Journal-tism

One of the early motivators in doing Pilot's World was to have a journal of my life to share. Not just with people today, but also for my kids and other descendants. I think many generations will enjoy reading this blog and wondering just what was wrong with me.

But as my job coach pointed out a few months ago, people can have many different journals that do different things. So there's this blog that's a public journal, I have my work journals, and I have a private journal that's more for my mental and physical health. 

My work journals are one of my more successful journaling endeavours outside of Pilot's World. I've been keeping a daily to-do/notes journal at work since about 2015, with the journals you see above going back to December of 2016. There was another book before the #1 book you see there, but it was on an old cheap notepad and was frankly more of a scratch pad than it was a journal. 

I started this set of journals after taking one of those productivity seminars they have you do occasionally at corporate jobs. I think it might have been 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. But maybe it wasn't. All I remember is the suggestion that you take the last 10-15 minutes of every day and lay out the next day for yourself in a journal.  

And boy, have I done that. For 10 years now, I've done that. I've also taken endless notes in endless meetings, drawn little sketches and kept every apple, orange or fruit sticker from every snack I've brought to work in that time. 

There are some pivotal moments in these journals, too, like the day we got sent home from The Pandemic. Interestingly, that page was written the same day as the one post I did on Pilot's World between 2012 and 2024. 

Or even some history that wasn't put down with a pen. Like this journal that was chewed up by a baby Ahsoka. 

I'm nearly at the end of book 14, and I've really only got 5 or 6 more blank books before I run out. Dollarama stopped stocking this kind of notebook, so sometime in the next 3-5 years, I need to find another job or completely pivot on what kind of notebook I use for this! 

Which brings me to my personal journal and the conflict I'm feeling right now. It started up about a year ago in response to a couple of things. First, Rhonda suggested I start keeping track of some of my health stuff, like when my gout starts to act up or if I'm having issues with my eyes. Likewise, my counsellors have suggested doing the same for my mental health, so I combined them into a single Google Docs document. 

For a while there, I was doing a post every morning, just sat down with my voice-to-text and blurted it all out. But as you can see in the screenshot above, this particular journal has started to lose its charm for me. I dunno. I don't necessarily feel the need to sit down and complain about life for 10 minutes every morning. And I don't go back much. It's just not fulfilling.

So I'm torn. I do like doing some journaling every day, but I'd like it to be more creative. More drawings, lyrics, ideas. Sure, I'll still have some griping or recording my glaucoma pressures. But it should be more. 

And while I appreciate the speed and versatility of doing this digitally, I dunno. Maybe I need to move my personal blog back onto notebooks. It's not as accessible to me, and it's MUCH slower. But having a decade of notebooks with such a variety of materials is pretty cool to have, too. And to look back on.  

So, what's the endgame of this whole journaling-related dump? Well, it's time for a change, this much I know. And I'm in a good position, both in my experience and in my desire, to make something cool. I might look into some kind of journaling service or try to make better use of the tools I have. Blogger clearly shows me that I can combine text, photos, drawings, video and more, which is very useful. I could build a private blog. Or I could just suck it up and start journaling in my old document again. 

I think there might be some use in trying to do it at a different time of day, too. Maybe I'm just too crabby to be doing it first thing in the morning. 

So yeah - a journal entry on journaling. Been trying to work through this lately and rediscover a passion for this personal journal because I think there can be some use for it. I do so much writing, creating and scratching. I need to make it something I enjoy every day. Do you journal? What's your favourite way to go about it? 

Is it actually working? (and is it that bad?)

 Like so many people in history, I struggle to process progress. On one hand, it's inevitable and probably makes life better for people. On the other hand, many new technologies and systems are implemented without thinking through the long-term effects. Cars have been great, but they've brought a lot of pollution. Social media made it easier to stay in contact, but the way it was executed has turned the users into zombie content machines. 

And so I continue to debate my feelings on AI. Yes, it's going to make many mundane jobs easier, and it's being pushed so hard and so quickly that its inevitability seems certain. But I really don't think they've looked at the long-term effects on people, the environment and our society. As a writer, the promise of generative AI is pretty strong, and that leaves me in a position where I don't know if there will be a job for me in 10 years. 

But there is one positive side to all of this technology that I think might illuminate a long-term benefit for all of us, and that's accessibility. When used in the right way, all of this technology can be very inclusive and democratizing. 

When used the right way.

Case in point is Minecraft YouTuber, GoodTimesWithScar or just Scar for short. Scar is a YouTube gamer I've followed for nearly a decade during my own Minecraft journey, and he's an incredibly talented and creative builder in the game. But, most importantly for this conversation, he's also a disabled person. From what he's told his viewers, he suffers from a severe autoimmune disease that's left him in a wheelchair, dependent on oxygen and a flurry of other medical interventions. He's absent for long spells at a time as he battles with his health issues and the usual rigamarole of life.

But here's where we see the positives of technology. Obviously, on the surface, we have medical technology not only keeping him alive but helping him to maintain some mobility and capability. But we also have social media, low-cost video production technology and the internet, giving him a job and a community. I can't say exactly what he makes, but he seems to make enough to help support his life a bit, and he brings inspiration and entertainment to thousands, possibly millions of people. In the 1990s, he probably would have just been kept alive, and before that, I'm not sure we'd have the wonder of Scar to enjoy. 

Sure, all he's doing is playing a game, but it's entertaining and giving him a role in society. So, what does this mean for the rest of us? 

My hope is that as technology takes the terrible jobs, the rest of us get to explore our creative and expressive sides more. Honestly, I want people like Scar to get first dibs. I think that's the first step of the transition and one that we're already in. And don't get me wrong, there are myriads of fully capable people, both physically and mentally, doing the same job as Scar. So they're ahead of the curve a bit. 

But don't think that's the end game being planned by the Illuminati - I'm sure they're happy to just inhale all of the money and wealth and leave the rest of us picking through trash piles for new styles and inventions. Hence, my assertion at the top that these technologies aren't being thought through long-term. 

Who's to say? Lots of the oracles and pundits are predicting big societal change over the next decade or two, and I think we're well overdue. So maybe, just maybe, my music career becomes the norm and not just some weird guy trying to convince you that kazoo is cool. 

The Lie - Winner Winner (chicken dinner)

Every couple of weeks or so, my family will cook up a whole chicken for Sunday supper. I know, it reeks of trad-wife traditionalism, but it's less about tradition and more about trying to do some cooking that will help the rest of the week go smoother. 

When I get a chicken, I want to be able to gorge myself on Sunday night, but also have something for my sandwich on Monday and my fried rice on Wednesday. And most importantly, I need to boil up all of the otherwise unused bits of the carcass into chicken broth I can freeze and use for soup and sauces over the next few weeks. 

But there is a problem. Over the last few years, it's been nearly impossible to buy a full-sized - or at least reasonably sized - full chicken at the grocery store. They're all small "fryer" sized, which means I barely get the full supper meal in, and the small amount of broth it makes is almost a waste of my time. This past weekend, I actually went to the trouble of buying a 2-pack of these chickens just so that I ended up with the leftovers that I wanted and needed. And that worked for sure. We ended up with a full Sunday supper, 6 litres of chicken broth and enough leftover chicken for chicken pitas at supper last night and some chicken for lunchtime sandwiches this week. Anything leftover by Wednesday will become a highly desirable treat for the dogs. 

I think this pivot to only small fryer chickens is an intentional act by the grocers. Smaller chickens are cheaper to produce, you can fit more chickens in the same area and turn through more product by harvesting them small. And at best, you get a couple of meals out of one for a small family. If they made them larger, they'd need to spend more on feed, space and transportation for only marginally more income. I can imagine they get less profitable as they grow larger. 

Not to mention, if a single chicken can meat (get it?) the protein needs of a family for most of a week, then you aren't buying deli meat, boxed broth or another package of chicken to feed everyone. 

Of course, living in Saskatchewan, the Hutterites are always an option, and I take advantage of their chickens whenever I can. Not only are they larger, but they also taste so much better. It's like garden tomato versus grocery tomato. There really isn't a comparison; it's so good. But I'm not in a position where I can just call up a Hutterite. Not to mention, they're usually selling like a dozen at a time, and I'm not exactly swimming in extra cash at all times. 

I guess that's just living in late-stage capitalism for you. 

I will say this. If the apocalypse we've all been praying for since Y2K finally comes around, getting my hands on some good chickens will be an early priority for me. Goats are probably a good option too, but I think I know enough about chickens to muddle my way through and have a reasonable source of food moving forward. Plus, they're manageable by 1 or 2 people. I don't think I could handle a whole cow by myself.  

And you can bet that I'll be growing those chickens nice, big and fat. 

Communication Breakdown

I recently took out a membership with a federal political party. For the sake of this conversation, the specific party isn't important. My thought was that with all of the wild stuff happening in the United States right now, being actively involved in democracy is pretty important, right now and having a party membership would be a good start to getting into the process. 

A coworker with whom I talk politics had invited me to join, so there was a person-to-person, grassroots element to it. It felt like a good first step.

But it went immediately south. Because within 20 minutes of sending in my membership form, the emails started - and they haven't stopped. I receive something like 5-10 emails per day from the party and related members. It's so much. I am not reading any of it because there's no filter. And it's occurred to me that this may be exactly why I haven't been involved in politics/democracy directly. There's just too much noise. 

I'm kind of sickly diligent about unsubscribing to emails I don't want. Everything you buy online is followed by a daily "buy more" email, and it's easy for me to turn that off. But in this case, if I turn off those emails, then they just have my $25, and I'm not further along the path.  

I've mentioned before how Hank Green compares our new discovery of social media to the upheaval that happened after the launch of the printing press. I think this is a symptom of the same problem. We've all been given this infinite broadcast capacity, but we've never yet figured out how to make it palatable, or even manageable for a consumer who is not infinite. 

I think it's part of why I've focused so hard on the live part of my music lately. At least there I'm talking and dealing with people in person. I'm resistant to starting a mailing list or even recording an album because I feel like it's destined to just be dumped into the noise. At a venue, I have your attention. 

This is a real and new problem we could be applying AI to. Rather than training it to do the jobs that people do well, maybe it could do this job that people can't do. Sort through all of this communication and give me the parts that are important. Deliver me the bad news at the right time. Delete 4 out of 5 emails that come in from that place where I bought new shoes. 

And here I am with a blog, just adding more noise to the ocean. Oh well. At least it's just one person who's being overwhelmed. 

Introducing 55 Cancri

 I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I wanted to adopt a star. Have my own favourite ball of burning gas out there in the cosmos. 

I spent a few hours that day looking at some stars that best fit the requirements I outlined in that article. I was surprised to learn how many really common stars have exoplanets. Like there are planets EVERYWHERE. They're not rare.

The best tool I found was a website called The Planet Project. It's a comfortingly retro internet website with yellow and cyan text linked to pages with bright blue backgrounds. Just like momma used to make. 

I sorted through the stars listed there, excluding the ones from the southern hemisphere and the ones that are maybe a bit more common. 

I ended up landing on 55 Cancri, a star in the constellation Cancer. Since my start sign is Cancer, it felt fitting. Plus, it was one of two or three in the list that had full planetary systems, not just a single big Jupiter that is basically a throw-off from when the star was made. 55 Cancri has 5 planets known to date AND is part of a double star system with a red dwarf they've cheekily named 55 Cancri B. 

Now, there is a lot already known about 55 Cancri, or as I'll be calling it, Fiddy-fi Can. It's got a pretty robust Wikipedia page, and there are quite a few interesting things about it already. For example, a radio signal was sent to the start system in 2003. But that means I can throw a party in 2044 when the signal gets there - just to observe the day our signal arrives. 

There have been lots of different kinds of observations so far, and it's a pretty bright star, so assembling information should be a fun challenge. I have not yet had the opportunity to go look for the star, so here is my initial artist rendition:

So what next? Well, I want to read more about it, get my head around it all. Gotta memorize the names of the planets, of course. I'm on the back stretch of my February Album Writing month challenge, and there have been a few people writing songs about planets and things. I'm gonna show them all by writing a song for 55 Cancri -and it's little family of planets, and its partner nearby. 

I'm also excited to have something to focus on at the Saskatchewan Star Party this summer. Maybe get some good photos. Use Dad's telescope to see 55 Cancri B. 

And I suppose I should make a sub-blog or something to collect all the stuff I find about the star together. 

Should be fun. Please welcome my new favourite star, 55 Cancri! 

Root Beer and the monoculture

 It's no secret to anyone who reads this blog that I'm a big fan of root beer. I even held a strange root beer contest on here over 20 years ago when I found a can of Hires root beer in the store. 

As I mentioned in that particular post, if we go back even further to about 30 years ago, one of the first websites I ever built was a Barq's fan page on Geocities. I'd give almost anything to see that old website again. 

When Kayah turned one, we even themed her birthday party as a root beer party. I bought as many kinds of root beer as I could find! 

I think my love of root beer started with my dad brewing it in beer bottles when we were kids. I don't know that I'll ever recapture how good that root beer tasted. Like a junkie, I spend my life chasing that high from boutique candy store to boutique candy store, trying to find a root beer that can fill that hole. 

Fast forward to this weekend, and the lovely Rhonda got me a four-pack of Intergalactic Root Beer. Or maybe more accurately, Captain Electro's Intergalactic Root Beer. I dunno. It has a rocket on it, it has a robot on it. It's perfect. 

And it was delicious. The wintergreen and pepper flavours are particularly nice. 

And it makes me grateful that society has begun to shake off the allure of the monoculture. That desire that we should all watch the same thing, eat the same things or live the same way. Coke and Pepsi are certainly guilty of this; for a time, you drank what they put on the shelf. 

Thankfully, sometime around that reintroduction of Hires that I talked about in 2005, the world started to diversify again. Now it's easy for me to grab a Jones Soda, Boylan's or even the local Paperback Beverage Co. root beers and enjoy something other than the behemoth that is A&W. 

The biggest issue now is that I need to plan a trip to London Drugs. I need more of that sweet, sweet elixir.  

What's your favourite root beer? 

Contemplating Change

 The reader of this blog is likely to be weary of my repeated assertions that I need to find another job, something not at SGI. Well, cycles do cycle, and I'm in another "I gotta get another job" cycle. 

As I sat down with that thought again last night, I had the more important question of, "Why, if I always want to leave, am I just head-rushing towards my 19th year here?" Why can't I make that change? 

I think a lot of it is the routine, the security, and pay that's enough to keep me here, but not make me happy. I was thinking as I came up the elevator to my office this morning about all of the people who have promoted past me. 

I think the problem is one of motivation. 

I do apply for jobs, but I struggle to make a habit or a routine of it. I just toss a resume here and there whenever something attractive pops up. But I don't stop once a week and look at what is out there. 

I've done a bit of work through my job coach on how to pursue some of this, and I've done some of that work. But I also feel limited. I suppose that's the struggle of wanting to pursue creativity for a career in a place like Regina, SK, where people are all about business suits and hockey. 

My morning reading today talked about not making decisions or change based on anger. I understand the advice for sure, but anger is a motivator. The argument is making decisions or changing based on anger leads to blind decisions or unsatisfying results. But at the same time, watching what's happening in the states is infuriating and change needs to happen. If we wait to get past our anger, we aren't going to make changes.

And I think that's why I get in these cycles. I try to affect the change when I'm angry and frustrated at work, then something gets better and I forget. 

I think the solution is that I really need to identify and over-arching goal and start pursuing that. And in some respects, I'm trying to do that with my music. But I'm realist enough to see that it's unlikely to be something that could support me. And if it does, it's going to take many many years. Many years of cycling over and over. 

I think I need a secondary goal to look at as well. 

Maybe I should get into guitar repair. 

I want to adopt a star

I've had this idea for a few years that I would like to adopt a star.  This will be my "favourite star," and I will keep maybe a journal, a blog or something. Some kind of collection of all the information and facts about this particular star. 

But there are a few elements of it that I haven't been able to settle on just yet. So I haven't picked a favourite. I think the initial instinct is to go with maybe one of the more well-known stars, like Betelgeuse or Polaris. Maybe you'd go down the popularity/luminosity list to a Pollux, Deneb or Omicron Persei. 

But I feel there are already large collections about stars like that. There are whole YouTube videos on them. I need to go a bit smaller. The kind that doesn't have a proper name yet. Named something like NCCD22234_a*.

That's not to say I want a star that's invisible to me. It doesn't need to be the third star from the left of the Andromeda galaxy, and I'll never get a good look at it in my lifetime. Something that I can still see with my naked eye, but really, maybe only when I'm out in a really dark area. I have terrible eyesight, so it needs to be visible and easy to locate. Binoculars are a consideration. 

I would go back to one of those more common stars I wrote about earlier. Use it as an anchor star to find my favourite. Something that I can see year-round is best, but I'd be ok with just in the summer. February stars need not apply. 

I think a star system would be cool to follow because there are actual changes visible. Double (or more) interacting stars would actually be cool. I think it increases the chance you get to see something happening. Exoplanets are a plus, habitable ones are better. 

Appearance in fiction would also be a bonus if that's possible. I've eyeballed Deneb for appearing in Star Trek and Omicron Persei because of Futurama. Maybe there's some start that appears in a weird space opera rag. Or maybe Navigator just starts writing a fiction around it for me. 

I know that data folks could just slam all of these links and criteria into a number machine and it would spit out an answer - or a list of answers. But I suppose I hope to find it a bit more organically. But in preparing this blog post, I think I've come much closer to an answer. 

The family has been ordered out to the star party this summer, so I've set myself a deadline to have the star picked by then. Or at least a Top 5 or 10, or whatever, and use the time there to lock it in. Toss any suggestions you have into the comments. Especially around fiction or an exoplanet story.

Tinted Nostalgia

I've been thinking a lot over the past couple of days about nostalgia and how it can tend to morph and become a falsehood. 

It all started when I saw a reel yesterday of someone with an old Sony Walkman. The same kind I had as a kid, as a matter of fact, the big yellow sports one. I started in the mode of, "Oh, I should get one of those, that would be nice to consume music like that again." 

But then I gave my head a shake.

The fact is, I never liked tapes, even in their heyday. I hated fast-forwarding, flipping tapes and untangling them when they inevitably unspooled. I was SO EXCITED when CDs hit the market because you could skip to songs, fast-forward in a moment, and the sound was so much better. Static isn't warmth, it's bad sound.

Cassettes do have a couple of strengths. You could leave a tape on the floor of your car for weeks and still be able to play them ok. CDs didn't have that durability. But in our modern age of streaming - and even MP3 players before that - both don't hold any durability or portability points. 

I often have to remind myself of these rose coloured glasses when I watch people working with vintage computers on YouTube. As much as I'd like to go buy an old Tandy 1000 on eBay to play all my favourite vintage games, I need to remind myself how slow and low-powered my old Tandy was. How I wanted nothing more than a computer that could show more than 16 colours or play something nicer than 8-bit sound. Not to mention, a PC that is 35+ years old is not going to just plug in and play. At least not consistently. 

I have access to DOSBox and the Internet; I don't need a 286. 

I suppose in times like these, when everything seems complex, expensive and dangerous, nostalgia gives us a break. But as was mentioned in a discussion at a party this weekend, times weren't better. We were just sheltered or forgot the bad parts. 

And don't even get me started on the three shelves of vinyl records I have collecting dust in my living room. 

Maybe it's best to just focus on the now, what we have and what we can make of it. It's certainly more affordable than paying $1000 for a dusty memory that never works. 

Unapologetically late

Well, following an intensely stressful week and the release of that stress on Friday, I got sick. Down in bed sick. So I missed Tuesday. And I missed yesterday. Today is good, right? 

Maybe the delay is a good one because it gives me a chance to comment on something that happened on Tuesday that I feel might pan out to be a pivotal historical moment. 

The last year (and in some ways, the last decade) has been defined by the incessant blumbering of the big orange man from down south, Donald Trump. He's graduated from harmful blowhard to existential crisis. At this particular moment in the shit storm, ol' Donny is trying to get his hands on Greenland, wants Canada and is ready to take on anyone but his fellow autocrats to get all the power he could ever want. 

A couple of months ago, the subject of our current Prime Minister, Mark Carney, came up in the family group chat. I said it on a whim that he's our generation's Winston Churchill. Maybe not the most popular guy, but absolutely the one person we need to lead our country through this moment. He's a man of deep knowledge, strategic thought and incomparable economic experience. 

That observation of Mr. Carney was borne out on Tuesday when he delivered a speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. It's interesting watching this back today because the speaker introducing him describes his election as one of the most pivotal moments in Canadian history. I don't think he realized that the pivotal moment was coming in the next 30 minutes. 

Perhaps you've seen the speech, or you're eagerly waiting for the end of this blog to go watch an economist speak for 30 minutes. So I won't go into too much detail, but Carney compares the current economic and diplomatic world to the way people behaved under Communist rule. He goes on to describe how the "middle powers" need to pivot, how Canada has already begun that pivot and what it means for the future. 

It's a bold speech. But it's one I'm glad to hear coming from the leader of the country I live in. Ever since the start of the pandemic, the conversation has increasingly turned towards changing how we run the world, a restructuring of the old order and a need to change the status quo. And as a millennial who has seen my retirement savings kicked down over and over again because of the US economy, whose ability to earn has degraded constantly since I graduated from high school - I'm ready for that change. 

I can't even sit here and pretend like I totally understand the new approach. Nor am I in any way capable of predicting its success. But given the choice between the status quo, being steered by a man with dictatorial aspirations and a mind progressing towards dementia, and a leader who has run two world banks and has among the best economic awareness of any world leader in history - well, Mark is my man on this one. 

And the best part? It seems to have got under ol' Donny's skin. And that's something to celebrate.