BuJo Initiate

It’s the Ex week again, and like for the past few years now, I’ve taken it as holiday time. It has also been the habit to use the time to do practical economical household craft projects each year during this time, as sort of an advanced preparation for making winter a bit cozier. This time around is no exception. Last year, it was some carpentry to reclaim storage space; other years, it has been canning preserves. This year, I’ve minimized and simplified things even more for a multi-day project.

Over the past couple years or so, one positive habit I have been cultivating for myself is carrying

One template format I'm exploring . . .

around a pocketbook and pen. Sure, a note taking app on the phone is quite handy, but when in a pressured dash or impulse to record, capture, and recover something more instantly and accurately while it is on the tip of my brain, the pen and notebook beats the cellphone. I have been finding my old-fashioned pocketbook to be as indispensable to me as carrying my keys, wallet, and my cellphone. It has helped save me a lot of time, money, and energy, especially in spots when the phone had little to no battery power left.

I like technical innovation a lot, but honestly, only up to a certain point. We think we are doing well for ourselves by organizing our lives with apps on our phones and computers, but this is illusory on some levels. It is ultimately making us comply to a complex system that suits tech companies in finding new ways to control us with ones and zeros, and for them to glean more of our money and personal data from us. In this sense, apps can tend to cheapen the quality of your life, or they at least make the data of it more valuable to everyone except yourself. There is a point where we lose sight of being able to create a very personalized, customized, and more organic system that allows us to stage things better for our own organizational needs, our unique learning modalities, our own personal goals; one that accommodates for recording through our more private and practical eccentricities. Those ones are not for sharing, the non-bloggables: thoughts and ideas best left on a page of paper, with the privacy assured.

One of the things I regret about my formal education, from childhood on through to my early university years, in the days before academic computer use, and before the internet was available, is that I never had any teacher at any time of my life who put any effort at all on teaching me how to do the very essential and elemental thing for excelling in true higher learning. That is, really teaching me on how to organize myself with the practical skill of efficient written planning/journaling, and effective note taking. It seems absurd, but it’s true. Sure, I of course learned literacy, but only mastering merely the taking in and absorbing of information part of it. I always had substandard teachers and mentors for helping me exploit my strongest learning modalities to transpose, and express, what was going on in my head in the way I sensed it, and frame it in the best organized and condensed manner on to a page that was most memorable and comprehensive to me. My willingness to write, or “show my work”, as was always demanded of me, just wasn’t there, and from that I think I suffered greatly in such a way that I was always reticent, reluctant, reserved, made to feel embarrassed, about expressing any form of creativity at all through the written word or graphics for the longest time. I was no dullard, there was lots of thinking going on; but I was always embarrassed with my poor organizational ability of trying to sort it out on paper. Capturing thoughts through note taking was like trying to catch wriggling live fish with soapy hands. I improved a lot over the years, but my journey to get better at it has been a very independent and solitary one, and I missed the most critical of years of when what I know now would have served me better at an earlier time. I’m trying to actively compensate for that even today.

This all brings me now to making a concerted effort at learning something that encompasses serving me as a means of approaching efficient minimalism, enhancing my productivity, and being a creative pastime. Currently, I’m immersing myself in the craft of bullet journaling (or BuJo* for short)¹. Like most of my hobbies and pastimes, it is nerdy thing that is a nice blend of aesthetics that pleases the senses, and orderly precision that gets mathematical, scientific, and data oriented. What I gain from doing it is a clearer snapshot of how my mind works while figuring out goal-oriented objectives. One thing I’m noticing is that there is a great and drastic schism in the quality in my handwriting between the floodlight mind (cursive, observing and fervent collecting a vast array of thoughts instantaneously) and my spotlight mind (block printed, mindfully focusing and methodically organizing them on paper, without the pressure of time and other stressful distractions). Comparing the two is seeing my brain operating and functioning in two different levels, or existing on two entirely different worlds, for each process. I wonder if there is name for the weird psychological anomaly to describe this huge difference between each modality. Examples provided.

My manic, brain-on-fire,
"conspitated looking" as one
of my friends once called it,

cursive writing vs.

My relaxed and focused self

block printing

My goal with this pastime is to get a journal formatted and formulated with templates for the

One template I designed that I may 

use for seasonal tasks. I couldn't

 find anything like this in a stationary 

store. Custom made is the way to go!

remainder of this year and the entire coming new year. What will I do with it all? Well, to automate some plans without the actual need for technical automation; to make cybernetic changes and adjustments without the cyberspace. I’m not trying to think like a machine, but I am trying to enhance my own recording and processing of stuff in much the same way that computers do: more effort to taking a small codified, point/mark, or bit of info to record and ramming it through a formatted program or function to filter out a result. Pixilating points (or customized bullets) to track data is a simple and effective way to record progress. The gist of this being investing in time to structure a perfect (for me) format now so that I can waste very little time and material for recording stuff later. Minimal effort through simple coding that can lead to big results. There is stuff to enter that is not as simple as purely numerical, or a yes/no, true/false, 0/1,

kinds of data. Some stuff, of course, is trackable and traceable only on a spectrum, or layers of spectra, or else needs a full out verbal explanation. The modular nature of this system allows for this too. I’m most interested see what kind of artistic infographics I’ll be able to create and incorporate as well. I want to see if I can progress from being crude to making the great leap ahead of being . . . slightly less crude with my graphical talents. Most of the detailed subjects that I will be recording, and tracking, are too personal to post here. However, I will disclose the broader general reasons for this new objective:

• Shifting from Day to Night Mode – Someday, I hope not too soon yet, I will be transitioning to doing night shifts. It will be a major upheaval for my body and mind to adapt to, with phases of insomnia assured to come; my working memory being the worse off casualty due to that. Hence, I’ll have to get into the habit of writing things down more often to not lose track of things. Also, having lists of things to work through eliminates the burdensome and torturous task of having to make decisions in such a state (or suffering consequences of making bad decisions in that way, read further below).
  
• Total Schedule Reorganization - There then must be a major reorganization of my schedule for my daily activity, have a productive rhythm to my day; to conserve my energy, and my social life and relationships outside of work. 
  
• Monitoring Health – Another offshoot of switching to nights is needing to actively check myself over for signs of physical deterioration due to the odd hours and unnatural rhythm of wakefulness. Knowing and marking the ideal time to exercise, and what and when to eat during this (mal)adjustment period is critical also, since “breakfast” kind of doesn’t work (doesn’t feel right) as a meal option in mid-afternoon. Alcohol consumption periods are things to be mindfully reckoning with too. What gets measured gets mastered.
  
• Impulse Grounding – One of the things I have noticed after long bouts of insomnia is the poor ability to make sound decisions. The likelihood of acting on impulse rather than think things through rises significantly. For example, this is especially bad when I want to commit to a minimalist lifestyle, but then act on a reckless spending spree for impractical things after too little sleep. BuJo is a way to do a brain dump and check your thoughts outside yourself, with some frame of order, to analyze and weigh pros and cons. At the very least, the very act of doing this is a much cheaper alternative of using one’s time rather than falling into an impulsive habit of mindless consumption of whatever it is that one could possibly become addicted to.
  
• Cheap Hobby – It only needs: a writing instrument of your preference, and a good quality dot

  

  My entire Bullet Journaling kit.

  (or grid) paged journal for the basics. For refined line forming for edging and bordering and such, a cheap geometry set from a dollar store works. Additional lettering stencils and templates can be found cheap in an arts and craft shop, or even in a dollar store. Just engage the imagination, and that’s it. A minimalist’s dream come true! Very portable, and it doesn’t need a battery for power (except maybe just a good source of caffeine). It’s a big step upward from an adult colouring book anyway, and far more practical to use as well.
  
• Veering Away from Toxic Social/News Media – Simply substituting a bad use of time for a better, more constructive, one. I will have a genuinely more enriching time working on a means to sort my own life’s issues, and creating my own viable solutions for approaching problems and goals than thinking and believing, that during these turbulent politically charged times of the election season, that any government or other social institution, is going to be genuinely interested in doing that for me. It’s my time to opt out of indiscriminately spending too much time and attention on negative news and social media during these times of waiting for our nation’s federal election coming this October, and the bloody ridiculous circus of the still 454 remaining days of campaigning until the American election. Working on my own betterment through my journals will be a nice retreat away from all this.

The most satisfying and enriching thing about using BuJo as an analogue system of note taking and calligraphy²: purposely taking a plain word and page space and embellishing it such as to make it so strikingly elegant and distinctly vivid enough that it becomes impossible to ignore. Imagine then how much more powerful it would look when it is applied to a whole written thought or idea. Goals are made to appear to have an esteemed meaning, as truly worthy goals should. It somehow makes your own ideas and listed tasks and duties appear more alive/animated. Even the duller things on a to do list can then look like they could be integral parts of some overall grand adventure.

A potential syllabus list

with flipped open pages

to record book titles

journaling is the chance and choice to be liberally creative and expressive with stylish lettering and artwork in one’s journal, thus further stimulating and empowering one to use the entire brain; not just the analytical and logical left hemisphere. I really believe there is some weight to this as a benefit, adding artful flourishes through doodles, and calligraphy.

I’m coming closer to understanding why monks in the medieval era were charged with the tasks of illuminating pages, making copies of calligraphic manuscripts, and other such scrivenery. Apart from being just merely literate, to do such a job well very much requires and demands a deeply focused, disciplined, and meditative mind. It can be very relaxing. However, I’m certainly not a monk. The best advice I could give as a novice for starting a page template is just to dive right into it. It is 100% guaranteed that it will be imperfect at the start, making lots of mistakes in your initial formatting, lettering, and page section alignment. So, once that is all done, set it aside for a long while, have a drink or two, then come back and review it, and then be totally relentless, ruthless, and absolutely merciless with editing it, and redo it until you get the right design and style that really satisfies you. You are allowed be your own harshest critic since you are going to be the only one interacting with this material; you have no one to please but yourself by taking such a measure.

The first mess . . .

. . . then the final product. Custom made and adapted for a coding 

matrix system unique and personal to me, and again, 

it can't be found in any regular stationers shop.

I have nothing more to include with this entry, except for this last thought from a quote by the author of my guidebook:

“Each Bullet Journal becomes another volume in the story of your life. Does it represent the life you want to live? If not, then leverage the lessons you've learned to change the narrative in the next volume.”
― Ryder Carroll, The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future

*- I like Bujo because sounds more to me like some unique, Zen-based, Japanese term for some sort of work ethic discipline, like kaizen.

1. The initial resource I used was The Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll. I solidified the reason why I decided to undertake this; after that though, I’ve been finding a multitude of ideas for personalization on Pinterest.

2. I’m not ashamed to say, as a guy, that I love the artform of calligraphy. Before you scoff and think by default that it’s a sissy craft to do, consider this: the most instrumental class that Steve Jobs said he ever took (before he dropped out of college) which he said had been the most influential one for the inception of the Mac computer wasn’t a software programming class, wasn’t a computer science or engineering class; it was a calligraphy class. In a roundabout way, the practice of it forced him to see things differently through the elegance of design, and natural forms and ease of interface that made one want to engage with using a computer. Proper design is powerful stuff!

Summer Holiday 2019: Happy Thoughts

It’s ridiculously early this Sunday morning. I should be sleeping, but I can’t. I needed to do some head-clearing: both on the physical and mental level, and I’ve made the poor choice of using caffeinated warm beverages to do it. My choices for the days booked off for my summer holiday time are centred around the simple and practical reason of avoiding too much sleep-deprivation. I usually take the week around the solstice off as a “first period” of my summer holiday, because I struggle to sleep as it is, and this phase of extra daylight hours makes it worse. The other sleep-disrupting period of summer are the annoyingly noisy days of the Ex echoing through my neighbourhood, and I find it necessary to book time off then too.

As far as holiday time goes, this round is certainly not 100% satisfactory. Of course, as per usual, as it has been for the last few years, the early allotment of my summer holiday time has become muddled with bad fortune. I’ve been spending the better part of the week of it battling a super-bad, sinus cold. I won’t prattle on about that: I’m miserable enough knowing that it has already stolen quality time and energy to share with my girlfriend during her booked time off. Relating more details about it won’t make it better. I’ll only say that if I were forced to choose between one or the other, that I’ll take and endure a winter cold any day over one that strikes me in the middle of summer.

We also had a fine dump much needed rain for this region, which was most certainly welcome to help break this long stretch of drought. However, I just wish it hadn’t all come at once during this time that I’ve been off work. I really shouldn’t complain about that either because I was cooped inside all the time anyway being sick. It was a bit disappointing to miss the solstice day as it should have been for these parts: normally bright enough to be able to read a book outside until about 10:00 pm. Instead, it was so dreary that my evening lights were on turned at 11:00 am.

This time off also coincides with having to re-train myself to walk right again, with the inclusion of custom-made new orthotics. The adaptation process has been slow (slower than I want), and I can’t yet do near the amount of walking that I normally would do during this time off. The difference between using them and not using them is like night and day. There is the initial pain and discomfort, felt right to the bone and joint level, of adjusting to them to deal with. Of course, I wouldn’t lucky enough to have these things become set right during my time off, for better times in my life, but they’ll be all right for me to use for an entire day just by the time I come back to work. Whoopity- freakin’-doo!

Besides fulling shoes with high-tech composite insoles, and emptying boxes of tissues and mugs of tea, this term of my holiday time (the alone part) has only lent itself to: allowing me to grapple with necessary and practical chores and fix-up tasks, too much idleness and screen time, me being trapped in the inertia of having no energy, me struggling to think clearly with a snot-addled head, and yielding little else in regards to what I would call fun and enjoyment. I did do one thing quite successfully though: I avoided all the negativity being broadcast and deluged upon me through the television news channels and social media during this time.

Of course, the sensible mission while on a vacation is to not just be avoidant of negative crap; it should be a purposeful movement in some direction toward just being happier than one would be if one was working. It was a good time to put my head into the book I found: The Happiness Equation, by Neil Pasricha. To pull oneself out of a miserable mood, sometimes it is just plain old sensible and practical common sense measure to immerse oneself in list making, specifically a happiness list, i.e., the things that truly make you happy, grateful, or at the very least are a relief to you, and turning all your attention to building and adding on to it: a literal counting of blessings. I would encourage everyone to do such a thing. Neil has done this for himself in his book and blog, The Book of Awesome, and A 1000 Awesome Things. For me, this is the result of my own exercise of doing this (though numbered, there is no real ranked order to this list):

1. Summer (or any season, in whole or in part, when I can enjoy being outside without freezing my ass off, or slipping on ice), but I’m thinking specifically of enjoying longer days. Living at this latitude is ideal for that
2. Peace and quiet when it comes to me. I can then hear myself think
3. My girlfriend’s company: whenever she has time for me
4. My dog (the being that is the closest thing I have for a daughter
5. Dogs in general, even the more unpleasant ones are more tolerated by me than the wrong sorts of people
6. Living in Canada, a peaceful place with more freedoms and less violence and corruption then most other countries on Earth
7. Time spent with my family (parents, brothers, in-laws
8. The soothing sound of gently falling rain
9. Dining outside in the fresh air
10. A properly working dishwasher (and now knowing some tricks on how to repair one if necessary
11. Inventing a meal from scratch, and cooking it successfully
12. Leisurely bike rides along the trails by the river
13. Jigsaw puzzles, when I’m in the zone, all time stops for me when doing these things
14. Reading, and being able to read in more languages than just English and French
15.  Writing, with the same dimensions to be thankful for as the point above about reading 
16. Playing Kaiser, or other card games with my parents (either as a partner or an opponent
17. Colourful sunsets
18. Sitting by a fire (campfire or fireplace)
19.  Relaxing by watching the clouds go by as I sit outside on my deck (like right now)
20. My Union, and the great supportive staff and fellow brother and sister members in it
21. The Union conferences and workshops that I attend and learn from
22. Relaxing in the sauna after brutal, bone-chilling cold day
23. Greenhouses (specifically inhaling the floral air made by a mass of photosynthesizing plants condensed under one roof – it’s the essence of aliveness, an instant pleasure)
24. Successfully growing a plant that hasn’t instantly died in my car
25. Watching my nephews growing into the fine young men that they are
26. Super-sized sudoku puzzles (like the 16 x 16, or 25 x 25 varieties)
27. Vietnamese pho soup and noodle bowls, very comforting stuff
28. Spicy food in general (becoming fond of more types of curry)
29. Barbecued meat of almost any kind
30. The smell of baking bread, fresh homemade bread is the bomb!
31. The smell of homemade chicken broth
32. The smell of frying bacon (Canadian perfume)
33. Making beer; drinking the results
34. Sampling most types of beer really
35. Netflix, although the variety and viewing options often overwhelm me
36. The local Farmers’ Market
37. My Alt Rock and Indie music playlists
38. My Classic Rock playlists
39. Spotify and Stingray music streaming for discovering all else that’s new
40. Having enough money left after paying the mortgage, bills, fees, and taxes
41. Playing Poker (and winning at it) – a time when it feels right and very liberating to be a cocky smartass
42. Haggling at garage and yard sales
43. Finding useful free stuff at the giveaway table in my building
44. Finding a bargain on the things I like and appreciate
45. My Xbox game console, because sometimes you just must vent off anger properly, and blow the heads off a few despicable digital Nazis
46. Massages that actually soothe my knotted-up muscles 
47. Eggs, and all the groovy things one can do with them
48. The smell of incense (so many aromas to like)
49. The voice of Alan Watts, and listening to his philosophical lectures
50. Juicy, perfectly ripened slices of watermelon on a hot day, with a little sprinkle of salt or Tajin seasoning
51. Putting on a fresh pair of brand-new socks
52. Putting on some gotch¹ with the exact and optimal fitted contours and dimensions for exemplary containment and comfort, preferably from just out of the dryer
53. Finding shoes that actually fit my strangely configured feet
54. Meeting a goal and crossing it off a checklist: no matter how small or trivial – it’s accomplishment
55. Watching young kids learn things using all their senses, attention, and fascination, and listening to some of the interesting questions and observations they come up with
56. Hikes through the wilderness (foraging for stuff)
57. Discovering new ways of not wasting stuff (energy, food, water, discarded material, etc.)
58. Fishing (especially if there is a prize catch)
59. My bathrobe, and having cozy days when I don’t have to wear anything else but that; being liberated from wearing pants at its finest
60. Long soaks in the tub full of Espom salts (feeling relieved more than happy)
61. Playing Scrabble
62. Playing Backgammon
63. Trips to food shops with strange and exotic merchandise
64. Connecting to foreign strangers when I greet and thank them in their native language
65. Swimming in the ocean: I discovered that I can actually float and (sort of) swim in saltwater
66. Seeing pictures of some of my friends’ babies
67. Puppies – you truly would have to be some kind of soulless psychopathic monster if you don’t find puppies adorable
68. Running – if done right, one does indeed experience a runner’s high
69. The best part of running: pulling off the shoes afterward, super endorphin rush there
70. The first new snow of winter: the only minute fraction about winter I like apart from . . .
71.  Christmas
72. Seeing the winter landscapes covered with hoarfrost
73. The unique winter solstice my girlfriend and I celebrate: Yule Bookfest
74. Cannabis is legal here in Canada - even though I myself am a non-user, I’m happy when stupidly archaic, overly punitive, and useless laws and prohibitions get repealed
75. Universal healthcare in this nation, with Pharmacare in the works as a possible reality here too in the near future
76. My laptop computer
77. My smartphone
78. The internet
79. The wonderful electrical and telecommunications networks we have for making all this stuff work
80. The mobility that all points 76 to 80 allow me in this country
81. The fact that I can drink the tap water here
82. Whenever I don’t have to wake up to an alarm clock
83. Functioning flush toilets
84. Reliable postal service (live outside of Canada for a while in a developing country fraught with mail theft, and it becomes something that you won’t ever take for granted ever again)
85. Fresh fruit and vegetables when in season
86. Owls – for no other reason than I just think that they are uniquely evolved and fascinating types of birds of prey. Creatures with proportionately huge eyes to body size capture my attention in general
87. The kind of technology that comes around that makes you wonder how you were ever able to survive without it
88. Infographic and flowcharts that better allow me to visualize data
89. I have air conditioning in my home (and car) if I need it
90. It doesn’t get to be plus 40 degrees with 95% humidity here (I can tolerate -40 with -50 wind chill over that
91. I have a perfectly sized living space that’s adequate for my needs
92. A super heavy quilt to crawl under in winter evenings, especially after . . . 
93. Nordic skiing
94. For cooking, realizing the combinatorial mathematics in crafting and blending things up for stuff like toppings for pizza, fillings for a sandwich, or seasonings and marinades for barbequing. When it comes down to it, you can ultimately have an infinite selection for any pizza, sandwich, or BBQ, or at least more than you’ll ever get to sample in your entire lifetime. It’s mindful abundance at its best
95. Perhaps a silly detail to include, but I’m happy to have something like insurance. I hope that I ultimately won’t need to use it for some disaster
96. Happy to be living in a city with lots of parks and greenspace
97. Single malt scotch (not too smoky, with more notes of caramel and aged leather), a decadent pleasure
98. Margaritas: the only tolerable way to consume tequila  
99. I have my own washer and dryer in my suite, and there’s no more need to experience the hell of using a public laundromat
100. The sound of Ella snoring: because she’s an old girl, it let’s me know that she’s still alive
101. Slipping on a bunnyhug² once the evening chill comes on
102. My commute is only 12 minutes by car, 20 minutes by bike
103. Peeling a tangerine in one long intact piece of rind, crumpling that up and giving that a squeeze, and smelling the aroma of it. It immediately takes me to a happy place
104. Cheese and pickles, in any form
105. Discovering when any species of wildlife has been taken off the endangered species list
106. My pantry and freezer: both are always full of options that prevent both boredom and starvation
107. The Saskatoon Public Library: I love free reading materials, plus exercising my intellectual freedom
108. Alternately, all the bookshops in Saskatoon
109. Scientific and historical non-fiction, especially material written by Michael Pollan, and Bill Bryson
110. Novels by Jonas Jonasson (the funniest Swedish author ever; if there are funnier, please let me know)
111. Technological, medical (and overall social) advances and breakthroughs that bring more independence, ability, and access to the world for people with various disabilities.
112. Perusing national and global statistics, making comparisons in terms of what can be linked to progress and overall wellness (incredibly nerdy stuff, but hey, that’s just me being me!)
113. Cozy darkness, involving various forms of snuggling
114. My leisure time coffee (sugar and cream), otherwise I take it black while at work
115. My rockabilia T-shirt collection
116. Interesting logic and math puzzles
117. All the powerful and constructive things that can be done with a simple pen and paper, and a little imagination
118. Success stories involving the implementation of greener, cleaner, alternative energy technologies, and efforts to better recycle and repurpose the waste we’ve already left on this planet
119. The concept and practice of etherealization: being able to do more with less material and energy
120. Jeopardy!, bar room trivia contests, and other ways to bleed off the pressure from all the trivial facts building up in my head (making otherwise useless information potentially useful, even if the outcome is just scoring some winning free drinks)
121. Road trips when driving isn’t too overstimulating (Saskatchewan is perfect for this)
122. Lastly, for now, the simple fact that when I encounter people who are greedy and yet wasteful consumers, and who may start to judge me; thinking that they are somehow superior to me because I have less than them, I can counter back to them saying that I have something that they don’t seem to have. That is, that I have the knowledge that I already have enough. Sure, more is nice, but enough is a good start. The constant pursuit of more often just brings more unhappiness because you have more to protect, defend, and ultimately worry about. It’s another good lesson that I acquired from this book.

Standing back and re-reading all this, the thing I notice about this list is that most of this stuff is achievable for very little, or no money at all, so it should not be that hard to find happiness. Nothing on here is really centred on politics or religious beliefs, or some other thing that’s generally seen as a violation to another’s sense of well-being; which for me is the base all the crap that makes the news so unbearably ridiculous to watch. I quit deluding myself in thinking that those things will ever make me happier. That’s the stuff that anchors people to their negative thoughts and beliefs, to give themselves permission to seize and hold on to some prejudice, or otherwise actively postponing happiness until condition X, or other variable, is met, (utterly stupid stuff like, for example: “Oh I’ll be happy when X is voted out of (or into) office, I just have to wait through the four years for that to happen and endure the misery and react with conflictive drama that I chose to dream up and speculate for it”; “I’ll be happy when they get tough on all these X people from doing Y behaviour(s), by taking Z action(s) on them. Hell, I’ll even support some measures of authoritarian fascism to have that happen.”, or “I’ll be happy when I meet my lord X, (Jesus, Allah, or some other dreamt up omnipotent patriarchal monarch figure) in heaven! I just have to wait out the rest of my lifetime being sanctimonious, hypocritical, wishing ill on non-believers, and following cult teachings until that may happen”. Those are just coping mechanisms at best; embracing such things rarely sets up a stage for any period of lasting contentment, especially when you are constantly facing people with differing or polar opposite opinions and ideas than you have.

A list of a hundred and twenty-two items is a pretty good start, and after listing all this I do indeed at least have some elevated spirits, despite still being stricken with a cold. There is more stuff yet, but it’s too personal to post here. I should continue and aim for 365 items after posting this, so there is at least one thing for every day of the year to be grateful for. I’m now happy that I’m a third of the way there (#123).

1.1.Gotch – Canadian English colloquialism meaning men’s underwear

2.2.Bunnyhug – Saskatchewan English, meaning a pullover hooded jersey

5Q5A: Summer Vacation 2019

I’ve been fortunate to have booked time off for holidays for this part of summer that coincide with those of my girlfriend. We spent this past Fathers’ Day Sunday at my parents’ place; having a good visit with them. On the way back home, we talked about this and that in terms of how we were going to use the rest of the days during the time off: for things and events both together as a couple, and for each others’ personal time separately. She asked me if I did any blogging lately, and it struck me that I didn’t write or post anything for the longest while. I have no answer as to why such a lapse happened, except for the fact that sharing the delightful company with such a lovely, intelligent, and talented person occupies more of my thoughts and time now; I’ve been finding more solace in that now than I do in any writing. To keep myself focused, I resume the rest of this entry in 5Q5A format.


Q1. What whammies am I having to deal with this time around for this summer holiday?


A1. It never fails. I always seem to get some curve ball pitched at me that serves to be some obstacle to contend with, impeding me from having a completely blissful summer holiday; mostly in the form of unwelcome and unexpected expenses needed to rectify something requiring immediate attention. It has been becoming a repeated and inevitable cycle annually: a regular expectation that some freakish issue or series of unfortunate events will manifest themselves to make this happen. Last year, it was emergency surgery for my dog. This year, the (sometimes excruciating) state of my own knees and hips demanded that I replace some orthotics immediately (it greatly also affects how active I can be). Add to that, there is a malfunctioning dishwasher (drainage issues) to fix now. Instead of freely frolicking around elsewhere, I’m now relegated to take a crash course in how to be an appliance technician, or someone who may need to call a certified one if I can’t fix the problem myself. No functioning dishwasher means no way to properly sanitize bottles and equipment for beermaking: the other project I wanted to do this week. Added to that are repercussions of work-related issues that I choose not to explain here. It’s most definitely an unsatisfactory use of part of my holiday time. However, I do keep myself grounded by reminding myself that whatever problems I have during this time, they are pretty darn minimal compared to most those of the people I work for.


Q2. What cerebral things are becoming entertaining this time around (things in the mind that one can do that don’t need a specific or physical time and place)?


A2. Lately, I’ve been becoming intrigued with learning more of the nuances of poker: Texas Hold’em poker specifically. Aside from playing the actual game itself, it’s also a playful challenge in mastering being able to mentally wrangle things like the hole card rankings, pot odds, and putting other charts, tables, and other statistics into some mnemonic order. The technical side of playing the game (playing a tighter game) has improved a lot for me; the psychological (mastering effective bluffing) part of the game will always be a work in progress. I’m giving it a break for now; not allowing it to become an unhealthy, addictive, obsession.


Q3. If expense and travel time weren’t factors, what would have the plans otherwise been?

A3. Probably going on a road trip to Waterton Lakes National Park – getting away from this drought zone and enjoying the Rocky Mountain air may do us both some good.


Q4. If instead then resorting to cheap(er) thrills, what are they?


A4. Checking out and exploring the yet unvisited and unknown local shops in and out of town that cater to our eclectic and esoteric interests; and fashioning the odd little feast for us to indulge in throughout the week is also in the works. Using my moments of solitude, like this one, in my mornings and afternoons just be content to sit outside and chill out, playing my favourite music, with either coffee/beer/strong badass cocktails, with my laptop or notebooks, plotting my own little schemes of world domination for new world order (at least for my own little singular point of this world anyway).


Q5. What is the happiness being enjoyed in the here and now?
  

A5. At this moment, making a pleasant discovery about my dishwasher and being able to announce and exclaim, “Yay! The <bleep>ing thing drained completely!!!”, to my girlfriend in a text message. It’s like I successfully passed some sort of adulting test through appliance repair. Now I’m relieved and freer to enjoy the rest of this week in peace.


Addendum: I found and started reading a book later in the day about happiness; which itself seems like a fitting thing to do on a holiday. The Happiness Equation by Neil Pasricha was my chosen non-fiction read of the week. One of the better lessons in it is that you should never make yourself too busy for the dear people who matter to you.

August Civic Holiday/Vacation 2018 (Lagom, Hygge, and Kalsarikännit)

As usual, as glorious as it can be, this summer in Saskatoon is passing too quickly. This one seems to be flickering past me even more rapidly than others. It may be because I have been overall happier. The inclusion of endearing forces in my life are doing me good. The absence of some other tyrannical, narcissistic forces, and whiney nagging people has allowed me to climb still further out of a hole of negativity. I’m enjoying the reprieve from that thus far. I feel strong enough to be a supportive friend again, and to be there for those who matter. 

It’s the beginning of another stretch of holidays for me, and yet I honestly haven’t been that eager to formulate some grandiose, concrete plan for a getaway for it; perhaps because it’s the first time after the longest time that I finally feel like there is nothing I really need to escape from. The most off-kilter thing I done throughout this time around was daring to play a clandestine poker game in a meat locker with a bunch of Russian gangsters*. My brain has been switched on to entertaining myself with puzzles and games again, on top of digesting some literature. It’s a personal barometer that indicates good things for me. It’s a peaceful retreat for this time, even when the annual ruckus of the Ex appears once again in the neighbourhood. My internal clock is already shifting itself now, by default, to waking up even earlier, and trying to nap a few hours during the heat of the day to compensate for the rest I won’t be getting at night. Yet, despite all that, I can retreat into my own head now more easily with a greater sense of clarity and contentment, without any great interference; and to seek such a thing from someplace else right now seems like a needless and futile squandering of energies. With temperatures rising as high as 40 degrees near week’s end, I’m even more disinclined to be too active. By then, the thought of playing games in an actual meat locker might really be appealing. Even more desirable would be an upgrade to a walk-in beer cooler.

I did give myself a few moments to wonder about and reassess my own personal reasons as to why I would travel. I did so because I was probed with such questions by my sweetheart about what I’d like to do for my upcoming birthday. The thrill of travel isn’t planting my ass on the sand of some beach, nor is it even visiting museums or festivals, though they’d be interesting enough I’m sure. Neither does much for me in exploring or understanding the vibe of the place, which I think is the whole jest of traveling to begin with. With this gaming mentality going on for me now, I realize that the thrill of travel for me is just to get a whole new perspective on other lifestyles and challenging myself to interact with them successfully. That’s like a game in and of itself. It includes the challenge of using and interacting with another language and finding avenues to do so for sake of just getting around and taking care of your basal needs of eating, lodging, and moving from spot to spot. It’s strange for me to see people who have traveled far more than I have, and yet who are totally scared shitless at the thought of daring to depart from their all-English-speaking tour group from their isolated resort. They say that they like to tour around; and at the same time are totally xenophobic. As introverted as I am I still like taking the more immersive and anthropological approach to traveling and touring by vagabonding.

This gaming/puzzling phase I’m in has made me both reflect and fantasize about the scenes I liked and would like to retreat to. I got nostalgic thinking about watching the citizens playing spirited games of dominoes in the outdoors taverns when I was doing life in Valencia many years ago. In past summers at some lake with family, when we were not cooling off in the water, or fishing, or eating, or listening to stories and gossip around a campfire at night, we were spending time playing Kaiser**, Meadow Lake Rummy**, or other card games in the campsite or cabin. I thought about how content I’d be and how cool it would be just chill out in a café nearby a souk in Istanbul playing backgammon with some locals, or perhaps learning mah-jong in a park in Shanghai or Hong Kong. I think about this because apart from the need to buy and consume, use math and logic, and listening to music; entertaining oneself with gaming is another thing that can transcend language, or at least be another avenue to learn about language and culture by this other amusing and informal vehicle.

Speaking of language and culture, that has been the subject of my non-fiction reading during this time off. It once again is a study into the Nordic/Scandinavian lifestyle, and being a nerd for linguistics. I should diversify into studying other cultural viewpoints, but once again, I can’t help but to be attracted to the subject of Scandinavia, as it always intrigues, interests, and impresses me. It is partly because despite with me not being immersed in such a culture, I yet somehow already live by, learned through my upbringing, or have adopted similar such equivalent ideas and ethics***; I just now have discovered new words for some of these memes by some strange synchronicity, which aren’t conveniently packaged into the English vocabulary for me to describe my own personal modus operandi. It’s the whole Law of Jante (Wikipedia source) thing they got going on over there - that I can deeply appreciate, which is sort of a Scandinavian societal modality that serves to curb things like vanity, greed, undo pride, pretentiousness, and a false sense of entitlement. The book I’ve been reading is called Lagom: the Swedish Art of Balanced Living, by Linnea Dunne. A guide for balanced living seems to be an appropriate thing to read while spending some holiday time alone. I touched on the subject of Lagom in a past entry, but I didn’t do it any justice in trying to elaborate on it.

The best new concept words I learned from this book that I can appreciate are:

·         Köpstopp – (pronounced sort of like “short stop”, switching the “rt” with "p") It’s the discipline of applying a spending cap for a given amount of time: a voluntary moratorium on shopping for anything beyond essentials for living. I experimented with this at the beginning of the year, I just didn’t have this concise name for this behaviour. A way to tame mindless consumption.

·         Panta – a recycling fee for your cans and bottles. The Swedish form of what would be the equivalent of a Sarcan refund here. A monetary incentive is always a good thing to encourage a cleaner environment.

·         Plastbanta – The banning of toxin plastic products in your household, and opting for wood/bamboo, stainless steel. I was already shifting towards this trend; again, I just didn’t have a concise name for it before.

·         Lördagsgodis- Not everything falls under the self-regulatory restrictiveness of the Laws of Jante, or the discipline of Lagom in Sweden. There are memes for unfettered indulgence, like this one meaning “Saturday goodies/candies” basically meaning going whole hog on sweets and snacks, but just for once a week. It coincides and accords with my cheat days whenever I have the hair-brain schemes of dieting, and whenever I entreat myself to something weird and exotic to experiment with in my kitchen, as the rhythm for that typically falls on Saturday.

·         Fredagsmys – Another once a week institution. This time meaning roughly “Friday coziness”, relaxing and retreating in your own home with nothing but your snacks at the ready and other creature comforts, and no other obligations to do anything else but veg out. Being that they neighbour as countries, I imagine there may be some correlation with the Finnish meme of kalsarikännit at this time of the week (read on further).   

·         Pyttipanna- A general cooking method of creatively making the most out of the leftovers in your fridge and pantry. Something I do all the time as a personal principle, because being wasteful disgusts me.

·         Loppis – A word meaning to tour flea markets, yard sales, and other places for gently used goods. Loppisrunda means making an entire day’s event of it. Another movement towards frugality, and waste-reduction, repurposing, and giving second hand items a new home and life.

The other Nordic memes I’d like to look into more, study, and explore are the concepts of hygge (Danish) – something akin to “coziness” but I’m led to believe and understand that it is something more divine and intricate than that, and the Finnish institution of kalsarikännit – I apologize that the translation is not too succinct: it roughly means “underwear drunk” but it actually essentially means succumbing to the urge to get intoxicated at home alone in your underwear after a bad day, with no intention of going out and socializing. That’s perhaps the perfect one to test out on a smoky, smouldering, 40 degree August afternoon, like what’s coming ahead.

*- Not for reals; in the Xbox game Prominence Poker. It’s the fact that I’m playing video games to begin with, instead of immersing myself in some other strange little project: that’s what is off-kilter for me, but it beats frying in the merciless heat for now.

** - Two very regional games unique to the area where I was raised here in Saskatchewan. 

*** - Perhaps it’s all mysteriously inherited and instinctual, seeing now that 25% of genome is Scandinavian after a DNA test. Nature versus nurture arguments will be for some other time.

A Road Trip to 65 MYA

There should be no way that I should be disliking any of my vacation time; yet I have been. Four days passed into my stretch of time off, and I was finding it all pointless. The weather forecasts since Canada Day have been a 100% chance of cloudy/rainy suck-ass, as well as tornado watches in effect at times. Although I’ve been eating well, one can eat only eat so much, accounting for only a small fraction of a day. Medications disallow me from drinking the necessary volumes of booze that would actually put me in my happy place. I can only drink so much coffee at the coffeehouses that I feel very little need to frequent: just sitting there, watching other people brood about things has no entertainment value. I was becoming angered with getting interference from what are still work related calls over last weekend. I dipped into what is my all-too-massive personal syllabus of reading material (science and non-fiction mostly); I overdid it and consequently suffered too much eye strain from having my nose in too many books.

I spent most of the following Monday feeling wounded, the source of that being from having a dental appointment that morning. I didn’t have the sense to book a time outside of my vacation days. As per usual, the dental hygienist performing the cleaning service managed to poke at each and every special acupressure combination of nerve endings along my gingiva, which made me feel like I was being repeatedly struck in the face with a pick axe throughout the ordeal. A migraine ensued after and stayed with me for rest of the afternoon. More time wasted; not a good vacation day. I suppose it wasn’t enough to already feel like a luckless loser for the day. I went to the casino later in the evening to have it confirmed. I lost most of the small stakes that I thought acceptable to part with, and that time passed quickly. I realized then that I had to do something else with myself than handling kitchen knives, reading/screen-watching, or waving bye-bye to my hard-earned money at the slots and roulette table. I saw that another staycation was going to shove me into a pit of misery. Lunch with my friend on Tuesday gave me a little time to decompress as I examined my situation. I was made to see afterward that I have always been shirking travel off in the guise of being responsible. Another reason is that there isn’t much fun doing it alone anymore; or I’ve been hating my own company enough to the point where I am starting to bore myself: a symptom of something very wrong, I think. Whatever the case, I found myself really having to leave this town, badly.

I packed a few essentials; Ella happily joined me in the car. As I didn’t have any real plan, I chose to visit my folks first. If I got nothing else done, I would have at least spent some time with them. Wherever else I decided to go to, the Battlefords is not too far out of the way as a jump off point: a better one if going north was feasible, and an acceptable loss in highway time if I had to retrace any route back through and past home. I used Wednesday afternoon, watching the news and weather channels, formulating things. The process for narrowing down my destination decision was as such:

1.       The Weather Corridor – Forecasts for rain were for the north and east, and I was getting chased by funnel cloud warnings from the southeast. That left me with west or southwest if I wanted to find someplace without inclemency.

2.       Geographical Variation – the idea of a vacation is going to someplace that doesn’t look like home. Some people are content enough with walking into another room for a change of scenery. Other people, like me, need the entire landscape to change to feel like they’ve gotten away and escaped to someplace. That’s a tough deal when one has been an inhabitant in an area smack dab in the middle of the Canadian parkland/prairie . . . a region that’s so expansive. There is the Boreal forest, but as I said, weather wasn’t making going north an ideal choice, neither was my lack of camping gear. The next closest options for going southwest were: Cyprus Hills (with an elevation as high as that in Banff), or the Badlands. Next factor . . .

3.       My Six Hour Driving Radius – six hours in a crammed in a vehicle in a day seems to be my absolute limit. After that, I start having some adverse psychological effect from it, especially when I’m the one driving. If I have bad company with me as a follow passenger, then it’s triply worse. They risk being punched out and then abandoned in some ditch in the middle of nowhere if they exhibit too many marked signs of stupidity or impudent assholery for each and every minute approaching hour six, crammed in a vehicle with me. Life is short. I travel to see new places and experience new things; so sitting in a metal box (with toxic people), like a goddamned trapped rat, longer than necessary, is wasted time. The trip between Saskatoon and Calgary is an example of the longest one I can endure by car. If longer than that, then I fly; using only three hours or so to take me to places in this country much further away with less overall cost, hassle, and energy needed to attend to driving. I’ll happily spend more money to buy more time to stay off a road. The whole issue of me now being more prone to idiopathic thrombosis and blood-clotting makes the matter of prolonged periods sitting/immobility a more genuinely serious reason to avoid extra long of car rides. Cyprus and the Badlands fall within that six-hour radius from the Battlefords.

4.       An Act of Rebellion Against Ignorance – as I sat with my Dad, switching to the channel with Wheel of Fortune for him to watch (and Jeopardy for me after), I caught the last few minutes of the CBS nightly news which showed a story that disgusted me as a person who appreciates progress and education in science. I watched this story about some guy in Kentucky, who built a supposedly full scale replica of Noah’s Ark for an amusement site. It cost millions to get this thing made. The guy who founded this project is a self-proclaimed Creationist, who truly believes that the Earth is only 6000 years old or so, and that humans and dinosaurs co-existed together. He actually has models of dinosaurs penned up along with other contemporary species in this excessively ridiculous display. He, as an employer, actively discriminates by making the workers there sign some sort of “statement of faith” to prove that they are “Christian” enough to work there. He goes so far as to say that evolution is a “junk science”, and this crazy tacky spectacle is the length he is willing to go to refute and take a stand against it. You may just say “pshaw . . . whatever, it’s just a goofy spectacle”. I would agree too if it weren’t for another crazy issue about this damn stupid boat. The most disturbing issue of it for me was that some of the millions that he used to build this wretched monstrosity actually came directly from the state government of Kentucky itself, i.e. the Kentucky taxpayers were pitching in a fortune to have this idiotic thing built. It’s bad enough seeing that Kentucky is regarded as being one of those have-not states in the USA and suffering for it, with fewer resources for better healthcare, and an adequate education system*. To see this kind of insane amount of money (in the high tens of millions) being squandered away by their state government to sponsor the creation of something that takes away from science education and promotes more ignorance to suit the whim of a lobby of biblical-literalist right wing nut jobs** goes far beyond obscene in my mind. How did this guy manage to con some government official to permit him access to this kind of money for such a moronic endeavour? I admit to having some moments of a fantasy after I saw that story - it was that of Neil Degrasse Tyson himself, going over there to pop a cap in the ass of this ignorant bastard perpetuating this nonsense. Thinking about Richard Dawkins storming over to this ark thing, and then beating seven shades of shit out of this fundamentalist huckster with one of the limbs torn off of the animatronic Noah mannequin was an entertaining visualization too. It helped, in a way, to settle the question as to where I was going to go then for my holiday for my narrowed down options. I chose to take a stand! I’d then make a pilgrimage to the Badlands to use my tourist dollars to support science. So, Drumheller ended up becoming my chosen destination.

I heeded my Mom’s advice. She told that I really needed to take some time for myself. It meant surrendering the dog to her care as I went on this trip: so I had one less thing to tend to, and fewer problems, like finding lodgings that take pets. My car stereo quit working, meaning that I had no tunes, or CBC radio to occupy my mind as I drove for so long. I was a sort of on a true pilgrimage: just me, without my dog, driving for a long time, no distractions, being alone with my own thoughts. Stray thoughts slipped into my mind about those of whom I’d love to have riding shotgun with me on such a venture. I thought about where I would go to in the US if I ever took a spontaneous turn to head to the border (that is, if I hadn’t procrastinated and gotten a valid passport). Given the current political mayhem going on down there, the current currency exchange rate, the obscene amount of (recent) gun violence, and the reflection about the types of mindsets I’d be dealing with, like those who would allow and support something like the bizarro Noah’s ark down in Kentucky, any curiosity about finding anything interesting to do in the states extinguished pretty quickly. Those same reasons I just gave for not heading over the border maybe are the same ones as to why I saw so many vehicles with American license plates around where I was touring.

I went to Drumheller a couple times before in my life: once as a kid who was awestruck with dinosaurs, and again as a twenty-something with university classes in zoology still fresh in my head to make me appreciate the experience even more. Now, with a little more life wisdom and knowledge at this stage of life, and some more conscientiousness of how to put big concepts in a whole new perspective, I thought it would do me well to see the place again before I become a fossil myself. Given the things I said before, what else can a nerd who is travelling alone with limited time really do?

I eventually made it there, and after touring the Royal Tyrrell Museum, and scrambling around the Hoo Doos for a while, I went to the first hotel I could find – more accurately, I went to the first hotel I spotted that didn’t look like it was slapped together with pieces of flotsam from a shipwreck. I passed by three other places that fit such a description. This place was a short walking distance from a place that sold cold off-sale beer - a nice bonus. I managed to claim the last of the vacant rooms there. I was given a whole room with two double queen beds. I guess, to the clerk, I looked like the sort that rolls around a lot. I discover that the day after was an event called the Passion Play of the Badlands, happening the next day: apparently, it is an affair that attracts more fundamentalist types from all over the continent, and such goers to this sort of thing snapped up most of the rooms. Aw Shit! Religious nuts to contend with?! I couldn’t help but to be bewildered by the irony of it all: a place with the richest bed of fossil evidence of dinosaurs in Canada, confirming their existence and extinction 65 million years ago, scientifically proving the workings of evolution; being swarmed by a clique of religious people, many of whom still believing in this myth of creationism, like that knob in Kentucky. They probably show this religious theatrical production here, just because out of all the places in Canada, this one perhaps has what looks most like the natural scenery of Golgotha of ancient Judea.

I couldn’t stay to be bothered by all this to witness how cheesy and tacky it would all be. I thought about proceeding to Calgary, but then realized that the Stampede starts the day after. I wouldn’t have had a hope in hell of finding a hotel room. Just as well, because my time wasn’t going to be used mingling around in a place celebrating country music and cowboy/rodeo culture***. I spent what little time I had left wandering the hills in the early morning, contemplating and meditating: about the massive explosions of both life and death that occurred here, captured in the layers of sandstone throughout this valley that act as chapters of a book capturing the history of all life on Earth in this region for many aeons. I thought about how I wouldn’t even have been here to witness all this if it weren’t for an asteroid wiping out these monstrous creatures 65 million years ago. If that rock was even a small percentage larger, the likelihood of any life existing on this planet today would be zero. The intricacies of cause and effect being quite overwhelming, as I sat on those rocks, thinking about courses of natural selection and what comes about for each beings’ evolution. All this was pondered, plus a great myriad of other things involving the natural catastrophes involving extinction . . . that are a hell of a lot more interesting and rational than some story of a flood and an old dude on a big boat full of animals.

I returned back to the Battlefords after another long drive. I was happily greeted by my own little dinosaur who was missing me: attacked with eager kisses from the Ellabooboosaurus. I stayed long enough for a reprieve from driving, and helped to do some DIY electrical work installing new fixtures in my folks’ home. I returned to my own place later that evening, happy to use my own bed.

More holiday time is due to me in August, and I’m debating whether or not it will be worth booking a flight somewhere east (if there are any cheap enough); it would be a thing I genuinely would like company for though. The places I have in mind are walking and bike tour intensive.

*- I found an infographic recently on Mental Floss, which compared the education level of each state in the USA which similarly corresponded to the level of education with a world nation on the United Nations Development Index. Kentucky's education level was most similar to that of Honduras.

**- I’m not bashing all religious acts. Pray if you like to: if that, or meditation, really gives you a centred mindset for empowering yourself to do better for yourself and others, I’ll even encourage you to do such things. It all costs nothing to do, and it’s harmless while you are sitting there still and silent doing it. However, when huge sums of government money are being used for propagating mythology as fact, instead of fostering true science education, and being diverted away from more socially valuable “Christian” ways of helping people, like for instance, supporting and equipping care homes for the elderly, sick, and disabled, it obviously becomes an evident problem for everyone. I guess there is no such thing as separation of Church and state down in Kentucky.

***- Some people want to relive the bloody Wild West. I believe in living in a progressive, civilized, and educated one, if you haven’t figured that out already.

Bloody Valentines

I have expressed often enough in previous entries my great loathing for Valentine's Day. I make no secret and don't deny at all that I am to Valentine's Day what the Grinch is to Christmas. I've been single through most of them, and the additional spitefulness towards the day comes from living in a region where 80% of the Valentine's Days during my lifetime have been blasted with winter storms, not unlike the one arriving today (more than 15 cm of blowing snow coming). I was initially going to travel out of town earlier, but I wised up to the advisories considering what my trip back home would be like. I've already been harshly greeted and woken up with a cruel icy bitch slap of a face-shredding wind outside this morning while walking the dog (-37 wind chill), and it doesn't help much knowing that the worst is yet to come. I work this evening, and I'm debating whether I should risk driving there and getting stuck, or try walking there in near white-out conditions. It's pretty much assured that given the weather that we'll be short-staffed. It's a day of anomie and isolation for singles that occurs when one is already in, and enduring, the deepest trough of mid-winter depression. For this province, in this climate, there couldn't possibly be a more poorly-placed, or more idiotically contrived occasion in the year to celebrate and glorify romantic love than today. My apologies to those who have already done so, but if you live around here, and chose today to propose marriage to your sweetheart, just because it's an easy date to remember, on this sort of miserable day, you ought to be automatically and officially classified as some sort of retard.

For me, I just had to find some way to keep myself busy. For the morning of this most wretched of all observances of the year for me, I ceremoniously grabbed my sharpest knife and cleaver and applied them to disarticulating joints, cracking bones, slashing up and peeling away skin, and hacking at, grinding, and macerating raw dead flesh. 

It's OK, relax! Don't over-react, I haven't gone off the deep end! It's not like I was in Halifax* . . . I was just processing and trimming some bulk pork for making my own homemade sausages. It's my way of rebelling against eating the industry-processed food. I at least know what's going into my own stuff. Sure, it's a dorky and weird thing to opt to do on Valentine's Day, but for me it's perhaps appropriate. Like the old European cheese, wine and beer-making traditions, sausage-making seems to be one of those food crafts best-suited for the monastic sorts**. I might as well call myself a monk, since it's another Valentine's Day with no one to share it with. Making tubular meat-filled phallic symbols all morning was as good as it got for me today. To be honest, it felt right to do, or it was at least chopping, cutting, and slashing at some inert fleshy mass was a more benign way to be cathartic, but what would have been perhaps even more fitting for me to do was to take the actual heart of the same poor beast and use it as an additional ingredient to pass through the meat grinder, thoroughly disintegrating it: an act truly demonstrative of my contempt for this damn stupid, inclement, ridiculous, alienating day. Thankfully, there are limits to both my appetite for destruction and gratuitous expressions of spite. That extra step would have just probably only edged me further toward a darker place. However, my focus wasn't tainted by too much bitterness. I concentrated on making my knife work flawlessly. I managed to take some gross-looking stuff and make it more delicious and aesthetically pleasing. My execution of this project was reasonably quick, efficient, inventive, well-contained, and clean, with no indication or evidence afterward that some orgy of blood, greasy lard, and raw pork had ever graced my kitchen. I think that Hannibal Lecter*** himself would have been impressed with my methods. As usual, nothing was wasted. Today's renderings were: three kilograms of Cajun style cured sausage, three kilos of Hungarian style smoked paprika and garlic sausage, three liters of Vietnamese Pho broth made from that noble hog's baked bones, marrow, tendons, and trimmings. For the finale, I fashioned a sort of a chichorón cassoulet made with the rest of that marvelous skin (to be served with some fava beans and a fine Chianti . . . slurp, slurp, slurp, slurp . . .). Through reviewing some recipes online, it seems like it's only the English, the Spanish/Mexicans, the Filipinos, and myself who can appreciate how delicious pork cracklings can be.

So, what of the other aspect of that main element of Valentine's Day: the LOVE part. Sorry. Love is a topic that I don't touch on here in this blog, or with any other company. I come nowhere close to being an authority with any wisdom on such a thing. It's too irrational, and too conditional to allow me to figure it out. I've heard of this myth of unconditional love; I live each day never seeing it really happening. I only know that I've witnessed and endured too many examples of what it isn't (in my mind anyway). To say I'm a bit jaded about the subject is perhaps an understatement. I could expose my thoughts about it, but it would be at the risk of sounding like a cold-hearted bastard, like I was once indoctrinated by the Khmer Rouge, or had once been some sort of feral child that was raised by a troop of rabid badgers. I'll limit myself by saying the following things about it and be done with the subject from here on in.

In regards to love and entering romantic relationships:

• In the history of literature, Dante Alighieri, writer of The Divine Comedy, foolishly forgot to include "dating after the age of 40" as another one of the circles of Hell****.
• I'm absolutely powerless to "make" someone love me back. Whenever love felt real to me, it has only turned back against to me and disappointed me and made me suffer by being unrequited. It has happened too often; so much so that one can't help but to feel isolated and to give up hope.
• Too many instances and too much exposure to what I would call "50 Shades of Crazy" has no doubt left me somewhat gun shy.
• It's far better to be alone than being around someone who does nothing but argue, nag, belittle, and accost you with other forms of negativity. So far, I've met more people who are like that than those who are not. The ones who don't sadly are either adults who are a just few too many years my junior and wouldn't be interested in me, or else too many years my senior.
• It's most often the case that, given this age, any women who are interesting enough for me are usually already partnered.
• The women I've found most endearing to me now all live afar. Life is unfair

I don't know why, but I do hold out for the chance for when, like the Grinch, my heart somehow grows three sizes larger someday upon crossing paths and meeting that most wonderful person. Right now though, it feels like a mostly useless and unwanted thing: one that has been passed through a meat grinder again and again; weakening and disintegrating more and more, feeling like less and less.
 
Just one positive Valentine's Day in my life is all that I humbly ask for. I guess I just have to somehow stay strong and survive through this one to see if that will ever happen. Today, however, is just another wretched winter day here, made all the more challenging and difficult by having to fumble around through it in knee-deep snow and wind to acquire the more basal elements of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, never mind trying to attain that which approaches a higher love, intimate contact and connection, and acceptance.

*- I just heard on the news about some sociopathic misfit loser punks who were planning a murder rampage in a Halifax mall. As a much as a downer this bit of writing is, nothing tops that sort of unfettered anger and contempt. Thankfully, that was thwarted by the police there today.
 
**- Sausage trivia - I learned that the name of the type of delicacy we Anglophones call "summer" sausage has nothing to do with the season, and is actually a corruption of the words "seminary sausage", i.e. sausage that was traditionally made in a monastery. I can't guess as to why; maybe it changed to "summer" because the word "seminary" perhaps sounded too unnervingly close to the word "semen", which would undoubtedly be an obvious PR nightmare for the church, especially if it was construed that "semen sausage" was prepared by some monks . . . Ew, nasty! That, as I say, is a whole other weekend of entertainment. Anyway, more seriously, before the days of scientific thinking, having something wonderfully appetizing rendered from something like spoiling curdled milk, souring grapes, musty grain, or something formed from the less appealing bits and pieces of an animal was really thought to be miraculous and an act of divine intervention. Thus, such processes of fermentation and controlled decay and denaturation were left under the auspices of chaste and holy men who were charged to be in good standing with the Lord almighty. Speaking of holy men, it still baffles me as to how Valentine's Day, a day originally commemorating the execution and martyrdom of a priest, got deviated into what it is today.
 
***- An interesting, yet creepy,Valentine's Day bit of movie trivia: The Silence of the Lambs was released in theatres on February 14^th back in 1991. I wonder: how many rejected marriage proposals happened that day after such a movie date? So, today's bloody activity thus seemed to be a bit of the homage of sorts. As dark, disturbing, shocking and graphic as it is, it still remains on my Top 10 all-time favourite movies list, and worthy of all the Oscars it won. More interesting facts about this film from this Mental Floss link
 
****- He should have added "February in Saskatchewan" as a circle as well.