever needed a leash in his whole life. 

And so our family has been filled out with two big dogs and one tiny cat ever since. We fostered a beautiful reddish golden retriever, whom we nicknamed "Honey" because her name was also Liberty. The owner wanted us to adopt her, but with my gout and two dogs we already needed to care for, it wasn't to be. She stayed with us for a few weeks and was definitely part of our pet story. I miss having a fish tank, but I don't think the cat would leave them alone. Her killer instinct is too strong. We tried to have a few guinea pigs, but Leika made a snack of one, and that experiment ended prematurely. 

And now, I'm finally caught up on my pet story here on Pilot's World. My pets really are important to me, and in looking at my Instagram to put this together, I'm realizing how much I love animals in general. Maybe someday, Rhonda will let me get a highland cow

Tuesday, September 23, 2025

Two in a year

Last week, just after walking off stage after performing at O’Hanlon’s I learned that my grandfather, Remo Forer had passed away at 97 years old. I carry his name with me; my middle name is Remo after him.


I’m sad about it, but at the same time, I never had a deep relationship with grandpa. We would talk politely at family events, and I always loved passing out the gum he gave me to my cousins, but he never really shared wisdom with me or guided me through much of life.

We always lived in a different town, so that’s a part of it. I know many of my cousins who lived around Avonlea had much closer relationships.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have an appreciation and respect for the man. 97 good years of life is in itself respectable. But I also share his passion for hats, and I admire his entrepreneurial spirit. In fact, if there’s one thing I wish I’d learned more from him, it’s how to be a businessman. He may have been a farmer and later a gravel-baron, but at his core, he was a shrewd businessman.

I also admire his longevity. And not just living to 97. Up until two or three years ago, he was still extremely active. Famously, he did a James Bond-style dive out of his bulldozer as it slipped off a cliff. On his 90th birthday! I don’t know that I could make that dive now at 44.

And so, we said farewell to grandpa on Saturday. I always find the graveside part of the mourning process to be the most impactful. Church is important to a lot of my family, but it always feels like the priest is spending more time delivering a guilt trip than helping us remember or mourn. But at the graveside, we say goodbye, and it’s very emotional. And twice in the last month, I’ve shovelled dirt on the remains of a grandparent. I was an honourary pallbearer for the first time; I’m sure it won’t be my last.

And so, I’m left with one grandparent. Luckily/unlucky, I dunno. But I know it’s fleetingly rare to reach my age with any grandparents. And grandma is not doing great. She was too sick to attend the funeral, and I do worry if we’ll be saying goodbye to her before long.

I suppose that’s just part of growing up and growing older. 

Tuesday, September 16, 2025

Danks Coach!

It’s been a weird year for me.

On one hand, I’ve launched a music project that’s growing at a really comfortable rate and giving me the confidence – and permission – to really stretch out creatively.

On the other hand, nearly 18 years at the same company and struggles to get ahead there have really started to chafe me, and I question why I’ve let myself get stuck there.

Over the past few months, in particular since I was unsuccessful in earning the promotion I was going for, I’ve been looking at changing paths. Maybe find a new job or at least look at some different possibilities. But the job boards don’t really have anything that piques my interest.

In a few months, my current job contract will expire, and I’ve already made a goal to try and make up the shortfall that will come by playing music. I don’t know if I’ll make it in time, but BOY am I gonna try!

It's with that frustration at looking at other jobs, and this maybe a bit insane try at something completely different that I decided to start using a career coach. My work has an FSEAP (Family Services Employee Assistance Program) that provides it as a benefit, so why not?

So it was that last Friday, I spent over an hour on a Zoom call with a wonderful woman named Susan as we started to discuss my goals, look at what I wanted to make happen and explore some ways to make that happen. It was shocking to me how encouraging she was; there was no “no you can’t do that,” and very little negative language. In fact, the only negative language was coming out of me, and she was very quick to correct it and put me back on a better trajectory.

It was also interesting how I’m really already on the path. I’ve set some deadlines, making some hard work happen and making some hard choices. I’m looking at my options, and even though I perceived my use of the resources my job gives me to my own ends as parasitic, she helped me to reframe that as just realizing the possibilities of my resources. It’s less about being selfish as much as it’s about self-care. We have benefits at work – so let them benefit me!

In the short term, I’ve reignited my use of my daily journal (basically every counsellor and coach I’ve ever had harps on it; it’s time I get more consistent), and I’m making plans to start doing a bit more every day. I already practice and write every day, but I also need to set time aside to “do paperwork”. And that’s one I’m well behind on. I’m actually a bit slow at work lately, so I’m going to use some of that capacity in the short term to catch up on that and get myself set up for future success.

And then there’s the books.

While I do like the idea of journaling, self-help books are a bit grating to me and a few were recommended. They just seem to go on and on, and then you get one good nugget of info. I’ve put a few on my reading list per Susan’s suggestion, but I’m not sure how deep I’ll delve into them. But I will try.

Oh, and – the encouragement. I’ve gotta say there was nothing more valuable than having someone who understood my frustration and my dreams just yelling “YES” at me across an internet connection. Don’t get me wrong, Rhonda is supportive, and Mom tries to be enthusiastic. But there’s something about someone who’s also pursued a life in the arts telling me that YES, I CAN DO THIS, that is just the bee’s knees. I think I needed someone to give me more than permission.

I think it’s gonna be a really interesting winter. There are lots of cool things ahead.